Wednesday, May 27, 2009

If you can't type...

Words of advice. If you are going to contact your helpdesk because you can not get to a website, please, make sure you are typing in the proper address. Web browser can only go to the websites you tell them to go to. If you can't get to a training website because you can't type, thats your fault, not the computers. Similarly, if you do not know how to type, but can "Copy and Paste", make sure that when you "copy" you only highlight the portion that is relevant to the destination site. If you copy the ")", paste that into the address bar and hit search, you will get a "website not found" error. Once again, that is on you, not the computer.

I believe that instead of having error messages that are caused by users, Windows should pop up a "USER FAIL!" message.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Technical Assistance

http://abstrusegoose.com/136

People that should NOT have Blackberry's

I get a ticket that required me to go see a user who had forgotten her password to her blackberry. Now, at the time, we where told there is no "Password Reset" ability, so if a password is forgotten, the only form of 'fixing' it is to delete the Blackberry, and do a fresh install. The process isn't as bad as it sounds because everything is saved on the server, it is just annoying when the problem is caused by someone being an ID10T.

So, I go up, speak to said user, and I begin the process of deleting/reinstalling. Once the wipe was complete, I handed it back to her (she was sitting in her chair at her desk), and said can you please plug it in for me.

The look I got back was very similar to the look my dog gives me when I make a noise it has not heard before. The tilted-head, blank look of "I heard something come out of your mouth, but I have no earthly idea what it means". So, thinking that MAYBE she's just not use to hearing the term "plugged in" I say, attach the USB cable to the Blackberry and computer. She digs in her drawer and pulls out a USB cable, at which time I breathed a sigh of relief that I was not dealing with a moron. That breath was stopped short.

She was able to successfully plug the proper end of the USB cable into the blackberry on her first attempt... and thats where it stopped.

If you are a fan of a show called "The Simpsons", and you remember the episode that Mr. Burns lost the power-plant and needed to start from scracth to re-amass his great empire, you will know EXACTLY what look I'm about to describe. Mr. Burns is in the grocery store, in the middle of the isle saying "Catsup.... Ketchup....Catsup...Ketchup". The woman had NO idea what to do with the other end of the cable. I wish the story stopped there.

I moved her out of the way, and plugged the rectangle end into the rectangle hole, and finished the process of resyncnig the device. As I'm getting ready to leave she says, "How do I get the globe to work?" Baffled, I asked what do you mean, what globe. "Well, on my personal blackberry..." (that phrase alone confused me, how does someone who has their OWN blackberry, NOT know about USB cables?!) "...when I click on the globe icon, things like CNN pop up." I began to explain to her that our phones do not have the internet feature enabled on them, to which she said "Well, how do I get to CNN?". Stunned, I retold her "Again, ma'am, the internet feature is not turned on in our contract, so you can not surf the web on your blackberry."

I $h*t you not, her final response to me was "So... I can't get to CNN?"

*sigh*