I can't log on and other sign language

"Can't log on." A woman says quietly as she balances the door on the end of her shoe and leans into the room waving her ID at us.

I try to ignore her bobbing about as she tries to hold the door open with her foot and pass her ID to me at the same time. She wobbles slightly, realises that the door can support itself and gives it up. She steps into the room and looks at me expectantly as the door slams.

I check her account out and all seems ok, I reset the password for good measure. I tell her what I have changed it to and that she can setup a new password when she logs in.

Arrrrghhh, My Ears!

The worst type of caller is when someone rings with a simple request, and they have to complicate it, make a drama out of it. They have to complain about everything, tell you their life's woes and make out they are hard done by.

Generally I usually ignore the rants and carry on. But it makes me wonder what I have done to deserve the onslaught.

The phone rings late one morning and I answer.

"IT Support" I say, ready to be helpful.

New Laptop

"I have an appointment" a rather rude woman tells us as she barges through the door, laptop bag hugged to her chest.

There were three of us in the room and that's the first we had heard of it. Still, ever eager to satisfy the masses we all smile and offer our assistance.

"My laptop has loads of viruses" she says. "I spoke to someone yesterday."

We all have blank looks on our faces and we are all thinking the same thing about the "loads of viruses," format c:, die, viruses die!

Personal Security

This is not exactly IT related, but it did happen to a former member of my department. He told me about it many times over the years and I have always found it amusing.

This story involves a woman (mentioned before in previous editions) that I have had many dealings with in the past.

She is one of the worst users of IT equipment in the entire company... ever. Many times we have laughed or groaned over her stupidities and lack of sense. Especially amusing were some of the things she said.

It's a Server!

A few years ago the technology layout of this company was very different. Instead of just having a server room, we had servers doing the hard work scattered in various places.

One such place was a room was in a remote building, where myself and one or another of my colleagues had to cover once a week in case anybody down there needed technical support. We used to call this place "the black hole." It was small, dark, dingy and out of the way.

In this room we had a PC for our use and a huge, tower server that at that time was used for running online exams software. Not an ideal place to keep it, but it did the job well enough for a long time, until...

For several weeks we kept have very strange problems with it. For instance, sometimes we would find that the server had been powered down or would be running mind-numbingly slow due to lack of resources.