Support stories

This was kind of prompted by the customer support stories that have been told over Vent on some nights. I just got one. It's more of an 'interesting' than 'facepalming' story, but I thought I'd share it.

I have worked on several sites doing independent work. Although I'm not strictly the tech support for them and don't manage the servers, I do sometimes get a call when things go really wrong with the site when it involves the backend.

So I get a call from a particular client and they tell me that no one can log in to the system because everyone there are getting an "invalid username or password" message. I haven't made any changes to it recently, site is still up, backups are there, so I'm thinking that someone high up had a password changing rampage or there was some server update they did to break the password hashing that was being used.

I try to log in and find out that ... I can! It seems to be working fine. Puzzled, I checked and no one has actually changed their password this week either ... and this started in the middle of today. I contacted the other guy who does the front-end of the site and asked him to log in. "It's giving me invalid username or password." Now even more unsure what to think, I created a new account, changed the password, tried it on all other different levels, etc. It worked fine.

"Uhm, okay," I told him, "here's what we're going to do. I'm going to change your password to *this* and then you try loging in." It worked. "Okay, now change it back to what it was." I watched the hash changed back to what it was originally when he was having problems.

"Yeah, it's working fine with my old password now. What did you do?"

I don't even know.

"Mass password memory failure syndrome."

My favorite facepalm story actually highlights why I try to have patience with SOME people, because some people just do not get computers (if you really step back and think about it, computers are very non-intuitive).  

So I have this lady at a large bank call in, we supported a ton of banks in our heyday, and her computer's hardlocked.  That's not what she says of course, but she describes it and I figure out almost instantly that it's a hardlock, do a couple quick tests to confirm, and ask her to go ahead and bounce the box.  Now, she really wigs out a bit at this... nothing too overt, but she's clearly frightened of the thought of doing something she's not authorized to do, aka restart her computer, but I assure her it will be alright as long as she does what I say, and it won't be complicated. 

This is the part where I have to describe to her how to hit the power button on the computer.  I'll just let that sentence sit there while you try to envision how that conversation went, but here's the kicker.

Me: Okay did you find the button?
Her: Yeah.
*about 6 seconds of silence*
Me: Did you hit it?
Her: Yes, but all it did was make the cd tray pop out.
Me: *without missing a beat* Okay hit that button again, then keep looking further down the case for ANOTHER button, probably more central.
Her: Okay.  *pause*  I hit the first button a couple more times but the tray keeps coming out.
Me: Just push it back in and look for that other button.
Her: Are you sure? 

I could keep going but this poor woman knew literally nothing about how a computer functioned on any level.  It's okay though, she did finally find that power button.

 

I had to talk someone out of a screensaver once.

I could elaborate, but...

This pretty much sums up every time I visit my parents now...

Great video. Anyone else think the guy sounds like Rory?

Kolson Wezrae wrote:Great video. Anyone else think the guy sounds like Rory?

To me he sounds like H. Jon Benjamin. AKA the guy who voices Sterling Archer.

Yeah, I guess. Being H. Jon Benjamin and all right there in the credits. The voice still reminds me of yours though.

I have to admit, I very much enjoyed that. It's very true too.

http://tinyurl.com/pln5mhy
(hehehe)

*Attempts epic highfive with Gwydo, which results on random evil people's heads to spontaneously explode*

Oh, and I liked the link.

Well that sucks, because I can't purposely attempt an impression of Jon Benjamin. I just can't sound like Jon Benjamin to myself.

For my own personalized therapy, I like to type "anime rave party". Sometimes I switch off all CAPS, sometimes I leave only some of the words in CAPS, and sometimes, I capitalize every other letter. I do that for about 30 lines or so and when I get back to life sitting on a chair, it doesn't seem so bad by comparison, and I feel refreshed.

Lol, good find Gwydo.

This just happened.
(Co-worker) "Just set it on fire."
(Me) "I'm Commander Shepard and that's my favourite solution on the Citadel."

Co-worker stares at me for a moment and then busts out laughing.

Destroy option. Excellent.

Maybe add some more lava to the fire? Overkill is usually the safest option. And the awesome one.

And then employee #C shouted, "NO! I will get this whole situation under CONTROL, DO YOU HEAR ME!?"