OT: Been There, Screamed About That - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

27 Jun 2002

Rumor has it that David Woyciesjes may have mentioned these words:
...
   From:        
ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk [snip]
   20) If
the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail
 upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin
 crumbs and nail clippings in them. 
          I'm reminded of one of my
users who said her whole computer would
"freak out" when she used her mouse. (BTW She's right handed...) So, once I
get to her desk, everything is okay for me, and using the mouse (located to
the right, and behind the keyboard.) was normal.
         So I ask her to show me. That's when I see her heavy, very loose &
baggy sleeve, wool sweater push down just about every key on the numeric
keypad. Especially the Enter key. When I pointed this out to her, she said
"No it's not. It's the computer!"
"Really? Okay. Well I'm gonna go downstairs and check the server for
problems. In the meantime, watch your sleeve, just in case."
         And no, I didn't bother with the server. Just went to lunch. And
never heard about that problem again... 
I have one better - when I worked as a tech (way back when Winders 3.1 was 
king...) one lady said she couldn't get her work done, because WordPerfect 
for Winders kept crashing. (There were more memory leaks in that program 
than a sieve...) She was not restarting winders every crash, so I told her 
in the short term if it crashed she needed to restart winders every time, 
that would help lower the hard crashes until I had a chance to troubleshoot 
the problem.

She went ballistic. "How the hell do you expect me to get my work done if I 
have to keep restarting windows?" (understandable...) Two hours later, I 
made it to her cubicle, and after an hour (troubleshooting, testing, 
double-checking, and fixing), figured out that it was the driver for her 
3-button Logitech mouse (great mice, crappy drivers) was causing WPW to 
crash so often, so I removed the driver, and everything seemed fine...

... an hour later, I got an even more ballistic call - "Where the hell did 
my double-click go?" "'Scuse me?" "My middle button quit working!
Where'd 
my double-click go?" "I told you, that was the reason why your WP was 
crashing. You wanted that fixed, I fixed it. "Well, how the HELL do you 
expect me to get my work done without my double-click????" -- "You *might* 
try double-clicking on the left mouse button..." "I can't be bothered with 
doing THAT! Do you realize how much TIME having my double-click saves me! I 
just can't be BOTHERED to do that on my own!!! Get your a$$ back here and 
give me my double-click!!!"  But ma'am, if I do that, your WP will start 
crashing again, and you'll need to restart your windows every time that 
happens.  "I don't CARE! I just can't get my work done without my 
double-click!!!!!"

It's times like those that make me wish I became a farmer instead...
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   ---   sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right???  Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.

If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.