Odd Computer Stories

D

Dyrseve989

Well-known member
Ok, feel free to share any funny or odd computer stories that you happen to have or know of. Heres Mine:

So me and a buddy of mine were shooting a video for a client. Real easy improv show, three camera - NonSync audio. All worked out well and we even got some free food ontop of free DV tapes and of course our payment. We decided this was going to be an easy project to edit, so we said screw it, we'll take it easy for a few days, capture/edit/pop it out onto 6 master DVD's in no time flat.

We'll we decided to walk away from the footage for about a week. We finally realized that the deadline we were givin was fast approaching, in two days. We grabbed a cam, captured all the footage, and began our editing. All was well as we expected and we began flying through the editing of this 3 cam setup show. We exported and had the DVD authored and ready to be burnt.

We'll, my buddies comp crashed. Not a fun night. The following day was the day we need to give our client the 6 Master dvd's. So there was no time,since it was 1am in the morn, to edit it all and d everything again. We brought his comp to a computer store to see if they can fix the problem and get us back up and ready to go. My friend gave the guy his computer and the guy asked for his password. My friend didnt answer. I was very irritated wth him wasting time because WE HAD NO TIME LEFT!! I snapped at him to give the guy the password, my friend still did not respond. I finally convinced him to tell the guy the password otherwise we were screwed out of many future jobs wit this client.

My friend turned very slowly and suddely to the computer guy, but looking down at the ground. He started saying each letter of the password, "I-A-M-G-A-Y" It took me a second, the same for the comp guy, and then realized what that read. The comp guy looked at my friend who at that point was sweating in embarasment, and said loudly and confused, "I AM GAY?", everyone in the store turned and drew there attention to the three of us. My friend looked like he was going to collapse, and I was holding back the tears I was laughing so hard.

The guy then fixed the comp, and we made or deadline, and I had something to laugh about for many many days.

*and he wasent acually gay, he just thought it would b a password no one would ever guess.
 
Too funny.
I had a call out back-in-the-day when I fixed puters. The client was screaming down the phone...The computers down...We have tried everything...dead...I thought **** this is serious...got down there...and sat down and switched on the monitor...they all gasped and said how did you fix it so quickly?...I was like what?? They had been looking at this blank screen for hours...people are dumb...
J
 
I would tell the one about the elusive *ANY KEY*.....but we've all heard that one in one form or another.

~reservoir~
 
Great, now we all know your friends password :) Can you give us his name, birth date and SS number as well, I would appreciate it greatly :).
 
I remember working a help desk line once and I received a phone call from a guy who was having a problem with his computer. During the course of the conversation I realized I needed a copy of a data diskette he was using (had reports or something on it) so he agreed to mail a copy to me after which I was to call him back and, hopefully, resolve the problem. A couple days later I received an envelope in the mail with a photocopy of a diskette, not a disk with the data on it, but a Xerox copy of the face of the disk. He was a very important client for our company so I had to call and say, "Thanks for the copy of the disk, but now I need some additional things from you...." :)

Another time I was working the help desk and a woman called frantic and said her disk drive was eating her disks. I assumed she meant that the drive was damaging the disks, but after asking this she said, "No, I put the disk in the drive and try to open the files on the computer, but it says there is no disk in the drive. Then when I go to pull the disk out it isn't there." At this I was shocked and completely confused. Fortunately, I worked in the same building so I found out where she was located, grabbed some spare parts (including a new disk drive - just in case) and went to her cube. I had learned earlier on in my "help desk" career that it was important to observe the clients environment and to have them re-create how THEY perform different functions. So I asked her to recreate the disk problem and watched as she reached to the computer below her desk and, without looking down, slipped the disk into the space between the drive and the case. Whoever put the computer together had left a gap there and she was actully dropping the disks into her case. The best of this story is that when I opened her computer to "fix the problem" I found 15 disks in there. Apparently it took her a while to figure out there was a problem :)

One more :) I had a friend who used to work in a tech support call center for a major computer manufacturer. Many times he would receive these types of calls and when he did would ask them to please hold while he "looked something up". He would then put them on hold and proceed to ridicule them to his co-workers and they would all have a good laugh about it. Many times when he would take them off hold he would find they had hung up and couldn't figure it out. Then one day, after placing someone "On Hold" and beginning to mock the person his buddy in the next desk over pointed at his phone and said, that's the "Speaker Phone" button. We still give him a hard time about that one :)
 
jpbankesmercer said:
They had been looking at this blank screen for hours...people are dumb...
Click to expand...

One of my friends works at a call in tech sopport center, according to him about 60-70% of the problems are fixed by one of the following:

1. Turn on your monitor.
2. Plug in your monitor.
3. Plug in your computer.
4. Connect your monitor to the computer.

yeah,, people are DUMB!
 
Back in the day, I was running OS/2 on my computer. It was fully loaded, with the latest audio cards and stuff. You may know that OS/2 was never great with driver support, which is IMO the main reason Windows (and relentless marketing by MS) won the PC operating system war.

Despite that, I had all compatible hardware, so things worked pretty well for me. One day, the sound stopped coming out of the speakers. I started troubleshooting: different set of speakers; different cables; reinstalled the driver; nothing worked. I took the computer to the shop. They took out the card, plugged a new one in... nothing.

Then Greg, the store owner, said: leave it here, a buddy of mine knows a lot about OS/2, he'll have a look.

Two days later, I got a call to pick the computer up - it was fixed. I aked what was wrong...

The 'Mute' check box in sound properties was selected the whole time. :thumbsup:


And since we are on such a lovely subject, I have one that happened to a friend of mine. Unbeknownst to each other, we landed in Canada on the same day, even on the same plane. We only got to know each other afterwards, though; our families shared temporary accommodation for government sponsored refugee immigrants. His family also came from Czechoslovakia, so we used to hang out a lot, helping each other to find jobs, apartments, schools, and... computers.

My English was a little better than his (which is to say his was close to non-existent), so we searched far and wide, until we found a perfect deal for him. We brought the new toy to his home, unpacked it, hooked it up, got the user manual and an English-Czech dictionary (a daily necessity back then), and started to crack the secrets of MS-DOS. At that point, I thought I'd leave him alone, and went home, just a few blocks away.

Ten minutes after I arrived home, my friend was on the phone: could I come to have a look at the computer, it won't start. So I returned to his place, and sure enough, the computer wouldn't boot.

So I started asking him questions about what exactly he did with it. He showed me a piece of paper on which he translated into Czech something he read in the manual: 'This command prepares the hard disk for use' (or something like that).

Of course, the command was 'format c:'. :laugh:
 
kai said:
DOH!
Click to expand...
When you come from a DIY land, you are used to EVERYTHING needing to be 'prepared' before you can use it. :grin:

It used to be one of my beefs with socialism: in a centrally planned economy, nothing would work out of the box, you always had to go through hoops to get anything done (if you were so lucky as to get what you needed). Paradise for black market, too.

Today, I realize it had certain charm (up to a limit). It makes you resourceful. Sometimes too much (like my friend who probably was shocked he didn't have to assemble the PC himself from smuggled parts).
 
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