Tales From The It Guy

So, I have a user, lets call her Julie she works in sales. I hear Julie in the next office asking the sales audit person how to copy files on to a USB. Chuckle. I'm on site with another salesperson and he tells me how Julie is really smart with computer because she made this Excel sheet. Yesterday I get an email from Julie that she is getting this message when she is trying to use an Excel sheet that calculates rates for sales. "MS Office needs to be activated", she has not been on the corporate network for a while (Corona - work from home stuff). I tell her to go to the office or one of our remote sites and get on the network to activate office, to which she replies she doesn't want to use Office, just the "rate calculator". Facepalm!

 

My almost 74 year old friend...
Hi E how you doing, Please do you know how I can stop this bloody RAM thing going. Its been hours and I cant switch it or close it. It touched something when I went into my computer and nos cant get on the Internet. Have switched my PC off 4 times and still there.

RAM will change all the time.
Click the arrow at the top right.

I think I got it thanks E
When it went small I did a click and it had exit there it's been 3 hours of this shitdamn I miss you. Besides the PC I miss you being here. It CRAP just letting you know

 

Haha.....…

 

What??....you mean I cant put this DVD onto a CD?

How come our WiFi network wont work when the power goes out???
You must have used cheap components?

I cant remember my email password......can you email me a new one?

I cant get this very important email because your stupid Antivirus suite says it has a virus.
"Sorry but you wont be allowed to keep infected files on your networked computer".
Cant you just turn it off for a minute so I can get my email, then you can turn it on again?

 

This happened to me several years ago

General Manager (son of CEO/company owner): Why won't the network printer print this document? It says I have exceeded my daily quota and even when I turn the printer off and on it still says the same thing
Me (IT Admin): What are you trying to print?
General Manager: I have this book in the document feeder and I want 30 copies for staff use only.
Me: How many pages in the book?
General Manager: Just over 80 pages.
Me: This will be over 2,400 pages to print and remember earlier this year you were complaining about high paper usage by the printer/copier and asked me to put a quota system in place so we could castigate the guilty offender.
General Manager: But surely that doesn't apply to me.
Me: Sure does and the only exemption to the 100 page daily limit is the monthly account invoice run which has a 5,000 page daily limit and can only print in 2,500 page runs because the A4 power cassette only holds 5 reams of paper.
General Manager: Can we change this quota bullsh*t ASAP? It is preventing me doing my job. Why don't we just cancel the limit?
Me: Sure thing.......Long as you send me the request in writing and also admitting that you are the culprit using the large amounts of paper you were complaining about and blaming others. Maybe an apology is in order because you all but directly accused the warehouse manager and several of our sales team of using the company resources to print stuff out for their home businesses.
General Manager: Seems like you are on a witch hunt and are just singling me out.
Me: No you accused others and threatened them with the sack when now it is clear that they were innocent because from the logs I can see nobody prints more than 20 pages a day except the accountant and she has her own personal printer on her desk for confidential documents so she only uses the network printer for end of month stuff.
Here is a thought, why not just buy 30 copies of the book?
General Manager: It is $10 a copy and that would be $300......far too expensive for in-house staff copies of the book.
Me: So lets be crystal clear, we spend only $300 and you have the books ready to distribute to staff end of story............or we pay the cost of 5 reams of paper, a Fuji/Xerox toner cartridge, wages for someone to watch the printer in case the scanner or the printer jams, paying someone to collate all the pages, getting someone else downstairs to take the finished collated print job and add a cover and then finally put each book into the binding press and punch the 12 elongated slots for the plastic binding then take the punched pages for each book and slide them over the fingers of the binding machine so the plastic spine can be inserted..............tell me you are joking and just pay the $300
General Manager: You make it sound much worse than it is...........I am just trying to save money!!!! You need to get a clearer perspective.............
Me: WTF

.........and this guy was promoted to managing director one year later and within two years a 35 year old company was in financial difficulty and had to be sold to a foreign competitor.......crikey
Luckily I retired one year before the company was sold and and I only had to suffer his inept leadership for one year.........and then I took early retirement as I could see what was going to happen.

 

This is something I posted back in 2016 and thought some of the newer members might get a laugh https://forums.majorgeeks.com/threads/has-this-happened-to-anyone.296884/#post-1940534

Yep I had a good one quite a few years ago. A friend who owns a panel beating business called me up saying one of the computers was still working but a week ago it made a whirring squeaking sound and now the receptionist says it is making a really bad smell. I asked if it still was making the noise and did it smell like burning electronics or something that was running too hot and he said that the noise had stopped but wasn't sure he could describe the smell but it was making the receptionist feel really queasy. I asked if it wasn't all the paint thinners fumes making her feel sick but he said they have a paint booth with a water wall and filters so not that. After much discussion about this strange smell and although I was really busy with my real job I made some time so I could go down to the panel shop. On arrival I said that I bet that I will know the problem as soon as I take the side of the case off ................. and there it was.......... a mouse caught in the rear cooling fan. Ewwwww

http://i968.photobucket.com/albums/ae163/joffa666/mouse_in_pc_at%20panel_shop_zpsucun2gew.jpg

Hey mouseketeers bad news.......... poor Mickey didn't make it

Surely someone could describe a smell of something rotting but it seems not

BTW Note how filthy a 6 month old computer in a panel shop becomes.... the dust is from when they dry sand the filler and is when they leave the office door open to hear the phone because the receptionist only works two or three days a week