Tag Archives: cmd

I’m No BOFH

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Like many tech support people (and geeks in general), I regret that I am not the BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell). I have to resort to internal sarcasm, the mute button, and jabber to keep all of the crap at bay. The truth is that every one of us have a BOFH living inside of us that just wants to be let out, but we like to eat, so we keep it to ourselves or put it on our blog. We do this while changing the names and events enough to keep us from becoming hungry later on.

The results are funny. The results help us when we are in the midst of those stressful moments. “The website is down.” someone says. And besides going, “Aw, fuck.” we can post the link and quasi-quote, “Dude, I can’t arrange the icons by penis”.

The rest of you can laugh… pause… and wonder if you are the type of person to say the funny, yet dumb thing.

Over these months I’ve heard a lot and it’s time to share some with the rest of you. Things have been changed to protect people, namely myself.

7:01 P.M. – beep
“This won’t even install.”
“What version of the software do you have?”
Names a version from the late ninties.
“And what operating system are you running on your computer?”
“Vista.”
“That, unfortunately, isn’t going to run even if we can get it to install.”
“It’s not even supported on Vista?”
Well, Vista kinda didn’t exist when the software was written, buddy. It’s hard to support something when it doesn’t exist.
“If you’d like I can send you a link to the system requirements for that version.”
“Well, is there a newer version that is supported?”
“Yes there is.”
“Can you send that to me?”
Oh, yeah, we give out software for free here. It’s what we do, make newer versions so people with the old one can get it for free. Winning business model right there…
“Unfortunately, no. You’d need to buy it.”
“But I paid for this!!”
“I’d be more than happy to help you install that on a computer running a compatible operating system.”
“This is wrong! I bought this and now I can’t even use it! I upgraded to Vista. I don’t have a computer running anything else.”
Can I get a FAIL?

7:15 P.M. – beep
“Thank you for calling.”
“Hi, uh, I can’t get my student software to work.”
“Are you getting an error message?”
“I fill out the form with my information: my name, uh, my school, my address-”
I let this continue for awhile.
“…and it’s telling me I need to enter my year of graduation and no where do I see a year box, I see: my name, um, my school-”
I feel like I’ve let him go on long enough.
“Are you on a Mac?”
“Uh, yeah. How’d you-”
“Try using the scroll bar or resizing the window.”
“Oh- hey, there it is. Thanks.”
“No problem. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“Uh, no. Wow, I feel stupid.”
You and the half a dozen people who call with the exact same issue every week.
“Oh, no, don’t. It’s what we’re here for. You have a great evening.”
“Um, yah, you too. Thanks!”

7:23 P.M.
“What operating system are you on?
“Um, I’m on Windows.”
“Is that XP?”
“No, Vista.”
“Okay, could you please go to your start menu-”
“I don’t have a start menu.”
Riiight
“Okay, sure. Please go to the start bubble on the bottom left hand side of the screen. In the search box there type c-m-d. That’s charlie, mary, delta. Hit enter.”
“…”
“Just let me know when you’ve done that. A command prompt window should come up.”
“.. …okay.”
“Now could you please type the command for me i-p-c-o-n-f-i-g, ipconfig, slash, a-l-l, all… and hit enter.”
“It’s not working.”
“Did you type cmd first and hit enter.”
“Yeah, it didn’t do anything.”
“Try it again.”
“Oh. Ooooh. I must not have hit enter.”
“Sure. Could you please type the command i-p-c-o-n-f-i-g, slash, a-l-l?”
“…”
“Just let me know when you’ve done that.”

7:44 P. M.
“This doesn’t work.”
“Have you installed and activated? Is there a particular error message you are getting.”
“I click on it and it goes away.”
“What operating system are you on?”
“Mac.”
“What version of Mac OSX do you have?”
“…”
“Panther,Tiger, Leopard…?”
“Um, how do I find out?”
“Go to the apple icon in the top left and click on it. Click on ‘about this Mac’.”
“Okay. I have 10.4.-”
“Alright. Then can you please get your Tiger DVD?”
“I don’t have it with me. It’s at my other house.”
“Okay, then I can send you some instructions on what to do when you do have your DVD to get this to work.”
“Um, that’s going to be like, not for a very long time and I need this now. Can’t I download it?”
“The Apple website only has updates, it does not have the actual program that you need installed.”
“What if I don’t have that dvd anymore.”
“Then you should probably go to the Apple store and get a new one. It’s pretty important to have your operating system disk.”
…even when you’re pirating it, you should probably have a copy.
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

7:55 P.M.
“So, I’m getting a message about a missing lib or something.”
“It sounds like you’re missing that library.”
“How do I get it?”
“Well, if you have the yum installer, you can use that.”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s try it. Type yum install..”
…the missing library. Making sure he’s typing it in with the correct case. How to spell yum.
“It didn’t work. How do I get a yum install thing?”
“Well, you can download the yum installer for your distribution of Linux.”
“How do I do that?”
“Just Google it by what distro you have.”
“…okay..?”

7:59 P.M.
“So, I got that thing you told me to install from the Tiger disk.”
“Great.”
“It’s still not working.”
“Okay, well let’s walk through together and install the package.”
“Um, I don’t have the DVD here with me.”
A few minutes to make sure he doesn’t have the right thing installed
“It sounds like you have the Leopard version of this installed.”
“…”
“You need to install this from a Tiger dvd.”
“Oh. Well, okay. I downloaded the right thing.”
“You need to install this from a Tiger dvd.”

…and time to go home.

Yuvi: “Tech Support work is harder than Superman’s. Usually.”
Me: “Superman saves people from villains. In tech support we have to save people from their own ignorance and stupidity. That’s damn near impossible.”

Communication Technology

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So, people have a hard enough time with regular socialization skills. Now with all the tiers of communicating, it’s a wonder anyone can keep up. It’s not just technology to master, otherwise geeks would be super-pro at socialization.

First there were people communicating at social gatherings and work.

Then there was phone.

Now there is *deep breath* AIMPhoneMSNICQCellPhoneMySpaceEmailFacebookBlogRTSTextMessageForumMMORPG *another breath* -you get the idea. You figure this would ease communication. We’d be super in touch with everyone all the time. No. Because there is no way someone is going to call you to tell you something important if they can text you even if you disabled text messaging because you’re either dirt poor or got sick of getting texts of “hi :)” (or both). Even though you told them in person that you blocked texting, they forgot and they don’t like talking on the phone. They’d rather enjoy Olympic button pressing and staring at a post-it sized screen for 5x the time it would take to say what they needed to. They scoff and think that if you really cared to keep in touch with them, you would enable texting so that you’d get that one important text out of 500. And don’t dare ask them to email you, because that’s *totally* not the same thing.

I once had a boyfriend who argued with me on the phone until I downloaded an instant messaging service to talk to him. It doesn’t matter that we had cell phones, texting, and SKYPE (back when you could dial out for free). This was his most comfortable way of communicating, so I better adapt. On some level, I can understand. You can minimize the other person, don’t need to listen to their tone of voice, can play your RTS or MMORPG, have both hands to type unlike a cell phone, and they don’t know if you got up to get a bagel or pee. On the other hand, we were kind of trying to be emotionally intimate. One other advantage of online messaging is that I still have logs from these chats. That’s what I need… a record of how much I don’t stand up for myself. Hindsight is supposed to at least be softened by memory, and here I have a .txt file showing how pathetic I can be.

Sure, check your email, but make sure you have your FacebookMySpaceLinkedInRandomNetworkingThingies configured to let you know when someone sends you a message on one of these websites. But usually, you can’t read it in your email. I go into my email, see I have something on facebook, and in facebook go to my wall or my inbox… TWO separate methods of communication in ONE networking tool that tells you through email.

Woe onto you who have more than one email. I have two… one that I have had since… before it was cool. The other I got in college and has forums for jobs and places to live and alumni and dialogs on campus and stuff for sale and calls for art. It also has instant messaging built in too… so instant messaging services open and go into your email with yet another instant messaging service and texting on the cell phone in your pocket that can also ring… I’m sorry if I haven’t got around to checking my other email in awhile.

We’re not at the sad part yet. Want to know what the sad part is..? I’m part of a generation who is used to it. Sure, I set my boundaries. I’m on facebook. I’m not getting MySpace too. I’m not enabling texting for the pope- if you’re at your cell, call me!

But I’m used to it to the point where it is ingrained in me as a socializing solution to my communication shortcomings. That’s right, I sometimes look for even more alternate forms of indirect communication… Sure, I could turn around and say something to the funny and good looking guy in my IT class who I’ve thought was pretty cool since the first class (even if he does have a girlfriend but who cares it’d just be nice to communicate). Or, instead risking getting giddy and giggling like an idiot, I’d could go run, cmd, net send…

But the instructor set his boundaries. Thou shall not abuse net send or I shall disable it. Don’t make me do it.

And then people started writing batch files that sent net sends by the hundreds… and logged into other computers with remote desktop to say ‘it wasn’t me’… and flirted using poetic computer based metaphor (Oh, wait, that was just me… and him… as far as I know).

It’s ridiculous, and I realize it. I looked myself in the eye reflecting in the monitor and made a decision.

I asked for his cell number in the parking lot. *cheers* Score one for the communication revolution! At some point in the future, we will hang out and communicate outside of class- in person!

…now I just need to call it …and stop giggling at everything he says to me in person. Yes, even I- currently rated number three most confident on the compare people face book application of all my facebook friends who also have said application- can get shy. (see documentation above)

With all the additional ways to communicate and keep in touch with people, it’s true, we still don’t know how to communicate with other human beings. The opposite sex… oh, forget about that. This isn’t Star Trek you know. We don’t have the technology.

Follow up posts:
Communication Revolution: Quashed!
Wednesday Night