Some stupidly funny computer stories. — Various
Ed. note: I tried to go with those items that showed at least mass ignorance, and which were new to at least me. I didn’t include the especially techy errors (like trying to format the primary hard drive while in Win2K), nor those that have been floating around (like putting credit cards in the floppy drive when asked for a credit card number).
Thanks to all who sent items in. Enjoy.
Military Intelligence
I am a computer tech for a military installation, and some user called in saying his computer had blown up. Upon arriving, I found out that his computer had water all over and in it. The user was watering his plant that was located on top of the case.
It wasn’t all that bad that the computer was dead, but it was really bad that he was watering a fake plant.
Being Taken Literally
I work for a small ISP. I had a customer with chronic problems getting online with his 56k modem, so I took the time to drive out to their house to show them basically how to use their computer and how to quit screwing things up.
So as I’m re-installing his modem and putting in all the info for Outlook and his dial-up adapter in and showing him where the power button was, he tells me that he had called our office earlier in the week and that the girl in the office was trying to walk him through the basics of setting up his modem. He told me that she had him go to my computer and right click, then she asked him to go to Properties. He said nothing happened.
I had to apologize for laughing hysterically when I saw his notebook laying on the desk. Apparently, he thought he was being told to WRITE “CLICK.”
It Works On Tabletops
Well, I used to work for (OEM tech support), so i could keep you entertained for weeks, but I witnessed a phone call where an elderly lady sprayed Lysol in her computer to kill viruses.
Another Lost iMac User
A woman returned a “faulty” scanner. “Did you check
the connections?”
“Oh, I thought it was infra-red or something.”
“No. Those wires are not decorative.”
8-Track Girl
A customer service rep for our company’s ISP division got a call from a
woman trying to install our Internet configuration software. She complained
loudly, “Why didn’t you REWIND this CD before you sent it out?!”.
She Is Not Alone
I was working at a tech at Microcenter at the time. Someone who was
completely new to computers (Had never even typed at one in his life)
purchased the most expensive system in the store. He just could not
figure out how to use it at all. He kept returning it to the service
department when it was fine. So eventually they sat him down with me for
a lesson. Not something we normally do but this guy dropped 15,000 on
this system so we wanted him to be happy.
So I explained the basics of
what the mouse is, what icons are. Anyway when we got to the disk drives
I tried to explain what a cd-rom was. Now keep in mind this is in 1997.
I said its just like an audio CD. Well, he had never even seen an audio
CD. So when I explained that it’s a modern form of a record or tape.
Well he had a tape deck. So I said yeah its like that. Then came the
incredible line: “So how do I rewind it when I am done with it?”
Linux is STABLE!
A good friend of mine (really!) decided to drill some more holes in his case to add some fans. Well, smart guy that he is, decides, this comp runs Linux, hasn’t been re-booted in forever, so why take it down now?
He put some plastic down, and, case running, starts drilling. Well, guess what? The plastic covering wasn’t that great. He heard some noises, and, oops, time to buy a new m/b!
Natural Watercooling
When I implented my water-cooling system into my case I did all the drilling on my case outside on the patio. Of course, I never even gave the concern that my motherboard was still in the case that night when I left to go to the movies. When I got out of the movies it was raining, and I never took my computer back in side, or even put the case back together. So my mobo got to take a nice bath in the rain.
Your Tax Money Hard At Work
It was early in the semester during my Computer Engineering. The teacher was
displaying overheads of motherboards, describing the components so we can
learn the layout. She had absolutely no clue what she was
talking about. She got to a picture of a Slot I motherboard, and I was half
asleep trying not to learn how she thought a computer worked. She starts
naming components, expansion slots, RAM slots, power headers…etc. Then she points to a big black chip labeled “440BX” and says,
“Now this is the processor”. At that moment I couldn’t let her go on with
this, “No it isn’t” I yelled out. Everyone laughed.
She looked at me, “be
quiet, of course it is, where else would it be?”. I pointed to the big brown slot in the middle of the board.
“That’s where the processor goes.” “No it doesn’t” she said, “That’s for THE
CACHE”.
Oh well, i guess it’s not all bad. Of course I now have her for programming.
Good thing she just learned java the weekend before the semester started
PColtergeists
One of our technicians dropped a PC on the floor, right in front of its owner, scattering bits of computer everywhere in a
6-foot radius. Ugly.
After that, we borrowed a walkie-talkie from the security department and hid it behind the PCs we were working on. For the next
week, whenever he went near those computers, we would say “No! Don’t kill me! Leave
me alone!” and so on in falsetto voices into the walkie-talkie so they
appeared to be ‘talking’.
Oh Well, Back to the Pedophiles
Son: How do you… er… find information that you’ve, like, put into
the computer?
Me: What do you mean, exactly?
Son: Say you put in some… er… numbers and then you wanted to find
them again.
Me: Well, you could use the Find tool.
Son: No, they were on the Internet.
Me: Google?
Mother: Oh, just tell the man.
Son: Well, I… er… used my mom’s credit card to sign up for a
website.
Mother: Tell him.
Son: I signed up for this adult website and I lost the password and now
I can’t cancel it because I lost the password.
If This Is True, Then Why Aren’t Cats Extinct?
I found this picture on my hd, don’t know where I downloaded them.
The caption on
godkills.jpg is “Everytime you masturbate… God kills a kitten.
Please, think of the kittens.” The pictures shows a kitten running
away from some things that look like brown lunch bags with teeth
painted on them.”
Timothy Leary’s First PC
We once had a complete lunatic who tried to refund his
perfectly-working, one-month-old PC for reasons he wouldn’t disclose. We
explained that we didn’t refund working items. He then changed his mind
and claimed it was faulty. What’s the fault? “It’s doing my head in!”
Another Input Device
About a year ago, my girlfriend’s aunt called me because she had a
computer problem. Each time she sat down and tried to
write something using any software, the cursor would
“go nuts and not stop running away”.
So I went over there to check in on the
problem.
She started her computer and started Word,
then the cursor effectively “ran away”; Looking at the
keyboard, I saw that her rather very
large breasts were pressed on the
keyboard. So, I rebooted the computer and asked her to
sit a little farther away from the screen. Surprise!
It worked! I didn’t say anything more, thinking she
understood the cause of the problem.
I went home, but an hour later, I received another call from her,
saying that the “bug” had returned. I went
over there again, pushed the keyboard away from her.
she saw everything was working fine this time, and
being a nice boy, I said no more.
I went home, but she called back again the next day. This was
getting old fast, but I wanted to be as polite as
possible, so I called my girlfriend and told her
to tell her aunt to please remove her boobs from the
keyboard.
Boot Camp
Every time someone wants to
use my computer, I just say, “Over there”. If the
computer is turned off (in the morning), I say “over
there”, each person turns on
the power station (which controls the monitor and
speakers), and waits for it to boot up.
After five
minutes, they all ask “What’s wrong with your computer?”
and I always answer, “Push the button next to the
floppy drive”. That usually fixes it.
. . . and last but not least.
How Michael Dell Got Started
Back in 1983 I was in computer sales. Those were the days when an 4.77MHz 8088-based IBM computer w/ a 360KB full height floppy drive and a 10MB HDD, 256K (not MB) RAM, CGA 16 color video adapter and 14″ color monitor, with a parallel port and Epson 80 column dot matrix printer ran $10,000+ dollars. Needless to say, personal computing was in its infancy and customers were not very educated about this “new” technology.
Well, we had a “regular” customer that would “hang out” at our computer store — kind of like a “groupie” without the sex or drugs. This person considered himself an expert, and would show up practically every day to advise our customers on what to buy. Whenever a customer made a decision as to which computer they were going to purchase, the groupie went out of his way to tell the buyer what a wise decision he or she had made and would offer additional recommendations to help us add to the sale with items such as supplies, surge suppressors, floppies, etc..
One day, we were very busy. The “groupie” was extremely helpful and made sure that customers were greeted and that did not wander about unrecognized. He spent a great deal of time working with one prospective customer and developed quite a trusting relationship with him. Whatever our “adopted salesperson” recommended, they wanted. All-in-all, quite a nice little system — all components that I would certainly have recommended.
When it came to ring up the sale, I asked about items such as surge suppressor, printer ribbons, etc., and also mentioned a Floppy Diskette holder to store the diskettes. The customer then looked to our friendly and helpful “groupie” for his opinion and received the comforting “nod” of approval. I then went to the back room to collect the items, and upon placing them on the counter I started to ring the items up.
Suddenly our “groupie” blurted out “not that one. “Don’t get that floppy disk holder.” That one stores the diskettes vertically — the bytes will slide right off and you’ll lose your data!” “You need one that will store the diskettes horizontally!”
Everyone in the shop (sales personnel included) stopped what they were doing and looked to see what my response would be. After what seemed like an eternity I responded — “You are absolutely right,” I said. “Thank you for catching that! It seems that our vendor ran out of the horizontal floppy storage cases and substituted the vertical ones”.
I then told the customer that I would re-order the horizontal storage units and give them a call upon there arrival.
Well, what could I say? After all, this person had practically sold the customer a complete system, and I was getting the commission for it. I couldn’t make him look stupid!
After that we always stocked horizontal floppy diskette storage cases for whenever our “groupie” was around.
Then there was the time someone failed to save their data and blamed the fact their data was missing on the fact that the PC’s power cord was pinched between the desk and the wall, impeding the flow of electricity, similar to a kink in a garden hose …
Those were the days!! 😉
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