The Misadventures of a Traveling Computer Repairman

General Discussion
121

guys, i was paraphrasing. the book doesn’t actually say that word-for-word, haha. it does tell you to take a shower and don’t call the client an idiot though.

[quote=“klr.b, post:117, topic:155695”]

i disagree with both statements.

[random thoughts and experiences]

i feel that our culture is undergoing a bit of a paradigm shift where quality of work/person has a slight edge over efficiency. a large part of customer satisfaction is from the understanding that you busted your ass working on their stuff- 100% clean or not. now, in a corporate situation i agree with both of you. how a corporation wants a system fixed is efficiency first, because most of the time the workers do not have privileges or any type of ownership on the systems in which they work. i’m primarily a residential tech though and most of my clients are older. losing emails, bookmarks, random-ass pictures of their cats and dogs that they see everyday can be devastating to them. i’m not singling anyone out- just in general- dorknerds need to understand that the older generation has a fear of the technology we embrace; not exactly a fear of the computer itself, but the fear of seriously messing something up. that’s one of the reasons ransomware works so well on them.

before i got them, many of my clients got the geeksquad/sperglord treatment. geeksquad wants their money and the sperglord wants their ego stroked; both are willing to make problems seem worse than they actually are to accomplish that goal. i try to put them in the mindset of “hey, computers are lolgoodfuntime. none of this is all that serious.” now, instead of “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD, I JUST RUINED EVERYTHING” becomes “heh, hey can you come over? i got that virus that says the FBI is gonna get me for lookin at this titty site again. yeah, right. like i’d believe that. nice try, Afghanistan heh heh.”

so sure, formatting covers the REPAIR TECH’S ass, but to the less technologically inclined person, it screams at them “YOU fucked me up so bad this guy had to come over and burn all of your pictures of your grand kids just so i could work again.” that kind of negativity drives people away from their systems and can make them resent the repair tech. cultivating a positive atmosphere is important in more ways than just efficiency, IMHO.

[/random thoughts and experiences]

that being said, i fix almost all problems at the house in an hour or two. if i have to take it to my workshop, i’m usually same-day or next-day fixing these hos. can’t fade me.

122

I’ve had mine for years, it looks good on paper but it’s a fair pointless certification.
If you are truly looking to certify you need to specialize via a specific vendor’s more advanced applications.

123

Pretty sure your brain switched to pussy gear on that instance and blew it for you.

You could have applied the old but favorite “Excuse me, could you give me the phone number? - I’m sorry? - Phone number please. - My phone number? - Well i was asking the number of the shop so i could check that the installed parts were properly working, but if you also want to give me yours i guess i don’t mind.”

True story. (But back when i worked in a honda stand on warehouse retail)

124

So did you guys know that the flap from a cardboard box in the backsteat of a car going 70 miles an hour with the windows down can launch a clipboard full of important paperwork out of the window and onto the highway and into the path of an 18 wheeler, where it explodes into many shards of particle board and flying paper?

I didn’t either, until today.

I also got rear-ended (no damage to my car, but it dented his fender up good :3), got chastised by an HP rep who just happened to be at the UPS hub over packages that were still there from before I transferred, had to pay $18 dollars in parking that I don’t get reimbursed for for a job that should have taken 30 minutes ($1.50 in parking) that turned out to be a loose cable on the rear assembly’s pcb correctly (which took 45 minutes to get to), and finally getting stuck in traffic for an hour and being late for a job that should have taken an hour (which the lady graciously waited for) but took FIVE FUCKING HOURS.

Oh, and the lady who stayed behind? She’s already getting jokes about staying so late at the office with me. Yeah, like that’s not going to make things awkward when I have to go back tomorrow. No, she isn’t attractive.

I really do love my job, but goddamn… something’s gotta give after that.

125

Man you have the shittiest luck in existence lol.

126

On a positive note, you are now on the Best of top 5 topics always up there above everything on the forum.

I also hope you turned back looking towards that flying clipboard as a reaction that looked very suspicious what with the eyepatch then sped up & got out of Dodge and got a truck horn or two at least for such efforts.

Take a trip to get another copy of the list on a flash drive ala the Collateral Tom Cruise badguy movie.

127

It’s a fair trade for being ridiculously handsome, possessing genius-level intellect, and a very nicely shaped penis.

128

the top answer is reboot and hope for the best, amirite?

pretty much ever things you said about ipads apply to macs in general from my experiences.

129

I think I stole all of DRD’s luck.

130

Man that shits dangerous man. You could have cause a pile up in the highway, Final-Destination style with dem flying papers.

As for that lady…

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/37846380.jpg

131

yeah, when i’m researching problems rebooting is one. updating is another one. can’t hate, a shutdown and update can solve problems :rofl:

132

And the hits just keep coming.

Today I got pulled over by a highway patrolman for going six miles over the speed limit. He wanted to ticket me until I asked how fast he thought I was going. We got into a staring match. I smiled. I was going six miles over.

I got off with a warning.

Went back for round five with one of the two printers from hell today. For some reason, the HP support reps during that time of day suck elephant balls. Anyway, the part they sent didn’t fix the problem, so I have to go back tomorrow for round six. That is, if the part even gets there this time, as they used the same shitty courier they used last time who couldn’t be bothered to go half a mile past where the GPS says the address is.

133

Shit like that is why we lease our printers in the office. We just get replacement units whenever something breaks.

134

Real talk, HP printers can go fuck themselves. They are so fucking worthless man; especially in a Federal Government environment. The drivers are usually the culprit and all of the techs that I work with hate them, including myself. Usually, people go for the big money Canon’s if they have the budget for it.

For anyone who is on the fence about A+, I have had mine for about a year now and it will get you in the door at most places as it is vendor-neutral and is a requirement of the Department of Defense Directive 8570. Most of A+ are the things you either already know or something you know but couldn’t put a name on it. If you have an active clearance, some certs with education & experience, you will turn out fine and you’ll get something. In addition, most of the things you may learn from class and from books you won’t use in the real world. I speak from experience.

Just my heads up.

135

And then there’s people with shitty credit like me who can’t pass a clearance check and have to work on printers or take jobs at call centers for a living. -_-

136

well, in the case of low end printers, HP does a good job, I tried a few canon n they did faulty prints, but yeah, big money u go for the high end ones, hopefully dont buy it for the day to day personal use

137

I see you have felt the same pain I once had to contend with during my days as a sailor in the Navy. Yes, I give a big middle finger to HP, their printers, their other products, and the couches the evil craftsmen who construct their various evil machinations sit upon. May they all rot. Cannon? Cool in my book. I can’t tell you how hard they are to fix because I’ve never had to fix one.

-Starhammer-

138

Currently studying for my 70-685. I hope to take the exam in early June after my house move.

139

So I think I’ve got a story worthy of this thread now. While I am not a travelling computer repairman, I did have the pleasure of travelling down to Alabama and saw the worst placed server room in the history of servers or time.

My internship with [redacted] Steel Company started with me going into their IT department last Monday, the 3rd, ready to travel to their [redacted], Alabama plant to help them get ready to transfer the plant onto SAP, a centralized business database system. I was going to mainly help the man in charge of bar code readers get them ready for their role in the mock taking of inventory. Monday went fine, aside from a 4 hour delayed flight out of Atlanta but what can you say it happens, and Tuesday is where the real fun begins…

I’m sure many of you don’t know but I spend most of my time in Ohio and Pennsylvania so to me Alabama is fucking HOT, and as Tuesday wore on it only got hotter. Work Tuesday started at 8 and it was mostly spent trying to figure out why there were so many complaints of scanners not sending their data and freezing. My group consisted of the guy who supports all of the scanners in the company, the guy who hung all of the wireless access points across the yard (contractor) and myself and we went off into the dusty frontier that was the yard. We made the rounds all day in a vast majority of the yard then decided to head back to ‘homebase’ which was just the locker room and install the latest version of the wireless software that these scanners are using to connect to the system. All of a sudden, around 4 o’clock (not too far off quitting time) none of the scanners could connect to anything; we couldn’t log in, send data or ping our server.

I didn’t know that the shit was going on, I had been on the job one day I was as confused as most of the Alabamians (wow thats a word) when Scannerman told them that these scanners were a lot like their PCs and iPads (because every mill laborer that is working TWELVE HOUR SHIFTS OUTSIDE IN ALABAMA has a fucking iPad, sure. Same as all the 55 year old black guys there who have been doing this shit for 30 years has a PC, okay). Scannerman, who is actually with the company made calls and found out that the server was down, none of us knew where it was and the IT guy down there is notoriously flaky and didn’t answer any of our calls to help us out find the server room in this pretty large campus of a mill. A little bit later Scannerman got a phone call from the Systems and Server control man and heard that the temperature in the room was 120 degrees, ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FUCKING DEGREES. At this point Wirelessdude remembers that he knows where the server is and decides the A/C unit must have failed. I’ll bet you guys can never guess where (or what) the server room is. Go ahead and guess I’ll give you a minute.

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The Heat Treat Building. The Heat Treat Building. The. Heat. Treat. Building. This isn’t 3 hours after I was told that the temperature in there was just slightly hotter than hell. I don’t know exactly what they do in the heat treat building but I’m sure that is has something to do with getting steel pipes RLLY FCKNG HOT. The room the server was in is obviously in a secluded corner of the building far away from any machinery that can heat up steel to a level that it can be played with, right? WRONG!!! Right next to the assembly line, where I saw smoke coming out of steel pipes like chimneys, in a steel box that could be used for cruel and unusual punishment if you got left in the sun for too long inside it (pictures down below for reference of proximity to the line). So obviously the A/C unit in the room failed, and had been leaking apparently because there was a one gallon bucket beneath it that had overflown who knows how long ago. Scannerman and Wirelessdude call maintenance and explain the severity of the issue. Maintenance couldn’t do anything and called the A/C guys from in town. All the while moving at what I can only explain as a ‘Southern Pace’ all the while this server is cooking, as production had started back up from shift change.

Scannerman and Wireless dude decided we couldn’t wait for the repairmen to fix the A/C so we ran off to 4 different stores to find an indoor air conditioner. Salesman at whatever hardware store inside told us this one window unit here is just fine indoors and in confined spaces. We buy it and a 5 gallon bucket. Get back to the oven that is baking up some server switch casserole and plug the A/C into the wall and set it on a big barrel with the bucket under it. Ten minutes later I reach behind the A/C and in NO WAY is it okay sitting in that room, all the cool air is getting cancelled out by the hot air pumping out the back. So Wireless dude tells maintenance to cut a hole in the wall and install the window unit in there and here are the results: https://plus.google.com/photos/102841965962301979807/albums/5887646651935367953?authkey=CO-o3LncnfXrOg.

140

Looks like Doc needs to call up Russian dude for you. XD

Edit: Why am I picturing gief SPD’ing a a/c unit now?