Badly Drawn Monsters
A site of nerdery, life, geekism, and monsters
hrrmmmm….
Nov 5th
friend: “Michael Chrichton died, did you hear?”me: “Dinosaur attack?”friend: “No, cancer”me: (feeling like an ass)
Much later….
me: “…and then she says ‘no, cancer’ and I felt like such an ass”another friend: “Yeah, that always kills the party, can’t joke about that topic. Now, dinosaur attacks have always been funny, just unfortunate.” http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThisIsWhyYourHoldTimeIsSoLong
dumb and dumber
Nov 3rd
Short version, this program has so many issues, upgrading it would be like putting a fresh coat of paint on a pile of manure. This is confusing because there is a NEW version and an OLD version, and both don’t work terribly well.
her: “Hello, our timeclocks are one or two hours off”
me: “Ah yes, we did just have daylight savings and the clocks don’t update themselves, so they would be an hour off right now. Do you use the new version or the old version?”
her: “ummm, how do I know?”
me: “the old one was Unix based, and it looked like More >
emails with a friend
Oct 30th
first email:“Hi Jeff, I just got a wireless card for my computer, and how do I hook it up? It’s a [name brand] card and its supposed to go in my computer somewhere. How do I get it in there? Glue or something? ”
response:“Hey Dani, ok, so first you have to take the side of the case off, there should be some screws you have to undo and then the side panel should come off. Then, in the lower left corner, you should see some empty slots. That’s what you have to push the card into. First though, you have More >
one foot is slippery
Oct 28th
So this weekend my friend Becky found out that the local curling club is had an open house to which you can go and learn to curl.
I do not know how she found this out.
Since we had nothing better to do, and since I was working off a ridiculous hangover brought on by homecoming in Madison the night before, I was not capable of much physical activity. Curling sounded right about up my alley.
So the fiance and I went on down there with Becky and her husband Allen. I did not even know where we were going, or where you More >
problems that aren’t
Oct 24th
I had the privilege of speaking to the gentleman who is the root of the expression “Asshat”.
I rarely get mad at any users; most often the errors that they have are due to lack of knowledge on how to do something. This does not mean that they’re stupid or bad people, but that they just haven’t had the opportunity to learn something yet. This can be turned in your favor by teaching them what happened, and usually this makes everyone happy as kittens in a sunbeam.
This gentleman is the asshat that has “problems” that are “your fault” and has no More >
it’s on typewriters too
Oct 24th
Sometimes you just get a feeling when you’re talking to someone about the cause of a problem, and I had a hunch that this one was due to user error. Her password was very simple (Happy12) yet she couldn’t get it to work. I could log in as her on my computer, so there was definitely something screwy going on with her side.
A common mistake is having the capslock key on so that it inverts your password (hAPPY12). I told her to turn it off, but she told me that she was “only using it for that one letter”.
That seemed More >
computer abuse
Oct 22nd
A user was complaining her computer was running slow.
After checking her computer, I find that it has a 38gb hard drive that only has 150mb free. I cleaned off all the temporary files I can find, do some basic cleanup things, deleted some old programs, make as much space as I can without making drastic changes to her computer. This gets me to 250mb free. I then go to tools and want to defragment her hard drive.
Wow.
I have never seen a computer this bad. Several technicians came over and offered their condolences. If her computer was the family cat, time to take it to More >
listen to me
Oct 22nd
This morning a representative whose desk is across from mine had this happen to him.
Slightly geeky back story:In order to get a client’s IP address, you have to type “ipconfig” in a DOS window.
Since this isn’t the most common thing for someone to type, we walk users step by step on opening a DOS window and typing this “ipconfig” in letter by letter. Once in awhile, someone will mishear you and type it wrong once. Usually this is corrected after one attempt.
We usually say something along the lines of: “I as in indigo, P as in Peter, C as in Cat, More >
tucker plays for real madrid
Oct 21st
I figured out what’s wrong with Tucker: he is a European soccer player in a dog’s body.
He will be running around playing just fine, having a grand ol’ time, and then something will cause him slight discomfort (hitting the end of the leash, bumping into a table, Leinie taking his toy).
This causes him to assume the “oh I’m so injured I can’t possibly go on anymore!” flop that soccer players do when someone looks at them too hard.
When we ignore him for a few minutes, he goes all sulky to his corner, as if to say “Fine, if you don’t want More >
this isn’t new
Oct 20th
How long have PCs been around in the mainstream? 15 years or so? Like around that time, every library threw out their cards and got computers, and every school had a teacher who didn’t know jack about computers trying to teach typing. Still, I get this variation at least twice a week:
“Can you tell me what kind of computer you’re on?”“…umm, it says Planar on it”“No, that’s the monitor, the computer is the other box, can you tell me what it says on it?”“All I have is this computer, I don’t have another one”“OK, can you follow the cord coming More >
