Recent tickets coming in for Excel not autocalculating. The Cliff Clavin caller knows that this is an indication that we should upgrade him to the latest version of Office.
Turned on Automatic calculation in Tools > Options. So much for the upgrade.
Thursday, 1 March 2018
Wednesday, 7 June 2017
I think we need all email application designers to sign-on to this idea: Prevent users from typing their whole message in the subject line. I'm picturing something like the dreaded Clippy popping up to say something like, "You appear to be typing an awful lot of words into the subject line. Would you like me to copy this to the body of the email instead?" The help system could then further explain that the subject line is a brief summary of what the email is about while the meat of the message is contained in the body. Perhaps it could also point out that people that put more words in the subject line than there are in the body of the message are more likely to annoy those on the other end.
Or maybe I'm just crazy.
Wednesday, 24 May 2017
What happened to "the customer is always right"
In my time on this planet I have dealt with a few different companies and a couple governments looking for customer support. Among that group who would you guess has the worst customer support? You'd think the government, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong!
Several years ago my company signed on with a mid-sized partner to provide us with phone services. At the time we thought it would be better to be a big fish in a small pond because we would be the most important customer in their roster and would reap the benefits. Looking back through the egg on our faces I'm sure we wish we could hop in the old DeLorean and go slap ourselves upside the head.
It turns out that, not only were we the big fish in their little pond, we were like Otto in A Fish Out of Water - we just kept growing and growing until we were too big for them to handle. Now most companies, you'd think, would take one of two paths; 1) Admit that they had bitten off more than they could chew and bow out gracefully or 2) Step up to the plate and use some of the profits we paid them to improve - better infrastructure, more knowledgeable staff, etc. Turns out that this company was not like the others.They chose option 3) Take the money and run the contract into the ground no matter what.
As things started going south with calls dropping, bad quality, people not being able to hear each other, etc. our support desk found itself escalating more and more issues to our partner's support desk. At least that is what they called it. In the 3 years of the contract they had gone through 4 or 5 support desk managers ranging from the fairly knowledgeable and helpful to the downright ignorant and rude. At one point they practically auto-replied to us with "not it" whenever we pushed a ticket their way.
For example, one day, the 5th day of outages which they ignored the first day, blamed on us the second, finally located the problem on their end on the third, blamed us again on the fourth and then, with their admission of guilt still hanging out there, stopped troubleshooting altogether. The issue had happened before several times and always had the same solution. Instead of taking the road well-traveled, however, they wanted us to, once again, prove that water is wet and step through a series of extra troubleshooting steps. This after 4 days of no phone service and horrible customer support.
Now, I'm no businessman, but I fail to see the logic of treating your biggest customer like a stray dog that just crapped on your manicured lawn. According to their press we made them profitable where they weren't before. They even listed us as 5 different clients on their otherwise paltry customer list. Which means that when we dropped their services they lost over half their customer list.
We have since moved to another provider who has not once blamed us for their own failures and has, on several occasions, informed us of outages before we learned of them from our end-users. Our old partner still has the claims on their website that so amused me back then. I find particular humour in the sentence which reads "we provide exemplary customer support" and even more in the promise of 24-hour coverage. I never once was able to reach anyone outside of normal business hours on their "24-hour support line." It reminds me of Steven Wright's joke about going to the 7-11 to find the owner locking up. "What are you doing? Your sign says you're opened 24 hours" "Yes, but not in a row."
Maybe things have changed and they are finally living up to their claims, but I somehow doubt it.
UPDATE: I found this posting in my drafts folder recently and decided to see what the old company was doing. They went bankrupt in 2015, meaning they lasted longer than I expected, but came to the same end.
Several years ago my company signed on with a mid-sized partner to provide us with phone services. At the time we thought it would be better to be a big fish in a small pond because we would be the most important customer in their roster and would reap the benefits. Looking back through the egg on our faces I'm sure we wish we could hop in the old DeLorean and go slap ourselves upside the head.
It turns out that, not only were we the big fish in their little pond, we were like Otto in A Fish Out of Water - we just kept growing and growing until we were too big for them to handle. Now most companies, you'd think, would take one of two paths; 1) Admit that they had bitten off more than they could chew and bow out gracefully or 2) Step up to the plate and use some of the profits we paid them to improve - better infrastructure, more knowledgeable staff, etc. Turns out that this company was not like the others.They chose option 3) Take the money and run the contract into the ground no matter what.
As things started going south with calls dropping, bad quality, people not being able to hear each other, etc. our support desk found itself escalating more and more issues to our partner's support desk. At least that is what they called it. In the 3 years of the contract they had gone through 4 or 5 support desk managers ranging from the fairly knowledgeable and helpful to the downright ignorant and rude. At one point they practically auto-replied to us with "not it" whenever we pushed a ticket their way.
For example, one day, the 5th day of outages which they ignored the first day, blamed on us the second, finally located the problem on their end on the third, blamed us again on the fourth and then, with their admission of guilt still hanging out there, stopped troubleshooting altogether. The issue had happened before several times and always had the same solution. Instead of taking the road well-traveled, however, they wanted us to, once again, prove that water is wet and step through a series of extra troubleshooting steps. This after 4 days of no phone service and horrible customer support.
Now, I'm no businessman, but I fail to see the logic of treating your biggest customer like a stray dog that just crapped on your manicured lawn. According to their press we made them profitable where they weren't before. They even listed us as 5 different clients on their otherwise paltry customer list. Which means that when we dropped their services they lost over half their customer list.
We have since moved to another provider who has not once blamed us for their own failures and has, on several occasions, informed us of outages before we learned of them from our end-users. Our old partner still has the claims on their website that so amused me back then. I find particular humour in the sentence which reads "we provide exemplary customer support" and even more in the promise of 24-hour coverage. I never once was able to reach anyone outside of normal business hours on their "24-hour support line." It reminds me of Steven Wright's joke about going to the 7-11 to find the owner locking up. "What are you doing? Your sign says you're opened 24 hours" "Yes, but not in a row."
Maybe things have changed and they are finally living up to their claims, but I somehow doubt it.
UPDATE: I found this posting in my drafts folder recently and decided to see what the old company was doing. They went bankrupt in 2015, meaning they lasted longer than I expected, but came to the same end.
Tuesday, 16 May 2017
O'Brien's Law
The term 'observer effect' in Physics refers to the idea that the act of observation changes the phenomenon being observed. Physics being what it is, this effect is usually seen in the microscopic and smaller scale. However, I have discovered a real-world example of this on the macro scale.
Many times in my career I have stepped up to a computer for the purpose of assessment and eventual repair only to discover that it is now working. The user claims it was broken right up until the point I arrived. Usually this is then followed with claims that they are "not crazy" and other things I am not qualified to determine.
I have often referred to this as the "car mechanic" principle, since it follows a similar situation where that annoying thing your car was doing went away once the mechanic got a hold of it. However, in this case the car is usually sitting idle for some time before a mechanic gets to it, so it does not fit the sudden and dare I say miraculous curing of ailing computers simply by arriving on the scene.
Now that I've put it out there, could it be that we IT professionals are somehow possessed of the ability to cure computers simply by a laying of hands? Discuss.
Contrary to the name of this blog, I do not subscribe to any specific religion, so I'll leave the miracles to others. Instead I postulate this:
Many times in my career I have stepped up to a computer for the purpose of assessment and eventual repair only to discover that it is now working. The user claims it was broken right up until the point I arrived. Usually this is then followed with claims that they are "not crazy" and other things I am not qualified to determine.
I have often referred to this as the "car mechanic" principle, since it follows a similar situation where that annoying thing your car was doing went away once the mechanic got a hold of it. However, in this case the car is usually sitting idle for some time before a mechanic gets to it, so it does not fit the sudden and dare I say miraculous curing of ailing computers simply by arriving on the scene.
Now that I've put it out there, could it be that we IT professionals are somehow possessed of the ability to cure computers simply by a laying of hands? Discuss.
Contrary to the name of this blog, I do not subscribe to any specific religion, so I'll leave the miracles to others. Instead I postulate this:
The act of observation of an IT-related issue, by a qualified IT professional, can sometimes resolve this issue.I think this should be called O'Brien's Law of Quantum Observation as it Relates to IT Issues. Discuss.
Wednesday, 3 December 2014
Average and Retroactive Stupidity
Have you ever had somebody say something so stupid that it sucks the intelligence out of everything else they say? As if you are averaging their intelligence across their comments. Or are you averaging their stupidity?
Tech support from our printer supplier emailed me to say the user complaining about a smell and noise when they print may "have no toner cartridge installed." I don't know about you, but my printer doesn't print at when the toner or ink cartridge is removed. The printers are intelligent enough to know this, apparently some printer techs are not.
Their next suggestion was actually very insightful and under normal circumstances could have been considered brilliant. Since the printer was reporting toner level at 0% they suggested that installing a fresh toner may resolve the "burning smell" issue. Of course! Why didn't we think of that before?
Unfortunately the ballast of the first comment is dragging the second one down so it is no longer 'brilliant' or 'insightful'. Instead we just have a 'good idea'.
A similar effect can be achieved by stating something intelligent followed by something stupid. In IT support we often see this from Cliff Clavin-type users who say things like "I ran out of hard drive space. I need more RAM" In this case the stupidity is retroactive.
Tech support from our printer supplier emailed me to say the user complaining about a smell and noise when they print may "have no toner cartridge installed." I don't know about you, but my printer doesn't print at when the toner or ink cartridge is removed. The printers are intelligent enough to know this, apparently some printer techs are not.
Their next suggestion was actually very insightful and under normal circumstances could have been considered brilliant. Since the printer was reporting toner level at 0% they suggested that installing a fresh toner may resolve the "burning smell" issue. Of course! Why didn't we think of that before?
Unfortunately the ballast of the first comment is dragging the second one down so it is no longer 'brilliant' or 'insightful'. Instead we just have a 'good idea'.
A similar effect can be achieved by stating something intelligent followed by something stupid. In IT support we often see this from Cliff Clavin-type users who say things like "I ran out of hard drive space. I need more RAM" In this case the stupidity is retroactive.
Wednesday, 22 January 2014
And you are...?
There are times when I have been able to solve a problem from a brief or poorly worded description. Most of that is experience and intuition getting together for an educated stab in the dark, not clairvoyance or omniscience. Judging from some of the work orders I receive, however, a lot of people think it is the latter.
They must think of us as minor deities to think that we can solve an issue from, "I can't log in." Keep in mind that our ticketing system only identifies the location the complaint is coming from, the rest is up to the person submitting the ticket. We even seed the ticket with reminders, "replace with short description of issue" and that sort of thing. Yet, each day we get tickets with such detailed information as "1 computer not working" when the site has 5 computers.
They must think of us as minor deities to think that we can solve an issue from, "I can't log in." Keep in mind that our ticketing system only identifies the location the complaint is coming from, the rest is up to the person submitting the ticket. We even seed the ticket with reminders, "replace with short description of issue" and that sort of thing. Yet, each day we get tickets with such detailed information as "1 computer not working" when the site has 5 computers.
Monday, 1 April 2013
April Fools' Pranks (Repost)
Today you will be bombarded by April Fools pranks from every quarter. Your local newspaper, TV or radio station will run a bogus headline, your favorite website will post something bizarre of some sort (check out Think Geek for their annual too-good-to-be-true April Fools product), your coworkers and/or family will drive you mad with pranks. So, why not fight fire with fire?
A computer is a wonderful canvas to practice retaliatory or even preemptive pranking. Here's a few relatively safe pranks for Windows (sorry Mac users I dropped out after OS9.1):
Additional ideas:
Put a piece of Scotch tape over the optics of an optical mouse.
Physically swap keys on the keyboard. Be warned, some keyboard keys will not come off easily.
Download Intellimouse and use it to calibrate the mouse incorrectly. The program tells you to move the mouse up, but who does it think it is! Move the mouse in any direction you want.
Download the Sysinternals BSOD screensaver by Mark Russinovich. Unfortunately this has not been updated with Windows 7 load screens.
Use remote access tools to create a ghost in the machine by moving the victims mouse or typing when they type. Takes a fair amount of pre-planning.
DISCLAIMER: Computers are ultimately fickle devices which may or may not take kindly to being the instrument of your amusement. Keep this in mind and choose your victims wisely and with a thought to the consequences of a disaster. Practice responsible pranking and if you do try any of the tricks listed above and they get you in trouble, don't mention my name.
A computer is a wonderful canvas to practice retaliatory or even preemptive pranking. Here's a few relatively safe pranks for Windows (sorry Mac users I dropped out after OS9.1):
Dude, where's my icons?
| Difficulty: Easy | Works On: XP, Vista, Win7 | |
| Tools Needed: None | Risk: Low | |
Built into Windows is the ability to hide all the icons on the desktop, leaving a nice clean unobstructed view of your desktop wallpaper. Instructions: | ||
XP:
|
Vista, Win7:
| |
|
| |
Dude, where's my taskbar?
| Difficulty: Easy | Works On: XP, Vista, Win7 | |
| Tools Needed: None | Risk: Low | |
This prank has two stages:
| ||
XP:
|
Vista, Win7:
| |
| Vista and Windows 7 will not allow you to minimize the taskbar, you can only move it and auto-hide it.
| |
A picture's worth a good laugh
| Difficulty: Moderate | Works On: XP, Vista, Win7 | |
| Tools Needed: MSPaint or similar | Risk: Low-medium | |
A blank desktop is so boring, why not give your victim something to look at...and click on...repeatedly...with no response from their computer. The risk here is that they will assume their computer is frozen and reboot, potentially losing unsaved work. Instructions: | ||
XP, Vista, Win7:
| ||
| ||
Slow and steady
| Difficulty: Easy | Works On: XP, Vista, Win7 | |
| Tools Needed: MSPaint or similar | Risk: Low-medium | |
I discovered this one while helping a high school computer instructor troubleshoot a computer that would allow him to type his login, but then the keyboard appeared to stop working. Three known-good keyboards and 20 minutes later... Instructions: | ||
XP:
|
Vista, Win7:
| |
|
| |
I know something you do not...
| Difficulty: Easy | Works On: XP, Vista, Win7 | |
| Tools Needed: None | Risk: Low | |
...I am not left handed. Even not many southpaws know about this setting, so it is perfect for pranking. A simple checkbox will trade the left and right-click buttons of any mouse. Note: Some mice will have programmable buttons or other options which provide other opportunities for mischief. Instructions: | ||
XP, Vista, Win7:
| ||
| ||
Like a record, baby
| Difficulty: Moderate | Works On: Depends on graphics card | |
| Tools Needed: None | Risk: Low | |
There are monitors that can be rotated 90-degrees into 'portrait' mode, perfect for reading documents a page at a time or for playing Pac-Man the way it was meant to be played. Because they exist, graphics card manufacturers include a 'rotate' function in their settings usually with the ability to add a hot-key combination. Only Intel enables these hot-keys by default. Which brings us to the... Instructions: | ||
Intel on-board graphics:
|
Others:
| |
For a while Dell was exclusively using Intel motherboards with on-board Intel graphics. HP has also used Intel at various points. Note: The computer has to be unlocked with a user logged in.
| You will need to explore the options of the graphics card to see if rotation is possible, assign hot-keys, etc. Look for ATI's CATALYST Control Center, NVIDIA Settings application or...
| |
¡Uno momento! ¡Yo hablo Español!
| Difficulty: Easy-Moderate | Works On: XP, Vista, Win7 | |
| Tools Needed: None | Risk: Low-moderate | |
There is a vast range of languages to choose from for this prank. For a subtle change try using a French Canadian keyboard layout to change a few keys. If, however, you belong to the 'Go big or go home' school of thought, change the input language to Russian. Instructions: | ||
XP:
|
Vista, Win7:
| |
|
| |
Additional ideas:
Put a piece of Scotch tape over the optics of an optical mouse.
Physically swap keys on the keyboard. Be warned, some keyboard keys will not come off easily.
Download Intellimouse and use it to calibrate the mouse incorrectly. The program tells you to move the mouse up, but who does it think it is! Move the mouse in any direction you want.
Download the Sysinternals BSOD screensaver by Mark Russinovich. Unfortunately this has not been updated with Windows 7 load screens.
Use remote access tools to create a ghost in the machine by moving the victims mouse or typing when they type. Takes a fair amount of pre-planning.
DISCLAIMER: Computers are ultimately fickle devices which may or may not take kindly to being the instrument of your amusement. Keep this in mind and choose your victims wisely and with a thought to the consequences of a disaster. Practice responsible pranking and if you do try any of the tricks listed above and they get you in trouble, don't mention my name.
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