Now I want cake. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Mmmmmmm. Cake.

Want I should have Em headbutt you and make you forget about cake?

Argh. User called, said she couldn't send e-mail. I tried asking her if Outlook said "Offline" in the lower right hand corner. She asks "All I see is the clock." No, above that. In the Outlook window. "It says 'Office'." What? "The only thing I can see says 'Office'." So I talk her through letting my remote into her PC. Sure enough, Outlook has a big red X in the lower right hand corner and says "Offline". I move the cursor over it and tell her 'This is what I was talking about.' "Right" she replies. "It says 'Office'."

Apparently basic literacy is not a required job skill in health care.

Though slightly less frustrating from the user with an attitude that called yesterday in a very exasperated tone of voice to tell me that her computer wasn't working and she couldn't log into it. After talking to her for a minute I determined that one of her applications was simply running slow. How this equates to "I can't login to my computer", I have no friggin' clue.

Just, argh.

ETA: Feel free to have Em headbutt both of them (the users, that is) if you'd like, Aimee.

Leif is into headbutting too. His head is like a little bowling ball, so it's pretty effective.

Oh good. It's not just my violent kid.

Way back when, when I did computer support I had a call about a printer that wouldn't work. I got down to the printer and discovered that it wouldn't power up. I traced the plug back to a power strip. I traced the power strip to an extension cord. I traced the extension cord back to the same power strip.

Babies learn quickly, but not always what you're teaching them:

This is why everything of interest is "Cat!" to Lillian.

Happy birthday to Kathy and Raq!

You all Natterers are being funny today. Not that that's unusual.

God help me, may I never perform tech support again.

That having been said, the L1 support guy I last spoke to who condescended to me and told me that refronting my new to me laptop was too effort intensive, and that it was better for the various tech groups to redo each little bit in a lovely roundrobin of me never getting the thing back. Two minutes after the actual people-doing-the-work showed up, they said "Oh, we'll just refront and start from scratch. Much easier."

Hmmph.

Hey, does anyone know--when a cellphone incoming call messes with the stereo, is it messing with the signal at the wires or at the speaker?

Way back when, when I did computer support I had a call about a printer that wouldn't work. I got down to the printer and discovered that it wouldn't power up. I traced the plug back to a power strip. I traced the power strip to a an extension cord. I traced the extension cord back to the same power strip.

That's pretty classic. I've had more "It won't work" and the device isn't plugged in calls than I can count, but I've never had someone actually plug something into itself.

My all time favorite (and I think I've talked about it here before) is the nurses who called me to say their PC kept making a really loud noise and there was a burning smell. I go down to their office. I don't smell or hear anything. They tell me the noise is intermitent. So I crawl under the desk to check the PC and see if the fans are running and maybe I'll catch a whiff of the smell when I get closer to the machine.

As I'm under the desk, I hear this horrific racket right behind my head. The nurses immediately tell me "There it is! Can you hear it?"

I climb out from under the desk, open the desk drawer, extract the pager set on vibrate that was inside and hand it to one of the nurses. "Problem solved."

Of course, my desk-crawling days are behind me at the moment with this stupid re-org.