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.

Two minutes after the actual people-doing-the-work showed up, they said "Oh, we'll just refront and start from scratch. Much easier."

No kidding. SOP around here is unless the new person is going to be doing the exact same job as the previous owner, the machine gets wiped and reinstalled before being transferred. Saves on a lot of headaches.

Man. I have made some really dumb tech support calls in my life. Really dumb.

Saves on a lot of headaches.

I was talking to a guy who insisted on using the old version of my Notes ID on the network, despite it being a notebook which was used disconnected (duh) all the time. He also insisted I had no choice but to run MS Office from the networks.

Sometimes you just want to get off the phone and get to the automated system, or grab one of the techs as they walk past (I sit a couple cubes from their door, and I make a point of being friendly with them. Not people on whose bad side you want to be).

Kalshane--did you find people who put in dud calls (like the nurses) were blasé, defensive, or apologetic?