Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

Three years ago, DS got a new desktop - but he wanted it to be connected via wireless, because the router is six feet from his door - but it is on the other side of the door, so any Ethernet cable would have to go down to the floor, through the door frame by the carpet, up the side of the door frame, across the top of the door frame, halfway down the other side of the door frame, then four feet down the wall to the router (taking about twenty-four feet of cable to get a signal across those six feet). I order the cable and tell him that I'm ready to set things up for a faster signal and one less likely to be scrambled (he games on that computer).

He's not ready to do it for weeks, which turn into months. His dad needs a length of cable for work and it just happens that the one I ordered is the right length - so he takes it to work.

Finally, two years later - he decides that he needs an Ethernet cable installed in the next hour before a tournament starts...

The longest cable I have on hand is about six feet long - but since we replaced the router & modem with a wireless modem - it works. All we had to do was move the modem and its shelf over a few inches...

Because I wasn't supposed to use that Ethernet cable for any other computer (and we only have six of them)!

I organized the various USB, Ethernet, printer, and misc. cables in clear plastic shoe boxes with lids stacked under the workspace.

Nobody else can find them - since they are no longer tangled in a pile on the desk.

During an Outlook Level 1 class, the instructor said, "Right-click on the message." The student, taking his hand off the mouse and moving it to the keyboard, looked confused. Then he asked, "Where do I write it?"

Location: My one man computer shop.

A client brings in an old HP media center PC.

AllOfASudden it says 'fan failure' and shuts down.

'Easy fix, easy money', I think to myself.

The PC Health says only one of the two fans are running.

I open the case and see the case fan IS the CPU fan.

(A plastic duct directs air from the case fan to the heat

sink, the way many of the early Dells did.)

I don't see 'disregard fan failure' in the CMOS.

I suppose I could bolt a CPU fan to the heatsink and take

the plastic duct off, but I don't have applicable fans or bolts.

Instead I double sided foam tape a rescued 60mm fan to the side

of the duct and plug it into the 2nd fan socket on the motherboard.

The PC is now satisfied that it has two spinning fans, despite

the fact the smaller one isn't blowing on anything.