posted 04-17-2001 11:16            

but somehow, it always does.

"Nothing on my screen comes up big any more."

This, my friends, is the absolute clearest technical information I was able to elicit concerning this problem. I was utterly unable to get the user to tell me whether or not the picture filled the physical monitor screen or not ("there's a bunch of gray space around it" - gray? Is the monitor brightness turned up too high, is this the wallpaper color, what? ... turns out it was the background area of Microsoft Access. Not that the USER ever told me that.)

Dammit, I hate tech support.

posted 04-17-2001 12:11            

Jimbo... what are you doing anwsering the phone??? You're a manager for Christs' sake!

posted 04-17-2001 14:45            

I should have my mother call you. She's had her computer for ohhh several years now. She doesn't understand how to select text. She couldn't figure out how to disable AIM so it wouldn't come up on startup all the time. Her reason for not using it? She can't type fast enough to keep up with anything. Even though I wrote down the instructions for her, she can't figure out how to use AntiVirus to scan her computer.

Worst of all? I sent her one of those little email surveys in a fit on spontenaity thinking it would be fun. You know "what's your favorite food, if you could do anything, what would it be, etc etc". I got an email back from her saying my responses were interesting but she didn't have the time to retype the entire thing to send her responses back. THREE YEARS and she can't fucking cut and paste. And this woman wants to use home business accounting software.

I was adopted. I must have been.

posted 04-17-2001 15:05            

quote:

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Originally posted by LaMFear:
From J1mb0's profile:
Occupation: Information Systems Manager

Jimbo... what are you doing anwsering the phone??? You're a manager for Christs' sake!

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Well, I'm also the MIS Director, the tech support guy, the graphics design guy, the software engineer, the network administrator, the training coordinator, the HTML guy...

It's just me covering every possible technical need for seven offices over two states.

posted 04-17-2001 15:16            

quote:

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Originally posted by Bex:
She couldn't figure out how to disable AIM so it wouldn't come up on startup all the time.

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[horrified] You're trying to teach a user how to manipulate the startup menu?!

quote:

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THREE YEARS and she can't fucking cut and paste.

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[horrified] You're trying to teach a user to cut and paste?!

Seriously, I only show users things like that if they can ask in a halfway intelligent fashion how to do it. The fumbling majority, well, it's safer just to leave them in the dark and design your applications around what they ARE capable of doing...

... after five years here, I've utterly given up on teaching secretaries the file folder metaphor for documents on a hard drive. There are a rare few who pick it up like it's nothing... and the rest will NEVER, NEVER, EVER grasp the concept that "Microsoft Word" is not a container which holds documents, it is an APPLICATION that OPENS documents, which you store in folders.

Finally, after five years, I have simply added a form within my tracking system which automatically opens templates for frequently-used office forms in Word when you click a graphical thumbnail. This, they understand. "Oh, my forms are in the Tracking System now! That's so cool!"

And finally, after five years of effort, they've (mostly) quit making 20th generation photocopies of office forms and then coming to me whining for me to "make the forms look better again" when the files are right there in My Fucking Documents the whole time.

Users - bah!

quote:

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I was adopted. I must have been.

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posted 04-17-2001 15:20            

About two years ago she bought a PC and got an account with an ISP. At the time, she only had some very basic MS Word and Win 3.11/95 experience. The first six months I had to explain evertying about using IE, Outlook, basic windows navigation, connecting to the internet using ISDN, etc. Using a remote desktop program (VNC) I could take over her PC from my house, and show her stuff while we talked over the phone. It worked fine.

Now, two years later, she rarely needs my help. She does all her banking on her PC, her boyfriend checks, buys & sells his stocks and bonds online. They do their taxes on the PC. All without my help.

I go there once a week or so for dinner (mom's cooking is still the best) and check her PC for problems and stuff, and everyting's fine most of the time. She even updates her anti-virus program once a week.

posted 04-17-2001 15:25            

I told her how to shut down the AIM auto-load in AIM, not in the startup menu. Do I look insane?

posted 04-17-2001 17:09            

"Everytime I click on Internet Explorer it says the page can't be viewed."
I go upstairs and check it out.
"It would help if you connect to the internet."
"I use American On-line for that, right?"
"America On-Line, yea."

Whats sad and somewhat scary, is that he is like the main technical officer for this company and all they do is deal with electronics. Like massive machines that do weird junk to making and fixing circuit boards. He can do all that just fine, but going online to look at the web.. too diffecult.

posted 04-17-2001 17:58            

Gah. I like my mom, I really do. She just should does not belong in a technological age. She just got an answering machine about 3 years ago because I bought it for her and hooked it up as a present. She just got her first CD player for Christmas. We spent more time trying to find one with childishly simple buttons than one with features.

posted 04-17-2001 20:49         

Not only am I able to do remote administration, but if I don't know what they're talking about, I can throw them in the support queue. Oh, and if they're rude... we can probably get them fired.

posted 04-17-2001 21:40            

quote:

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Originally posted by Bex:
Did I mention the ONE thing my mom is perfectly capable of is forwarding me every single stupid internet idiot-spawned message? I get these quasi-religious inspirational things, mythical virus/scam warnings, frightening attachments and retarded links on a regular basis.

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I have unleashed so much righteous unrestrained fury on coworkers and relatives that NONE of them send me those stupid fucking "forwarded funnies" anymore.

It's kinda funny, once I walked by an office where a newly-hired coworker was talking about some stupid fucking Flash executable virus magnet cartoon that he downloaded the night before, and then he said to his audience "I should send that to Jimbo!"

I swear to god, a grim silence fell over the office.