I’m No BOFH

Like many tech support people (and geeks in general), I regret that I am not the BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell). I have to resort to internal sarcasm, the mute button, and jabber to keep all of the crap at bay. The truth is that every one of us have a BOFH living inside of us that just wants to be let out, but we like to eat, so we keep it to ourselves or put it on our blog. We do this while changing the names and events enough to keep us from becoming hungry later on.

The results are funny. The results help us when we are in the midst of those stressful moments. “The website is down.” someone says. And besides going, “Aw, fuck.” we can post the link and quasi-quote, “Dude, I can’t arrange the icons by penis”.

The rest of you can laugh… pause… and wonder if you are the type of person to say the funny, yet dumb thing.

Over these months I’ve heard a lot and it’s time to share some with the rest of you. Things have been changed to protect people, namely myself.

7:01 P.M. – beep
“This won’t even install.”
“What version of the software do you have?”
Names a version from the late ninties.
“And what operating system are you running on your computer?”
“Vista.”
“That, unfortunately, isn’t going to run even if we can get it to install.”
“It’s not even supported on Vista?”
Well, Vista kinda didn’t exist when the software was written, buddy. It’s hard to support something when it doesn’t exist.
“If you’d like I can send you a link to the system requirements for that version.”
“Well, is there a newer version that is supported?”
“Yes there is.”
“Can you send that to me?”
Oh, yeah, we give out software for free here. It’s what we do, make newer versions so people with the old one can get it for free. Winning business model right there…
“Unfortunately, no. You’d need to buy it.”
“But I paid for this!!”
“I’d be more than happy to help you install that on a computer running a compatible operating system.”
“This is wrong! I bought this and now I can’t even use it! I upgraded to Vista. I don’t have a computer running anything else.”
Can I get a FAIL?

7:15 P.M. – beep
“Thank you for calling.”
“Hi, uh, I can’t get my student software to work.”
“Are you getting an error message?”
“I fill out the form with my information: my name, uh, my school, my address-”
I let this continue for awhile.
“…and it’s telling me I need to enter my year of graduation and no where do I see a year box, I see: my name, um, my school-”
I feel like I’ve let him go on long enough.
“Are you on a Mac?”
“Uh, yeah. How’d you-”
“Try using the scroll bar or resizing the window.”
“Oh- hey, there it is. Thanks.”
“No problem. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“Uh, no. Wow, I feel stupid.”
You and the half a dozen people who call with the exact same issue every week.
“Oh, no, don’t. It’s what we’re here for. You have a great evening.”
“Um, yah, you too. Thanks!”

7:23 P.M.
“What operating system are you on?
“Um, I’m on Windows.”
“Is that XP?”
“No, Vista.”
“Okay, could you please go to your start menu-”
“I don’t have a start menu.”
Riiight
“Okay, sure. Please go to the start bubble on the bottom left hand side of the screen. In the search box there type c-m-d. That’s charlie, mary, delta. Hit enter.”
“…”
“Just let me know when you’ve done that. A command prompt window should come up.”
“.. …okay.”
“Now could you please type the command for me i-p-c-o-n-f-i-g, ipconfig, slash, a-l-l, all… and hit enter.”
“It’s not working.”
“Did you type cmd first and hit enter.”
“Yeah, it didn’t do anything.”
“Try it again.”
“Oh. Ooooh. I must not have hit enter.”
“Sure. Could you please type the command i-p-c-o-n-f-i-g, slash, a-l-l?”
“…”
“Just let me know when you’ve done that.”

7:44 P. M.
“This doesn’t work.”
“Have you installed and activated? Is there a particular error message you are getting.”
“I click on it and it goes away.”
“What operating system are you on?”
“Mac.”
“What version of Mac OSX do you have?”
“…”
“Panther,Tiger, Leopard…?”
“Um, how do I find out?”
“Go to the apple icon in the top left and click on it. Click on ‘about this Mac’.”
“Okay. I have 10.4.-”
“Alright. Then can you please get your Tiger DVD?”
“I don’t have it with me. It’s at my other house.”
“Okay, then I can send you some instructions on what to do when you do have your DVD to get this to work.”
“Um, that’s going to be like, not for a very long time and I need this now. Can’t I download it?”
“The Apple website only has updates, it does not have the actual program that you need installed.”
“What if I don’t have that dvd anymore.”
“Then you should probably go to the Apple store and get a new one. It’s pretty important to have your operating system disk.”
…even when you’re pirating it, you should probably have a copy.
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

7:55 P.M.
“So, I’m getting a message about a missing lib or something.”
“It sounds like you’re missing that library.”
“How do I get it?”
“Well, if you have the yum installer, you can use that.”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s try it. Type yum install..”
…the missing library. Making sure he’s typing it in with the correct case. How to spell yum.
“It didn’t work. How do I get a yum install thing?”
“Well, you can download the yum installer for your distribution of Linux.”
“How do I do that?”
“Just Google it by what distro you have.”
“…okay..?”

7:59 P.M.
“So, I got that thing you told me to install from the Tiger disk.”
“Great.”
“It’s still not working.”
“Okay, well let’s walk through together and install the package.”
“Um, I don’t have the DVD here with me.”
A few minutes to make sure he doesn’t have the right thing installed
“It sounds like you have the Leopard version of this installed.”
“…”
“You need to install this from a Tiger dvd.”
“Oh. Well, okay. I downloaded the right thing.”
“You need to install this from a Tiger dvd.”

…and time to go home.

Yuvi: “Tech Support work is harder than Superman’s. Usually.”
Me: “Superman saves people from villains. In tech support we have to save people from their own ignorance and stupidity. That’s damn near impossible.”

I Call it the iStore or lol Cats (to Follow the Naming Conventions of Apple)

I had never been to an Apple Store before.

I had to pinch myself…

…to prevent myself from laughing so hard.

The little brother had a defunct 80 gig iPod Classic. We were greeted by a brightly t-shirted fellow whose sole job seemed to be a greeter. We were led to another brightly t-shirted fellow who plugged in the iPod and announced it worked fine. I told him to try unplugging it.


It shut off immediately.

“Oh.”

Pause.

“Well, let’s get you an appointment at the Genius Bar.”

Genius, as in super smart IQ, and bar, as in drinking alcohol? I thought I misheard. I followed him to a brightly t-shirted woman.

“Hi guys. Let’s get you set up with an appointment at the Genius bar!”

Pinch. I hadn’t misheard.

“Sure.”

“Can I have a name and email address?” I motioned to the little brother who had remained silent this whole time as I had instructed him to. I could tell he was pinching himself as well. He was trying really hard not to be a smart ass.

“victorcarmine@live.com”

“…”

The Apple woman looked perplexed.

“Did you say yahoo.com?”

“No. Live.com. It’s for my Xbox live account.”

“…”

“Are we going to a circle of Apple hell for having a Microsoft affiliated email address?” I asked forgetting to keep my smart ass in check.

“No,” she laughed, a bit nervously I thought. I checked my peripheral vision for Matrix-style agents or Steve Job’s face.

We were given an appointment for about a half hour later. We passed children sitting on large black balls playing on computers and exited to Gamestop.

A half hour later we took a seat at the bar (the regular one, not the genius one) to wait for our turn. Large screens gave us such fun facts as “Did you know that a Mac computer has the power of two computers combined?”.

My brother couldn’t help himself, “Yeah, two crappier computers.”

My brother may be eleven, but he is pretty smart. I saw his logic, “Technically, yeah, any computer could have the power of two computers with half of the hardware behind them. So technically, what they’re saying isn’t wrong…”

“Is stupid.”

“Correct,” I turned my attention away from the failed propaganda to the computer at the ‘bar’. Surprisingly, we could browse the web. After refraining from doing anything evil, we were called over to the more pretentious of the two bars. Yet another brightly colored t-shirted guy greeted us. This was starting to sound like a joke…

“A guy and a girl walk into a bar with and iPod.”

…with…

Q: “How many apple store geniuses does it take to troubleshoot and fix an iPod?”
A: “None. After plugging it in, holding down a few buttons, and trying to tell you it works fine, they just give you a new one.”

…which works for me. Two more brightly shirted people later we had a new iPod, a new case for it, and exited the Apple Store.

To those who missed the joke, lol cats is referring to the Mac operating system naming convention (ie: Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard). Can has werkin iPod, plz? Ktnxbye.

To those who see this as an opportunity to turn the comments into a Macs are better than PCs discussion, I am not interested in your fandom. I work with MacOSX, Windows, and various Linux distributions every day, and I do not have fandom attached to any OS or computer brand.
If you are personally offended by my poking fun, then you need to get a sense of humor. Ktnxbye.