I don't normally post links to xkcd, mostly because you guys have already seen it, but I FEEL THIS ONE and would staple it to the forehead of everyone who asks me to fix their computer.
I think my grandfather is learning - this weekend he called me over to his computer, and I was braced for yet another tech support question, but instead what he wanted to tell me was that how, in the past few weeks, every time something went wrong or wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing, he'd poke around and click things more-or-less at random until it started working again. And that process worked!
He's halfway to being professional tech support now!
I had a co-worker like that. Drove me up the wall. (Not that I don't have co-workers like that now, but luckily I am not the first line of workstation tech support - I troubleshoot the web stuff instead. XD)
I need that for my dad. XD Because I can use photoshop and can open a web browser that makes me the ultimate authority on fixing anything computer related... Despite being a lowly average know-nothing user.
A few years ago here, I had to get a particular software app working. I installed it and thought it was broken, even after weeks of testing and tweaking, but it turned out that it was working fine - I just didn't know the particular library process that it was used for and was assuming it was supposed to auto-fill information that the worker filled in. (Well, it *was* supposed to be integrated into our catalog - it was not an obvious option!)
But I wasted all those weeks because the guy in charge of the department that used it "wasn't a computer person" and didn't want anything to do with the setup. When I finally washed my hands of it and pushed it over to him, turns out it worked perfectly fine.
My boyfriend's grandmother was terrorized by a message that said "This computer was not shut down properly last time," on her laptop and refused to do anything until his aunt called his mother and had her call him (why she couldn't call directly, I'll never know). He correctly predicted that she had clicked the shutdown button and, not realizing that it's not like a TV and needs a bit of time to go through the shutdown process, closed the lid. And had to reassure her that no, nothing was going to explode, just shut down properly next time.
i think stuff like that happened in the early days of my mom's computer use, but at least she's improved over the years... now it's mainly random problems with ie or word or something.
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He's halfway to being professional tech support now!
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He: "I got this weird error message."
Me: "Yeah? What did it say?"
He: "I don't remember! Now what do I do?"
Me: *suppresses urge to hit* Uh ... what were you trying to do when you got it? Can you repeat that?"
He: "No, I don't remember that either!"
Me: *throws up hands*
I swear to you, it goes like that each and every time.
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But I wasted all those weeks because the guy in charge of the department that used it "wasn't a computer person" and didn't want anything to do with the setup. When I finally washed my hands of it and pushed it over to him, turns out it worked perfectly fine.
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And then I sent it to my mom.
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