I was looking at the server configuration for our BES (Blackberry Server) and noticed something odd, about one of the users contact information screens, she typed in the following information into her Blackberry in case she lost it:

REWARD IF FOUND – PLEASE CALL 555-555-5555

Yes I used a fake number but she used a real number, she entered her Blackberry’s phone number into the contact information so if someone found her Blackberry they can call her Blackberry to let her know she lost it.

It amazes me sometimes…

I get a trouble ticket from one of the users the other day, she stated in the ticket that there is an error flashing on her screen, well this is new, she is using a macbook pro, her major application is email and chat clients (don’t ask) so I figure I will take this one rather than someone else just because I’m curious as what ‘error’ is flashing on the screen I’ve had my macbook for about a year and I have NEVER seen an error.

Well I get up to her ‘office’ (don’t ask) and she says “Look there it is again, I need someone to fix it, its broke again!” the last FIVE times it was broken was a combination of showing her where the power button was to turn it on and to plug in the network cable, because god knows she isn’t smart enough to actually connect to the wireless network, “cause ya know it’s difficult to type in a 10 digit pass code, I should make it easy for everyone to connect to the interweb and get rid of the network password”

Well the error on the screen was:

“BATTERY POWER LOW”

Of course she states that her computer is always broken and she needs a new one, I tell her is a very technical solution to this problem, plug it in. She actually stated that she has never plugged the laptop in, over the past 3 months she has worked at the company. What does she actually do here? Natural selection would have had her eaten by a lion very early in life as she would have tried to pet the pretty kitty.

I would think not, the sheer volume of bullshit spam that comes from home user machines is incredible, its mind blowing actually. While not completely the users fault, the blame ends up being Microsoft and their insecure system, somewhat. Let’s face it even if Joe Sixpack actually used a flavor of Linux, he would still get the email giving him step by step instructions how to use SUDO and install software that will give control of his machine to spammers.

So while I like to blame the OS, which is partly at fault, we have to put the blame where is lies, moron that go to Wal-Mart and buy cheap ass PCs to get on the line, ya know the interweb, and send some mail in the tubes.

Look if you own a computer be a good citizen of the internet and run a full virus scan of your machine, then run a adware remover.  Look I think computers should have idiot lights installed like cars do, “Time to change your oil” it could be applied as “Time to run your virus scan”

All I’m saying is if you take the basic steps to keep your car’s engine from seizing why not do the same with your computer? This wasn’t a very large problem back in the day because computers cost many thousands of dollars and the people that bought them took care of them. Now that you can get a computer for less than half a week’s salary for most people they have become disposable. Can you picture the chaos that would occur if brand new cars cost half a week’s salary?

Now this one might just sound picky on my part but give me some slack on it, here is a trouble ticket from a new staff artist, who *needed* a new monitor because the 19” calibrated LCD on his desk was too small for such a talented person. He needed a 22” wide screen.

it is not correctly set, image too wide and bright,… all the circle became oval. Help…..

I know some of you might call me picky on this but a professional graphic artist should know about screen resolution, and dimensions as it pertains to his or her profession. He wasn’t aware of the simple fact that a different size screen with completely different physical dimensions should have the default resolution changed, and the brightness calibrated.

This is how this person makes a living! It would be like me asking what RAM was and why it was needed in a computer. You can’t make this stuff up.

Kush

I was just looking at my throw away account that I use if I just need to put an email address on a web form or need to give out my email address on the web for some reason.

With all the Viagra, enlarge your member, safe way to increase your manhood, spam that I get on this account , you would think that if just one of these penis enlargement advertisements actually worked women all over the world would be screaming in just out right pain all of the time.

Come on let’s face it if any man found a drug or device to increase his male prowess and enlarge his size he would so over do it, and we would all be wearing our penis as a belt or be able to compete in a three legged race by ourselves . Because we as men are idiots, and would do something that stupid to ourselves.

So come on spammers give us people with half a mind a break and stop trying to hock your snake oil to the stupid. Stupid people stop buying this crap and the spammers will stop. It doesn’t work.

Kush

Opened Illustrator and it opened twice, I need immediate assistance.

BUSINESS REASON FOR REQUEST: I can’t work.

My systems administrator responded very quickly to this one:

Close one of the instances of the program.

How do some people manage to survive to adulthood? Too bad with modern times natural selection doesn’t have a chance to kick in.

Here is one that I have been meaning to post for a while now. We have a user that is rather high up on the food chain. She requested that we disable the [CAPS LOCK] key on her keyboard; I thought it was an odd request so I asked on of my sys admins why? Which I didn’t think was an odd question. He couldn’t keep a straight face when I asked why she wanted this done. He then proceeded to tell me “Ya see she didn’t know that you needed to use the [SHIFT] key to enable capital letters, in order to make a capital letter she was using the [CAPS LOCK] key”

I was just amazed that anyone would do that, seeing as how she was in the business world when typewriters were prevalent, how did she ever use one?

My systems administrator went to one of our remote locations in NC, configured and installed an OS X server for a small art department. He gave the woman there who had been taking care of the server  VNC administrator access to the server to do minor things like add users, grant permissions etc. Well about a week after the install my admin gets a call that nothing is working; all the data shares are gone.

He attempts to log in remotely to the server and is denied root access to the box. He calls down to the woman in NC to see what is going on because the server is still online but refusing connection, it seems that she changed the randomly generated 10 character password to 123.

He logs in to the server via VNC through our VPN, uses the password 123 gets root access to the box, and all the shares that were configured are now gone, as with the permissions to the shares. He corrects everything that is done to the server, and brings it back to the exact same condition that he configured the box to the week before.

When he called the woman in our NC office and questioned her about it, her response was just mind blowing.

It seems that she wanted to connect an external drive to the server to move data around, and the default share names on the server were “CLOSE” to the name of the external hard disk drive so she renamed the server shares to the computer wouldn’t become “CONFUSED” because the names were similar.

All I can say is “Wow!”

Okay my first day with the iPhone, connection to activate the phone through the iTunes website took a few min to complete, I choose the lowest level of service plan that was offered, hell I’m cheap. Yea yea I know then why did you spend 600$ on a phone, I didn’t I spent 600$ on a toy.

After the phone was activated it took about 30 seconds to find my WiFi network and connect, that was pretty effortless.

The first application I configured was email, I use IMAP, the setup was a breeze but as people have stated the on screen keyboard took a little getting used to, I found I was using the backspace key A LOT! It worked first try without a hitch once my typing errors were corrected.

While connected to my WiFi there was no problem with the web, google came up in under 2 seconds, and it was one of the default bookmarks on the iPhone. Tap the screen from the web browser and the keyboard came right up for me to mistype my blog’s URL.

The next thing I tried was YouTube from the iPhone, it was a default shortcut on the iPhone’s desktop. While connected to my WiFi network at home it pulled up very quickly and the screen rez was incredible.

So far everything was going great, the phone worked without a hitch with everything I tried so far, but that was short lived. I was on my way to a grad party, my wife was driving so I figured let me play around with the toy. I hit the icon for YouTube again about 5 min in to our trip and no longer on my network connection, because nothing says road trip like the video for “White and Nerdy” while playing with my iPhone the day after release.

This is where the first issue I had with the iPhone it was slow, it was dirt slow connecting to YouTube, then I selected the video I wanted to watch 3.5-4 minutes later it came on the screen, which is just so wrong when 10 minutes before hand it was moving like “greezed I-talian lightning” If you aren’t in a hotspot you are for a world of pain if you try to browse the web much less use streaming media, this was a brutal experience.

Didn’t anyone at Apple even try this thing out away from a hotspot? Guys there is no reason for this, I might as well have tried dial-up. The tech is out there, I don’t understand why it wasn’t used, the EDGE network is painful to use.

Well I was on my way to a party so I didn’t get to play much with the phone, I was actually trying to socialize and chase my son down. I will get a little more time with the phone this weekend and update you on the other features as I use them.

Before I forget, The iPhone has a sexy solid feel in your hand, I think I will call this one “Lynne” its very well built and smooth…

Release 20DEC06

Leached from Curse-Gaming

D/L from here!