Names have been changed to protect the ignorant Everything else is true.

Story one.

Betty calls me the Monday after I delivered and setup her new PC workstation. The machine was delivered and installed on a Thursday. She exihbited a basic understanding of a computer. The phone call went something like this.

Me: LMRoss. Can I help you?

Betty: My screen is dark. The little light on the monitor is on but there is only the message saying check video card and monitor cable.

Me: Have you tried jiggling the mouse? Or hitting a key on the keyboard?

Betty: I did that and nothing happened.

Me: Was the computer on Friday when you left?

Betty: No, I think I turned it off.

Me: I see, and when you turned it on this morning what happened?

(long pause over the phone line)

Betty: I have to turn it back on? How do I do that? I thought all I had to do was turn on the monitor.

Me: Well, Betty, There is a button on the computer, A big button that says power, you have to push in that button.

Betty: Oh, I see. (long pause) Yes! It came on.

Me: Goodbye Betty, if you have any other problems please feel free to call me.

Story 2: This is the full excerpt from an email from an IT pro to his parts vendor relating the fiasco of an IT pro at home.

So about last week my wife calls me into her office a day after I installed XP clean on her box because one of her monitors had gone black. So I mess around in windows and it tells me that all is well with the video card. But looking at the monitor's amber light I see that it is on but it's not getting a signal. Cause the light's amber and all. So I pull her PCI video, cause that's the monitor that was on but not getting video. Cause of the amber light and all. So I tossed in some pci card I have laying around here and it doesn't work. So I called my good buddy Robert and low, he has for me a sweet little V3 3000 pci card. So I get this video card and stick it in there and something goes horribly wrong with XP. BSD's about infinite loop initializing 3dfx.vxd. Well, hell, I think to myself, maybe something is going on with the fact that I have two voodoo cards. I mean even though I didn't have any problems when I did it on my box Robert had said something about it so I figure, what the hell, Let's get Melissa a Geforce AGP card and that will take care of the dual 3dfx thing. I mean, it's Christmas right, and by now I am tired of mucking with this pc. I mean not three weeks ago I completely upgraded the thing. (God bless little kids) Why not go all the way. Granted my wife's probably never gonna use it but what the hell. So tonight I stick this gforce card in there. Now buy this time a number of days have gone buy with her using just the one monitor cause I can't get anything to work in PCI. I install the gforce and it's all sweet. I put the pci voodoo in the system once I have the gforce setup and I get the same BSD. Well shit. Off to the garage I go, digging thru my junk pile for a pci card. I find an old 2 meg pci card but hey, I'll try anything. Well that didn't work. Okay, I says to myself, where is the ATI pci card I pulled in the first place. So I pull it out of the trash, blow of the cigarette ashes and stick it back in. Hey, XP recognizes it and claims it's working. So I go crawling the web, (the cable modem is flaking out so this is taking a really long time) to find out what the HCL for XP says about secondary cards and what is says about the transcend motherboard. Well, the internet is not coming up, it's 11:00pm and I want to go to bed. Allright, I says to myself, let's switch monitors around and see what happens. I'm thinking I'd already done this and it worked. Well, it didn't work this time and I knew there was nothing wrong with the new gforce. But the monitor was still giving me my amber light, saying it was on but no video signal. So as I am buttoning up her case, pretty much just like it was when all this started except for her kick ass new card. I've left it on her desk as I worked on it, and it's pretty cramped space, what with the monitors up there and everything and I accidentally hit the power button on the monitor that is attached to the pci card. You know, I learned something tonight. Let me tell you a little story. The little LED on the front of almost every monitor on the planet is three "colors" green for power on and video input, no light for power off and finally the good old amber for power on and no video input. I mean that's a safe assumption right? Right?

Well dye my eyes and call me pretty it ain't always so. There is a monitor out there that isn't like that. Do you know which monitor that is? That monitor is an AOC Spectrum. Just like the two setting on my wife's desk. Just like the two fucked up, bass ackwards, monitors on my wife's desk. See, with these monitors the green light functions like you'd think. But you know something, when these fuckers are turned off the little LED doesn't go dark, oh no, the little sumbitches turn a real pretty amber color. Yep, they sure do.

PS I don't need another pci card.

PPS I really need a vacation.

Story 3: This is the full excerpt of an e-mail from an IT pro to to his staff regarding an after hours service call to an existing client.
.This is to psycho to write down. I will try...

Inital call

520 Steve called, Software vendor got cd stuck in ROM. Suggested paperclip.

540 Steve called, got drive open, disk not to be found. Told him I would come out early and dig out rom as it must be  jammed in the drive.

550 Steve says that the server "just shut itself off" when it came back on it said all this stuff.....something about 2 drives present, 2 drives failed....intrusion detected.....windows wont come up, it wont go past the nvram mismatch press A to enter RAID setup etc. And could I please come out now and help them, unable to make asphalt, load trucks etc...

610 I arrive, reminding myself this is why I should make my staff answer the phones.... when i enter the room with server..wait for it.....wait for it...all the panels are off, the intrusion alarm is buzzing, and Steve is looking very ashamed...

The monitor shows that both arrays have failed completely and that all drives are bad and offline.

Steve tries to explain something about something he pulled on inside the case (server is a poweredge 2600) all the drives are all hot swappable bays and the bays themselves are in modular bay)

Steve gets a call and while he is out of the room I start pulling and reseating the hard drives. For giggles I pulled the ROM (everything is modular) between the ROM and the case itself out falls a cd rom that it scratched to hell. Seeing as it was pushed into the crack between the rom and the top bay. I have reseated the drives in the hot bays and still no joy on the raid. Setup still says all bad, all offline.

As Steve walks back into the room I ask him what he pulled on. He points to the lockdown arm that seats and holds the entire front drive bays in the case. It has screw that holds it down, just one mind you.

He says he pulled on it a little when it didn't give he stopped. One of the front office girls then walked into the room and called him a pussy and so he "yanked on it pretty good" and at that point "all the little lights turned red. Yes my children, the machine was left on this whole time.

So, i reseated the module bay. Went into to raid bios and forced the drives to mount despite all the horrible warnings about mount drives listed as "bad"

The drives sucessfully mounted,windows loaded and all is well.