Tonight I was in the chat room entertaining IEunuch and Wetherman with my jokes when suddenly my keyboard began putting out nothing but jibberish.

As I was experiencing a Senior Moment (River never has senior moments) I panicked. If I couldn't figure out how to correct it, that would mean no more chatting nor historical research.

I called IEunuch in Canada and pleaded for help. Between us we worked on the problem for what seemed like an hour.

Finally, as my computer was not reloading properly after a "restart", I noticed one of my keys was being held down by a piece of lint. I removed the lint, the key popped back up and my keyboard was typing english again.

It was my ALT key, next to my space bar.

I now feel like the guy that calls the TV repairman who shows up only to tell they guy his TV was unplugged. Duh

BTW....IEunuch was very helpful and most gracious in helping despite the fact he has a miserable head cold.

Finally ...

MacTheWolf (imported) wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:49 pm I noticed one of my keys was being held down by a piece of lint. I removed the lint, the key popped back up and my keyboard was typing english again.

Hi Mac,

Didn't you have a different keyboard problem a few years back? I seem to remember you were complaing that some of the keys didn't work. In the end some kind soul gave you a keyboard that worked.

My own keyboard problem which used to irritate the hell out of me was I had the habit of resting my fingers on the bottom row of keys while I was thinking and this changed the function of the keys. It was supposed to be some wonderful feature of Windows. It was one of Microsoft's more stupid ideas. Since then I try not to rest my fingers on the keys. But I still do sometimes.

Years ago one of my users called in a panic, 'My Keyboard keeps typing out 3333333333 and it wont stop" I told her I would be right up. Now this user loved to eat at her desk, mostly chips and stuff like that. When I got there her cube mate was laughing as the 33333333333333s were still filling the screen. I checked the 3 on the key pad then I checked the 3 over the (w e) and found a chip stuck in there holding the 3 key down. So being the nice person I am I took a pen and removed the chip stopping the 333333333333333333333 run away. She turned red her cube mate was laughing then I picked up the keyboard by the end, turned it over and started banging it on the desk. I did this while I explained to the person that eating over the keyboard could cause problem all the time pieces of chips and everything she had eaten over the last year was being removed from the keyboard. She was scandalized by my actions. I turned over the keyboard and said 'All Fixed'. By this time we had several people watching, the user was red faced, her cube mate and everybody else was laughing.

And me, I was always happy to fix a problem with my users and tried to make them all happy.

Success.

Next time the call of 'MY monitor wont come on'.

River

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:15 am Next time the call of 'MY monitor wont come on'.

RiverWhen I was a teacher assistant, we used to say: "Devices always work better, when you power them on". There always was at least one student in the class, who forgot to power on the development board (and asked, why nothing seemed to work).

I think the funnest call I ever received was I when I worked at the bank in St Louis. We sent out CD's of a new process to all the branches, several hundred copies of this disk, I get a call from a user in California, it would not load. After several minutes I said 'lets walk through each step' she said OK, I then told her to open the CD drive at the top of her tower to put the CD in, several moments when by and I said did you put the CD in the tray? still nothing, HELLO, nothing, then laughing, finally the lady comes back on the phone and said it was loading and thanked me for all the help. I told her that is what I am here for then asked what she was doing before? yes you guessed it, holding the CD up to the screen. Very kindly I told her not a problem and if she ever had any trouble with her PC to give me a call and I would be happy to help walk her through the problem.

It is not a retractable cup holder.

River

Years and years ago we were working on a new system PC's were not yet around but small table top PC's were, it was back in the dark ages as it were. We finished the job and wrote the instructions then had the not so bright mail clerk take our instruction and told her, follow the instructions until she could go no further, we wanted to make sure our instructions were clear so anybody could do it, to relieve pressure on her we used our office left her in there and shut the door.

After about 20 minutes she came out and looked like she was going to cry, we asked how far she got? she just shook her head and told us she had not even got to the first step.

OUR FAULT, the first step was to turn on the machine and we left it out.

After a couple months and everybody in the office testing our system we finally had it right or hoped so and we called the gal we started with and gave her the instructions and asked her to do it again, go as far as you can. She came out about 20 minutes later with a big smile on her face, she completed every step.

That was my lesson on how to write instructions which I used for the rest of my 30 years in IT.

River

Seriously? I'd have fired her.

MacTheWolf (imported) wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:49 pm Finally, as my computer was not reloading properly after a "restart", I noticed one of my keys was being held down by a piece of lint. I removed the lint, the key popped back up and my keyboard was typing english again.

Did you put the lint back in your bellybutton where it belongs? I wonder where people with outie bellybuttons keep their lint. I am glad I have an innie bellybutton. I would hate not having a place to store my lint.

You might want to keep a spare keyboard around just in case you have a keyboard problem that is not so easily solved.

Paolo wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:09 pm Seriously? I'd have fired her.

Believe it or not there are people out there who don't have PC/Apples at home and are actually scared of the PC at work. The problem is that they need to be trained and are not. I did not fault her but did write up a complaint to the personal department that they should train new people when hired and more importantly when we buy other banks (something the boss was doing all the time) that they get that same training.

River