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Tech Tips: Clues for the Clueless

Are you a computer user?  If so, today’s post is aimed squarely at that bullseye on your forehead.  Tech people already know the list below by heart, but the common user seems to be oblivious to the following 10 tips on how to get better tech support.  This list was put together by me based on my own experiences in tech support of corporate clients.  If you re-use this, please link back to this site.

Here’s my Top Ten list of things to consider when you need tech support:

1. If you want our help, please get up from the chair and let us get access to the PC.  This is an immediate clue as to the intelligence level of a given user if they ask for help but don’t think to get up and let us work.  If you really want to piss us off when we ask to see your PC, just swivel the keyboard around and stay seated that way we have to balance on one foot to keep from touching the unholiness that is your presence which is dumb enough to think that this actually helps.  We don’t want to catch whatever you have.
2. Hovering over our shoulders while we work is not only irritating but often times distracting.  Unless we specifically need your input or are trying to show you how to do something… give us space.  We don’t need you to constantly take the mouse out of our hands to show us things that are completely irrelevant to the problem at hand.  Also, unless we are really close friends, we don’t need to hear all about your family and where you went on vacation while we are trying to fix your PC.  Hearing about your fantasy vacation to an elite resort on a private island could cause something unexpected.  Like your hard drive being mysteriously formatted.  I’m just saying….
3. Sitting in a chair across the desk from where we are working and continually whining about your deadline or lost data or missed appointment will not speed things up.  Crying will also not help.  It kinda freaks us out.  Just because you need your PC to be working right now does not alter the fact that it’s not working.
4. Please don’t call us for help with a problem and give us no information to go on.  This is especially annoying when you tell us that your PC is down when in fact, you just have Internet Explorer set to Work Offline and nothing more.  Better yet, call me in the middle of the night and tell me that the network is down because you can’t get your e-mail from home.  There are about 8,326,287,491 possible causes of this problem and only one of those is the network being completely down.  OMG.
5. If you are getting error messages on your PC, please please please take a screen-shot of that message or at least write it down.  Don’t be that user that just automatically clicks OK on every pop-up no matter what it was and then wonder why nothing is working.  Those error messages are sometimes clues as to the problems you are having.  They are important.  At least read them.
6. If you’re going to drop your PC off on our desks, leave something that will give us a clue as to what we are looking at.  I’ve found unlabeled notebook PCs sitting on my desk or chair before with no note, no name, no contact number, no indication of a problem… nothing.  Then at the end of the day So-and-So will call asking if their PC is fixed.  The answer is always going to be NO.  At least leave a Post-It note with your name or number so we know who to call to find out why we have an orphan in our office.  Even a snapshot of you with your dog would be more desirable than nothing if you can’t be bothered to write even your own name.
7. If you know that you will be getting a new PC setup at your desk take a minute or two to clean up around the hardware that will be replaced.  If you aren’t sure what will be replaced, then just clean it all up.  That includes removing all the Post-It notes, toys, pictures, shwag, stickers, make-up, food, mobile phone adapters, USB aquariums, etc. that are obviously going to be in the way of us helping you change your equipment.  Or if that’s too much trouble, then don’t complain when you find all your precious “stuff” swept off to the edge of your desk in a ball of clutter that would make the King of the Cosmos weep with pride.
8. If your PC is having a problem and we ask you if you installed anything on the PC - don’t lie.  We are not that stupid.  You’re only making yourself look bad when you lie about things like that.  More than likely we, or someone on our team, built that PC you are now using.  So when we look at the problem computer and see that Yahoo Instant Messenger, Ask Toolbar, 1001 Smileys, Free Animal ScreenSaver, Bejeweled, Nokia Mobile Connect, etc. are installed on your PC we not only know that you lied but you have given us proof.  Everything installed on a PC can potentially change how the whole system works.  We don’t just ask this for fun.  If you lie it’s not going to change the reality of what you did.  Just be honest.  We may think you are ignorant for not knowing better but at least you can look us in the eye with some sense of dignity.
9. If you don’t like an answer you’ve received to your PC questions, then by all means ask for explanations or clarifications.  Not all tech people are as open and friendly as I am.  Many techs have the social skills of a badger suffering from crack withdrawals.  Sometimes you may need more info.  But whatever you do, DO NOT get angry with us if we have worked on your problems and given you an honest answer that you just don’t like.  The best way to ensure that you will never receive quality tech support again is to yell and scream at the servicing technician because there is no way for them to recover your files off a crashed hard drive or a failed USB thumb drive.  Threatening our jobs because you don’t think we’ve done our jobs right, even though we’ve told you that what you are asking for is impossible, will also not get you very far.  Even if you succeeded in getting that particular tech fired, you will quickly run out of IT people when they all give you the same answer.  Attend some anger management classes but do not take out your problems on the tech.
10. You don’t need us to do or see every single thing that happens on your PC.  If you got a message in Internet Explorer that said it will be showing you both secure and unsecure items, yeah OK, no problem.  That’s normal.  If your screen flickered once and never again… probably a fluke or you kicked the power cord under your desk.  And if you get an error or warning message on your PC that comes complete with an explanation of the problem you are having and instructions on how to fix that problem then by all means please try it out.  Not only does it save time and gives you a certain sense of pride that you were able to fix your own computer problem but it also keeps you from wasting our time.  Many programs do offer fixes for the problems that can arise.  Most developers also make these message “dummy-proof” so even the most computer illiterate person can understand and follow the instructions.  We are not here to hold your hand every time the computer beeps.  It’s not scary.  It will be OK.

There you go.  That ended up being a lot longer than I had thought it would be.  I think the next Tech Tips will cover the opposite angle and focus on the techs themselves.  Users are always to blame but we have to share some of the burden sometimes.  Sometimes.

The mobile web

I just attended a luncheon regarding the rising opportunities in the online mobile phone markets and it was pretty interesting.  I found out the the average youth user in China sends an average of 100 text messages a day.  That’s just sending!  Considering I’d never sent a text message in my life prior to coming to Hong Kong, that just seems inconceivable to me.

However, the focus of the presentation was about the youth market and how it’s affecting and shaping the mobile web.  Basically the premise is that the kids today are deciding and driving the technology and services available on mobile devices and us old folks will just get whatever they decide on.  Lucky us.  The 2 second attention span generation has come to power.

Supposedly, 50 Cent and young Japanese girls have something in common.  They are doing something called Lifecasting.  They basically wear their phones around their necks and let it record constantly throughout their day and it auto transmits these images or video to an online accessible site.  Personally, I’m not sure how I would feel about this but I guess it would keep Fiddy from doing illegal activities since he’d be broadcasting whatever he’s doing to the world.  The japanese girls will probably get flooded with dirty old men though.  But maybe that’s what they’re going for.

It sounds like more and more content on mobile devices will be branded as well.  Just like you can’t have a college bowl game without some companies name and logo plastered all over it.  Just like you can’t play certain video games without seeing billboards in the games advertising everything from soft drinks to cars.  Now your mobile content will also be branded.  Considering the size of the screens, I hope that you can still see what you were looking for with all those logos.

Of course since this meeting I’ve been thinking about the possibilities of making this site and A Little Scary more mobile friendly.  I found this Wordpress Mobile Plugin that looks like it makes your site mobile phone compatible and thought I might give it a try.  If anyone out there has any opinions on the matter, please leave them in the comments.

Happy Birthday Buddha

It’s Monday and I’m sitting at home still un-showered and working on comics.  Today is a public holiday here in Hong Kong.  It’s Buddha’s birthday!  Who am I to argue?  Sadly though, public holidays are a double-edged sword.  Sure you get the day off, but unless you feel like pushing through crowds of people everywhere you go, you pretty much just sit at home all day. Like I’m doing.

We say Iron Man on Saturday afternoon and it was awesome.  I’m a bit of a fanboy when it comes to comic book to movie adaptations and I know many of them aren’t that great.  Iron Man definitely lived up to the hype in my opinion though.

After the movie, Muse and I split up and went with our friends to different places.  Me and my friend went to Sham Shui Po to go to the computer and game malls to look for a Sony PSP for me.  I thought about getting a second hand system but decided it was too much risk for too little discount.  So I went for a new one.  Unfortunately all the cool colors of the new ’slim’ PSP are all twice the price (or more) of the standard black, white or pastel colors.  So I found a shop that still sold the ‘fat’ versions.  They had a few of the limited Japanese releases so I went for one of those.  Just to make Colin jealous if nothing else.

Oh yeah, that is a metallic blue Sony PSP.  Only released in Japan but everything ends up in Hong Kong eventually.  Sometimes I love shopping here in Hong Kong.

Inside a mouse’s balls

Yesterday, I got a bit distracted from my work.  I had a standard Dell USB optical mouse that I liberated from a users desk because it was so nasty and sticky that I refused to use it.  I gave them a new one.  But of course that left me with the nasty sticky mouse which also had smooth spots worn into the two mouse buttons.

I also had an even older Dell USB ball mouse that worked just fine but no one wants old style mice with balls.  It had a nice clean black top half and was the exact same size and shape as the optical version.  At least on the outside. So I thought I’d clean off the funk from the bottom of the optical mouse and put the nice black top from the ball mouse on that.  In theory it’s very simple.  In reality it’s really freaking hard.

Even though the outsides of the two mice were physically shaped the same, the insides were different.  There were plastic support posts and wiring in different locations in each mouse.  I used a straight blade to shave down plastic edges and cut off supports.  I had to rearrange some wiring and eventually use a little brute force to get the new hybrid mouse to close up.  I was only partially successful the first try as the right mouse button wouldn’t press.  The second try after a bunch more cutting was a complete success.  It’s a pretty sharp looking mouse now with it’s flat black top and it’s smoky opaque bottom.

Then of course, I have to completely disassemble the remaining parts.  Which of course starts with removing the old mouse ball.  It made me realize that optical mice were probably the best thing to ever happen because mouse balls were stolen constantly.  I have no idea why or what people did with all those stolen balls but every store you went in with a PC on display, you’d try and move the mouse and immediately find that the ball was gone.  Even attempts at gluing the ball in rarely had the desired effect.  Optical mice changed all that of course and those damn ball thieves were thwarted once and for all.  You know who you are.

A new thought occured to me once I got the mouse ball.  Why is it so heavy?  I never thought about before when mouse balls were the only choice, but now that I hadn’t handled a mouse ball for so long, I was intrigued by it’s weight.  I bounced it against my wood-like desk and it popped like a metal sound.  So I decided to see for myself.  I grabbed the straight blade and started slicing it around it’s circumference.  I thought it might be metal inside but once that razor sharp blade starting grinding against something that set my teeth on edge I knew it was.

So there’s a metal ball bearing hidden inside there.  That also explains why old mice feel so much more substantial than new optical mice and also why some high end gaming manufacturers have started putting weights in their new mice.  It makes a big difference.

Perhaps you’ve never wondered about this and certainly don’t care now that the age of eunuch mice has taken over, but now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.  Considering that quote is from G.I. Joe, I can only assume that the other half the battle is the guns, explosives, killing, wounding, etc.  They never really said.

OK Invent this

So here are a few ideas I’ve had for inventions that I can’t figure out.  I figure that since someone is always beating me to the punch, I might as well share the things that don’t exist that I can’t figure out myself.  If you do figure one or more of these out and become rich, could you at least acknowledge me for the ideas?  That’d be nice.

• Air Conditioned Pillow
  I know that I’m not the only one in the world that likes their bed pillow the most for those first ten seconds after laying on it while it’s still nice and cool.  Then it warms up to your body temperature and depending on where you live may start sticking to you.  I would pay good money for a pillow that stayed cool all night long.
• Digital Currency Converter
  I typed a lot on this entry and got pretty detailed.  Then I decided that maybe this one was possible after all.  So I’m not posting it just yet.  I just need help from someone who really knows electronics….
• Pollution Eater
  After living in a pretty polluted city like Hong Kong for a while you start wondering two things: ‘How can this be cleaned up?’ and ‘If I fall in the harbor will my flesh melt?’  So I started thinking about all the new advances in nanotechnology and biotechnology and I’m wondering when we will be able to make a little nano/bio critter that can not only clean up pollutants but breed to make more of itself but also have a short life-cycle.
  The trick would be to introduxe said organism/machine into a polluted body of water.  It would basically ‘eat’ pollution and use that food to create two duplicates of itself and then die.  The ‘offspring’ would then go off and do the same thing and continue the cycle and exponentially increasing their numbers in an outward radius leaving pollution free water in their wake.  That’s also the reason they need a very short life-span so that once an area is clean, the nanos stop eating and thus stop breeding and die.  Sure there would be the equivalent of an extra thin layer of silt at the bottom of the body of water as a result, but at least it would be clean water again.
  This is doable, but I am in the wrong field for this sort of thing.  An airborne version for air pollution should also be possible but the logistics and locomotion are much more difficult.

OK actually that’s all I can remember at the moment.  Of course there are other things like self-powering electro-magnetic propulsion and anti-gravity and invisibility but I was trying to be somewhat realistic.

If you were going to try and invent something, what would it be?

Apple iStick?

Interested in a small iPod Touch the size of a tube of lipstick?

There’s a design for one right now with a cube shape where all four sides are touch screens. Take a look at more pictures here from the article over at Yanko Design. I’m not sure about those funky, assumably Bluetooth, earpieces… but that’s not important. Apple has never been known to package decent earphones with their mp3 players.

I have no idea if this is in the pipeline for Apple or not, but it is an interesting concept. Given the familiar Mac / iPhone interface and the unusual size and shape,I’m sure that if Apple were to build it, the masses would buy it. No matter what.

I hate Blackberrys

I hate Blackberrys. Not the fruit but the more popular psuedo-pager Blackberry that most people assume work by way of magic. Which they do kind of. They also seem to stop working as if by magic as well. Perhaps it’s more like voodoo. The only thing for sure is that business people love them and can’t live without them. And when they don’t work they want us tech people to wave our magic wand and make it better in 10 seconds or less.

For those of you that don’t have to support Blackberrys, here’s how we troubleshoot them when they stop working:

1. Check to make sure that the radio is still turned on. So often it gets turned off for mysterious and dark reasons.
2. Make sure it shows that it has a signal and sees the network.
3. Realize that Step 2 was absolute rubbish (because that means nothing) and pop the battery out to truly power off the device.
4. Put the battery back in and start chanting praises to the lesser demons of wireless. They sometimes enjoy that.
5. Sit and stare at that stupid hourglass till it finishes booting up. Continue with the chanting or begin the ritual dance as described in Blackberry tech support article FU666BS86.
6. Check to see if mail is being sent and received. Most of the time, it will be fixed and no matter how many times you tell the user that simply removing the battery (with ot without the chanting and dance) is well within their means.
7. If it’s still not working, curse the lesser demons of wireless and try manually setting the Network Provider. You know, just in case.
8. If the user is standing over your shoulder, you may want to poke about in the Advanced options as quickly as possible with a stern yet determined look upon your face until they decide they have better things to do.
9. Mumble to them that you’ll get back to them. They like that.
10. Remove the Blackberry account from the Blackberry Enterprise Server. Because you’re using that, right? If not, you are a mockery to all the other Blackberry support people. And also a bit of an envy to us too. We hate you either way.
11. Add the Blackberry back onto the server and get a new activation password. If you are doing this for someone else, make sure you make the most difficult password you can possibly imagine. Especially if the Blackberry is saddled with one of those crappy T9 inputs.
12. Wipe the Blackberry. This isn’t always necessary BUT it seems to work better sometimes. Magic.
13. Go through the Enterprise Activation one more time and enjoy the thrill of clicking Next on meaningless screens of crap you’ve seen a hundred times before.
14. Enter the e-mail address and password and then take up a new hobby. Model plane building, learn the guitar, paint your office followed by the rest of the offices in the building, blog posting, etc. Whatever you do, and this is crucial, DO NOT sit there and wait for that activation to complete while you sit there and watch. You have a better chance of curing a person of leprosy by licking their wounds than you do of outlasting this painfully long process. This is where the lesser demons perform their activation rituals and they are shy. And evil. Do not mess with them at this point.
15. When you get back from vacation, check the Blackberry and see if activation is complete and then see if it’s working. If so, yay! If not, quit your job and become a firefighter or a bomb defuser or a journalist in the Middle East. Because that would be easier than trying to figure out what exactly is the issue.

As you might have guessed, there’s been a few Blackberry issues here lately. They come in groups it seems. Nothing for weeks and then four or five of them will flake out at the same time. Very rarely do you ever see one go bad on it’s own. They just don’t have the ambition or self-confidence to do anything on their own. They live and work in a pack mentality. You just have to learn to deal with that.

Last few nails…

And now we see the last few nails in the coffin for HD DVD.  I had mentioned a few days ago that the format war was over but the news over the past couple of days is just rubbing salt in the wounds.  Retail leviathan Wal-Mart has announced that it will no longer carry HD DVD following Best Buy’s earlier decision.  And though there were rumors of Toshiba completely dropping HD DVD over the weekend, we still don’t know if those rumors are true.  According to Toshiba today, they are still weighing their options in this increasingly Blu-Ray market.

In my opinion Toshiba should just get out while they can and before the downward spiral catches more unwary consumers in it’s wake.  Everyone knows that most people who buy technology are at least relatively clueless (much to the dismay of us obsessive research techies) and it won’t be long till stores that are still selling the remainder of their stock of HD DVD hardware and movies start looking with customers with the word “SUCKER” stamped on their forehead.  It will happen; it always does.  And those unlucky people who invest in HD DVD at this stage of the game (or later) are going to be very upset when they can’t find any more red cases floating in the sea of blu.

Bummer, Blu-Ray wins

Well, the format war between HD DVD and Blu-Ray DVD for HD format dominance was basically over when Warner Brothers announced that they would stop producing HD DVD versions of their movies as of the summer of 2008.  Considering that Warner Brothers makes up a ton of DVD sales this is pretty much the death blow for HD DVD.

Of course the speculation becomes a moot point now that Netflix has announced that it will only carry Blu-Ray discs as their Hi-Def format of choice.  Might as well side with the winner on this one.  Netflix hasn’t gotten where they are by making stupid decisions.

And then the next day, Best Buy announces that its stores will still carry some HD-DVD but they will be focusing on the sales of Blu-Ray equipment and discs from now on.  Their sales staff will be trained to push the Sony format over HD-DVD as the future of Hi-Def.

So what if Paramount and Dreamworks have sided with HD DVD at this point.  Their sales numbers are nothing compared to Warner Brothers and with Netflix’s dominant user base and Best Buy’s saturation of retail stores globally it’s pretty clear that this format war is over.

Which sucks.

I was really hoping for HD DVD to win this war because it’s much better for the consumers.  HD and Blu-Ray picture and audio quality are basically identical so no big deal there.  Blu-Ray has more top-end capactiy per disc so that’s good except movies and all their special features and soundtracks and languages don’t take up all that much space on either format.  So again no real advantage.

However, there are two features that made HD DVD stand out to me.
One was that since HD DVD is more similar to current generation DVD discs, you had many movies coming out with HD versions of the movie on one side of the disc and the standard defintion version on the other side of the same disc.  Why is this important?  Say you have a beautiful Hi-Def home theater in your home to play your HD DVD in.  Then you want to go to the mall in your SUV or Minivan and take the movie with you.  Well you could do that because you just flip the disc over and the conventional DVD player in your vehicle can read it no problem.  Blu-Ray can’t do that.

The other reason is that while Blu-Ray followed the tried and true and much reviled region coding that standard DVDs started so many years ago, HD DVD movies are completely region-free.  This means that if you want to order a movie from the United Kingdom or Japan, you can and you don’t have to worry about your USA HD DVD player not being able to play them.  Perhaps that’s not a big deal to you, but I guarantee its a huge deal to collectors and people living overseas like me.  Or perhaps you live in Europe and Hi-Def moviescost twice as much as they do in the States. They have the option of ordering from the States and shipping back for half the price and not having to worry about being able to watch their new movie.  Blu-Ray was designed to keep this from happening and I think that is one of the major reasons that Blu-Ray was always going to win the fight.  Aside from profit, there is nothing in the world that the movie companies like more than total control over who can and can’t watch their movies.

So I’m a little upset about this.  It means that it will probably be a long time before I get into the Hi-Def market myself.  Blu-Ray equipment costs more as do the movies in general compared to HD DVD.  And with the death of HD DVD, there will be little incentive for Blu-Ray prices to come down at all.  And there is no way in hell I’m buying a Sony PS3 just to play movies on.  Which considering there’s still not a single must-have game for the PS3 is all it’s good for in my opinion.

Buying an MP3 player

Does anyone out there have any experience with the Sony Walkman MP3 players? Specifically the A8xx series (link to 4GB model)? Muse’s MP3 player (an older Cowon iAudio 1GB unit) bit the dust a while ago and she’s stolen mine. She doesn’t really care for my tiny iRiver s10 2GB unit because, admittedly, the controls are kind of funky and it does take a little patience and compromise to use such a small player. It’s the size of a standard postage stamp.

So I’ve been looking for a new MP3 player for her lately. Something at least 2GB in size that is of an average size and weight (per her request), durable, not too many functions and easy to use. Getting an iPod is completely out of the question because I am not converting my entire music library over to iTunes. Ever. So my criteria are that it has to be able to be plugged in via USB and be seen as a drive so I can drag and drop new music on or off the device without any need for extra software or file conversion.

So I’d narrowed it down to Sandisk, Creative and Sony and the reviews on the newest of the Sony Walkman series are really promising. I looked at a few at the electonics store near my office and out of five, the Sony was the only one that felt like a nice solid metal piece of equipment that wouldn’t crack in a pocket.

However, it’s still a relatively new product and not everyone takes the time to right reviews. So here’s where you come in: If you have a recent or current generation Sony Walkman MP3 player, please leave your thoughts on it in the comments of this post.

There’s nothing in it for you except the fuzzy warm feeling of helping out another person. And I’d really appreciate it.