How IT are you? Find out now in our HILARIOUS quiz! Gor blimey guv. I jus’ bin dahn the ol’ rub-a-dub for a pokey alright sparrah do us a lemon John. Fret not, faithful reader. Be comforted that I have neither succumbed to Dickvandykitis nor do I have any compulsion to “do the old bamboo” – a suspicious euphemism if ever I heard one. I am merely rejoicing in being told that I …
A user calls to report a non-working printer. Do you...
Call the user from a non-caller ID phone, explain that there is a magnetic hysterisis problem with the hot-roll, and the user needs to reset it with a hairpin or large straightened paper clip. The user needs to locate the magnetic impulse wires near the top of the rollers, one red, one blue, and user needs to discharge this by pressing the clip against the red wire to evacuate the charge, and for best results, also needs to touch some other grounded element.
Wait for the bang and the smell or burning toner, go to pub when ambulance is in earshot.
Is this like "How do you do?"
Which should never be answered with anything related to your health, either good or bad.
Eg.
Q-How do you do?
A-Fine thanks.
Bzzzt wrong!
Q-How do you do?
A-How do you do.
Q-No, How do *you* do?
A-No, How do you *do*.
etc.
...profitzzz.
where there was a big Scientology thing going on. And they hook you in with personality quizzes which invariably are designed to show you that you are a good person but you need to spend £4000 on a course which will teach you to correct x, y or z personality defect which is holding you back and stopping you from becoming a millionaire like Tom Cruise.
Being a psychology undergraduate, much like Dabbsy's victim, I went to their in depth feedback assessment and promptly took apart their questionnaire, scoring each question for positive/negative bias, control question loading etc etc and left their interviewer (a very attractive young lady, what a surprise) as a nervous wreck. My girlfriend who had been given the hard sell by an attractive young man (again, what a surprise), told me she'd signed up for two years of courses and did I think we could live the rest of the year on just my grant money - which sent me into a meltdown. She was, of course, joking; which meant she won that one.
Not scientologists, but one of these jumped me today on my way to work* and unlike most of them, this guy were a bit rude: "I saw you look at us**. It will only be 10 seconds!" - with an aggressive tone of voice. He didn't touch me to stop me in my tracks past him though, or it might have turned ugly.
*My way to work is through a mine field: lady with coin jar for charity at shopping centre entrance (so I see her -twice- each day within 10 minutes), Jehova's witnesses, credit card pushers, plain old "got spare change mate" people... And that's just one point on my commute while I change trains.
**Of course I looked at you - for half a second. I wanted to see if I'm supposed to escape you or not as I walk past you. I don't have enough time between trains to learn how to fuck with you. It's a 20 minutes interchange, and I already spent 10 of those minutes in the shop.
My mate and I very much enjoy the delights of the harder end of the muscial spectrum, the delights of Decapitated and Amon Amarth are firm favourites.
I well remember heading to Brixton one bright sunny Summer evening to see Slayer play. The dear Scientologists had a little table set up right outside Subway along the high street, selling their snake-oil books and tapes. Well when of the most often used subjects for heavy metal songs is preachers of any faith trying to brainwash people into believing their tripe and nonsense. I waited outside Subway for my mate to arrive and all the while I was there, a good 30 mins, I started to feel a little sorry for those Scientoligists as they looked absolutely terrified every time a group of metallers walked past, sneered or passed comment and walked into Subway, then sneered and passed more comments on the way back. When it came time to pack away their little table I've never seen anyone shift boxes of unsold tapes and books so fast!
I once had a scientologist wanting to inflict a questionnaire on me, so, being a good sport, I went along with it. Answering all the loaded questions in slowly increasing psychopath mode wasn't the only thing that got to him. I think it was the combination of my slightly too bright smile, the way I kept staring fixedly at his right ear, and developing a slight twitch in my left eye that really did it. I was careful not to overdo it, I just subtly built it up. He bolted at the end.
I had just been rehearsing a part as an insane Columbian taxi driver in a student play, so I could keep the act up all day, if needed
personality defect which is holding you back and stopping you from becoming a millionaire like Tom Cruise.
The money would be nice, but I don't want to jump up and down on a couch while screaming.... OH.... they can fix that defect then... Where do I sign up?
(b) tell them to log a call with buildings management because stationery falls under someone else’s cost centre?
Every time. I spend more time writing something that sounds plausable and reassigning tickets than actually working. They eventually come back to me anyway but under a different project, one with enough hours that allows me to actually work on them.
D, keep them on the phone as long as humanly possible and involve as much tedious small talk as you can muster. In between the tedium try and get as may Monty Python quotes in without being obvious. Gauge their own assumed knowledge with near incomprehensible babble about flooded packet gateways, network degradation based on 443htz bleed-through from the local communications tower. Things like this will heavily dissuade idiots from calling you again.
Sometimes it's worth a small effort.
Internet questionnaires are more 2 dimensional than the screens used to read them, even (and probably especially the ones meant to be useful and not entertainment).
I did a career related one, and the results of suitable careers started with 'shoe designer*' WTF!
* Ok, I have a minor foot fetish, but there was certainly not a question about that in it, and if there had been, it'd be more likely to advise I was never let anywhere near womens feet for public decency issues.
Great article, although I do feel let down, I was actually looking forward to an actual 'how IT are you' quiz that wasn't loaded with ads and one question per page that took ten minutes to load the next one..
d. Open a call and ask them to send an image of connections at the back of the printer. They reply promptly. Five days later ask for image of connections at side of printer. They reply promptly. Ffive days later ask for detailled schematics of printer. They reply promptly. Five days later ask for wiring diagram of building. Keep going askig for ever more totally irrelavent details until they get pissed off and give up then close call due to inactivity.
Nowadays, to really convince them, you need to stand buck naked in the middle of the room, stick your todger between your legs and spread your arms out and scream "I'd F**K me!".
(Disclaimer, if you accidentally get elected as a Tory Party member using this technique, don;t blame me).
right-click on printer, remove.
turn printer back on -- if no printing then how the fuck are we supposed to fix a hardware problem on a Friday?!
move them to another print queue as geographically as far way from thier desk as is possible - and tell them is it only a 'temporary fix to get you back and working'.
"Unfortunately for them, I’d seen all the questions before: my father, a clinical psychologist, had shown them to me when I was little. They were mostly based on an old Hans Eysenck test for psychopathic tendencies."
When you say "shown"...
Suddenly, everything about Uncle Dabbsy makes starts making sense!
Steven "Just kidding, they don't use those tests on kids really - they have other ones" R
Dunno why but I can sympathise with the coffee name spelling.
I'm apparently a grammar genius and a spelling wizard. And "better than 96% of the population at....." in far far far too many cases. However, so are a couple of folks I know who would have problems floating in a kiddie pool full of pudding.
for the printer:
option Q)
note that support for that hardware is currently in transition, advise the user that they need to open three tickets in three different systems, collate all ticket numbers into a single email and then email 8 DLs with those ticket numbers asking if there is anyone that can acknowledge that they are aware the printer exists, and advise which of the two outsourcing agencies actually support the printer. Advise the user to ensure that security is on the email trail as they will have to grant access for the support person who eventually is assigned to inspect the printer. Send the formal process documentation advising how to open tickets in the three ticketing systems to the user and CC their manager as well. Sign off.
Head outside for lunch, a scotch and a chance to watch the cardinals finish building their nest in my cedar tree.
That's sad to hear, Alistair. My commiserations. Dementia is a terrible thing that leaves the body and takes the soul.* The sooner a cure is found, the better.
*I don't mean this in a religious sense - just that everything that made the person who they were is erased. No memories of the past mean that the personality changes. Foul disease.
Pour être admissible au Québec, il faut vivre pour (au moins) UN AN dans votre sac de papier brun dans la fosse septique!
Bien sur! And also be able to code in la Langage de balisage hypertexte! - "LBHT". (You call it HTML).
Unlike those scurrilous folks of France, Quebec has proper language laws rigidly enforced!
...I was asked if I could go back and change something in my life, what would I change?
I said "everything".
Which is apparently the wrong answer.
Why?
The way I see it, I've "done stuff" and "made decisions" and arrived here. If I should be able to go back in time and change something, why would I want to change only one thing? Why not do everything differently and see where life goes then?
Oh, and replying to the half-full/half-empty thing with "the cup is clearly the wrong size" is also an incorrect answer. Ho hum. I'll go cook my spaghetti in a frying pan, maybe that'll be the right size?
I'm getting the feeling I am reading one of those old-school Science Fiction stories found in those "Nebula Awards" or "Michael Moorcock presents..." anthologies of my youth.
It's either the beer or some subconscious trigger. Maybe the disturbing questionnaire silliness?
I remember is J.G. Ballard's "Answers to a Questionnaire" (on the Internet). Also, John Sladek's "Anxietal Register B" (which appeared in John Christopher's Mind in Chains, but I had to look that up), basically a form that you don't want to fill in as it goes progressively deeper into querying information about your inner space. Shit's not on the Internet though... pity.
I do have to admit in a similar vain - that I get a real sense of satisfaction when I get spam emails that claim my account with this bank, or paypal, or my iTunes account has been compromised or - any of the other "give us your personal details" type of emails come rolling in. When I'm feeling mischievous and really want to f**k up someone's day - I like to copy the link, paste it into Incognito Chrome, and if the "red screen of death" doesn't appear, I like to submit as much gibberish information as I can be bothered to. It probably doesn't really make a lot of difference, but I like to tell myself - that I'm not the only one doing this and they are being overloaded with so much false information or login data that it's not worth the time trying to figure out what is real and what is not.......... It would be nice to know other people take it upon themselves to do the same - but I'm probably alone in this. I'll just continue doing it though.
What annoys me in spam is the "you have more friends etc." from Facebook. I don't have any friends and if I did they wouldn't use Facebook either, but what annoys me is if a careless swipe fails to delete them unopened so some evil tracker reports the address as a valid one. Android badly needs a baked in Facebook email rejecter.
It's particularly easy to see what's going on in the Scientology "personality test". Every tenth question is in the same category, so you can easily score 100% once you've worked out what the categories are. More amusingly, you can chose your scores so that the graph of them that they show you is a picture of a house or something like that.
I thought the questions in the Scientology test were as follows:
1. Have you ever studied psychology at a university?
2. Are you loaded?
3. Are you really, really gullible?
A match is of course No-Yes-Yes. Question 3 is intended to catch out the people who are only doing it for a laugh.
It appears that he's unhappy that Starbucks spelled his name Alistor instead of Alistair. As he claims it's a Gaelic name, it's evident that he doesn't know how to spell it himself - both his spelling and the Starbucks spelling break a fundamental Gaelic spelling rule twice. The gaelic name is writen "Alasdair".
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