Archive for the ‘Computer jokes’ Category

Are computers male or female?

A language instructor was explaining to her class that French nouns, unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine.Things like ‘chalk’ or ‘pencil,’ she described, would have a gender association although in English these words were neutral. Puzzled, one student raised his hand and asked, “What gender is a computer?”The teacher wasn’t certain which it was,and so divided the class into two groups and asked them to decide if a computer should be masculine or feminine. One group was comprised of the women in the class, and the other, of men. Both groups were asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.The group of women concluded that computers should be referred to in masculine gender because:1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.2. They have a lot of data but are still clueless.3. They are supposed to help you solve your problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have had a better model.The men, on the other hand, decided that computers should definitely be referred to in the feminine gender because:1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories.

More tech support problems

Customer: “Your sound card is defective and I want a new one.”Tech Support: “What seems to be the problem?”Customer: “The balance is backwards. The left channel is coming out of the right speaker and the right channel is coming out the left.It’s defective!”Tech Support: “You can solve the problem by moving the left speaker to the right side of the machine and vice versa.”Customer: (sputter) (click)Tech Support: (snicker)****************I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard’s DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn’t solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine.Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my co-workers for help; they offered no new ideas.After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly,”Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this “yellow” construction paper?”*******************A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer’s tech support number, complaining about the error message: “Can’t find the printer.”On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in front of the screen, but the computer still couldn’t find it! (YEE-HAW!)*****************Customer: “Hello? I’m trying to dial in. I installed the software okay, and it dialed fine. I could hear that. Then I could hear the two computers connecting. But then the sound all stopped, so I picked up the phone to see if they were still connected, and I got the message, ‘No Carrier,’ on my screen. What’s wrong?”*****************An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a Windows installation that had gone terribly wrong.Customer: “I brought my Windows disks from work to install them on myhome computer.” (Training stresses that we are “not the Soft-ware Police,” so I let the little act of piracy slide.)Tech Support: “Umm-hmm. What happened?”Customer: “As I put each disk in it turns out they weren’t initialized.”Tech Support: “Do you remember the message exactly, ma’am?”Customer:(proudly) “I wrote it down. ‘This is not a Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialize it’?”Tech Support: “Er, what happened next?”Customer: “After they were initialized all the disks appeared to be blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I can’t read them in the A: drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our only set of Windows disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?”******************For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from someone, and our computers were facing away from each other.A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the room. I reached between our computers and switched the inputs for the keyboards. She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her face.She called the teacher over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would happen. The teacher tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced.I started to type, “Leave me alone!”They both jumped back, silenced. “What the . . . ” the teacher said.I typed, “I said leave me alone!”The kid got real upset. “I didn’t do anything to it, I swear!”It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes.Me: “Don’t touch me!”Her: “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit your keys that hard.”Me: “Who do you think you are anyway?!” Etc. Finally, I couldn’t contain myself any longer and fell out of my chair laughing.After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red. Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.***************I have a friend who just bought a computer and was instructed to load a program by typing “A:” and then the name of the program. My friend told me it would not work because his keyboard was no good. He said he couldn’t type the “dot over dot thingie” and that every time he tried to type the “dot over dot thingie” he kept getting the “dot over comma thingie” no matter how careful he was to press only on the very top ofthe key.When I taught him about the shift key, he thought I was a genius.*****************This guy calls in to complain that he gets an “Access Denied” message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and password in capital letters.Tech Support: “OK, let’s try once more, but use lower case letters.” Customer: “Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard.”****************Email from a friend: “CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?”****************My friend was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon. He noticed a young woman sitting in front of one of the workstations with her arms crossed across her chest and staring at the screen. After about 15 minutes he noticed that she was still in the same position only now she was impatiently tapping her foot. He asked if she needed help and she replied, “It’s about time! I pushed the F1 button over twenty minutes ago!”****************

Too stupid

“Hello. Tech Support; may I help you?”"Yes, well, I’m having trouble with WordPerfect.”"What sort of trouble?”"Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away.”"Went away?”"They disappeared.”"Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?”"Nothing.”"Nothing?”"It’s blank; it won’t accept anything when I type.”"Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?”"How do I tell?”[Uh-oh. Well, let's give it a try anyway.]“Can you see the C: prompt on the screen?”"What’s a sea-prompt?”[Uh-huh, thought so. Let's try a different tack.]“Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?”"There isn’t any cursor: I told you, it won’t accept anything I type.”[Ah--at least s/he knows what a cursor is. Sounds like a hardware problem. I wonder if s/he's kicked out his/her monitor's power plug?]“Does your monitor have a power indicator?”"What’s a monitor?”"It’s the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it’s on?”"I don’t know.”"Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?”[sound of rustling and jostling] [muffled] “Yes, I think so.”"Great! Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it’s plugged into the wall.”[pause] “Yes, it is.”[Hmm. Well, that's interesting. I doubt s/he would have accidentally turned it off, and I don't want to send him/her hunting for the power switch because I don't know what kind of monitor s/he has and it's bound to have more than one switch on it. Maybe the video cable is loose or something.] “When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?”"No.”"Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable.”[muffled] “Okay, here it is.”"Follow it for me, and tell me if it’s plugged securely into the back of your computer.”[still muffled] “I can’t reach.”"Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?”[clear again] “No.”"Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?”"Oh, it’s not because I don’t have the right angle–it’s because it’s dark.”"Dark?”"Yes–the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window.”"Well, turn on the office light then.”"I can’t.”"No? Why not?”"Because there’s a power outage.”"A power–!?!” …[AAAAAAARGH!]“A power outage? Aha! Okay, we’ve got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?”"Well, yes, I keep them in the closet.”"Good! Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from.”"Really? Is it that bad?”"Yes, I’m afraid it is.”"Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?”"Tell them you’re TOO STUPID TO OWN A COMPUTER!”

True stories from tech support

A computer maker is considering changing the command “Press Any Key” because of the flood of calls asking where the “Any” key is. AST technical support had a called complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.Another support technician recieved a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn”t read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble-shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer labeled the diskettes then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.Another customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with Xeroxed copies of the disk.A computer technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up crossing the room to close the door to his room.Another customer called to say he couldn”t get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hiting the “send” key.Another customer needed help setting up a new program, so a Dell tech suggested he go to the local Egghead. “yeah, I got me a couple of friends,” the customer replied. When told Egghead was a software store, the man said,”Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of geeks.”Yet another customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had clearned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.A technician recieved a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was “bad and an invalid.” The tech explained that the computer”s “bad command” and “invalid” responses shouldn”t be taken personally.An exasperated caller to Computer Tech Support couldn”t get her new Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, “I pushed and pushed on the foot pedal and nothing happens.” The “foot pedal” turned out to be the computer”s mouse.Another customer called tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn”t work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in, and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked “What power switch?”

Computer error code

I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Rick the computer guy, to come over. Rick clicked a couple of buttons andsolved the problem. He gave me a bill for a minimum service call. As he was walking away, I called after him, “So, what was wrong?” He replied, “It was an ID ten T error..” (Sure Sounds Like Me ! ! ) I didn’t want to appear stupid, but nonethelessinquired: “An ID ten T error? What’s that … in case I need to fix it again?” The computer guy grinned…. “Haven’t you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?” “No,” I replied. “Write it down,” he said, “and I think you’ll figure it out.”So I wrote out …… I D 1 0 T