So, I already bitched and moaned about the terms that need to die. Here’s a subset of terms that are just as, dare I say, psychotic.

I mentioned the &quotWar on Terror”. The only place I ever want to see “war” used is in an actual war; bullets, combat, death, destruction, battles. We’ve had a few of them that were significant over the centuries. Let’s use war for actual wars.

For the love of all that is holy, stop referring to the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on poverty, the war on homelessness, the war on teen pregnancy, the war on want (what the hell is that?), the war on science, the war on spam, the war on indecency, the war on guns, the war on junk, the war on democracy, the war on the middle class, the war on clutter, the war on evolution, the war on linux, the war on the press, the war on photographers, the war on sex (yeah, you’ll get some takers for that one!), the war on fat, the war on toddlerism, the war on ALS, the war on copying, and the war on freedom.

Unless, of course, you’re actually trying to wage a war on thought. 

While the concept of a %-complete progress bar while installing computer applications or browsing web sites is, in theory, a good idea, the reality is somewhat different.

There’s a fundamental concept that is missing from the %-complete indicator: the unit of measure.

That is, does the progress bar an indicator of the Volume of data, the number of files to be written, or the duration of time expected for the process to finish.

I’ve had users say, “The progress bar in IE is all the way to the right, but there’s still nothing on the page… your system sucks!” Well, in that case, the progress bar is an indicator of time, not volume. That time value can vary depending on different factors.

How about waiting for an application to install–there’s that effing progress bar, scrolling across the page. Just when you think it’s finished, it jumps back to 0%, hoping you didn’t notice. In this case, it’s actually an indicator of the volume of data read or written to the drive for each file, not for the entire program–which, in some cases, may consist of hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of files. But it doesn’t say that.

I just spent an hour freezing my ass off in a datacenter waiting for one of those stupid progress indicators to go from 98% complete to 100%. The first 98% went by in about four minutes.

Tip: When you write an application that uses a progress bar, get out your stopwatch and time the process on an “average” computer. Do it a few times and record the highest number. Then, write your code to show the user how much time it’s expected to finish the needed process. 

In the office, we share real stories from callers–here’s a gem that happened several years ago, but it’s still hilarious. Names changed to protect those involved:

Earlier today, xxxxxxxxx from xxxxxxxxx e-mailed the help desk explaining that a student in an online course was claiming to have received a virus from the course platform. Here’s the e-mail we got:

Hello … I’m the Tech Q&A person here at the xxxxxxxxxx. I just picked up a voice mail from one of our students saying that there is a virus going around in two courses, disabling her computer which she tells me is affecting other students as well. The courses are xxxxxxxxxx and xxxxxxxxxx.

I have not gone into the course yet to see if there have been any postings in the Tech Q&A to that effect. Please check yourself.

If you need more information from this student, her name is xxxxxxxxxx (xxx-xxx-xxxx), xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

xxxxxxxxxx

Of course, I was quick to respond that it couldn’t POSSIBLY have come from us, that we scan everything, and that it’d be a disaster for us to have a virus on our system with as many students as we have on our system every day.

Well, about half an hour later, xxxxxxxxxx called to say that she’d told the student what I told her and that the student was POSITIVE that she had a virus from our course platform. She said that she could SEE the virus and was looking at it right then.

So, I told her to walk me through how to get there. I got into the course and entered the threaded discussion where the “virus” was located. I expanded a student’s posting as directed, and guess what I saw? An angry, little red-faced emoticon. I REALLY wanted to burst out laughing, but, being a consummate Help Desk professional, I very calmly said “Oh, that’s not a virus, it’s an emoticon.” I then had to explain what an emoticon was to her and the admins at xxxxxxxxxx.

Then they wanted to know why they weren’t informed that we had this new feature, and I explained that it had been explained in a System Update that they received weekly. She said “Oh, we never read that stuff” and asked me to call the student.

So, I called the student and asked her why she thought she had a virus, and she showed me the emoticon and said that she just knew that the “Angry little red man” was trying to tell her that she had a virus on her computer, and that was how her computer showed her that it was mad at her.

I explained about the emoticons, and she didn’t sound relieved at all, she said “I NEVER typed those keys!” really loudly, and then she paused and started whispering: “I only copy and pasted my response. Is my computer putting them in there?”

I explained that even though she hadn’t typed the message, she had copied and pasted the right combination of characters to create this particular face.

She kept telling me that this face was SO ANGRY, she knew she’d pissed her computer off.

Finally I convinced her that the emoticons were there to express some sort of emotion and that I had deleted the emoticon from her posting. I told her that she might see these faces in other students’ postings and that was OK, they were supposed to be there.

She didn’t seem to believe me, and she asked if the “angry little red guy” would come back again–I told her only if a student used that emoticon. She paused and said “He scares me.” in this sad little voice–EVEN at this point, I didn’t laugh at her.

I told her that I was sorry the face scared her, but that there were a lot of those faces–there were happy yellow faces, sad blue faces–any color you wanted, there’s a face for it. I advised her that if she saw other faces, not to worry. If she really had a virus, she’d notice it in her system performance and ability to open programs and not in pictures on a website.

She sat there and then said “Well, if you say so.” and hung up.

Stolen from the internet:

I think it might be time for those of you who work in the corporate environment to get a bit of a refresher on your IT departments unspoken rules. It seems a few of you have forgotten what it’s all about. This should provide as a reminder as to the inner workings of the corporate IT world.

1.They are all my computers; I am only letting you borrow them. People constantly laugh at me when I say this, with no idea that I am absolutely serious. I have been given the responsibility of every computer in the office; they are all under my auspices, bar none. if I am gracious enough to give you access to one of my computers, then be nice to it. Talk to it kindly, call it a nice computer, and occasionally pat the monitor. Your computer – and your IT guy – will thank you for it. Also, this applies to printers, the network connection to the outside world, the videoconference system, and the phone system. Mine. All mine. Get it? Good.

2. If you are going to use my stuff, then use it properly. This means LEARN ABOUT FUCKING SPYWARE. If you absolutely HAVE to go to some site during work hours (and we’ll talk about this in a minute), then make sure, when the popups start showing up, you click the little black X in the upper right hand corner. Don’t click the big flashing “OK” in the middle. Don’t. Whatever it is you think you should do – if it’s not that little grey X in the uppermost right corner, don’t do it. Don’t. Just. Fucking. Don’t.

3. We know. Yeah, that’s right, we know. Every little site you’ve gone to. All the email that passes through your computers. All the instant message chats you have. We know. All of them. So the next time you decide you just HAVE to visit some idiotic website with a movie of two guys fucking a chicken, the next time you HAVE to spam emails to all your friends about the cute guy you hooked up with the other night and he gave you chlamydia, the next time you HAVE to talk to your ex-girlfriend about hooking up one more time behind your fiance’s back, think twice about who might be reading that shit, and if you’ve pissed your IT guys off. Because we know.

4. Do not take advantage of us, or our toys. It’s awful nice of us to provide you with a boatload of network storage space for your own private use. Oh, and incidentally, that network storage space at work? IT’S FOR WORK PURPOSES. That means take the seventeen gigabytes of mp3s from some shitty hip-hop artist that you got from some peer-to-peer and GET THEM OFF MY FUCKING NETWORK. I won’t ask nicely again. And listen to some real music – hip-hop sucks.

5. Learn to share. Look, I realize that the computer came with Windows XP. I don’t like it any more than you do. But really – that T1 we’ve got? It’s for everyone, so you can’t hog all our bandwidth by downloading the entire Fedora Core 3. Do it from home. If you want to bring it in to work and dual-boot your drive, I really don’t have a problem with it. But go back to kindergarden first and realize that hoarding is a bad thing, ok? Thanks.

6. The computer I let you use is for your use alone. This is somewhat malleable, where if someone at work needs your machine for a minute, you can let them use it. When your fourteen year old son comes to the office with you on Saturday and you let him use one of MY computers, then bitch to me about spyware, well, I’m just gonna tell you to lick the crack of my ass and spit in a cup. Sure, I’ll fix your machine, but after that you’re gonna have two icons on your desktop; “Go To Work” and “Go Home”, and “Go Home” won’t work until 5:30. Think I can’t do it? Try me.

7. Are you a Program Manager? Then keep your fucking hands off of my fucking computers. This is non-negotiable. You people could fuck up a free lunch. Get the fuck away from them or I will stab you in the neck with a pencil.

8. Are you in sales? Please see #7. You people are worse than Program Managers. Drink bleach.

9. Are you in Engineering? I realize that most of you have forgotten more about hardware than I will ever know. This doesn’t really give you the right to attempt to overclock the PC I’ve let you use to Ludicrious Speed. Please use discretion. Attempting to eke out a few hundred more hertz is fine; requisitioning a Freon Cooling Unit because 3.06G just isn’t fast enough is a little overkill. Trust me.

10. Oh, so you have a laptop of your own? Keep. It. Off. My. Network. If I catch an unknown machine anywhere on my net (please see #3), I will fuck that machine up so badly your high-school TI calculator will be a Beowulf Cluster compared to your new paperweight. Also, I don’t fix home computers. Tough shit. I hope you get herpes.

11. If you want something from your IT Department, email is your friend. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but still – if you need something from me, email it to me. Don’t blindly call me, don’t magically materialize next to my desk and sit there while I’m working on something, waiting for me to pay attention to you – email it to me. I’m not doing shit for you until I have a paper trail originating from you about it. You can follow up with a phone call, that’s fine; you can come over and say, “I just shot you an email, can we discuss?” – that’s fine too. If you just come over and leer at me while I’m in the middle of something, I will ignore you, and mentally give you cancer with my mind.

12. Anti-virus software. Look, people, it’s there for a fucking reason. Don’t try to shut it off, please? Can we at least agree on that? We spent a lot of money on that software so that it would be up and running all the time, and it’s not really my fault if you have fifty applications open and “the anti-virus software is slowing my machine down!!” So I’ll make a deal with you; if you don’t shut my anti-virus software on my computers off, I won’t shove an abacus straight up your ass. Ok? Good.

Following these 12 simple steps will make for a far more pleasing work environment. I guarantee it. 

To the major geeks out there, this is old news. But it could come in handy for our up and coming geeks who are getting into the technical fields. It’s the Universal Troubleshooting Process (UTP).

Here’s a summary of its steps:

The 10 step Universal Troubleshooting Process

1. Get the Attitude

2. Get a complete and accurate symptom description

3. Make damage control plan

4. Reproduce the symptom

5. Do the appropriate general maintenance

6. Narrow it down to the root cause

7. Repair or replace the defective component

8. Test

9. Take pride in your solution

10. Prevent future occurrence of this problem

This does not apply only to computers! You can troubleshoot anything technical with these rules. Computers, networks, engines and machinery, even health and biology! Yeah, there are probably other things you could use this on, but I’m too lazy to think of anything else.