Help Line


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Help Line

My job can be quite fun at times, especially on days when I don't have all that much to be doing, other than answering phones. Take, for instance, yesterday afternoon. I was answering all sorts of interesting Internet-related questions and turned on the radio. The first advertisement on was for a 1-900 service that answered all sorts of computer-related questions. "Call now! Only $2.00 per minute!1-900-555-HELP. We can help you solve any of your computing needs."

This, of course, merited my calling the number.

"Computer Consultants, Incorporated. How may we help you?"
"Yeah, can you tell me how I can get on the Internet?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but we deal with personal computer questions,
such as questions dealing with Microsoft Word or Word Perfect."
"Oh. Hmm. Well, do you answer Windows questions?"
"Certainly."
"Well, I can't get Word Perfect to run through my windows setup. I can't figure out why."
"Do you have the original disks?"
"Of course! I'm not a pirate."
"And you've installed windows correctly?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. What version of DOS do you have?"
"DOS? I'm running Solaris 2.3"
"Solaris??"
"Of course! What else do you run on a Sparc 10?"
<*click*>
Obviously, these people don't know anything about what I wanted to know. So, I go back to answering phones for a bit. Another guy finally calls up, speaking in a less-than-friendly tone.

"Yes, your computers are screwed up. I can't connect from home and it's your fault."
My fault? Well, we can't have that. "Sir, are you sure that you ACL'd your connector with the correct RS232 IEEE etherlinked ISDN compression?"
"Uh..."
Oh, this one's going to be good...

"No, I didn't bother to check," trying to pull a fast one. Too late, though, as I already knew he was mine.

"Let's see, well first you need to make sure that there are no exposed wires in the back of your computer. If there are any, just take some scissors and cut them right off."
Long pause. "I see a red one through the vent in the back. Should I cut it off?"
"Yes!" I shout, "Do it before something bad happens!"
<*snip*>
"Ok. Anything else I should do before trying to connect again?"

"Well, sir," I began, "the only thing left to do is make sure that the heavy sunspot activity doesn't kill your monitor." Long pause on the other end. "You can prevent this from happening by wrapping it in tin foil, otherwise you may just blow your IRC-bitnet connection and lose your entire hard disk."
"Whoa. Let me go get some." <*crinkle crinkle*>
"Now make sure that the monitor is wrapped good and tight and all those little holes in the back of the monitor are covered."
<*crinkle crinkle*> "Ok, all done."
"Good. Now just to be safe, make sure that it's working correctly by turning it off and on about 20 times."
<*click*> <*click*> <*click*> ... <*BOOM!*>
How funny; it lasted almost 14 times. Usually the monitors choke around six or seven.
"My monitor just exploded!"
"Ah, must've been those nasty sunspots. Make sure that your computer's not affected, quickly! Get some power on that thing!" <*ZZZSSHRRZAP!*> I can hear the phone hit the floor and hang up. These people have just got to learn for themselves one day.

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