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05-04-22 12:42:54 AM
Jul - Computers and Technology - People who should never be allowed near computers EVER New poll - New thread - New reply
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Gabu

Star Mario
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From: Santa Cruisin' USA

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Posted on 11-30-09 04:09:50 PM Link | Quote
Oh God, when reading about the Office Ribbon in the "User Interfaces that suck" topic, I was reminded of when I had to take this dumbass "Microsoft Applications" class in school to GRADUATE. To be fair, it was a class for the underclass population of the school, but there is no way that someone should be such an idiot where they need to have a 17 week CLASS on how to basically work on the computer in order to be a good office drone worker, right? I mean, a 4 week class would be much more acceptable, right?

Well, I was partnered with possibly the dumbest person I had ever met when it came to computers. First several weeks of the course was to develop good typing skills. I'm thinking "30 WPM is pretty good for these people", since I can type at about 60 WPM without an interruption in though or whatever. But this guy! This guy's WPM during a typing exam? 6. You heard me right. 6 WPM. Quite obvious that I have high standards for computers already, and you guys may be thinking that I'm overreacting, but it's with the actual application part of the class where I see failure in this guy. He always seemed to get lost in even the most simplest of things even when the INSTRUCTIONS WERE RIGHT THERE IN THE BOOK THE ENTIRE TIME. Good God, I even had to get him out of Microsoft WORD when we were on Excel, Accel, and PowerPoint! Every time we started a new application, he would always open up Word and wonder why he couldn't get something to look like the pictures in the book. Numbnuts, you're in the wrong program! I got so upset that this kid couldn't handle a simple task (while I would complete the entire project in as little as thirty minutes, at best), I went and vented to my brother-in-law, probably using some words that I shouldn't have and ended up on the butt-end of karma and getting my foot broken two days later due to self-idiocy. But enough of that.

Ugh. If computers are the future, then we need to clean up the gene pool. Anyone you guys know that make you go "WTF" in rage and exasperation in completely simple computer stuff?

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Bagel

Giant Red Paratroopa
without music life would Bb
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From: bear

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Posted on 11-30-09 05:02:34 PM Link | Quote
Flash back to 1999. Middle school. Using then-new Windows 98 machines, loaded with Netscape. The school district had broadband at that time, too.

Many times we'd hear from a teacher "Netscape must not be feeling well today" ... it turns out the machine doesn't have an ethernet cable plugged in at all, or it came loose half the time.

Then the many times when people would go crazy because "F12 crashes the computer" or something. They'd put out-of-order signs on the monitors when nothing is actually wrong; consider changing the desktop background vandalism, and they'd look at telnet or something equally as innocent as a "game" and boot you off the computer and ban you from using one again.

Also there was the time in high school when my English teacher's machine needed serviced for a hardware problem, and the technician said it was because "your RAM is leaking." It was actually a dead fan and the machine was overheating (it was an old Pentium II box, running XP, on 92MB RAM. P2s were well-known for running pretty hot. And this was in 2004.)

What else ... oh yes. The time at the school library (in like ... 2002 I think) when someone was typing a report into a browser's address bar. I was looking up a book on the machine next to it and they leaned over and asked me "is the page supposed to be this short" or something and I wanted to beat them over the head with the CRT. How can people be this dumb?

Of course now that I have worked a bit in retail, the above incidents are occurrences of brilliance compared to some of the things I've seen ...

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Girlydragon
3030
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Posted on 11-30-09 06:03:40 PM Link | Quote
What I mostly hate is peoples INABILITY TO READ.

My mom recently got a computer, she always ask me for help, even when the instructions are in plain sight.

You read what it says thoroughly twice. Then you can ask for my help.


Other than that, no real horror stories.

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Taryn

Passed away.

Thanks for being a part of us, even if it wasn't always on the best of terms.

1987-2014


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Posted on 11-30-09 07:10:48 PM (last edited by Terra at 11-30-09 04:11 PM) Link | Quote
Here you go

My high school used Dell computers. They had a raised Dell logo that could be pulled off, and some students did so. The so-called technicians made us stop. Not because we were vandalizing the machines or making them ugly or throwing the logos at each other or anything, but because it allegedly ruined the network cards. Which are located on pretty much the opposite end of the case.

There was also the guy who would make, say, a 25*25 image by making like a 500*500 image and shrinking it. They tended to look horrible.

My mom would delete files by using the Find feature in Windows 95 to search for the Start menu option correspinding to the program, usually only deleting the tiny shortcut and not the actual program. This was only slightly out of the 8.3 era when filenames rarely matched the program names. We almost filled up that hard drive

Both my mom and I would confuse RAM with hard drive space, too.

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~Terra

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Rachel Mae

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Posted on 11-30-09 09:27:56 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Terra
The so-called technicians made us stop. Not because we were vandalizing the machines or making them ugly or throwing the logos at each other or anything, but because it allegedly ruined the network cards.
To be fair, they could have been saying that just to make the less computer-savvy students stop. For all they know, it could ruin the network card. :specialed:

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Bloodstar
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Posted on 11-30-09 09:41:06 PM Link | Quote
I once tried to write QBasic programs in plain English.

Granted, I was only five, but damn.

I've never really HAD any of these awful experiences, amusingly. My mom's paranoid to let me do any kind of work on her computer, but that's somewhat understandable - even I'm afraid to make hardware changes sometimes...

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Taryn

Passed away.

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1987-2014


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Posted on 11-30-09 09:54:15 PM (last edited by Terra at 11-30-09 06:54 PM) Link | Quote
Originally posted by Gunstar Green
To be fair, they could have been saying that just to make the less computer-savvy students stop. For all they know, it could ruin the network card. :specialed:


My theory is that a network card failed on 1 machine, and that one happened to have a missing logo, so instead of attributing it to random hardware failure, they decided to blame the students.

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~Terra

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Gabu

Star Mario
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Pronouns: they/them, she/her
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Posted on 11-30-09 09:59:20 PM Link | Quote
Because apparently all students are evil and are the source of anything wrong with and in the school and the world in general. :specialed:

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Rena
I had one (1) message in Discord deleted and proceeded to make a huge, huge mess about how it was a violation of free speech and how moderators are supposed to be spam janitors and nobody should have the right to tell me not to talk about school shootings
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Posted on 12-01-09 03:11:28 AM Link | Quote
Post #2672 - 11-30-09 10:11:28 PM
Originally posted by Onyx
I once tried to write QBasic programs in plain English.

Granted, I was only five, but damn.
Reminds me of writing a QBASIC program in a text editor, renaming the source file to .exe, and running it. Crashed the machine. I decided that probably wasn't the right way to write a program.

I've seen people fall for those ad banners that poorly mimic message boxes or say "you have a message", over and over. Really depressing to watch.

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why not?
paulguy

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Posted on 12-01-09 03:31:10 AM Link | Quote
Paulguy's Post configuration
As an extension of what hyperhacker said, I actually got fired from a summer job because I saw someone keep trying to click "cancel" on one of those ads that's made to look like an installshield wizard. Turns out she was my supervisor and I didn't really think that she would take it so badly. :/ I wasn't even rude about it either, I simply said "That's an advertisement.".

Other than that, mostly just my sister yelling at me because something doesn't work, and closing error messages without reading them, or allowing me to read them, then getting mad at me because I can't help her because I don't know what's wrong, because she closed the error message. She doesn't do that much anymore, though.

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Taryn

Passed away.

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1987-2014


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Posted on 12-01-09 03:54:41 AM (last edited by Terra at 12-01-09 12:54 AM) Link | Quote
Originally posted by HyperHacker
Reminds me of writing a QBASIC program in a text editor, renaming the source file to .exe, and running it. Crashed the machine. I decided that probably wasn't the right way to write a program.


When I was new to programming, I would open .exe files in Turbo C++ to look at the source code. I wondered why that programming language with the weird CP437 symbols was so popular. It seemed hard to read.

I was around 9 years old.

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paulguy

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Posted on 12-01-09 07:20:34 AM Link | Quote
Paulguy's Post configuration
When I was little I tried opening data files in Microsoft word and realized they looked like random garbage, so i tried to write a bunch of random characters and save it as .bmp and try to open it. I didn't get any programming stuff (qbasic) on my computer until I was 10 or 11 so I had a bit more sense by then. :p

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plushifoxed

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Posted on 12-01-09 07:34:05 AM Link | Quote
Supakitsune's post
When I was really young (like 7 or 8), I basically left my Macintosh LC in a FUBAR state by:
* Overflowing the hard drive with random crap like text files and paint pictures
* Randomly deleting files in the system folder and other important places
* Formatting the system install floppies on a Windows PC
Note that this computer was basically meant for me just to play around with, since it was a hand-me-down from a co-worker of my mom's (about 3 or 4 years old when we got it). Still, though...

Nowadays, I don't really have too many actual horror stories, just "me being annoyed with morons who don't read before doing things and then expect things to work right" stories. There's a reason I've stopped bothering to be helpful toward others in my A+ class; I'm not gonna help you if you don't help yourself.
It doesn't help that some of my classmates are pretty huge pricks. :| There are some okay people there though.

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Ninji

Birdo
Why did my user title say I'm a toaster anyway
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Posted on 12-01-09 03:06:24 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by HyperHacker
I've seen people fall for those ad banners that poorly mimic message boxes or say "you have a message", over and over. Really depressing to watch.

Once, I was installing some drivers for my mom and the computer had to restart. A dialog came up from Firefox asking her if she wanted to close the 3 or so tabs she had open. Her response was to scream very loudly.

I laughed at her and I still bring it up to this day. I even have it on video.

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Gabu

Star Mario
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Posted on 12-01-09 04:04:53 PM Link | Quote
What.

WHAT.

Upload that video and/or link it to us. Now.

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Ninji

Birdo
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Posted on 12-01-09 05:52:09 PM Link | Quote
I don't know where it is, and even if I did, I wouldn't post it. It's still really funny just to imagine though.

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Posted on 12-01-09 06:00:01 PM Link | Quote
Not technically a horror story but there's the ongoing debate between me and my dad that he should needs to ditch Internet Explorer for Firefox or Chrome or something (my brother argues for Chrome). IE8 is slow as hell on the home computer, which is also Windows 7, FF2 isn't. The only reason he's given for staying with it is that MS Office Access online looks different in Firefox. I've already told him that he can keep all his bookmarks and everything, he just refuses to change it.

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Ninji

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Posted on 12-01-09 06:33:14 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by FirePhoenix
Not technically a horror story but there's the ongoing debate between me and my dad that he should needs to ditch Internet Explorer for Firefox or Chrome or something (my brother argues for Chrome). IE8 is slow as hell on the home computer, which is also Windows 7, FF2 isn't.

It took me a long time to get my mom to switch from IE6 to FF.

Originally posted by FirePhoenix
The only reason he's given for staying with it is that MS Office Access online looks different in Firefox. I've already told him that he can keep all his bookmarks and everything, he just refuses to change it.

Install IE Tab and filter the MS Office online site to use it.

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Posted on 12-01-09 08:50:32 PM Link | Quote
Lol that would be perfect.

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Posted on 12-11-09 01:59:39 AM Link | Quote
I always loved messing with stupid people by telling them to download more RAM (lol) a lot of people actually try :/
Me and my friends made up a name for people who suck with computers, we call them "Magic-box" because they think that a computer is a case with pixie dust in it that runs off magic or something. We tend to call a lot of people Magic-box.
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Jul - Computers and Technology - People who should never be allowed near computers EVER New poll - New thread - New reply


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