Thursday, 8. January 2015
People and Computers
ell, 00:38h
Today I spent my afternoon with my grandma, drinking coffee (which pretty much surprised myself, because up to now I JUST DIDN'T DRINK coffee...) and listening the stories she and the other two elder ladies she had over for coffee told. I really want to write them down at some time, but writing along as they tell doesn't really work as they are talking pretty fast and in heavy franconian diaclect, and I forgot to bring on my mini-tape recorder that I used for learning maths for the exams last year. But my grandma isn't one of the people I'm refering to in the headline, she's already overstrained with using anything but the phone and the TV, and never using anything else.
Whom I'm refering to is my uncle, who is living in another appartment in the same house. He came home, just when we finished our coffee and Grandma's guests were about to go home, and spotting me he immediately asked, if I could have a look at his computer, becuase the internet wasn't working. Of course I agreed, it was about half past five then (keep that in mind, please).
It took me about twenty minutes to open anything, his PC is really unbelievably slow, but as soon as I had access to the network-overview I found that there was no network connection what-so-ever, so I decided the problem had to be hardware-related, but somewhere outside the PC. Time to dive into this:
Well, not exactly this, there was a big multi-pole socket around which the whole knot had evolved. As I was keen on finding a quick solution, first thing I pulled out all loose ends, and even quite soon found where it should have been plucked in. That should have solved the problem, just that in the meantime the Computer had switched off. It took me five minutes to find the 'secret' on-switch on the back in all the chaos and another ten untill it had booted up again. Still keeping track of time? We're around six o'clock now.
Once I had set myself up again with the still unbelieveably slow computer, I started to try out the internet, which was still not working, just that we had a connection now, only there was no connection. I know it sounds weird, this is what I mean: I had access to the LAN connection, but couldn't access the internet, because everytime I tried it never finished loading. So I figured there must be some other error, too, and was starting to try the switch off - switch on trick in every way possible (there are about ten things you can switch off and on concerning internet connection and any of them can be the one to make it work again). Meanwhile I noticed that my uncle was looming suspiciously over the cables. I told him to not touch anything, but I think you know what happens if you tell that to anyone. I don't know what he did, he claims he never did anything, but next thing I looked onto the screen it was black.
I figure that the PC must have a loose contact at the power pluck, because it immediately started booting up again, and the whole thing happened to me all over several times, until this:
The whole run through took nearly fifteen minutes and when it switched off again next time the first thing I did was disentangle the pretty little cable-knot behind the PC. As we unplucked everything, we also rebooted the router with this, so when we finished I had run out of ideas and phoned my brother who then told me to try it out with another Computer and if it wouldn't work then, phone support.
By the time I got home (I'm at my mum's three houses down from my grandma's) it was near to seven. I grabbed my laptop PC and went back to my uncle. Ten minutes later I was phoning support. After another fifteen minutes of waiting I finally found that the error was actually theirs. They had had a problem with the responder in the area since yesterday, or rather they had found out about that problem yesterday and since then had it shut down for maintanance until somewhen tomorrow.
By the time I got home again it was half past seven. I had spent two full hours on tech support to find that the error was with the telephone provider. And I got ten bucks out of it. I'm not sure if I should call that a win.
Whom I'm refering to is my uncle, who is living in another appartment in the same house. He came home, just when we finished our coffee and Grandma's guests were about to go home, and spotting me he immediately asked, if I could have a look at his computer, becuase the internet wasn't working. Of course I agreed, it was about half past five then (keep that in mind, please).
It took me about twenty minutes to open anything, his PC is really unbelievably slow, but as soon as I had access to the network-overview I found that there was no network connection what-so-ever, so I decided the problem had to be hardware-related, but somewhere outside the PC. Time to dive into this:
Well, not exactly this, there was a big multi-pole socket around which the whole knot had evolved. As I was keen on finding a quick solution, first thing I pulled out all loose ends, and even quite soon found where it should have been plucked in. That should have solved the problem, just that in the meantime the Computer had switched off. It took me five minutes to find the 'secret' on-switch on the back in all the chaos and another ten untill it had booted up again. Still keeping track of time? We're around six o'clock now.
Once I had set myself up again with the still unbelieveably slow computer, I started to try out the internet, which was still not working, just that we had a connection now, only there was no connection. I know it sounds weird, this is what I mean: I had access to the LAN connection, but couldn't access the internet, because everytime I tried it never finished loading. So I figured there must be some other error, too, and was starting to try the switch off - switch on trick in every way possible (there are about ten things you can switch off and on concerning internet connection and any of them can be the one to make it work again). Meanwhile I noticed that my uncle was looming suspiciously over the cables. I told him to not touch anything, but I think you know what happens if you tell that to anyone. I don't know what he did, he claims he never did anything, but next thing I looked onto the screen it was black.
I figure that the PC must have a loose contact at the power pluck, because it immediately started booting up again, and the whole thing happened to me all over several times, until this:
The whole run through took nearly fifteen minutes and when it switched off again next time the first thing I did was disentangle the pretty little cable-knot behind the PC. As we unplucked everything, we also rebooted the router with this, so when we finished I had run out of ideas and phoned my brother who then told me to try it out with another Computer and if it wouldn't work then, phone support.
By the time I got home (I'm at my mum's three houses down from my grandma's) it was near to seven. I grabbed my laptop PC and went back to my uncle. Ten minutes later I was phoning support. After another fifteen minutes of waiting I finally found that the error was actually theirs. They had had a problem with the responder in the area since yesterday, or rather they had found out about that problem yesterday and since then had it shut down for maintanance until somewhen tomorrow.
By the time I got home again it was half past seven. I had spent two full hours on tech support to find that the error was with the telephone provider. And I got ten bucks out of it. I'm not sure if I should call that a win.
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