Hey There,
This week I've extended the humor section to include today. The main reason for this (as alluded to in the title) is an operating system (the name rhymes with Mistah) that is probably the worst thing I've ever had to work on in my entire life. It's taking massive constraint to make today's humor anything but MS-bashing. I think I've slept 2 hours since Saturday and some of the problems I've run into are truly scary (referencing a support MS's site with 511 pages of complaints - still unresolved - about "one" issue).
This has, more than anything MS has ever done, made me a pure Linux desktop person. I could deal with the XP that came with my last PC, but this OS is so poorly designed, implemented and supported, I can't believe they charge money for it. And, to top it off, they're dropping support for XP to push this new version of warmed-over garbage while it still "barely works"...
Anyway, once I'm done posting tonight (and covering up the patches of hair I've pulled out ;) this laptop is going full Linux. I feel like an idiot for not just doing that in the first place. I heard the horror stories, but downplayed them, since I'd heard the same thing about lots of other versions of MS Windows, but this time they were more true than I could have ever imagined.
If you buy a new PC or laptop (which will have this OS on it, by default - bundled with hardware and drivers that MS has deemed incompatible, due to user complaints, although they have no problem branding machines with unsupported hardware -- a buck's a buck), get ready to install another OS from scratch (at least on a separate partition). On the bright side, I didn't upgrade to the "ultimate" edition. That probably would have killed me ;)
In any event, I'll be back tomorrow with some original material (although the above is all, technically, original ;) and apologize for the lack of quality content today.
Hopefully you'll enjoy this long-long joke from long-long ago (and my tags for this post :)
Cheers,
Courtsey of
alt.sysadmin.recovery, where Sysadmins come to whine,
it's
The Sysadmin Price List:
Regular (as it were) Prices:
- Calling me with a question --- $10
- Calling me with a stupid question -- $20
- Calling me with a stupid question you can't quite articulate - $30
- Implying I'm incompetant because I can't interpret your inarticulate problem description - $1000+punitive damages
- Questions received via phone without first trying help desk - $10.00
- Questions where answer is in TFM - $10.00 (this should have been higher :-)
- Questions during Xpilot session - $20.00
- Calling me back with the same problem *after* I fix it once - $100
- Insisting that you're not breaking the software, the problem is on my end somehow - $200
- Asking me to walk over to your building to fix the problem - $5/step
- Asking me to drive to another town to fix your problem - $50/mile+gas
- If you interrupt me while I was reading news - $25/hr
- If you interrupt me while I was trying to count all the xroaches on my screen - $35/hr
- If you interrupt me while I was trying to actually fix somebody else's problem - $45/hr
- If you try to hang around and get me to fix it now - $50/hr
- If you expect me to tell you how I fixed it - $60/hr
- If you've come to ask me why something isn't working that I'm currently working on - $70/hr
- If you're asking me to fix something I fixed for you yesterday - $75/hr
- If you're asking me to fix something I told you I fixed yesterday, but never did fix - $85/hr
- If you're asking me to fix a quick patch that I made that didn't work - $95/hr
- If you're bugging me while there's another admin in the room who could have done it for
you - $150/hr - Making me trek to your office to fix your problem then leaving immediately after hanging up
the phone - $1500.00 - Calling up with a problem which "everybody" in the office is having and which is "stopping
all work." Not being there when I rush over to look at it and nobody else in the office knows
anything about it. - $1700.00 - Explaining a problem for 1/2 hour over the phone BEFORE mentioning it's your personal machine at home - $500.00
- Self-diagnosing your problem and informing me what to do - $150.00
- Having me bail you out when you perform your own repairs I told you not to do - $300.00
- Not telling all of your co-workers about it - $850.00
- Explaining that you can't log in to some server because you don't have an
account there - $10 - Explaining that you don't have an account on the machine you used to have an
account on because you used it to try to break into the above server - $500 - Forgetting your password after it was tattooed on your index finger - $25
- Changing memory partitions without informing me first - $50
- Each time you call and start out by saying "I was fooling around on
my computer when ..." - $50 + $ 10 /hr to fix the problem + $ 30 /hr
to clean up after you. - Installing programs without informing me /getting permission first -$100 per program
- Technical support for the above programs - $150 per hour (regardless of whether I know the program or not :))
- Calling me to tell me that none of the users in your group can log on
without telling me that you placed an order to remove applications for those
users $25 - After I find out that you placed the order to DELETE all of your users
$1,000 (including $4,000 discount for the hilarity factor) - Leaving files on desktop - $5 per file, $10 per day the file is left unclaimed
- Bringing in your own copy of the original Norton Utilities v1.0 to fix a brand new machine - $200
- Putting feet up next to workstation after ten mile jog through NYC streets - $50
- Spending 30 minutes trying to figure out what your problem is, and another
5 explaining how to verify and fix it, only to hear you say... "So that's
what the little box that popped up on my screen was telling me to do!" - $40 - Dealing with tech support requests for obviously pirated software - $25
- Dealing with "How can I get another copy of [obviously pirated software]?
Mine just died." requests - $45 - Having to use the "We're really not the best people to talk to about that;
why don't you try calling the number on the box in which you bought it?" line
- $55 - Actually needing to explain copyright law to you after you failed to get
the hint in the previous response - $95 (includes instructions for
getting freeware replacements from the public file server) - Having to point out anything that's on the wall in a typeface larger than
18 points - $15 - If I wrote the sign - $45
- If it's in a 144 point font and taped to the side of the monitor facing the
door - $75 - Reporting slow connection by passenger pigeon packets to MPEG archive
in Outer Slobavia as a Mosaic/Netscape/Gopher/FTP client problem - $25.00 - Reporting it more than once - $50.00
- Reporting it more than once and implying slothfullness on tech
support's inability to solve problem - $200.00
"Hardware Problem" Prices:
- Figuring out you mean floppy drive when you say hard drive - $50.00
- BEFORE I order your replacement hard drive - $250.00
- Telling me that you don't have a hard drive $50
- Spending 15 minutes to find out the size of your hard drive (includes
walking you through the process) $100 - Telling me that you don't save anything to the any of the drives, you "just
push a button and it goes off into computer land." $50 - Fixing your "broken" mouse with a mousepad - $25.00
- Fixing your "broken" optical mouse by rotating the mousepad 90 degrees -$35.00
- Fixing your "broken" optical mouse by taking off the post-it note someone has put on the bottom. - $50.00
- Fixing a "broken" mouse by cleaning the rollers - $50.00
- Fixing your "broken" printer with an ink/toner cartridge - $35.00
- Fixing your "broken" ANYTHING with the power button - $250.00
- Fixing the "crashed" system by turning the external disk back on - $200.00
- Fixing the "hung" systemby plugging the ethernet transciver back in - $375.00
- Fixing the crashed nameserver by plugging back in the SCSI cord someone
accidentially yanked out on Friday afternoon when the 'real' sysadmin has
just left for a two week vacation - $400 - Visiting your old university and fixing the broken PC by plugging the
monitor lead back in - $50 - Spilling coke on keyboard - $25 plus cost of keyboard
- Spilling coke on monitor - $50 plus cost of monitor
- Spilling coke on CPU - $200 plus cost of motherboard swap plus hourly rate of $150 per hour spent reinstalling the system
- Cleaning the mouse with spit and sleeve - $50 plus cost of sleeve plus cost of therapy :)
- Chewing on the end of the graphic tablet stylus - $25
- Listening to your network troubles, suggesting that you check to see if
you are plugged into the network jack, hearing yes, trying five other things,
asking you to identify your plug type, listening to you drag furniture, and
hearing a sheepish, "Oops. Nevermind." - $35 (including discount for polite apology)
Beeper Prices:
- Beeping me when I'm out with the significant other - $50
- Beeping me when I'm out of town and I took pains to insure that help
files were left all over and that diagnostics had been run on all machines before I left - $100 - Beeping me more than once to tell me that the printer's offline and the fix is to press the
On Line button - $200 - Beeping me more than once while I'm asleep - $50 per beep
- Beeping me and not identifying yourself within the first 5 seconds - $25
- Beeping me and then changing your story / denying you placed the call / hoped I would
forget who caused the problem - $500
Special Rates:
- Dealing with user body odor - $75.00/hour
- Dealing with user not familiar with the primary language spoken at site - $50.00/hour
- Dealing with user who is (self-proclaimed) smarter than you are, but
still calls every other day for help - $100.00/hour - Dealing with computer hobbiests - $125.00/hour
- Questioning the other prices .................................$50
Collected from posts & email from:
jam@philabs.philips.com
jlkinsel@engr.ucdavis.edu
dpeschel@u.washington.edu
msuzio@tiamat.umd.umich.edu
nhughes@umich.edu
harlan@oberon.cs.wisc.edu
uhajj@superdec.uni.uiuc.edu
the8thman@aol.com
emk@dartmouth.edu
itchris@dale.ucdavis.edu
d-farley@tezcat.com
akilpat@engr.ucdavis.edu
ilaine@panix.com
s138@cpcroh.cpc.uea.ac.uk
drewkt@wellsfargo.com
rambler@sowest.net
, Mike
