Today's peeve

[ciphergoth]

Todays peeve is idiots who say "I got an error message" but are incapable of even attempting to read the message. Did it cross your mind that the text in that message might be for something, and you might learn something by reading it? If I don't know the error, how can I fix your problem? Or are all error messages just computerese for "SOMETHING FUCKED UP, MAKE SOMEONE ELSE FIX YOUR PROBLEM"?

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Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Heh. Tip: If you get a really incomprehensible error, and you think you might ask someone else to help, write the error down word-for-word; the bits that are meaningless to you should be meaningful to them.

Incidentally, your TrustFlow results are already calculated and await your inspection...

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

hear hear! If only people would at least write down the message.

Another peeve: I'll sometimes talk people through running the command prompt commands that I'd be running if only their server were picking up the )(*_(*_( phone. I'll have them type something ("no, don't write out 'space' hit the space bar") and hit enter. Then I'll wait patiently for them to read me back what the response was. Then ask, "what did it say?" "nothing." "no, look... " "D:\DS>" "no, above that." "Oh!" and they read the useful info that came back.

Why is it so hard to realize that the person on the phone is asking you to type things for a reason?

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

bonus tip for extra points: get the user to press PrintScreen and send you the error message

I woner if that would be a useful background utility - like the MS phone home error message when applications crash, a utility that you could open that would capture the error message and system state and submit them as a support request to your help desk, with a link that lets the help desk remote in to your system and fix it for you ;-)