Of all the things.. [tech rant enclosed]

[yrallee]

Yay inventory day at work!
That means a)our printers decided to go down
and b) gloria's computer isn't working properly. This means that she has to tell us 500 times a minute that it's not working. I figure out that her ethernet card is no longer installed.
Great.
It's a Dell.
This is good. I go download the driver on a different computer and install it on gloria's computer.
Restart.
That didn't work.
Try again.
Nope.
Download the diagnostic tool and install and run.
That can't run because there's no network adapter installed.
Call our tech people. The head guy's in a meeting until who knows when. Other person that works with our company isn't helpful. Says she'll talk to Dave Navarro (head guy that handles us not the guitarist) when he gets out of the meeting to see what kind of support we have with Dell.
Oh yeah.. this computer was hooked up here no more than a month ago. it's a Dimension 2400.. The software isn't anywhere to be found.

This has been my morning and I wish I could say I'm not even supposed to be here today!

[CRASHER]

all I will say is
I charge $75 an hour and I can pretend to even like being there

[yrallee]

I dealt with crap and then the guy at Dell was patient and helpful. The NIC is busted and it's integrated, so that means they'll replace the motherboard with everything onboard.
Hey, at least I know how to reset BIOS physically now.

*sigh*

*thinks about liquor*

[CRASHER]

you pull the jumper and reboot the machine right

you know you could actually put another NIC in and just disable the on-board one too

[yrallee]

Move the jumper by the battery to the other set of prongs for like 15 seconds then switch it back. Easy.

If my company has tech support and wants to use it. I don't care. However, a new NIC would be a good idea, but something tells me whoever's job it is to purchase it would pick out the piece of crap.

[CRASHER]

I knew it was something like that
i remember just removing it.. booting it then turning it off and putting the jumper back on in FairLawn a few times

well the idea of the NIC is there if ya need the machine

*sigh*
I miss the school districts

[yrallee]

eh.. not my money or time anymore. I wouldn't have any time for that anyway next week.

[DrDee]

You work with a techie named Dave Navarro?!?!?!?! That's hilarious...seriously, how in the hell did that happen? :-) You'd think he'd be living out his life in a cover band!

[yrallee]

He'a a middle aged IT guy. Something tells me he was out of the popular scene before the Chili Peppers were out of junior high.
I still double take every time I hear that "Dave Navarro's on line one"

[yrallee]

Right.
Dell ordered the wrong part, so the service call was cancelled. There's no way I would have known unless I called up, which I did.

This company, while the website is very helpful and the whole service tag and codes are a good thing, I'm beginning to think the techs are incompetent.

[CRASHER]

the best way to see if a tech is clueless...

one does he use a lot of techno-babble... if he can't make you understand he has NO clue
does he do a lot of things and not let you see what's going on ?? that's a CLEAR sign

does he speak English ??

[yrallee]

Actually, he sounded competant. Asked me to check several things that made sense AND spoke English. In fact, he sounded like a native speaker.
I'm not annoyed that the wrong part was ordered. That can happen. I'm annoyed that I didn't get a call about it and that the work order was cancelled.

[CRASHER]

understandable.. sounds like an old OBS type fuck up