Unintelligent computer users

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LoudMusic

LoudMusic

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I was sitting here playing with a Logitech cordless optical mouse when I suddenly had a flashback to middle school. The librarian quickly discovered that I had smarts pertaining to computer sciences and decided that I would be her personal support staff my six and seventh grade years. And let me tell you, it was not fun. Not in the slightest. But those beginning experiences led me to my cushy high paying job today, so I guess I can't complain about it too much.

So here's the story. One day I walk into the library and the librarian quickly heads me off. Seems she has a problem with her mouse. So I take a look-see, expecting it to simply be unplugged or something. No, not quite it. The bottom cover that allows you access to clean the mouse ball and wheels had broken and she decided to fix it with packing tape. Not a bad approach, considering this is 1991 and the mouse was still new and expensive to replace. But her implementation was lacking. Or maybe it was over zealous. Seems she had simply wrapped the tape around the mouse covering the hole, the button (Mac mouse) and nicely wadded up on the sides. I was so utterly shocked that I did not know what to say. I honestly believe I said nothing at all. Just sat there with my mouth hanging open unwrapping layer after layer of packing tape. Then I surgically reapplied the used tape in a functioning manner and began to play Oregon Trail.

Do you have stories of amazingly ignorant computer usage? Lets leave the CD-Rom tray as a cup holder out of this. And the mouse on the floor like a sewing machine pedal ... not necessary either. I want to hear some good stuff.
 
I used to joke around a lot in my programming classes. My favourite prank was when I swapped my friend's keyboard with the girl sitting next to me when she wasn't looking. In addition to that, I swapped my mouse with hers. My friend then proceeded to type random jibberish every time she put her fingers to the keyboard. When she realised we swapped keyboards, she assumed I had hers when my friend did... That confused her even more so she swapped with the person next to her. It took her close to 20 minutes to realize just how long the cords on our keyboards were and how far down we put hers. When she finally got her keyboard back, I started to randomly move the mouse around (I had hers). She automatically assumed it was someone sevral chairs down and the cycle continued. Just to finish off the prank, I managed to swap her monitor cable with someone a few desks down. She totally freaked when she looked at the screen and saw that her code for the day was all gone.

Another day, I was joking around again and I decided rather than swapping, i'd go and just add in 1 or 2 random letters of text when she wasn't looking at her code. It was sooo hilarious when she couldn't figure out what the problem was. Of course, I *did* eventually clean up her program and got it running.
 
LoudMusic
Is she hot? It's not worth the trouble unless you can help her with tutoring after school (:
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she wasn't bad (I wasn't looking at the time)... but after all the pranks we pulled on her and all the jokes, I had to make up for it by helping her debug every once in a while.

Either way, the pranks/jokes were the only thing keeping all of us sane through that entire semester
 
I had a keyboard class like that. But instead of pulling pranks on eachother, we used to do fun things like

"format c:\"

"y"

and leave for lunch. Mind you, this was back in the days of DOS.
 
I used to play with the netsend command in dos back before my school had decent firewalls up. I sent off exes and such to eject/close cdrom drives on computers connected to the network :D
 
Ha ha, sweet. We did some evil things to our computer labs as well, but mostly we could do nothing at all and the network would die on its own. In fact, we were lucky to have computers that worked most of the time.

Also, between 95 and 97 (while I was in high school) we shared a digital 56kbit connection with the entire school district. Or at least that's what I was told. Ten or so elementary schools, a middle school, junior high, and high school. Now, that doesn't mean that we had a huge amount of people using it at the same time, or that there were even a lot of computers, but it doesn't take much to slam a 56k connection. Even back when there wasn't just a whole lot to look at. We had one networked lab at the high school with internet access, and each of the department heads had a networked computer. The other schools might have had a workstation or two available in the library, but that was about all we had.

I'm sure things are different now. Probably a DS3 to each campus.
 
we shared a single t1 line amongst something like 5 high schools... 3 of them had computers in every room as well as 5-10 computer labs which were ALWAYS booked. For the last 2 years I was there, the speeds we were getting on the internet were so bad that I wished I was back in my 28.8 days
 
Yeah, pretty sucky. Now I work for an ad agency where we have 6mbit DSL and 5mbit cable shared amongst 65 users. I have no issues with speed, ever. I get 500KB/s pretty regular on our cable connection, but SWBell throttles individual connections to 100KB/s on the DSL so it takes about 7 simulntanious connections to fill it up.

I'm enjoying our private converstation (:
 
The best prank I played was using the "Connect to remote computer" function in Regedit. Edited the "Legal Notice" on the office grump's machine to say "Click here to confirm that you are a wretched old grouch".

Oh, and the old classic "Blue Screen of Death" screensaver. That's a classic.
 
Lol, just happened on this. Yeah, I played that keyboard/mouse swapping trick in typing class.

Anybody mess with FoolProof ever? I had a little competition with the network manager over that one, they would block me out, and I would find a new way in, and let them know by doing some inane **** (sending prints to printers in the principals office, changing backgrounds or computer names...etc.). Eventually, she got sick of it and just gave me the password...and I left them alone :)

I also could use the scanners becuase of my FoolProof shenanigans, and I made a couple of "joke" grade cards with sill comments, etc. Out grade cards were printed on regular white paper, so this wasnt too hard. So people wanted me to pay them to "change" their grades, and some girls even offered "other" forms of payment ;), but I left it at amusement (noble person, ain't I?).

Stupid usage? I bought a wireless mouse that was kind of symmetrical. My mom held it backwards, and tried to click where there were no buttons. She was entirely baffled by the strange "mirrored" motion of the mouse. I had to actually tell her "flip that around, you've got it backwards!"
 
I teach computing to mostly old people. The classes are meant for everyone, but it just so happens that most of them are retired.

One of the questions I was asked was, "where is the asteroid key?" :rolleyes:

Another time, we were using the Internet. This lady went onto the Ikea website to look at sofas and chairs and things. She gets a picture of one that she likes on the screen and then rubs the screen to try and feel the material. :dunce:

This other lady was typing up a word processing excercise about air traffic jams from a book. The instructions told her to save the document as "air traffic jams". Nothing strange there. She then made the changes according to the instructions. A bit of cut and paste, deleting text, adding text etc. The instructions then told her to save it again, but to give it a different name. I had just came up to see how she was managing and she said to me, "I was told to give this document a different name, so i called it "mangel". Is that OK?" :odd: I just gave her a funny look and suggested that maybe airtraffic jams 1 was probably a slighly better name.

It's really hard to try to not laugh at them, but instructing them to insert a 3 and a half inch floppy always raises a giggle.

EDIT: I've also seen a librarian picking a mouse up, waving it in the air, wondering why it's not working. After I explained how it worked, she then tured it upside down and tried to use the mouse ball like a trackball :ouch:
 
I loved pissing off my computer lab monitor-lady. I would spend countless classes skipping out, just to write a few macros and screensaver setups to piss them off royally. :D

My fave was to write a Macro that would go to the internet and start searching for porno sites, and opening them in new windows. I set one of the macros up so long, that it took a whole 30 min just to let it run it's course. Of course, by then, there were so many windows open, you couldn't even move the mouse. That, and somewhere along the macro, I'd make the desktop a porno pic, just to make the comp. lady have to re-ghost the pc, because she couldn't get past my admin password I put on. :D

Oh yeah, I usually disguised my fiendish macro as the My Computer icon on the desktop. I usually would tag about 4 pc's a day, and would love to watch the entire lab go down in a week. :D
 
Today, in school we learned what a desktop and taskbar are. :banghead:

I feel so stupid sitting in a class of people who don't know how to change there login password without asking the teacher. I aced all my " Quizzes" today on computers and I aced the identifying where the PS/2 ports and etc. are. :dopey:
 
I had to teach my mom how to close a window ("See that red dot in the upper corner? You click that.") Also, I don't think she realizes that web browsers have progress bars… if she "misses" clicking on a link, she'll just sit there for a minute until she realizes that nothing on the page has changed, then try to click again. My dad does that too. Also, one time I told my mom not to close the browser window, because I had some web articles loaded in other tabs… so instead, she quit the application. :rolleyes:

In my Freshman year, I got dumped into Computer Applications class (learning MS Word, Excel, and PP, since it seems that some people still have no experience with these wondrous technologies). There was this one girl in my class who had absolutely no idea how to use computers (she accomplished most of her lessons by directly copying what the guy next to her did). One day, she somehow accidentally pressed Control+A, and screamed when everything in the document was selected.
 
My dad likes to yell out whichever command he is executing.

"My Computer. C. Select All. Delete. James! I did something to the computer; can you fix it?"

No one in my house knows how to use computers, but they at least know how to use mice and keyboards.
 
Funny stuff, I'm not as "gifted" as you guys but in my major I'm one of the better ones. Usually it's doing simple things like helping them install a program over the phone.. Like in Daan's post I think it would be entertaining to teach people but then again no because I'd wanna shoot my self, same for being a driving instructor... Anyway, if you want to see me become a retard sit me infront of a Mac... WTF?! where's the second mouse button :dopey: How the hell do you delete a file?? :rolleyes:
 
You guys are big meanies!

I never tried to pull computer pranks, such as removing keys from a keyboard. I always tried to help people using computers, not making it worse for them.

Like Loud said, I too have become personal tech support to a number of people such as family members, friends (girls :sly: ), teachers, and my current employer. They think I'm some sort of computer master for performing the simplest tasks with a few keystrokes.
 
I remember when I was in Primary school (along time ago!) and we had the old BBC's (anyone remember those?). The computer had crashed and we were all standing around it with the teacher trying to get our work back. A few of us were pressing the buttons (quite randomly) whilest the teacher just looked on. She must have felt that she should be able to do something to help and decided that it would be a good idea to see what happens if she presses the switch on the mutiplug. :dunce: The computer goes off, and she turns to me and says "what did you do that for?". I could have got myself expelled but I contained the rage inside and pointed out that she had just cut the power to the computer. "Oh", she said.
 
Heh, I loved those bbc micros.

I remember when I was like 5 or 6 I was able to work the schools Mac Classic (One day i'm gonna buy one for nostalgia value) better than the teachers. In secondary school I did a whole load of crap, including installing playing quake 2 lan games.
 
My mum is pretty bad with computers, even though she's learning hard.

She'll ask the weirdest questions, like:

mum - how many photos can i fit on a cd?
me - it depends how big they are
mum - well, they're about 1024x768...

Have you ever tried explaining the difference between picture size and the size of a picture file? Damn it's not easy.

Studying Comp Sci at uni you see quite a lot of dumbasses. Never understand why some of them are taking the course when they don't know the most simplest of things. It's funny in a way, but their ignorance kinda pisses me off.
 
The best prank we ever pulled was in a computer lab. We would take screenshots of the desktop and set it as the background. Then we'd remove all of the icons from the desktop and watch as people tried to click on the background where it looked like there were icons.

When I was working at the lab people would often come up to me for help (since that was my job). My job could be reduced to a for loop.

i=0;
for i=1:1000000000
I'm having a problem with blah blah blah
Did you reboot?
no.
Give that a try.
Hey it worked!
i=i+1;
end
 
danoff
The best prank we ever pulled was in a computer lab. We would take screenshots of the desktop and set it as the background. Then we'd remove all of the icons from the desktop and watch as people tried to click on the background where it looked like there were icons.
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Spookily, I did something similar.

I erased all of my boss's desktop icons but for the "My Computer" one. I then took a screenshot, cropped it and set it to the desktop, tiled. I then moved the My Computer icon over one randomly chosen one.


Go on daan... Tell the one about the fabric :D
 
danoff
The best prank we ever pulled was in a computer lab. We would take screenshots of the desktop and set it as the background. Then we'd remove all of the icons from the desktop and watch as people tried to click on the background where it looked like there were icons.
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That's awsome! I'm gonna try that on the Family computer! I will then tell them that they have the Eye-Dee-Ten-Tee Virus! :lol:
 
I like turning people's monitor off when they are not looking and some people freaked out big time. they thought they lost all their work. it was hillarious. than I started turning computers off. that was funny.
 
Has anyone here taken a really powerful magnet and stuck it onto someone's monitor? Tons of fun right there :D. Even more so when it's powerful enough that you can hide it on top of the monitor where they won't see it.
 
donbenni
Have you ever tried explaining the difference between picture size and the size of a picture file? Damn it's not easy.
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Yup, my mom doesn't get it either. I've given up though – The concept of "hard drive space" just doesn't fly with her, no matter how hard I've tried to explain it.
 
emad
Has anyone here taken a really powerful magnet and stuck it onto someone's monitor? Tons of fun right there :D. Even more so when it's powerful enough that you can hide it on top of the monitor where they won't see it.
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That would be awsome! Ruin a $150 monitor! 👍 :lol:
 
nah, I've done it to the ones at school - my super strong magnet sometimes left marks on the screen for a few minutes at a time but it was nothing that a restart couldn't fix
 

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