Tag Archives: Tech

New server! Super exciting!

Web, , , , ,

In which we’ve moved.

Keef has been hosting goblinbox.com for free for years on a sandbox server he had co-located somewhere in California. That box finally got compromised. (I’m surprised it took as long as it did, honestly.) He decided to take the box down since he wasn’t really using it, so I had to move.

Now I’m at bluehost and am pretty much digging the holy hell out of it. Their hosting is cheap and their support is kick ass, and all kinds of WordPress neatness works that never worked before (like automatic updates. Hell yeah) and the ability to surf for themes from within the GUI.

You may find broken links until I finish the file migration. I may also post all kinds of old crap like this as I find it:

Placeholder

Work, , , , , ,

In which this will have to suffice!

I was gonna write about my weekend, but it really needs a particular image to make the post work, but I still can’t send images from my phone to Flickr and I forgot the phone’s USB cable at home so I can’t get the image online until later. Ergo: no real post until tomorrow.

In other news, I just got off the phone with a guy who is running a dual boot XP/Kubuntu box, possibly a laptop. He could connect and surf in XP, but not in Kubuntu. I had him put Google’s IP into the browser and the page didn’t load. I said he wasn’t online. He said he was. I asked him if he knew how to ping. He did not. I told him I’m not trained to support Linux distros, but that I suspected his problem was one of the following: lack of appropriate drivers for the wireless adapter; firewall settings; or conflicts from trying to connect to the same wireless router from two operating systems with the same MAC address. I explained that I couldn’t fix his problem.

He asked me if there was anyone else in tech support who could help him. I said there was not. He asked me if I could ask around. I explained that no one here was trained to support Linux and could do so only from personal experience and that NO ONE HERE RUNS KUBUNTU AT HOME, TRUST ME.

Stymied, he then went into detailed questions about encryption types and the fact that he has a wireless DSL modem with a wireless router behind it. I replied that I had no way of knowing which encryption type he had enabled on his wireless AP and that having two broadcasting wireless routers in his LAN was a personal problem. He then went off on another round of 1D10T questions that were only tangentially related to ANYTHING AT ALL EVER.

I finally said, “Listen! Since you can surf when you’re booted into Windows, we know that your connection works and that your hardware works. Therefore, your PROBLEM is with your LINUX DISTRO and as I’ve said NINE TIMES already I am not required to nor INTERESTED in supporting your issue, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to because YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO PING. So! Go log into Windows, go to kubuntu.org, and surf the forums until you find your answer.”

Moral: if you’re running Linux, (1.) be a geek, and (2.) GET OFF MY PHONE.

A day in the life of a support tech.

Work, ,

In which this is pretty much what I do. All day, every day.

“Okay, so, if I understand you correctly, you can’t connect to the Internet and you swear that your computer is giving you absolutely no error messages. Is that accurate?

“Well, before I can offer you any useful tech help, we need to get an error message. My records say you’re using Windows Vista, is that correct? Yes? Okay. Well, frankly, Vista’s dial-up networking implementation pretty much totally sucks, so we have to force it to give us a useful error message. To do that, we have to dial up from a particular place.

“Are you in front of your computer now? Is it booted up? Good.

“First, let me have you click on Start, and then go to Control Panel. Do you have something called Network and Internet? No? Okay, well, there do seem to be a couple of different versions of Vista. How about Network and Sharing Center, do you have that? Yes? Great. Okay, let me have you click on that for me.

“Yeah, that’ll be a left click.

“Now, on the left, under Tasks, the second-to-last item in the link list says Manage Network Connections. Do you see that? Yes? Okay. Click on that for me.

“Now, under the Dial-up header, do you have an icon labeled BMI? Yes? Good! Double-click on that.

“Double-click. …No. Double left click, please. It should open a new window called Connect BMI for you, once you do it right.

“Okay, now: are we speaking over the same like the computer uses to connect? We are? Okay, well, I’ll hang up now, and if you don’t connect to my server in 60 seconds, I’ll call you back. Remember: if you can’t connect, I need you to write down or remember the three-digit error code you’ll see, okay? Okay. Talk to you soon.”

Or if not that, then:

“So you can’t get online with your DSL. Gotcha. What brand of modem do you have?

“Uh, your modem is the little box you have plugged into both the wall jack and your computer. I need to know what brand it is.

“You don’t know where it is? Um. Okay, well, how about this: is there an Ethernet cable plugged into your computer? There is? Okay, trace it back to see what it’s plugged into.

“Yeah, see, that’s your DSL modem! Good job! What brand is it?

“It’s an Actiontec? Okay, well, do you see the Internet light on it? Is the light green, or is it red?”

And so on. Over and over, all day, five days a week. Srsly. Freaky thing is, I actually like this work. What’s wrong with me? (Wait. Don’t answer that.)

    tech support n. a service provided by a computer or technological company for aiding or advising customers of its product or service, usu. by telephone or email; see ha ha. ha.