Silliest questions youve heard...

So this was inspired by a lady that came into the shop recently. She was drawn to the cheapest laptop in the shop, an old aspire with XP and 512 of RAM, 120 HD.

Im the laptop guy so she called me over, and i asked her if she needed any help. She responded:

"has it got GIGS?!"

(literally, shouting)

"yes it has..."

"are they FAST GIGS?!"

at this point, i tried to explain that "GIGS", as she called it, dont determine the speed of a computer.

That was too much.

"BUT ARE THEY GOOD GIGS?"

"well, yeah, but-"

"FAST GIGS?!"


Facepalm moment if there ever was one.

Ahh the elderly and tech.....

I have often been asked why when you get an espresso coffee from a vending machine, do you only get a 3rd of a cup....

Well...are they fast?

I did a summer working the phones at Circuit City's 'Answer City' - when I got out of the Navy and was waiting for school to start. This is back before we sent those duties over to India. I had a caller who kept asking me how to use the foot pedal that had come with her computer. It took me a few minutes of probing to figure out she had her mouse on the floor...

Did she buy those "FAST GIGS"??

- Nick

Silliest question I ever heard . . . ..?

Was many years ago, we had just switched from 4 day work week (every Friday off) to every other Friday off.
As you can guess, I forgot and was happily asleep on Friday morning when the phone rang . . . it was my boss.
"Mike, where are you?"
As I was still a little groggy, I stopped, blinked a few times and asked, "Well, where did you call? I answered the phone, so obviously that is where I am."

Then I got dressed and went into work. I had a really good boss, so we laughed about it when I got there.

EDIT: Probably should add, this was in the days when portable phones required a backpack to carry. Land lines were the rule (with only very rare exceptions)

Razormac said:

I had a really good boss, so we laughed about it and got busy.

Click to expand...

You "got busy" with your boss??

That's what I call "Casual Friday's"!!!

- Nick

Working with a user trying to connect to our network over VPN. She had just been issued a laptop and after 30 minutes of coaxing we found out she had no kind of internet connection in her hous; no dialup, broadband, dsl. Her response:

"I dont want internet in my house, only VPN. I was told this laptop would let me connect over VPN."

Some people should not be given enough rope.

Deckyon said:

Working with a user trying to connect to our network over VPN. She had just been issued a laptop and after 30 minutes of coaxing we found out she had no kind of internet connection in her hous; no dialup, broadband, dsl. Her response:

"I dont want internet in my house, only VPN. I was told this laptop would let me connect over VPN."

Some people should not be given enough rope.

Click to expand...

Obviously computer & internet technologies are MUCH MUCH more prevalent now (2011)...and folks are MUCH more exposed to it in school, work, and at home than they were back in the late 70's & early 80's when personal computers started becoming widely available to the masses.

But when you hear some of the stories of how folks still can't "connect the dots"...you just got to shake your head!

I totally understand that some folks aren't interested...and just want the "computer to work". I'm just thinking that a lot of basic concepts should certainly be better understood in 2011...than compared to 1979.

Computers, smart phones, tablets, etc. and the internet are just too big of a part of our everyday lives to not have some sort of basic understanding of how things work. Some folks (when it comes to computers and the internet)...are still living in the 1970's!

- Nick

That is fine and I can understand when it is someone who is not on computers or have them available all the time. But when it is someone who works on them every day, not in IT, but in their job? No, that is just a blatant "I don't want to learn" attitude. And this person - 32 years old.

Deckyon said:

That is fine and I can understand when it is someone who is not on computers or have them available all the time. But when it is someone who works on them every day, not in IT, but in their job? No, that is just a blatant "I don't want to learn" attitude. And this person - 32 years old.

Click to expand...

Ahh...I see. I missed the part about this being a person who SHOULD be more familiar with the technology!

They'll probably get promoted soon...with a BIG raise...and become your boss! lol!

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

They'll probably get promoted soon...with a BIG raise...and become your boss! lol!

- Nick

Click to expand...

Cant be worse than the tards already there.

I'd say that going from IT to dev resolves much of that, but I'd be lying.

Absolutely not connected to computers in any way, but my sister, who was 24 at the time, asked if Rohypnol was made from Rapeseed.

I do wonder what planet she's on some times.

Wanna hear the silliest thing I ever heard .... no ? well too late.

My company had a global workshop in Cairo, Egypt.
On the last day, they organized diner in the desert, next to the pyramids ... local entertainment ..... the lot.

At one point I was standing outside and looking at the pyramids and a guy came up and stood next to me and we started a conversation on how great the pyramids are etc.
Then he said ( and I quote ) " I wonder why they built them so close to the city ? "
I looked at him without saying a word and he was dead serious.
Didn't know what to say, so I started talking work.
That person is now no longer with the company ( don't know if there is a relation between these events -_- )

Cheers ... McBie

McBie said:

At one point I was standing outside and looking at the pyramids and a guy came up and stood next to me and we started a conversation on how great the pyramids are etc.
Then he said ( and I quote ) " I wonder why they built them so close to the city ? "
I looked at him without saying a word and he was dead serious.

Click to expand...

Got a big laugh & a head-shake out of that one!!!

Thanks,

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Got a big laugh & a head-shake out of that one!!!

Thanks,

- Nick

Click to expand...

I would think the answer would be simple, that way it is closer to the highway and railroad for shipping in the stone blocks.

loving the stories lol. no she didnt buy the "fast GIGS". obviously arent fast enough.

Silliest question I ever had to deal with - this one is true and not some overheard third party tale.

WE honestly got a call from a client who's boss called us to ask why their internet pages were so messy.

What do you mean messy we said, the pages look fine to us, nothing out of place in all browsers

The pages are really untidy, came the response, can we tidy up the pages and make them look better

We were now flumoxed, the pages obeyed all their corporate guidelines, not one font or color was out of place, and it all looked like all the other corporate style pages.

It all looks jumbled and messy, all over the place, came the second response.

That had us perplexed, so we asked what browser and settings they were using, in the hope we could find something that was wrecking the pages

It was the old favorite IE, but we had tested that, so what was wrong?

Turns out the boss had selected view source and seen the real Internet, ie the html code that makes up the pages.

It was all ugly, courier font and no line breaks, a really ugly jumble of code (IE 6 doesn't do view source with any elegance )

So we had to explain that we couldn't tidy up the internet, since it was out of our control.

We could not tell all browser vendors to use a better font and more line spacing



The joke now in the office is that if there is any downtime, we can always "Tidy the internet" with a bit of Helvetica Neue Light

Allright, I may now make a fool of myself, but it happened to me that someone had sent me an E-mail with a print screen containing a picture of a window that had a button that said " Close Window " ......

Guess what I did ..... several times ?

If it is any excuse .... it was late in the evening and my mouse was faster than my brain.

Cheers ... McBie

robduckyworth said:

loving the stories lol. no she didnt buy the "fast GIGS". obviously arent fast enough.

Click to expand...

That's the problem with customers...lots of questions (sometimes silly ones)...but few buyers!

- Nick