Long time lurker, first time poster, yadda yadda. I tend to be overly verbose, so this one will be... well, long.
Jump in your DeLorean and travel back in time with me, back before home broadband, back to the early days of the internet. It was a wild, untamed frontier then. It was slow, ugly, (green flashing comic sans! Embedded MIDIs!) exciting and full of potential. ICQ was stunning. IRC was revelatory. Everything was new and the world was becoming smaller almost overnight.
It was the time of Geocities, of Camp Chaos, and the dreaded Hamsterdance. Winamp had only just begun whipping the llama’s ass. MP3 was just coming together – you manually ripped and encoded CDs, assuming you had a HDD that could hold all that raw data, via command line. (L3ENC). CPUs with triple digit clock speeds were awesome. How soon ‘till we hit 1GHZ? WOW!
It was long before many people had cell phones, much less cell phones that were fully realized computers in their own right.
The late 1990s.
I lived in a small, crumbling former textile town in the American south. Outsourcing hit this place hard. You hear people complain about NAFTA and the upcoming deal? This town was devastated by it. Yet many somehow scraped by. A lot of people purchased their first computers during this time.
The internet gave the computer a reason to exist for a great many people. They would buy their shiny new magic box from the local Gateway store or shudder Wal-Mart, bring it home, and then… well, most didn’t know a thing about computers, no idea how to use them, and they all wanted to jump right in to the brand-new “Information Superhighway” they’d heard about.
Back then, it was more like the “Information Muddy Pothole-infested Backroad with Lots of Unmarked Sideroads and Dubious Bridges”, but I digress. It was an exciting time. No one took tech for granted like we do now.
My first tech job – my first “real” job. I worked for the local ISP in this Podunk town. Your choices were pretty much AOL, maybe CompuServe or something, and us, ‘Podunk Communications’ (not the real name, obviously).
We had a lot of customers. I was one of a handful of tech support monkeys employed to shepherd new users through the process of getting their computers set up, configured, and online, and fixing things (related to the internet or not) when they broke.
We had a little installer given to new signups – on floppy! - that would run a few setup scripts, ask the user for their account information, and place a “Podunk Communications” icon on their desktop.
Many of our calls were setup related. Some were email (man, people got PISSED when email service went down). Many of our customers were also incompetent users. That was to be expected. This was a small town, and this was the first exposure to computing technology many people had. It could be challenging, and certainly frustrating, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I got yelled at a lot, called names, threatened, the usual.
A lot of users were older people and they didn’t like that some kid was telling them what to do. I guess it made them uncomfortable being lost, feeling confused and powerless, and they would vent on us, pride wounded and often in denial that they didn’t know what they were doing. (Or worse, caused their own problem).
Enough exposition. I have a lot of memories of this job, but one stands above the rest: Mister Thunderluck.
Now, in the spring and summer, frequent thunderstorms would sweep through our region. Most of them were standard regular summer storms, but every so often, my little town would get hammered by a truly impressive storm cell: high winds, hail, constant lightning, downed trees, flooding, and the occasional tornado. Scary-violent.
It was during just such a storm that Mr. Thunderluck called in. I and my other tech support monkeys were standing just outside our tiny call center room, next to the large window looking out, nervously watching the surrounding trees bend while bolts lit up the sky every few seconds. I'm the grey text, apparently. Customer is in green.
I walked over to my desk, put on my headset and answered:
”Thank you for calling Podunk Communications, this is Tin_Whiskers, how can I help you?”
“YOUR SERVICE F**KING SUCKS, YOU KNOW THAT, MAN?”
Wha-hey! No preamble, no build up -- skip the pleasantries and proceed right to full-tilt yelling. Lovely!
I’m sorry sir, may I have your email address?”
“Thunderluck@pokunkcommunications.net, though you might as well cancel this sh@t, as it SUCKS. First the busy signals, and now THIS BULLS@@T! This is SUCH BULLS@@T!”
I had to concede he had a minor point there. The company had been taken over by the son of the original owner… unlike the father, the son was a typical scumbag MBA. He hated investing any money into the service he was selling. Some months prior to this, we had simply run out of capacity, resulting in busy signals for users trying to dial in and connect to the internet. After enough of this, we had FINALLY gotten more lines and related equipment, and that particular problem was in the past.
Just in case, though, I pulled up Telnet (Yes, Telnet) and checked our current utilization. It was very low, probably because the majority of our userbase were hunkered down riding out the freaking tornado watch that had just been issued.
”Well, you shouldn’t be getting a busy signal at this time. What’s happening, exactly, when you go to connect?”
”It’s not f**king working, that’s what’s happening.”
(well, duh)
“I understand that, sir. Are you getting an error message of some kind?”
“Yeah, it said something.”
”What’s the message say?”
“I dunno, I got rid of it.”
”When was the last time you were able to get online?”
“A few hours ago. Can you just fix your s@@t, please?”
”A few more questions, okay? Alright, do you connect to the internet via the same phone line we’re talking on, or do you have a second line for your computer and fax machine?”
(Many of our clients only had one line, and would try to dial up to walk through their problems – while on the phone with us. I’d have to explain – over the loud click and sound of dialing in my ear - why it wasn’t working and tell them to hang up, try again, and let me know what the issue was on another call.)
“I’m not f@@kin’ stupid, I have two lines.”
“Okay, great. Let’s go ahead and try to connect to the internet. Double-click the “Podunk Communications” icon on your desktop and then click “connect”.
“Okay.”
…Nothing. Dead silence, save for a little crackle on the line. No sounds of a screeching modem handshake in the background.
Nada.
“Sir? What is it doing now?”
“Nothing.”
DING! The sound of the old windows alert, seared into my brain, came through the phone line. Something had popped up on his screen that would probably explain the issue.
“Did a message just pop up?”
“Uh-huh.”
”Okay, great! What did the message say?”
“I dunno, I got rid of it.”
sigh
”Okay, I’ll want to know what that message said. Can we try connecting again?”
“Whatever, it won’t work.”
DING!
”Okay! Before you dismiss that, could you read aloud the message that just appeared?”
“It says… Modem not detected.” (this may not have been the exact error, this was 15+ years ago, forgive me.)
”Ah hah. Okay, that message is indicating that windows is not finding the modem in your computer. Have you changed anything, installed or disconnected anything, on your computer since the last time you were online, or installed any new programs?”
“Not a goddamn thing.”
”Alright, do you use an internal or external modem? That is; do you have a little box with lights on the outside of your computer, maybe connected via a special port, or does your phone line go directly into the back of your computer?”
“It goes into the back of the computer.”
I then walked him through going to Device Manager in an attempt to find his modem. And… wouldn’t you know, there wasn’t one listed. At all. None. Poof! I had expected to perhaps see something in there along the lines of ‘unknown device’ an IRQ conflict, something to go off of. Nada. I knew what was coming, but HOW it happened has imprinted itself on my mind.
”Hmm. Your modem isn’t being seen by your computer. Er, out of curiosity, is it raining in your neck of the woods, Mr. Thunderluck?”
“Raining? Holy s**t, that’s an understatement. This storm is INSANE. I heard the tornado sirens earlier. This one’s not messin’ around.”
”Well, I can’t be 100% certain, but usually when I see this sort of thing, the modem has been damaged by an electrical discharge over the phone line. Have you had any power outages, nearby strikes, anything like th—“
”Sheeee-it.”
”I’m guessing that’s a… yes?”
“Is THAT what’s happening? Godammit. Yeah, son, ‘nearby’ lightning is a mite of an understatement. Lightning hit the tree in my backyard a while ago. Scared the dogs damn near to death.”
”Yeah, that might have done it.”
“I have an underground pipe, you see, that runs somewhere around under the tree. Lightning hit the tree, traveled up the pipe, and hit my house, near as I can tell.”
”It hit your… house? Oh, no! I’m glad you’re alright. Did anything else happen?”
“Yeah, the overhead light over my car awning exploded.”
”…Ex… the light bulbs EXPLODED?”
“Yup. Glass shattered. I was watching the weather on TV. TV Popped. VCR is toast. And my god damn refrigerator started smoking. I wasn't close to the TV when it went, so I guess I got lucky there."
He starts laughing at this point, and I start to laugh as well.
”Oh my god, I hope you have good insurance.”
“I turned off my smoke alarm just before calling you. ...Sonovabitch, I feel dumb.”
”Wait, your computer – it’s STILL WORKING! That’s amazing. It popped your modem, but your computer is still on? Sir, you got LUCKY. I mean… LUCKY! It could have easily fried your entire system.”
BOOM! Outside, another strike. My lights flickered.
“I should probably unplug it, you think?”
”That’s a wonderful idea. I’d unplug anything else expensive you have in your house that hasn’t already been hit. How did the circuit breakers not stop the surge?”
“It’s an old house, hell if I know, but I'm gonna find out. …. Oh Yeah, another strike just hit – damn ! (BOOM) – across the street, I think. Listen, son, I’m sorry I was so mean to you. This is gonna be an expensive lesson.”
”Well, go buy some good surge protectors. They make them for phone lines too, so maybe that’ll help in the future. Good luck!”
“Thanks, holy – another one!” (booom)
Mister Thunderluck hung up, still laughing. I tossed my headset (wired) away from me the moment I was off the call. Several moments later, the lights flickered, and then died, plunging our little call center into darkness.
“WHOA, DID YOU SEE THAT ONE?” one of my fellow techs shouted just as an almighty CRACK rumbled through the building.
The phones were down. No matter, the NOC/datacenter had backup generators. Not that I expected many people would be dialing up at the moment.
I walked out and joined the others in watching the light show, laughing that anyone could be that utterly dense. His ‘fridge burned, his TV popped, his VCR fried, the light bulbs over his car EXPLODED, and yet for whatever reason, he just assumed the computer problem was on OUR end. Well, at least he learned, and wasn't injured.
Just another day at Podunk Communications.
Submitted April 21, 2015 at 10:34PM by Tin_Whiskers http://ift.tt/1aPaA6d talesfromtechsupport
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