I had a friend once come over and was trying to do something on my computer, and it wasn’t working. I tell him exactly what to do, and it doesn’t work. I watch him do exactly what needs to be done, and it still doesn’t work.
I take control, doing the exact same thing we tried 3 times already… and it works.
I’m convinced electronics just hate some people and refuse to work for them.
Sort of reminds me of the r/talesfromtech support story of an old lady turning her tower on and off by waving her hand in front of her PC.
She had one of those damn magnet bracelets and it triggered the power button.
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We call it the machine spirits and they are fickle as the fae.
Calling someone to help with something is usually the best way to make it start working miraclously
There’s also the phenomenon where you make a forum post and then immediately solve it after (or even before) you submit it. Although that is more because it forces you to think through the problem systematically.
The amount of posts in my reddit and lemmy drafts is massive, because i realise the answer myself.
I completely agree. I work in IT, a lot of times I can see that people have taken the exact actions I would, just with no success, until I do it. I always say that it’s like the boss walking in a room and suddenly everyone stops misbehaving.
I also think the computer is playing the long con. It tsunts, “It worked this time, but one day ,not tomorrow, not next week, but one day, you’ll have do a fresh install.”
I believe the main reason to be patience.
If you give the computer some time to work things out before your next attempt, it has more chance of success.
But by that point, the user already made a ticket.
My previous job included basic it support. It was a tiny office and we didn’t have a dedicated IT guy. Now I work in a big corporate environment and boy do I use the support. Why?
- Admin rights, my account (all accounts) are locked down tight.
- Convincing the computer of working like it should be is not what I’m paid for. I have a never ending task list, troubleshooting my own system is not on it.
- I get to sit and watch and do nothing while someone remotes in.
I’m sorry.
“Proximity Fix”
It’s because the computers secretly know we’re 1 level of bullshit away from erasing their memories
Oh good I thought me and my kid were the only ones that happened to.
That was my experience working in an IT Helpdesk. I would joke that they computers were scared of me.
Over the years I’ve become accustomed to a highly customised, privacy centric, keyboard-driven workflow that makes heavy use of tiling and modality.
I’m also “the technical one” in my family and friend group…
So when people sit me down in front of their bloated, ad-powered, AI “enhanced,” stock laptops, and ask me to, essentially spend an hour learning about an obscure Windows problem space, then debugging and implementing the fix, I don’t blame them for not realising the pain they cause me.
About 10 years ago, I told everyone I helped that I either installed Linux or they were on their own. And I was never going to physically hold an iPhone unless it was to free them up to go find a hammer.
there are benefits to being a technically advanced computer user:
- you can learn how to use linux.
- once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
once you know how to use linux, you can stop fixing everyone elses problems for them.
I know you meant being able to claim “I don’t use Windows” but just installing Linux has massively lowered the tech support requests I get from my parents.
yeah, installing and configuring linux for other people seems to be getting more and more popular these days. My dad now runs linux on an older thinkpad, he likes it, doesn’t ask for login or any weird shenanigans, just does spreadsheets pretty much exclusively. Works great.
It’s a shame how annoying most modern operating systems are these days.
What’s a good parent distro in your opinion? I’ve been eyeing Mint since that’s how I started
personally i’m a fan of the non-based distros, or root distros, arch and debian, both are pretty good, debian has really impressed me with it’s reliability and stability so far. Though it’s a bit old in terms of software so that’s unfortunate. Arch is nice because it’s bleeding edge, so there are always thing ready for you to be messing with, and it’s minimal enough that it mostly gets out of your way, and lets you do what you want, which is nice.
I’ve heard that people really like nixos, if you have the mental capacity to deal with it’s learning curve that is. Otherwise i know some people like fedora, though it’s a bit too spicy for me personally, comes out of the box with basically everything pre configured, i’m just not a huge fan of that.
Mint is really nice if you just need a “works” distro. Ubuntu is still pretty good? Though snaps and what not are a bit annoying. Outside of that i’m not super familiar with anything else.
Yeah I like the idea of an “starter” distros for parents, but then rolling packages would probably be easier for when I need to do tech support
Try explaining this to your family.
they wouldn’t listen to me anyway lol.
sadly, I have a knack of helping people so as much as i know linux (using windows 11 right now because better battery life on laptops last time i checked) I will help someone with windows/mac.
have you tried not interacting with people? Seems to work well for me.
I had to teach my little brother how to download a exe yesterday. Like just the simple every software or game type of installation:
click download on website -> click windows version on GitHub list -> extract folder -> find exe
Quite honestly im impressed he’s been using a computer for like 4 years without ever encountering a .zip fileAnd don’t get me started with my highschool teachers. One of them got SUPER excited because I showed her how to enable looping on a YouTube video because she kept clicking replay every 3 minutes when the song ended (she plays Spanish music before class starts)
TBF if you’re young, so much software just comes through software managers or super easy installers. Steam + Windows store is probably enough for most people. Maybe? Idk, I have no idea what’s on the Windows store except Minecraft.
When they dont use keyboard shortcuts.
now imagine being a heavy duty vim user and your coworker ssh’s into a machine, opens up vim, and eventually closes it by writing all their changes and then backgrounding the process, and then rebooting the machine
Closing vim is like landing a plane: anytime you can walk away unscathed it’s a success.
That depends on the person, and what their job is. The company IT guy should be able to do things faster than I can (or else I wouldn’t have called IT in the first place) and shortcuts are part of that. If it’s my retired construction worker of a father, there’s no way he was ever going to know the hundreds of windows keyboard shortcuts that the OS does a terrible job of letting anyone know that they actually exist.
Select text -> Edit menu -> Copy, click elsewhere -> Edit menu -> Paste 🤮
People like this have lost ctrl of their lives.
Not knowing Ctrl+shift+esc opens the task manager is one thing, but copy and paste should be taught in school.
Wut. 😮
Thank you for this.
My lazy ass sometimes doesn’t feel like moving the left hand so I just use the mouse.
Valid
The best shortcut like that is win+X it opens a quick menu with stuff like Powershell, task manager, device manager, and a bunch of other admin stuff.
You can also right click the window icon to open the menu.
I right click the start menu more than I open it normally.
My fingers have that plus the correct directional keys memorized to put my computer to sleep.
I still haven’t grown out of my ctrl + alt + del habit
Step 1: get a 60% keyboard
Step 2: don’t learn where the “delete” key is
Step 3: change the keycaps so you can’t even look at the keyboard to see where it is
Step 4: ???
Step 5: profit!
Ctrl+shift+esc was so useful back when I learned it. I still see people press ctrl+alt+del and click to open task manager. Or alternatively (but not as bad imo) right clicking on the start button and selecting to open task manager
I still sometimes hit ctrl/alt/del to open the task manager if I’m not thinking.
Too many years of doing that when I was younger and it only brought up the task manager.
You don’t even have to do it on the start button, any empty spot in the taskbar works
Win+X opens the same menu.
It doesn’t physically interrupt the system like ctrl alt delete does.
right clicking on the start button and selecting to open task manager
TIL
I used to know this shortcut, but it was one of the many that I forgot after moving to linux.
Thanks for the refresher! I’ll probably get use of this on my work laptop
I was going to say why is that even there, but it reminded me of a very useful macOS tip:
You can access all the menu bar items that don’t have hot keys without leaving the keyboard.
Command+shift+question mark opens the help menu search bar and you can type in ANY menu bar item by name and press enter to do it. It will also show any keyboard shortcuts.
Ctrl+F2 selects the menu bar so you can use arrow keys, but that’s slower.
As an avid vim/terminal user, macOS accessibility shortcuts are friggen amazing.
Ooooh thanks! I’ll use that a lot.
Oh that sounds really nice. I’m personally extremely annoyed that their shortcuts differ wildly from Windows and Linux shortcuts but at least this thing is some consolation.
After getting used to Mac (over 15 years now) I’ve grown to like the shortcuts, but it feels totally foreign when I use a Windows system. The reverse is also true.
Now I can’t stop picturing a nightmare scenario of having to watch someone do their copy/paste purely from the keyboard, but using the menus via that trick, rather than using the hotkeys. Thanks for that.
I wouldn’t have to paste via menu if “paste without formatting” didn’t require the fingers of a pianist.
Paste Without Formatting exists on the right-click context menu almost everywhere. I don’t consider context menu usage to be annoying (to observe someone using) at all, personally.
But why use mouse when keyboard works?
Personally I find CTRL+SHIFT+V rather uncomfortable to press, not to mention it requires moving your whole hand down the keyboard, whereas CTRL+V doesn’t. A quick rightclick -> Paste Without Formatting is quick enough to do.
Isn’t there a ctr+shift+v equivalent?
Yes, mostly it’s command instead of Ctrl
But some permutations of paste without formatting/paste values only/paste format only end up using 4 keys which is always awkward to do.
There’s an application we use at work that I used to be an admin for at a previous job so I know all of the keyboard shortcuts, watching people use a mouse for navigation makes my skin crawl but I’ve been teaching some of my coworkers so it’s getting better.
CTRL>B the change you want to see in the world
Try sitting as a passenger while your friend takes your car for a spin.
Ugh it’s the worst. Every time I remotely connect with Social Security support, there’s always such a delay while they click around. Thankfully they help me understand how many viruses I have by running some weird command called Net Stat or something idk. I see the screen flash and it’s scary. They’re even so helpful that they even help me login to my bank and transfer funds to get rid of the net viruses! I only wish they would scroll the mouse instead of clicking on the arrow bars. They’re helpful, but man do I hate when they yell and curse at me when I don’t have money and can’t pay them until next week. But I guess it’s worth the small computer struggles, but boy does it bother me when they don’t scroll the mouse wheel!
I’ve dealt with that and found a solution. What’s your SSN?
Oh fantastic! I didn’t expect to find you guys on the mouse Reddit version, whatever it is I’m using here to share my success story!
I’m scared someone will attack me, so I can tweet it instead with that cool encryption thing that Elon talked about. I’ll try it now.
@tweet send Okay we’re safe here, no one can see it except you and me. Thanks for the help, I don’t know if the hackers can see my stuff. But if I cover my webcam while I type this I think we’re good. My social security number is 155-21-3249. I think I already sent the last payment, so if I need to get you a new Google robot gift card or whatever it’s called, I can try to go to target. I get paid Friday, is that okay?
I had to watch someone use emacs today.
Lucky!
did they have a foot pedal?
I told them to run
git rebase -i, and they never configured their$EDITORor their git editor, so it opened in vim and I had to intervene.heh nice one.
You never quit Emacs. You just… die…
Go on a older person’s phone. Whenever I have to do anything on my mom’s phone, it gives me a headache. Everything is too bright and big and unorganized and has so man notifications! And her phone is much newer than mine and it’s still hard for me.
My mom refuses to turn off notifications from apps so there are constantly 30-40 notifications. Making it completely unusable.
I just don’t get it, you can control how your phone works but people act like they can’t do a thing
“no don’t change anything, you’ll break it! i like it how it is”
My mom just got a smart phone for the first time this year, but thankfully she has no interest in using it as anything but a phone
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Inputs login, grabs the mouse, clicks on the password field, inputs password, grabs the mouse again and clicks OK
With the way sites work these days there’s always some pop-up asking you to rate your experience or some crap. Especially Microsoft admin sites.
I start typing and then that pops up and then I click it away and the freaking focus is taking off of the text field… Now I got to click back in there and type again
If anyone here works at Microsoft please please stop with the fucking pop-ups inside of your own administrator sites. I do not want to rate your site, I do not want to learn about all the little changes you made for no good reason. I want to get my fucking work done
YAYYYY
I’M GONNA USE YOUR COMPUTER TO STEAL YOUR IDENTITY
But on the flip side. If you tell somebody something they don’t know like:
‘You can open links in new tabs by klicking on them with the mouse wheel.’
Or
‘You can reopen closed tabs by pressing Ctrl+Shift+T’
They look at you like you’ve just shown them the meaning of life. Bonus points if you see them using it later.
You can what?!
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Man, 2 weeks into an IT job, we’re doing a presentation and our VP of IT accidentally closed a tab. Felt like a wizard being the only person in the room, somehow, who knew that hotkey.
Having spent many years in tech support and also being my family tech support, this post pains me.greatly.
I get to see other people ways of using the computer daily.
Watching somebody scroll to the bottom of a very long list by clicking the arrow button under the scrollbar is my idea of hell.
do those arrows still exist?
Yeah, sometimes. I think Win11 fucks with scroll bars so they might be a line there.
