No, this is not a badly spelled post about flattering others. A Complament is the outcry of sheer misery and frustration when your customer phones you because his computer has fallen over for the Nth time due to a suspected PICNIC* error which you have as yet failed to track down.
*PICNIC = ‘Problem In Chair, Not In Computer’ – a.k.a. an ID-10T error or PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard)
Anyway, as is usually the case, the user was wearing a sheepish expression and pleading complete innocence to any and all wrongdoing where the machine was concerned, despite the fact that, to paraphrase Monty Python, it had:
‘…kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibule!! THIS WAS AN EX-COMPUTER!!’.
Now it has to be said that, as a rule, I don’t do a lot of hardware support these days. Indeed, I haven’t since shortly after swearing to find a different avenue that fateful day in 1998 (before Win98) when a client stormed into my shop, banged his computer on the counter and proceeded to threaten me because ‘MY’ machine had stopped functioning when his daughter put the Windows directory into the Recycle Bin in an effort to save hard drive space.
There have been other incidents of critical user failure during my working life, but that is the one which has stayed with me through the years, purely because of the customer’s ‘negative’ reaction.
It should also be said at this stage that the machine in question here was neither built nor sold by me, but by a techie who left the Republic of Cyprus not long back. The client approached me on a friend’s recommendation, because English-trained techies are still something of a rarity over here.
In any case, this afternoon I was confronted for the third time in a week by a machine which seemed to suffer from intermittent errors of random nature.
The first error last week seemed simple; a loose wire from a USB port was shorting across the board and causing the machine to shut down intermittently. The second, a few days later, was somewhat more puzzling, since the hard drive seemed to have lost its partition, but was working fine and error-free when repartitioned. A full check of the hardware revealed no errors or conflicts of any kind.
After once again examining the machine, I noticed a strange thing; whereas before its innards had been quite dusty, now they were looking positively polished.
There now follows a rough transcript of my conversation with the user:
“Have you opened this case in the last couple of days?”
“Err… yes, I give it a bit of a clean yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, you know… it were looking a bit dusty inside like.”
“I see. And how did you clean it?”
“Oh I hoovered it.”
“With a little handheld vacuum cleaner?”
“Oh no… with me Dyson.”
“Ah… Could you have dislodged something while you were in there?”
“Oh no, I were careful like.”
“Right, so you’re sure nothing got moved or knocked?”
“Well, I did take off that box thingy.” (Points to heat sink)
“Did you unclip it before you took it off?”
“Oh yes, I were very careful.”
At this stage, being pretty sure that the computer had suffered static-electricity death at the hands of a Dyson, I decided to have a look at the heat sink, just in case it wasn’t seated properly. After pulling it from its mount, the first thing I noticed was the attached (to the heat sink) AMD Athlon 64 CPU. The second thing I noticed was the fact that the CPU locking bracket seemed to be in the ‘Locked’ position.
“Did it come apart like this when you were cleaning it?”
“Yes, it were a right bugger to get back in.”
“…!”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I won’t repeat what I said next, but it involved an explanation about the inherent fragility of computer components and a lot of self-control. In his defence though, he did try to straighten the bent pins on the CPU before calling me. :-O
As it transpired later though, the client simply has a fascination for the inner workings of the PC and this was not the first time he’d rooted around in there. I have recommended a course in basic hardware tuition to safeguard against future occurrences of this type.
The machine is now resting comfortably awaiting the arrival of replacement parts.
Just another Tale of the Complament.
Food for thought?
Nope, just another ID-10T error
