For anyone not in the know, while I’m not making money off of any of my music, at least not yet, I’m currently earning my keep by taking calls for a local (Maritime) ISP. I troubleshoot high-speed connection problems. Well, tonight, I solved a tricky one, and felt damn good about it, and thought I would share.
It’s around 11pm, and I’m off in an hour. I get a call, and it’s a lady, she seems rather forward, abrasive. Great, I lament, I love these ones.
She starts off by saying that this is her 3rd laptop in a month. Ok, I think, we don’t look after computer-related issues. I start to mention this, and she cuts me off. “The technicians at the repair shop say it’s a problem with your modem.”
Ok… weird, but anyway. I ask what the problem is. She starts telling me a tale the way only the technologically-hindered could tell it.
Her ‘typer’ isn’t working. Yes, her typer. And like I said, the guys from the repair shop are certain it’s her modem, as her laptop works just fine when she’s in the shop, when she’s at the library, when she’s anywhere but at home, connected to our modem. When she types anything in, some of the letters get erased, sometimes she’s TYPING ALL IN CAPS, and other times the text cursor jumps all over the place. Above her email, below her email, in the middle of her reply.
I tell her, as politely as I can, that in my near-20 years of using computers, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the modem itself (which doesn’t come with a software cd anymore) that we provide simply cannot cause her keyboard to act up. I’m sure there’s some weird situation where the electric-magnetic field from the modem interrupts the one from the keyboard, and due to shoddy craftsmanship on someone’s part, everything goes screwey. You know, if that’s the case, it’s still most likely on her end, as our modems, while not pillars of Internet Excellence, aren’t made to crumble like that, or to cause other devices to do so.
She then decides that it’s probably a hacker. Ugh.
So, the first step I suggest is to rule out the modem/hackers. I tell her to turn it off and unplug it from the computer. She does, and tries to type something into her email client, and sure enough, the messed-up behaviour continues.
I get her to actually state, not in a jerkish way, that the modem is, in fact, not on at the moment. Nor is it connected to anything aside from the phone jack and the power outlet. Therefore, since she’s not running wireless at all, there is now no possible way that the problem is coming from anyone or anywhere online. No modem problems. No hackers.
The problem is inside the house.
I then ask her what’s plugged into her laptop. She tells me the power. And then she mentions something about a wireless mouse. But it’s still plugged in. And it doesn’t run on batteries.
What?
I try my hardest to get out a better explanation from her. She ends up resorting to calling it a ‘clicker-thing’. She also mentions that she has a printer. Both of these are plugged in via USB. Good ol’ USB. I tell her to unplug everything that’s plugged in, save for the power outlet. She does so. I’m still kind of astounded as to what the hell is going on here. I make sure that she’s not resting her hands on the laptop in a way that might be holding down some keys. Nope, she says, she’s “typing like an old person.” Hah, oh ma’am. You so crazy.
She types. It all works. It all works perfectly. Each letter she types stays where it is, and it doesn’t screw up. I get her to turn her modem back on, and I log into her computer (with her consent and assistance… it’s a thing we can do. Yay remote desktopping!).
So, I’m on her screen, typing gibberish, but it’s coming out exactly as I’m typing it in. I ask her to try plugging in the printer.
Which one is the printer, she asks. How the hell should I know? It’s her stuff. I ask her if she could follow the cable from the connector to the printer. Sure enough, she finds it. Plugs it in. No problem.
Now, I’m still confused as to what the hell she has for a mouse set up. She says she hates using pads.
I did a mental double-take. Did she just say what I think she said?
…
OH! TRACK-pads! Gotcha. Yeah, I totally understand. So you have a usb mouse? No, she doesn’t. The mouse has no wires. She used to have a keyboard like this, but she doesn’t anymore. She only uses her laptop keyboard.
Ok, so what was it that you had plugged in beforehand? You had 2 things plugged in, and one of them was the printer… so the other one….?
“It’s just a USB cable, and then it connects to a little stick with 3 lights on it… one light has a “1″ next to it. The next has an “A”, and the third has a “S”.
I know what the problem is now, and I tell her this. She starts to say something, and, risking my call quality score that’s surely been shot to hell already by going this far into a problem that’s not ours, I cut her off, asking her to let me get this out, because it’s very important and it’s going to fix this 3-month-long issue. Yes, it’s been 3 months since she’s been able to type an email from her home. Three laptops in the past month, and two months before that without any real help at all. A tech has been to her house, and he wasn’t able to figure it out, but that was probably due to the fact that she always unplugged everything when he came over.
I ask her if her old keyboard came with the mouse she’s using right now. She says yes, they all came together with this USB thingy. I ask her where her keyboard is right now. She says “Oh, just over there.”
Over where?
“Underneath a bunch of books on my chair. Been there for months.”
I tell her to unplug the USB cable, and then I lay it all out for her. My eyes are rolling so much at this point that I fear they might stick in a weird position.
Her older keyboard is still active, even though she’s only using her mouse. I tell her to take out the batteries to that keyboard if she’s not using it, and for god’s sake, take it out from underneath the books that keep most of those keys pressed down. She’s mostly grasped the problem by now, so I explain with an analogy; Imagine that you’re trying to type an email, but you can’t do it properly because some jerk is sitting there, in front of your computer, holding down almost all of the keys already.
She agrees that that would be rather cumbersome. I tell her that’s pretty much what’s been happening all along.
She was so relieved that the problem was fixed, she said I should have my own tv show, like House. Only for computers. I’m apparently a detective. Just eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Holmes.
———–
And with that, another track. This time, a completed one that I never ended up putting on any sort of “official” (haha) CD.
Blueberry
