The basic premise is simple: computer users can be broken down into different types. Which type are you? Read on to find out...
Advantages: Provides interesting communication challanges.
Disadvantages: So do chimps.
Symptoms: Complete inability to use proper nouns.
Real Case: One user walked up to a certain Armenian lab manager and said, "I can't get what I want!" The lab manager leaned back, put his hands on his belt-buckle, and said, "Well, ma'am, you've come to the right place."
Advantages: Will try to find own solution to problems.
Disadvantages: User might have translated document to Navajo without meaning to.
Symptoms: More than six stopped jobs in UNIX, a 2:1 code-to-letter ratio in WordPerfect.
Real Case: One user came in complaining that his WordPerfect document was underlined. When I used reveal codes on it, I found that he'd set and unset underline more than fifty times in his document.
Tactician
Advantages: Will usually fix error.
Disadvantages: 'Fix' is defined VERY loosely here.
Symptoms: A tendancy to delete lines that get errors instead of fixing them.
Real Case: One user complained that their program executed, but didn't do anything. The student consultant looked at it for twenty minutes before realizing that they'd commented out EVERY LINE. The user said, "Well, that was the only way I could get it to compile."
Advantages: Gives insight into primitive mythology.
Disadvantages: Few student consultants are anthropology majors.
Symptoms: Frequent questions about irrelavent objects.
Real Case: One user complained that all information on one of their disks got erased (as Norton Utilities showed nothing but empty sectors, I suspect nothing had ever been on it). Reasoning that the deleted information went *somewhere*, they wouldn't shut up until the student consultant checked four different disks for the missing information.
Advantages: Using the cutting-edge in graphics technology.
Disadvantages: Has little or no idea how to use the cutting-edge in graphics technology.
Symptoms: Fuzzy hands, blindness.
Real Case: When I was off duty, two users sat down in front of me at a DEC station 5000/200s that systems was reconfiguring. I suppressed my laughter while, for twenty minutes, they sat down and did their best to act like they were doing exactly what they wanted to do, even though they couldn't log in.
Advantages: Apparently has remarkable luck when you aren't around.
Disadvantages: People complain when student consultants actually use the phrase "horse-puckey."
Symptoms: Loses all ability to do impossible when you're around. Must be the kryptonite in your pocket.
Real Case: At least three users have claimed that they've loaded IBM WordPerfect from Macintosh disks.
Advantages: Bold new challenges.
Disadvantages: Makes one wish to be a garbage collector.
Symptoms: An inability to keep quiet. Strong tendancies to make machines do things they don't want to do.
Real Case: One user tried to get a student consultant to find out what another person's email address was even though the user didn't know his target's home system, account name, or real name.
Advantages: Willing to show you exactly what they did to get an error.
Disadvantages: For as long as five or six hours.
Symptoms: Selective deafness to the phrase, "Right, right, okay, but what was the ERROR?" and a strong fondness for the phrase, "Well, I'm getting to that."
Real Case: I once had to spend half an hour looking over a user's shoulder while they continuously retrieved a document into itself and denied that they did it (the user was complaining that their document was 87 copies of the same thing).
Advantages: Flatters you with their high standards for your service.
Disadvantages: Impresses you with their obliviousness to other people on this planet.
Symptoms: Inability to communicate except by complaining.
Real Case: One user asked a student consultant to remove the message of the day because he (the user) didn't like it.
* unfair, perhaps, as these tend, overwhelmingly, to be males...
the Usurper
Advantages: Attempts to solve own problem.
Disadvantages: Kills three computers confirming the diagnosis. Kills three more with attempted remedy.
Symptoms: Pretty well convinced that he is UNIX God, especially at two in the morning. Will come to you with the problem, the cause, a diagram of the battlefield, and a list of casualties.
Real Case: One user hung up six Sparcstations with the interesting problem that scf-07 userids, and scf-07 userids only, would not work. This would not be an issue if other userids were also unable to log in. Came back with his diagnosis (first time any student consultant had heard of the problem), the list of computers that were now non-functional, and his check-in card. He left to go to his room and pout.
[Graciously submitted by David Hand.]
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