Shark Tank: Sometimes helpful, sometimes not so much

The Ultimate Fix: Reformat That Drive!
Secretary's PC won't boot up, and the reason is clear from the error message: a memory fault due to bad RAM. "Since these cheap units were recently purchased from a local vendor, I recommended that she have the vendor pick it up and replace the memory," says a pilot fish on the scene. But a day later, fish notices the problem PC is still sitting idle on the secretary's desk. Have you called the vendor? fish asks. "Oh no," she tells him, "my manager said all we need to do is reformat the hard drive." Sighs fish, "Fortunately, the real problem prevented them from trying to do that."

Too Easy
New call center gets some large plasma screens to display statistics -- but the facilities department installs them on one side of a wall and the PC that controls them on the other. "I just spent 10 minutes on the phone with our facilities manager trying to change the IP address of the machine," grumbles a pilot fish there. "An IT manager was working the keyboard and mouse and the facilities manager was yelling 'left, left, left, down, down, down, more, more, more, OK, too far!' I had them on mute most of the time so I could bring in other people to have a laugh at the insanity. Eventually, I just suggested he grab a flat panel off one of the call center PCs and plug it into the PC to see what he was doing. His response: 'Oooooohhhhh, good idea...'"

Unclear on the Concept
It's the late 1990s, and the government office where this pilot fish works handles requests for lists of registered voters. "It was my job to field orders, help people decide what they wanted and then produce the data file," fish says. "It always amazed me when people would call and request a list of all the unregistered voters in a district. I'd explain that we only had lists of registered voters. They would then ask how they could get the unregistered list. Tongue firmly in cheek, I would suggest that they purchase our list, print it out and then compare that list with a phone book. They would usually thank me for my assistance and not order anything at that time but say that they would get back to me."

User Logic
User's PC has mysterious problems, and nothing seems to help -- until this pilot fish starts to take it apart and discovers a calendar attached to the case with a small but very strong industrial magnet. Do you realize what a magnet this powerful can do to a computer? fish asks. User: "But it's being shielded by the calendar paper!"

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