That'll stop 'em

Auditors advise a bank's CIO to add an "authorization warning" -- a message that that will show up on all PCs before log-on warning unauthorized users to stay away -- and this IT pilot fish is tasked to whip it up. "I quickly threw it together and tested it on our IT group," fish says. "The test was successful, but rather than disabling it, I left it up, assuming only our department would see the message. However, I accidentally linked it to the entire domain. Not so bad, right?" Probably not, except that fish was having fun when he composed the test message: "USE THIS COMPUTER AND YOU WILL DIE." Sighs fish, "Needless to say, when hundreds of users were rebooting for the night, they freaked out and blew up our cell phones fearing the Reaper." 

Old Habits Die Hard

User calls help desk pilot fish with a complaint: There are too many choices. "She has a default printer named 16 and she wanted to print to 66, which was also in her printer list," explains the pilot fish who takes the call. "She has recently moved locations, so another printer was added to hers in case 16 wasn't available, which was 28. So she called us wanting to know if there was some way to change the order the printers appeared because before she could just press her down arrow, and 66 would be the next printer. Now she has to press her down arrow twice to skip over 28 to get to 66. That's too much work?"

Concierge Service

This pilot fish provides general support for users in two departments of a big organization and can handle most of them without trouble. Then there's the exception. "One user has what can only be described as extraordinary computer skills -- for 20 years ago," says fish. "These days, a dedicated intern takes care of most of the problems this user experiences, such as 'My e-mail isn't working' -- intern connects network cable -- or 'It's not printing' -- intern adds paper. On days when the intern isn't around, I get calls like the one this morning: 'I put this CD in, and it's just grinding around making a funny noise.' A quick walk down the hall and a few nanoseconds of troubleshooting later, I turned the CD label-side up. Mission accomplished!"

Aha!

User replaces a noisy old workhorse dot-matrix printer with a quieter ink-jet model -- and soon calls this IT pilot fish with a complaint. "He wanted to know why it wouldn't print the carbon copy," fish says. "I replied, 'It can't spit the ink out that hard' -- then watched the light in his brain come on."

Light up Sharky's brain by sending me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll score a sharp Shark shirt if I use it.

Tired of bungling bosses and clueless co-workers? Swim on over to Shark Bait and share your tales of woe. sharkbait.computerworld.com

Check out Sharky's blog, browse the Sharkives and sign up for Shark Tank home delivery at computerworld.com/sharky.