December 12th, 2003 Leave a comment Go to comments

A guy from the club was sharing his stories of end-user idiocy. It reminded me of an *interesting* moment I had with the CEO of the last company I worked with. He had a video camera that he’d dome a walk-around of our facility with, and he wanted the video dumped to a DVD. My computer in the server room was the only one with a DVD burner. The camera was super-duper new and used a new sort of compression that wasn’t universally supported yet. Idiocy ensues:
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Boss: “I need you to burn the video from this camera onto a DVD”
me: “ok. I just need the cables and disks it came with.”
boss: “I threw those out. were they important?”
me: “……….”
inside Ian’s brain: “nnnnnggggngnnnyaaa……must…..not……..speak…….”

Such delicate stupidity. Innocence wrapped in the numb blanket of “If I don’t need it now I never will.” I argued with them for an hour just to convince them that they did in fact need a special cable. Then I actually had to devise a strategy for how to tell them they need these magical “driver” things us IT folks are always talking about. The scenario I gave him was:

“The reality of the situation is that you’ve given me a car and told me to drive over there somewhere in it. This computer? that’s the body and the wheels. This camera? that’s the engine. Those cables and disks you threw away? those were the transmission.”

I can get the video to show up on Video Studio 7. It’s horrible quality tho. going on the car analogy, I have a 1000 hp Supra, and the only tranny I can find is a Justy CVT. The drivers aren’t available online. I finished the internet and didn’t find them. not on the sony homepage, not anywhere.

The only reason this is a big deal is that we need to ship this out to an investor today, and he waited till the last minute to say to himself “Well crap… I don’t seem to be able to get this video off here. It’s electronic, so Ian can do it. he has magic. good magic.”

Right now I hate end users with a seething passion.
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That’s my story. I’m sure all you IT folks can relate. besides, I hadn’t posted a funnAy in here for a while :p

-IggDawg

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  1. December 13th, 2003 at 07:11 | #1

    sadfully IT magic can’t cure stupidity
    Teacher: i can’t shut down
    Ian: so turn the power off
    Teacher: how do i do that?
    Ian:(blank stare) umm, you press the power button.

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