George on Humzoo

Friday, June 19th, 2009
Interesting Tech Support

This morning I got a call from a teacher who was trying to help a student whose computer was outputting different letters to those typed.
It turned out that the computer had got set to the Dvorak layout and she couldn't figure out how to set it back. We have a facility whereby we are able to connect to, view, and control peoples' computers but it involves sending them an e-mail and having them fill in a pre-session form. Of course, this involves typing. So I google the Dvorak layout....

Next I look up her e-mail address and password, and then proceed to encrypt all her details so that I can read off to her all the keys to press in turn to achieve all this. For example, the e-mail domain name became ;rogluygdphev12egpef

It worked and we managed to fix it but most of the work was involved in getting her signed into the e-mail.

We had fun.

Tags: Tech Support

9 Comments

1) hahah wow.... that cant happen very often... how random

cOnnOrSuLLivan Friday, June 19, 2009

2) Interesting problem. I have added it to my memory banks in case it ever comes up for me.

soundchick Friday, June 19, 2009

3) One of our developers, in his continuing effort to be abstruse, set several of our remote servers to default to Dvorak. It was great until anyone other than he needed to do something on them. We abused him with ribbon cables and CD-sleeve papercuts.

EyePulp Friday, June 19, 2009

4) We used to have a similar problem WAY back when we had Gateway computers with any key keyboards (or something like that). You could program the keyboard as you wished by hitting a program button and then hitting a key and then hitting another key to say that is the one you want the first key to be (hit program, then K, then L and that would tell the keyboard you wanted to type L when you hit the K key). I don't know anyone that ever used it for the purpose intended but occasionally someone would hit the program key in error and as they were typing they would change every key typed to the next key typed. To say the least they soon had garbage. It was an easy fix as soon as you programmed the CTRL and ALT keys back to CTRL and ALT (if I remember right) and then you could turn the programming off and all would return to the default keys. As soon as someone called and said "my keyboard is typing all the wrong keys" I knew the problem and walked them through the steps to fix it. I was very happy when the last one went to the garbage and we never had to fix that problem again.

LGrant Friday, June 19, 2009

5) Oooooo I'm going to remember this for next April Fool's Day. Excellent.

Ames Friday, June 19, 2009

6) HAHA...Ames co-workers...beware!

LGrant Friday, June 19, 2009

7) I would too except that I'd be the one dealing with the phone calls and fixing them all back again. I have a few others up my sleeve though.

LimeyGeorge Friday, June 19, 2009

8) Who exactly would use Dvorak? What is it even there for?

Biker Ben Friday, June 26, 2009

9) Nobody and nobody.

LimeyGeorge Friday, June 26, 2009