"I need one so I can connect my laptop and email this to myself so I can print it down here..."

No! Bring your own damn cable! Or learn the concept of removable storage!

Get people in here every day wanting network cables for that one reason, bleh.

Where do you work? I feel sorry for you, though. So many people using such technology without a basic grasp of common sense with it.

Why should someone buy their own cables? That would mena taking responsibility yourself and we all know that jsut not cool these days

Computer lab in the basement of a freshman dorm, hehe. It's not all that bad really. 90% of the job is sitting here staring across the room to make sure nothing's going on. The other 10% is fixing anything that happens to go wrong.

It just strkes me as funny that people randomly assume we have spare patch cables sitting around. Well, actually we have 1... And it's hooked to my laptop at the moment, haha. I actually offer to let people use it when they ask for one though, but for some reason they seem to not want to use it, lol.

Of course we also get people who expect us to have card readers for the school's debit account system... Yeah, we're a computer lab... We sell floppies for a dollar and charge small fees for excessive printing... We should have a debit reader...

Ah. As far as I've been able to tell, the Freshman class here don't even use laptops yet, so it's different. Of course, we can easily tell them apart from the others, as they're all wearing their cards arroun their necks...


What's even funnier is how many people in college actually rely on floppies... I haven't seriously used them for a few years now, though I've kept a few of them for backups (though they're far less reliable than the CD-R discs they're backing up). In a while, I'll e able to afford a large flash drive (at least 512MB), and then I can ditch everything else.

Well, we don't sell many of them. See a lot of people wander in with floppies though.

All of the PCs in here have front mounted USB ports too, so flash sticks aren't a pain or anything.

I guess the Macs here have them on their keyboards, but no one uses them anyway, heh.

Floppies... Oh yeah, I remember them!

Seriously, I've only used Zip discs in Engineering since coming to uni (all the engi machines have internal drives), and if I'm using an ITS machine and/or my own laptop/desktop it's RAM stick all the way.

Oh, and for the record I'm starting my fourth year in a few weeks.

In my comp sci department computer labs there are cables in every "laptop" network port (all the other ports are taken up by the permanent workstations) the cables are protected by theft from a thick security cable attached to them and the wall. An easy and cheap solution to stop anyone ever asking you for a network cable.

It's cheaper to say "Bring your own damn cable!"

Yes, but it doesn't stop people asking. I'd prefer spending about £50 on a decent setup than have to deal with people moaning at me everyday.

You could wear ear plugs and print out a sign. Then when someone walks up to you, point to the sign.

You don't hear them, and you don't talk to them.

of course meet me in Germany..... :p

Meh, I think they should be able enough to use their own since the school gives everyone a cat. 5e patch cable their freshman year, and then anyone who buys a laptop through the school, which a lot of people do, gets another cat. 5e patch cable!

When I read the above, I thought it said that the school gave everyone a cat. Then I realised it was a full stop, it was an abbreviation.

heheh

Its called get a USB jump drive like me.

just give me 5 seconds, a distraction, and a good pair of bolt cutters for the security wire, and i'll have a new cable. :p

Everytime I'm monitoring the lab, people want to know if there are any games on the image or how to print to the printer. Sadly, it is the advanced lab, you'd think people could find these things out for themselves.

[edit]By the way, my custom title kicks ***. Thanks to whoever thought that one up.[/edit]

Try running a College television station and the 25+ computers with various states of disarray.

Then I can sympathize with the....

"I can't get my floppy in!" it's backwards

"The computer won't work" it's not turned on

"How can I transfer this file to the server so that I can play it on the air?"
File>Export>Movie>DV AVI> set the folder to save to W:\ > Wait until it's done> tell the program director or me (operations manager) > show on the air

DUH!

Yes, but we have eMacs... Try turning on an eMac... Stupid eMacs...

My reputation for being a computer know-it-all is growing day by day at college... I get ppl who know me coming to ask me for help.

Once the dorm's residence director asked me to set up his wireless router. I had never set one up before, but I did it without much trouble, and I figured out how to get the WEP encryption working on the first try. :p

I'm gonna try to get a job at the college ITS (Information Technology Services) next year.

Well, a simple wireless setup really isn't that complex at all.

Stuff's just overall too easy these days if you ask me.

I miss the days of VESA local bus and IRQ conflicts...

WEP is flawed majorly. Don't use it.

Hey Darth, can I borrow your patch cable? I'll give it back next year, I swear on the holy JO cd case.

Meh, you can have it. I personally have way more than I use or need. =P

I'll be waiting in ze lobby.

Better yet, tell them to make their own! It's easy!

It's amazing how simple to use computer technology has gotten, yet roughly the same portion of society still asks for help with the most obvious things, or asks stupid questions. I think it stems from the most basic and primal instinct of humans: The Urge to Complain.

The_Mega_ZZTer: same here lol, my list of people wanting to fix their computer are growing everyday, now over 40-50 people has had their computer nuked and reformated w/ my standard carepack install :p

but omg one thing that aggrevants the hell out of me, is they often wait untill their computer is on the brink of death becore coming to get it fixed then its so far gone that only option really is to nuke and reformat. but first i got to save their **** to cdrom and often that takes 5 hour to do, i click a mouse, wait 5 min, click again, wait 5 min for a file box to open, select and wait 5 more min for system to select all, and so forth. its a pain in the ***.

one thing i noticed, is everyone has over 60+ processes running under windows, and have up to 30+ system tray processes.

on startup and on an normal day i average 16-20 processes w/ 4 items in my system tray. and i'm fine with that!