I should be in tech support

[angelophile]

So, came into work today to do a little catching up before Christmas (not that I've managed to get anything done yet).

As I've probably mentioned, our internet connection over the past few months has been a nightmare. We've been experiencing constant loss of connection, getting so bad that finally, on Monday, we were getting disconnected every two minutes. So we decided enough is enough and we'd swap ISPs. Yesterday, the day of my stinking hangover, the new ISP came into effect and we couldn't get online.

I left my assistant sorting it all out and he was on the phone to BT for hours, going back and forth, getting faults reported on the line etc etc. Supposedly it would definitely be sorted by 6pm last night. So, I came in today and of course, no internet connection.

So, I did the first thing I do whenever there's a technical problem.

Check everything's plugged in.

Guess what?

The DSL jack wasn't pushed into the socket properly.

Me=technical genius.

EDIT: Annoyingly, though, I got the router working but then had to reset the network setings on every computer and had a bit of trouble with Appletalk conflicting with DHCP so the net and printer wouldn't work at the same time. Got there in the end but it required some tinkering and I didn't get any actual work done because I was fooling around with that.

Comments

[tadiera.livejournal.com]

BT sucks, then.
FIRST THING we do is 'Unplug and plug the cables back in, to make sure they're in the socket properly.'
Bah.

But- you're adorable. :D

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

I suspect the first thing tech support asked was "is it all plugged in."

And I'm pretty sure the answer would have been "yes" because my assistant would assume that if the DSL line connection was lit and flashing then it MUST be plugged in okay. And he's got the cockiness of youth that he wouldn't actually check because he's sure he does things right first time, every time.

I'd put money on that being the case, since the cable was plugged in enough that there was a light but just needed the extra push to make it click into place properly. Like you say, it's the first thing anyone would ask but that's no guarantee that people actually check. They just ASSUME they've done it right.

tech support

[happy-hacker.livejournal.com]

When I did technical support professionally, checking to make sure stuff was plugged in was one of the first things we always did. The best book on tech support that I ever read was John Muir's "How to keep your Volkswagen alive, a manual of step by step instructions for the complete idiot", wherein the first step of troubleshooting your car under "Volkswagen stops, won't start." was "is there gas in the tank? Check."

Congrats on being the man of the moment. :)

-Jim