#tech-support

#tech-support

He took us back to an early moment in his career, when he worked for an outfit that configured Windows 98 PCs as "data collectors" for its clients. As part of his job, Gerald built PCs and provided field support. In this story, he built a new data collector, checked that it worked with the usual round of tests, and left it for someone else to install because he had another job to do elsewhere for a different client.

After spending many hours digging through long PL/SQL functions on the database I could see nothing wrong with the logic. Even more confusingly, the files I generated myself showed the correct times.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Fred" who told us that in the 1990s he worked in tech support for a government agency. "The work was pretty routine, but being in that particular environment was never dull... at least not for me," he told The Register. To prove his point, Fred told us that one day a user he said we should refer to as "Emily" complained that her word processor had lost the ability to print on the resident HP LaserJet.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Mason" who told us that in the mid-1990s he worked as a Unix administrator for a daily newspaper which decided to start a new business as a dialup internet service provider (ISP). The ISP was set up as a separate department with its own help desk and server administrators, but Mason was sometimes called in to help because the Unix boxes he managed handled jobs like dialup authentication and DNS.

In the story he sent to The Register, Andy's job was to visit a site he described as "an internationally important top-secret control bunker, buried deep under the UK countryside." Andy didn't know exactly what happened at this site, but it was clearly Very Important because when the client there required urgent repairs, they arranged a police escort to speed technicians to the site.

Users of Google Pixel phones have been experiencing a troubling bug where alarms randomly do not sound. Despite the volume being up and Do Not Disturb mode off, alarms fail to activate, resulting in missed events and meetings. The issue appears to be inconsistent, with no way to predict when alarms might be silent, causing significant frustration among users, as reported on various platforms including the Google Pixel subreddit.

Mark's former manager, who claimed to be an IT expert, insultingly referred to his colleagues as 'trained monkeys', yet was deemed valuable by executives for his PowerPoint skills.

Apple confirmed that a small percentage of Mac Mini models, specifically those with the M2 chip produced between June and November 2024, are experiencing power issues.

Geoffrey's experience showcases the chaos of a malfunctioning hospital access control network, where essential doors were incorrectly locked or unlocked, leading to potential security risks.

"We sent out someone to swap the monitor," Neville told On Call. A days later, the problem recurred, so Neville's company despatched another new display."

"When Harriet arrived, she found an office that smelled of fresh paint and had enough mess lying about that she concluded staff had only just moved in from another facility and were yet to finish unpacking."

Netflix will discontinue support for first-generation Fire TV devices on June 3, 2025, likely due to their inability to handle modern video and audio formats.

If you are still using one of these thermostats, Google will send you a $130 off promo code to purchase the fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat.

Ryan later chuckled, recalling that he had to explain to the customer that their calculators were working fine, but they weren't receiving adequate power.