You sir, are a moron.

[repsac]

I had something of a problem with my internet recently. The connection had gone really really slow on me and for the life of me I couldn't sort it out. So, I called tech support about it and they sent a guy out. He looks everything over a bit and then proclaims it's the splitter I had on. So he installs a new one.

Thing is, my connection doesn't get any better. If anything it gets worse.

Day five of this, and I decide to take matters into my own hands. Looking around through things I find the problem. It's an easy fix, or would have been if moron hadn't used pliers to tighten down the nuts on my connection. Either way, I sorted things out and life was good.

Fast forward to a few days ago. While in paying my bill, I strike up a convo with the lady behind the counter. She asks me how my service was doing, this is the conversation that followed as best I can remember.

CS: So, the service is fixed?
R: Yeah, well no thanks to the tech. It took me forever to figure out what he'd done; and then to fix what he screwed up.
CS: Sir, are you saying our technician is responsible for your problems?
R: Yes. Yes he was.
CS: Sir, I'll have you know, the technician has (this degree) and has studied at (that school.)
R: That may very well be, but I think he might need to go back.
CS: (about this point one tech I know had wandered out) And WHY is that?
R: Because he doesn't know how to install a splitter. He put the cable from the wall on one of the out ports, and the modem on the in port. Meaning, he put it in backward...

About this time the guy I know (i'll call J) cracks up, laughing out loud. The CS lady's face falls, looking like she just got slapped in the face. Tossing my receipt back at me she doesn't even thank me or say anything beyond well fine.


J told me as I left, that "Tech" is her son and she's always talking about how he knows so much more than everyone else because he went to (that school) and has (that degree).

[wagegoth]

Motherly pride can be blinding.

[Bright_Star]

Shows you how much going to a fancy school doesn't amount to shit if you don't have the common sense to go with it.
Some of the stupidest people I know went to college. They couldn't free themselves from a paper bag if they had the directions right in front of them.

[technical.angel]

And then there's the college student who tried to convince me that a space was a form of punctuation.

[Naaman]

One pre-Xmas period we had a recruiting drive for on-site engineers, part of the interview was a written test...

Thanks to a team leader mate who wrote the test us ordinary techs got to look at some of the papers
One afternoons lot in the first batch where picked for interview because they were 'qualified' MCSEs - it was one of the requirements according to the ad in the paper.
6 out of 10 of them in a written exam successfully explained how to change the desktop resolution in Windows....

A couple of days later they scrapped the written test

[MMATM]

Wait... only 60% of Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers know how to change the desktop resolution in Windows? Or do you mean some other acronym for MCSE? Malignantly Craptastic Stupidity Exemplifiers, maybe?

Mostly Clueless Systems Engineers, it would seem.

[lordlundar]

I think they're interchangeable.

[tollbaby]

Hate to tell you, but getting an MCSE qualification isn't all that hard. They've been known to pass some of the dumbest people (trust me... I know a few people who have gotten one that I wouldn't even trust to set my e-mail settings!)

[Lingering Grin]

And then there's the college student who tried to convince me that a space was a form of punctuation.

Wellll... I wouldn't CALL it punctuation, but in coding, it's not THAT far off of an analogy.

If you need a space to actually show up on screen in your code, you have to use an "escape sequence", which does go at the end of the line of code... kinda like punctuation would.

Though, you'd really only use it in very basic programs, like printing text to a screen or something.



Back on topic, how could you not know how to install a splitter? I could teach a 5 year old to do it. Let's see, you want to turn one connection into two... so you take the connection you want to split and plug it into the side that has ONE prong, and then attached the new connections to the side that has TWO prongs.
It's basic math people!

[Lil Bunny]

Both Darling Honey and I are sitting here slack jawed. I mean it seems obvious to us (he's an electronics degree, I'm a finance degree).

Pray tell you DID eventually get a refund on the repair or was it for free to begin with?

[Dark-Star]

And then there's the college student who tried to convince me that a space was a form of punctuation.

Can I pleeeease have the story on that??

[technical.angel]

When I was in college, IT decided they were going to have to change the way that students were allowed to connect their computers to the network. As it was, freshmen would drop off their computers in a building, where ONE staff member and an intern or two would install network cards (this way wayyyyy back in the day (5 whole years ago!) when network cards weren't added by default to computers, install the virus scan, and do some tinkering in the network cards settings. After that, for the next 3 years, we couldn't be sure they still had the AV installed. Thus, we were getting hit with a lot of viruses.

Over the summer before my internship, they changed settings on the network so we didn't have to change settings on the network cards.

Each and every student had to come to the Helpdesk, where they were presented with a CD, a floppy (like I said, this was about 5 years ago), and a packet of directions. They were to install the AV, and run the scan. After that, they were to put the floppy in their computer, and run a bit of code from the run command that would make a file with their name on it, on the floppy that would verify that they'd run the virus scan, and it came back clean. They were supposed to type what we stated, then their last name space first name. NO PUNCTUATION.

As you might guess, the majority of the students could NOT figure this out. We had everything in the world that you can imagine, and we had all kinds of phone calls that it was throwing errors, mainly because they tossed a comma after their last name.

One phone call, of course, "The directions say to put a space, but it also says no punctuation. Which one am I supposed to follow?"

"Uh... both...."

"But a space is a form of punctuation."

"No, it's not a form of punctuation. It's a space, by it's definition, it's well, nothing."

"Whatever." Click.

WTF?

Sure.. they didn't lower admission requirements... sure.....

[Dreamstalker]

Mostly Clueless Systems Engineers, it would seem.

Must Consult Someone Else

[Broomjockey]

I always liked "Minesweeper Consultant and Solitare Expert."

[wolfie]

R: Because he doesn't know how to install a splitter. He put the cable from the wall on one of the out ports, and the modem on the in port. Meaning, he put it in backward...

You didn't say whether or not the splitter is amplified (has a power wire in addition to the "in" and "out" cables), and cable modems may require a different splitter from the "TV only" era ones I'm familiar with, but if it was one of the "old style" spliiters he didn't do anything wrong.

If you pry the back panel off an "old-style" splitter, you'll see n+1 resistors (n being the number of "out" ports), with one resistor leading from the centre conductor of each "out" port, and one leading from the centre conductor of the "in" port , and the other ends of the resistors all being soldered together. All of the resistors have the same value, so as far as the signal is concerned there are no "in" ports or "out" ports, merely ports. For a 2-way splitter on 75 ohm cable, all of the resistors will be 25 ohms (parallel connection of 2 "75+25", series connected with 25 ohms, will wind up as 75 ohms again).

Of course, an amplified spitter has a definite "in" port, and a splitter that can take a cable modem "downstream" may be more sophisticated than an "old-style" splitter, in which case all bets are off.