A couple interesting service calls this week. A couple cases of, unfortunately, PEBKAC.
1) Home call, sloughed onto me by another tech. Old lady in a condo in a cul-de-sac on the edge of town. I'm guessing in her '80s somewhere. Comfortably well off, edging into dementia. IMHO&YMMV, I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TeeVee. Kept asking the same questions over and over. Had no clue (well, she had a notion, but it was wrong, both of them) what the login password for her ordinary and perfectly functioning 10 year old computer was. Really, the only useful thing I was able to do for her was clear that password, so she goes straight to a desktop. "Do you do banking with this?" "No." "Good."
2) a half hour before closing, guy comes in. We'd replaced his hard disk a while ago. He'd let "the IRS" into his computer, for an "identity theft" problem. And now his Book of Faces is complaining about unusual activity, and wanting him to walk through a "is it really you?" series of questions. Which is is utterly unable to do. I log him out, make him log back in. Book Face tells us last activity was from Atlanta GA, 4 states away, makes him reset his password. He changes it to a common dictionary word. "No, don't do that, must be more complicated." He adds "123" to the dictionary word. Yeah, that'll work. Retyping it into the confirmation box is a challenge. Did I mention the browser hijack, and the spammy popup notifications? He gets into the book of faces, You can see there's a list of 50 friend request he's totally ignored. He goes straight to what he does on FB, an online slots site. And then
I have to follow the instructions that are right in front of us, to enable Flash player. OK, now it all works.
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