Things and such
Aug. 18th, 2008 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoJust got back from a post-sunset trip out to the barns because Gary was sure he was hearing a horse whinnying angrily or in fear. He thought it was Tess, but it wasn't. Fortunately, she was asleep and we woke her up, but she still didn't whinny at all. She just made little snorty and grunty noises which is what she always does to greet me when it's dark in the barn. I made up to her and apologized for the disturbance, and Gary shut the back sliding door. I guess he thinks a fox might sneak in that way and eat her. XD The whinnying was from somewhere more distant, perhaps two or three farms away.
Spent way too much time today with a library user who was upset that his laptop wasn't working with our network. After he badgered the staff at the front desk badly enough, they called me out. As always with these situations, he was convinced that our network setup was faulty because his machine wasn't working with it. I explained to him that he had to accept address and router assignment via DHCP, but of course he had no idea what that meant or how to do it. I won't touch the configuration on anyone's laptop, or advise them on what to do because I learned long ago that it's a sure way to be blamed for every problem they have for the next year or more. I pointed out to him the fact that two other users were working away without any difficulty, but that didn't convince him. Finally he called his own office networking person for help. (Evidently he didn't even own the laptop, it was borrowed from work.) The network support guy started in with how our network was defective or the cable he borrowed from us was defective. I swapped the cable, but it made no difference. I pointed out again that he was probably trying to use a hard coded address that wasn't compatible with our public subnet. Finally the support guy walked him through checking the network configuration (not easy, because the guy hadn't the least idea what he was doing and kept getting lost in the wrong place in the menus.) I was right, of course. He was hard coded to use a particular IP address and router, and that was never going to work on our network. They changed that to accept automatic assignment and the problem went away. All this took about 45 minutes of my time, because he wouldn't let me leave until it was resolved.
Mind now, this point and click guy who had never even seen a command prompt before was getting free internet access from us. He doesn't have a library card, lives outside of town so he pays no taxes to support us, didn't even own the computer he was using, and was offered free use of an ethernet patch cable for as long as he needed it. Yet he thought he was being ill treated because we didn't "fix" things for him immediately...
I contend that this is rather like demanding that the waitress at a restaurant diagnose your stomach problems and provide free treatment. I'm sure this macho and very much type A personality guy would sneer at a woman who drives a car around but doesn't know how to check the oil or where to put in the gasoline; yet he is doing the exact same thing with that laptop. He doesn't know the first thing about how to set it up or how it's configured. When he gets back to his office and plugs it in or (more likely) slides it into his desktop docking station, he's going to be upset all over again because it doesn't work there any more (since he has erased his network access and routing information in order to get it to work on our network.)
Of course, Windows does provide the ability to have more than one configuration depending on your current locale, but certainly he doesn't understand that and apparently neither does his network support guy. Yeesh.
Spinning silk on the charkha. This isn't something I would have considered until very recently, but I need to spin a few hundred yards of fine silk thread to ply with that Mongolian cashmere. The charkha being convenient, I tried it. Holy cats! It really works well. Fine as sewing thread, and probably stronger. Takes a little adjusting to get it drafting right, and then it just goes.
Spent way too much time today with a library user who was upset that his laptop wasn't working with our network. After he badgered the staff at the front desk badly enough, they called me out. As always with these situations, he was convinced that our network setup was faulty because his machine wasn't working with it. I explained to him that he had to accept address and router assignment via DHCP, but of course he had no idea what that meant or how to do it. I won't touch the configuration on anyone's laptop, or advise them on what to do because I learned long ago that it's a sure way to be blamed for every problem they have for the next year or more. I pointed out to him the fact that two other users were working away without any difficulty, but that didn't convince him. Finally he called his own office networking person for help. (Evidently he didn't even own the laptop, it was borrowed from work.) The network support guy started in with how our network was defective or the cable he borrowed from us was defective. I swapped the cable, but it made no difference. I pointed out again that he was probably trying to use a hard coded address that wasn't compatible with our public subnet. Finally the support guy walked him through checking the network configuration (not easy, because the guy hadn't the least idea what he was doing and kept getting lost in the wrong place in the menus.) I was right, of course. He was hard coded to use a particular IP address and router, and that was never going to work on our network. They changed that to accept automatic assignment and the problem went away. All this took about 45 minutes of my time, because he wouldn't let me leave until it was resolved.
Mind now, this point and click guy who had never even seen a command prompt before was getting free internet access from us. He doesn't have a library card, lives outside of town so he pays no taxes to support us, didn't even own the computer he was using, and was offered free use of an ethernet patch cable for as long as he needed it. Yet he thought he was being ill treated because we didn't "fix" things for him immediately...
I contend that this is rather like demanding that the waitress at a restaurant diagnose your stomach problems and provide free treatment. I'm sure this macho and very much type A personality guy would sneer at a woman who drives a car around but doesn't know how to check the oil or where to put in the gasoline; yet he is doing the exact same thing with that laptop. He doesn't know the first thing about how to set it up or how it's configured. When he gets back to his office and plugs it in or (more likely) slides it into his desktop docking station, he's going to be upset all over again because it doesn't work there any more (since he has erased his network access and routing information in order to get it to work on our network.)
Of course, Windows does provide the ability to have more than one configuration depending on your current locale, but certainly he doesn't understand that and apparently neither does his network support guy. Yeesh.
Spinning silk on the charkha. This isn't something I would have considered until very recently, but I need to spin a few hundred yards of fine silk thread to ply with that Mongolian cashmere. The charkha being convenient, I tried it. Holy cats! It really works well. Fine as sewing thread, and probably stronger. Takes a little adjusting to get it drafting right, and then it just goes.
