@ Aaron:

LOL! That is actually quite priceless.

@ Craig A. Betts:

I shall remember that for the future. To bad it doesn’t work with pre-existing relationships. Most of the people who ask me for free support already know I can “fix things”.

@ Luke Maciak:It works as long as you stick to your guns. I am quite persistent in stating that I am a UNIX admin. Yeah, I work on Windows a lot at work but I refuse to let that become the norm on my time.

I work in the IT department of a certain university, and before a few months ago, there were no restrictions on passwords for the domain, now it’s draconian, has to be alphanumeric with special keys, cannot form a real word, yada yada yada. Before this, a professor dropped off their laptop with me because it was infected with viruses. Awesome. As he walked out of my cubicle I asked him what his password was. “My password? What do you need that for?” he asked. I said, “To log into your computer and work on it.” Now sure, I could have cracked the password or used my own domain, but I didn’t give a damn. So the professor leans over, and very quietly whispers “It’s poop.” He wasn’t kidding.

@ Travis McCrea:

That happened to me before too. Someone sends me a link and I’m like – hey, I know this person! :)

Also, sticky notes for passwords are just so cliche. I mean it’s 2010 – ie. the future. People should stick RSA tokens to their monitors now since in the future two factor authentication finally catches on… Oh wait… Never mind.

@ MrJones:

Yeah, I tried that. It ends up with them leaving panicked messages in my voice mail at 3am on Sunday night. It goes like this.

“Ummmm… Luke…. I know it’s late but I forgot the password. I had it on that sticky note but I can’t find it. Do you think you could reset it remotely or something? Like today? I have a big report I have to finish before 8am on Monday. So… I mean, I’m not going to sleep so maybe you can stop by if you get this… I really, really need to get this thing out on time. So call me back. Like today. Hold on, I’ll try your house phone…”

Oh, and the Oatmeal comics are awesome. There is one for every occasion.

@ Victoria:

I wonder if he figured out that someone guessed his password or simply forgot it and created a new one. I’d bet he forgot it. :)

@ Craig A. Betts:

Does that really work for you? Because most people I know think that “Software Engineer” stands for “Master of all devices electronic and mechanical”. People asked me to help them set up their audio systems, help them plug in their kids xbox to the TV (cause, you know – it can’t possibly be as easy to hook it up as it is to hook up a DVD, help people fix an electrical outlet, replace a battery in their phone, program their DVR and million other things. Usually people don’t believe me when I say that I know no more than they do about half of these things.

The only difference is that I seem to have some common sense, and I can sometimes follow the pictures in the manual (reading it is usually out of question since half the time it is google translated from Chinese into Korean before someone runs it through babblefish to produce the English text).

The biggest thing to keep from having to be tech support for all your acquaintances is to deny knowing anything about Windows. This even works for networks. People that use Macs have few problems and people that run Linux are smart enough to fix it themselves. The best thing I ever did was buy my parents a Mac Mini. I had questions the first few weeks, right up to the point when I introduced them the the Apple Store Genius bar.

When it comes to password resetting, I am quite the BOFH. I let them squirm for at least a day. When their manager comes to my desk, I prompty reset it while showing the fact that it was the user’s fault for being a dumb enough to forget it to begin with. This is usually accomplished by saying something like, “Man, he can’t remember his password here but has no problem logging into his Facebook account every day at work”.

Once upon a time I spent 7 horrible months of my life working at the IT department of a bank. I was the youngest member, two other guys were my bosses and they had that pattern for employee passwords that you type in a meaningful word in Russian only using English keyboard layout. We had a huge poster saying something like ‘If your password doesn’t match check your keyboard layout and Capslock BEFORE calling for IT help’ but it didn’t work.

But the story is not about those stupid users who couldn’t keep their Capslock at bay. The story is about one of my bosses, an actual IT guy with CS Master’s, Java programmer and ‘The head of bank informational security’. One day he came to work and realised his ICQ didn’t work, the password was wrong. He tried retrieving the password to email, didn’t work, he sadly created a new account and scanned his computer for trojans with negative results. He spent 3 days finding some of his ICQ contacts building the list back. 3 days later… guess what… his ICQ stopped working again. Ouch! He was furious – he checked for keyboard spies, malware, viruses – nothing. He got another account and it stayed intact. It all was a mistery.

After getting the hell out of that bank I kept contact with some of teller girls. One of them (she got fired before I left) told me a story. She was very angry with that boss of mine – he was very rude to her, talked behind her back calling her names and never did things she asked – like setting up new templates in old DOS-like banking system we had. So, after she got fired she told about all that her husband who was a programmer also. And about the password pattern (see above). He went to ICQ site and tried the first password he came up with. It matched. He killed the contact list, changed the email and the password and left. Each consequent day he and his wife checked ICQ for the same user they hacked. They found the new account 3 days after. And they tried to log in using the same data. It let them in. They destroyed the account info again and kept waiting for that user to pop up again. When he did, they tried the old password. FINALLY, it didn’t work. They stopped at that. What is the funniest part? The password was that IT boss’ first name and last name in Russian using the English layout.

I use qwertz and asdasd for accounts that are needless (newspapers etc) and some better stuff for mail and bank account. (like 1ha7eN3rd58500 ;))

Heres a little tip for you: NEVER ask them any questions, just take the router manual or a piece of paper and write down the password and them tell them, “this is your new password. There is no way you can change it, so keep this one! If you lose it all your data will be lost”

Ps: This ones exactly like your post!!!
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/computers

lol luke! One of my friends linked to this article on IRC before I even got to see it in my feed reader. I was like “HEY I KNOW THAT GUY! HES A FRIEND OF MINE!… HE HELPS FIX MY TECH PROBLEMS ;) ;) ;) ”

This is funny as heck. Funny because its true. I always enjoyed going to school and the teachers had their passwords on sticky notes on the monitor.

Some people just don’t know what is a password and why it is needed….