[paulette449]

A guy i worked with called me over to try to help him figure out why his apple wireless mouse wasn’t working. I replace the batteries, restarted bluetooth, restarted the computer - i’d spent quite a bit of time working thru my mental checklist when the guy just started moving the mouse furiously, as if he expected that would re-animate it, and the cursor. It didn’t. But out of the corner of my eye i noticed the cursor moving on a screen two desks away, a desk whose occupant was out to lunch. I asked the inevitable question and the guy admitted that his mouse had stopped working, figured the batteries had run out (they had) and he was in a hurry so he grabbed somebody else’s mouse instead. To this day i don't know whether i’m more flabbergasted that he omitted to mention this when he first called me over, or that he thought the act of placing a mouse in front of his computer was all it took for the pair to communicate.

[userbinator]

or that he thought the act of placing a mouse in front of his computer was all it took for the pair to communicate.

If his mental model of "wireless" is "IR remote control", that makes perfect sense. Some other RF remote controls work by proximity-only too.

[ProllyInfamous]

Whether or not intentially, the client is almost always lying to you.

I've seen the same wrong machine interface happen at checkout lanes with the handheld scanners (you'd think they'da kept them corded to their base station?).

[bruce511]

>>Whether or not intentially, the client is almost always lying to you

There's a TV drama called House. It's ostensibly a medical drama with the titular Dr House having to diagnose people who provide incomplete information.

It took me 3 episodes to realise its actually a show about IT support (but who would watch that right?)

His catch phrase was "everyone lies" - and the first rule of IT support is that you should never believe a word they say.

These days remote desktoping almost takes the fun out of it. I now last about 2 minutes before demanding TeamViewer (or whatever.) The days of spending 45 mins on the phone listening to someone not tell me about the big prominent error message on their screen are over.

So next time you're watching House remember, this is an IT support allegory.

[rd07]

It is funny that my first rule for handling client's complaint is "It is (almost) always user's fault". And that was backed by several years of experiences as a programmer and IT Support for my institutions.

[MiguelX413]

> It took me 3 episodes to realise its actually a show about IT support (but who would watch that right?)

That's been my dream TV show for years

[aspenmayer]

I have fond memories of watching Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, and Kevin Rose (of later digg fame) on The Screen Savers and Call For Help on the old ZDTV, then TechTV before it merged with G4. So many amazing hosts and shows got their start on that network, and many of them continue on their own shows/podcasts on YouTube and elsewhere, especially on the TWiT.tv video podcast network that Leo started. I met Leo once in SF at an impromptu meetup he announced on Twitter in the early 2010s, and he was the nicest person ever. Truly a larger than life personality and career, and you should check out all their shows if you're into IT on TV type content. They have like 10+ current active shows, including the namesake This Week in Tech and Security Now.

The closest to a show about IT support is Ask The Tech Guys, which is live in ~1.5 hours from now, and goes for 3 hours, and they have a Zoom link you can call in on @ call.twit.tv

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechTV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screen_Savers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWiT.tv

https://twit.tv/

https://www.youtube.com/ThisWeekinTech

https://twit.tv/shows/ask-the-tech-guys

https://www.youtube.com/TechGuyLabs

I'll never forget watching Patrick accidentally break a brand-new ~$1-2K AMD 64-bit processor iirc live on TV while Leo watched in like 2002 due to misalignment or improperly mounting the heatsink. They were experts but they still make mistakes like the rest of us, and they took it in stride along with some good-natured mockery. It was the epitome of r/techsupportgore schadenfreude.

If instead you wanted a drama about IT support, I don't know of one - the closest would probably be a tie between the equally fantastic Mr Robot and Halt and Catch Fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series...

The closest thing I know to a show about IT support would probably be the British sitcom The IT Crowd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd

[atoav]

To be frank if swapping is a possibe problem in a place with more than two periferals add a label that ties it to a machine.

[mcfedr]

And to be fair, that's how a Bluetooth mouse should work.

[lmz]

Have you really thought of the security implications of automatic unprompted pairing by proximity?