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ThinkGeek Have a good weekend? We spotted the BEST EVER Alaska license plate while leaving the Final Fantasy concert in Vienna, VA on Friday night & secretly hoping its owner is amongst our followers.

Best Alaska license plate in the history of ever

twitpic.com

You gotta click to see it. Totally worth it.

ThinkGeek HAPPY SYSADMIN DAY! We've posted the winners to our Survival Pack contest (yay, Daniel!) and now we ask the IT professionals amongst us: do you have any frustrating, funny tales you'd like to share with the class?

Happy SysAdmin Day!

thinkgeek.com

We'd like to honor each and every SysAdmin out there laboring in the networks, armpit deep in Cat5, fending off feral lusers, and maintaining that small black box with a flashing red light called The Internet. We salute you, SysAdmin heroes and heroines far and wide! Now, to unveil the winners of o...

July 30 at 8:10am · Comment · Like

Aubreywan Picobi, Craig Lee, Sleepy Maggie and 97 others like this.
- Erin Ackerman
  I used to work it, and honestly the level of stupidity... how can your job rely on your knowledge of a computer when you can't even turn it on? I mean really? Or hey dipstick, turn the num lock on, and the caps lock off! Omg. The same perso...n every morning would call whining about her computer wouldn't let her log in, eject the freaking disc first(literally every morning... after a while you would think she would figure it out). geez... or why won't it let me type numbers? Okay Num lock is your friend, look for the glowy light that tells you it is on... if not press the button... or ya know there are numbers above the qwerty right? or how do i make this work? umm... hit enter... I love telling people the computer had an I.D.10-T. error... save teh ones that actually write it down and realize what just happen. LOL I don't think I could ever go back to i.t. they say there is no such thing as a stupid question... i beg to differ... often. See More
  July 30 at 8:25am · 1 personLoading... ·
- Nicole Malik Yay! Happy Day SysDudes & SysDudettes! (And thx for posting my epic tale ;D)
  July 30 at 8:25am ·
- Joel Wilkins I once had an individual turn off a server that was hosting a business critical application. Their reason? It was too noisy.
  July 30 at 8:29am · 6 peopleLoading... ·
- Erin Ackerman Joel, I think once my frustration subsided I would have had trouble not laughing as I explained what happen to the higher ups in the company. That is such an epic fail it is almost a win dude.
  July 30 at 8:32am ·
- Kyle Goodman Got an urgent call from my supervisor. Turns out that the boss was stuck in a level on Tomb Raider.
  July 30 at 8:33am · 14 peopleLoading... ·
- Danielle Mahlum Tisinger user: "my keyboard doesn't seem to be working." tech, after a few diagnostic questions: "it sounds like you might have crumbs or something in it. Why don't you turn it upside down and gently shake it to dislodge whatever is in there." User: "um, I can't do that." Tech: "why not?" User: "where will the coffee go?"
  July 30 at 8:34am · 9 peopleLoading... ·
- Edward Pierce my favorite help desk call is when the user cannot login because they spelled their own name wrong.
  July 30 at 8:37am · 3 peopleLoading... ·
- Andrew Kissinger Just got a phone call that reminds me why I hate my job. Caller: "I can't get to yahoo. When I click on my internet icon it takes me to our intranet site" (this is our default homepage for all users) Me: "Type www.yahoo.com... ??" Caller: "Wow, you're a lot smarter than me. I never would have thought to do that."
  July 30 at 8:37am · 4 peopleLoading... ·
- Kirk Pinto User (To me) : Hey, where do we keep the universal laptop power supplies Me: ... we dont have any of those User: Well, where are the ones we use for the company laptops Me: (I tell him where) After a few minutes the user comes back to me and says "I think I fried my laptop. I thought if it fit in the slot it would work"
  July 30 at 8:37am · 3 peopleLoading... ·
- Elizabeth Beben Try someone who calls to ask if you can fix their toilet. I've had that twice.
  July 30 at 8:38am · 1 personLoading... ·
- Christina Mahon A week after being hired, a worker called our helpdesk freaking out because he couldn't turn on his company laptop. He finally admitted that he was so upset that the laptop he was *loaned* had XP, that he decided he was going to install Vista on it himself. Which he did, incorrectly. And it no longer worked correctly because he didn't have admin rights to fix it. He blamed us for his lack of productivity until we gave him a new working laptop.
  July 30 at 8:40am · 3 peopleLoading... ·
- ThinkGeek Keep 'em coming!
  July 30 at 8:40am ·
- Alan Go ‎@ My old job, the VP of Sales wanted everyones passwords to be the same... I insisted it was a security risk, but she kept insisting on it and told me I was trying to make things difficult. Needless to say, an ex employee logged in and deleted files left and right!
  July 30 at 8:51am · 4 peopleLoading... ·
- Gaelyn Hauser Helpdesking is 80% psychology and only 20% technology. Try keeping a straight face when you explain that "that's a common misperception - you're not the only one" who thinks they should be able to type an apostrophe, backspace, and type a period to make an exclamation point. That was about 8 years ago, but it still chokes me up!
  July 30 at 8:54am · 2 peopleLoading... ·
- Veronica Petersen At my old job we had an amazing co-worker that would always buy us gifts for sysadmin day. I miss her!
  July 30 at 8:57am · 1 personLoading... ·
- Whitney Kulwicki Caller: "When I try to bring up the website, it says Yahoo couldn't find any search results" Me: "Ah, it sounds like you're typing it into a search bar. You'll need to type (gives her URL again) into the address bar" Caller: "..." Me: (explanation of which one is the address bar) Caller: "oh... do I have to type the whole URL out?" Me: "Um... yes."
  July 30 at 9:05am ·
- Kevin Schiffer Had a user once that told me "Don't use computer geek words with me - I'm not a geek!" in a very angry voice...what was I telling him? A password - and the "geek word" I used...exclamation point!!! Same guy didn't know asterisk, either...
  July 30 at 9:21am ·
- Brendan Prout
  sysadmin: "right click on the desktop and a menu should appear."
  user: didn't work.
  sysadmin: "put your cursor anywhere on the desktop-"
  user: - you mean like the mouse?
  sysadmin: "yes, and then right click. A menu should pop up."
  ...user: nothing happened.
  sysadmin: "is your desktop visible?"
  user: yes
  sysadmin: "then right click on it."
  user: on the desktop
  sysadmin: "yes"
  user: okay, done.
  sysadmin: "and did a menu pop up?"
  user: I've written click on the desktop like five times now, I'm not sure how it relates to the computer.
  sysadmin: "wait. you mean you're taking a pen... (yes) and writing the word 'click' on your desktop next to the computer?
  user: yes, and I'm really confused. What's this supposed to do for the computer?
  sysadmin: @#!# - please holdSee More
  July 30 at 9:27am · 11 peopleLoading... ·
- Kristin Howard Salber My hubby tells me of a woman who was told to reboot several times. Actually told her 'turn it off, then back on'. She called minutes later saying it didn't work. Hubby asks 'Which button did you push?'. She said 'the little one in the corner'. Monitor power button. He said it took all his strength not to reply 'Ok close your eyes... Now open them... That's all you did!'
  July 30 at 9:37am · 1 personLoading... ·
- Kristin Howard Salber ‎@BRendan Prout - I laughed so hard at that comment I copied & sent it to my husband at work... TOO FUNNY!
  July 30 at 9:49am ·
- ThinkGeek These are great. Go SysAdmins!! (P.S. O hai Brendan!)
  July 30 at 9:54am ·
- Jason Maples
  My I.T. director and boss made me listen to 80's top 40 music on the 4 hour drive to Austin and back this week so he's getting nothing for sysadmin day.
  
  I had an end user call me and tell me they couldn't get on the wireless at the hotel and... that it was something wrong with my "bbbaaaassssseeee ssstttaaatttiiiooonnn" (wireless access point) and not his laptop. He insisted up and down and refused to troubleshoot with me. After 15 mins of that he finally started to work with me a bit.....turns out....wireless radio button on a dell laptop turned offSee More
  July 30 at 10:05am ·
- Jeremy O'Steen
  I monitor the computer lab at the college I attend. Had a user this week trying to finish typing up a final paper using M$ Word 2007. She has learned to ALT click a word to check its spelling, and happened to do this for the word "emphasi...s". She comes up to me asking how M$ knows what she is typing and why they are giving "her" advice. Naturally, I have to go look to see what she is talking about. Under the definition, there is an example on how to properly use the word in a sentence that states:
  
  "Your opening paragraph needs greater emphasis to grab the reader's attention."
  
  It took me several minutes to explain to her that it was just an example, and several minutes more to stop laughing out in the hallway afterwards.
  
  * wonders how many people are now going to type "emphasis" in M$ Word 2007, and check the Encarta entry....*See More
  July 30 at 10:19am · 1 personLoading... ·
- Dudley Forster I had a client that brought in his desktop saying Windows won’t show up. I started it and there was no bootable device. I opened the case and found the two hard drives had been opened and were now wrapped in duct tape. I asked him what he did and he said the drives where making some noise so he opened them up and sprayed in a little WD40.
  July 30 at 10:34am · 7 peopleLoading... ·
- Kristen 'Murray' Roessler This just in: support team emails user to call the support team back, the user *can't* log into their email desktop client nor the webmail client
  July 30 at 11:00am ·
- Kristen 'Murray' Roessler rofl these stories are great btw
  July 30 at 11:27am ·
- Claude Schrader at an old job working at a webhost, a customer once emailed the helpdesk asking us to turn up the color depth on our *web server*. Apparently the graphics weren't displaying correctly, and naturally the web server's video card was to blame
  July 30 at 12:40pm ·
- Jay Hough My favorite is when I get called to somebody's desk to recover something they deleted and then secure emptied from their trash. Ummm - it's gone. Finally installed a program that can restore trashed files. Think, people....think.
  July 30 at 12:49pm ·
- Catherine Marie Sandy Gurski I once had a user tell me that he can't use Outlook for his e-mail in France because France uses a different telephone system than the United States. He has to use Web mail.
  July 30 at 12:55pm · 1 personLoading... ·
- Aaron Kirby One time someone was having trouble typing a Word document and said there was something wrong with the "Character Map" on his computer and proceeded to explain what that was as if I didn't know. His computer was displaying the wrong characters as he was typing and I couldn't seem to resolve the issue over the phone, so I walked over to his building. That's when I found out that he was really a "Hunt and Peck" typist and someone had rearranged the keys on his old keyboard.
  July 30 at 1:48pm · 1 personLoading... ·
- David Voderberg
  I actually had this one with OTHER SYSADMINS!!!:
  
  Ok so i was working on a multimillion dollar tech refresh project for a multibillion dollar pharmaceutical company. I was responsible for the app installation and the Windows configuration and... end to end integration of SQL and AS400 and...well a complicated project. In short I was seen as "That Stupid App Guy" by the server team, who's only job was to install Windows on to server blades and do the physical installation of the server racks.
  
  Well right before we were to go live every weekend we did fail back testing which included Shutting down Windows and turning it back on and seeing how long it took to reinitialize all the apps, killing the Windows Networking and turning it back on, and then the last test was snapping off the power to the WHOLE Server rack.
  
  The first time I went through that fail back testing I reported my results, and i took the director aside and said "Look SQL HATES an ungraceful Shutdown, and so does Windows. We are going to loose data and it's gonna bork us eventually"
  
  I got back "What do you know stupid app guy!!?? I AM SEVER MAN!!! I KNOW ALL FOR WINDOWS!! YOU ARE BUT STUPID APP GUY!" Ok not a verbatim quote but close enough...
  
  Anyway we finished about half the sites and went to finish a site in Wisconsin. Sure enough they snapped off the power to the rack.
  They turned it back on.
  I waited.
  I waited.
  I couldn't even access the SQL instance. I turned to them and said "You know when I said this was gonna screw us? Today's the day.."
  I frantically worked on it for four hours, fixed it was still the "Stupid App guy"
  But we never did that fail test ever again. See More
  July 30 at 2:22pm ·
- Tim Aichholz Let's not forget people who cannot find the "any" key.
  July 30 at 3:07pm · 2 peopleLoading... ·
- Jesse Jones favorite ode to System Administrators ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE_p5N89XQI
  July 30 at 3:24pm · 1 personLoading... ·
- Catherine Marie Sandy Gurski Oooh! I have one more! I once had a user call and tell me his Caps Lock was on and he didn't have a button to disable it. I thought it was my boss messing with me until his response to my description of where the Caps Lock key is. "Ohhhhhhh."
  July 30 at 5:06pm · 1 personLoading... ·
- Kristen 'Murray' Roessler I love it when I have to help my hubby figure out computer stuff, and he's a geek too rofl He didn't know how to change his themes in Firefox...Tools> Add-ons> Themes
  July 30 at 5:24pm ·
- Stephen Forbes
  My manager calls me into her office for an 'IT' question. Well first she emails, then calls,.. She also sitsdirectly behind me. I go in and she starts describing the issue. She gets five words out then suggests i just come look at her scree...n. The issue? She was booking a flight to Sweden and had to pick her timezone from a dropdown list, and couldnt understand what a timezone was, let alone pick the one we are in.
  
  This is a 40 year old mother of two. I went back to my desk and shed a few tears for our future. See More
  July 30 at 7:49pm ·
- Stephen Forbes Also, i am a developer. Not support.
  July 30 at 7:51pm ·
- Michael Falcetta Reminds me of the Engie from TF2
  July 31 at 1:28am ·
- Michael Falcetta Oh - keep up the stories btw. I'm loling at all of this fail. SysAdmins for life!
  July 31 at 1:34am ·

ThinkGeek And our 5 Geek A Week card pack winners (who all happened to be Twitter users) are @MercyGrace @TarielOfLorien @RockettMan @sonofbelial @ceemonster. Everyone else, you win the precious attached link.

Pile of Cute

hearshot.tumblr.com

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww.

ThinkGeek Geek O'Clock!! Enter to randomly win a pack of Len Peralta's Geek A Week cards by 4pm ET: http://j.mp/diKnmp
And a very happy birthday to one Mr. Wil Wheaton. We've declared today Don't Be a Dick Day in his honor.

Get yer Geek A Week cards here!

j.mp

These were supposed to come with us to Comic-Con, but fate intervened and UPS never made it in time. So congratulations, internetters who didn't go to Comic-Con! We have 5 packs to give away today, and we'll dip back into the entries later when our boxes finally make it back to ThinkGeek Headquarter...

ThinkGeek New shinies for you! Make cupcakes at your desk, watch the LED Art Cube, admire an 18" Terminator, freak out neighbors with the Garden Zombie, and wear a slew of new t-shirts and hoodies.

"AWWRGGHHHBRAAAAINSUNNGHH"

www.thinkgeek.com

Oh and there's a huge clearance sale, *and* code SDCC is still good for $10 off $30+ orders through 8/13!

ThinkGeek Toasters, Wookiees, panels, cosplay, w00tstock, what we lost, & what we learned at San Diego Comic Con in 102 pics and some words. (That is, "OMG IT WAS AWESOME!!1!")

ThinkGeek Blog - Toasters, Wookiees, and 102 photos from SDCC

www.thinkgeek.com

Our away mission to San Diego Comic-Con is complete, and this photo of Timmy and our own Mike Kochis posing with Chief Tyrol pretty much says it all: IT WAS AWESOME.

ThinkGeek Just posted our top 10 SysAdmin entries in the running for the Survival Pack! The entries are pretty darn funny and need your votes! (Also, in honor of our surviving SDCC & not getting stabbed with pens, take $10 off your order of $30+ w/ code SDCC good through 8/13 midnight ET.)

ThinkGeek Blog - Vote for your favorite SysAdmin!

thinkgeek.com

Here are our ten finalists, in no particular order! They're all worth a read, and you'll find the voting form below. Oh, and btw, your vote enters you for a chance to win a $30 ThinkGeek gift certificate.

ThinkGeek How to find us at SDCC, a preview of the freebies we'll be carting around, and a promise of delicious frozen treats from Ice Cream Man at w00tstock. (Yes, we're getting excited!!1!)

ThinkGeek Blog: See you at San Diego Comic-Con?

www.thinkgeek.com

It's the time of year when everybody starts talking about San Diego Comic-Con. Usually you'd find us rocking back and forth, muttering something about lucky dogs and how Fairfax, Virginia is the most magical place in the world anyways.

ThinkGeek We've printed up a special limited edition pack of Len Peralta's Geek A Week cards, featuring Adam Savage, Jonathan Coulton, Wil Wheaton, Kevin Smith, Veronica Belmont, and more! Where can you get them? Find us at SDCC, or wait patiently at home--we'll do some giveaways next week.

ThinkGeek Blog: Geek A Week, IRL

thinkgeek.com

Len Peralta is an illustrator and all-around awesome guy who we got to know through Paul and Storm, who are also awesome but a little less artistic. You may have seen Len drawing crazy hivemind posters on stage at w00tstock, and you may have heard of his Geek A Week card project for which--self exp...

ThinkGeek SysAdmin Day is July 30th! You better get your sys-hero/heroine something in time; there's no accounting for what might happen to your email if you don't. Enter to win our SysAdmin Survival Pack, including a kick-ass steampunk cork gun, by 7/25. Public voting starts 7/26.

Also: have you tried turning it off and on agai...n?

ThinkGeek's SysAdmin Day Survival Pack

www.thinkgeek.com

Every day, rain or shine, and often remotely in the wee hours, SysAdmins get to work protecting your inbox, routing the internets, shoring up your network, and monitoring your web history.* All this while fighting back lusers who still--still--haven't learned to restart before picking up the phone. ...

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