Mahone

This may clear some things up for you :)

Your lack of British associations is evident

You avatar is a JPG image file. It needs to be a GIF image file in order for the animation to work, otherwise it will simply appear as a static image like you see now. Either you have converted the file to JPG at some point, or the forum software won't accept GIF files and has automatically converted it to a JPG file - I've not tried to upload a GIF file to this forum before so cannot clarify that yet for you.

The charging socket broke off the motherboard of the laptop? It's easy enough to repair on some laptops with a soldering iron, but on others it's flipping difficult to even get to the charging socket, let alone fix it - I dislike doing repairs of this nature on laptops for this reason. Depending on the manufacturer, they can be so complicated and delicate to take apart i.e. they do it this way on purpose so only someone who has worked for long periods of time with that model of laptop (their own technicians) can easily take it apart.

haha oh dear. I'm glad our building services department will never see that, they tease me enough as it is for having the general appearance of a doctor. It's been an on going thing for about three months now. I don't see it myself *confused*

Though if you have flowers on your underwear and you are male, yep, you just lost that job lol.

In a funny way I think you could. It depends how you manage to laugh it off, they will like you if you recover well from the embarassment.

Haha, exactly. But $200 for a hard drive? Geez.

Some of the responses are funny, others make me cring - however a few of them are what everyone would say if they were being truly honest Questions like "what are your weaknesses" always amuse me because do they really expect people to answer those questions honestly? Their biggest and true weaknesses are the ones they will very likely keep to themselves.

LOL, all people who work in I.t use google to work out solutions to some problems regardless of their position on the ladder. Unfortunately due to how big the field is and how often it changes, we constantly have to learn new things and will often be asked to support some previously unheard of piece of random software. That is when google comes into play. Like it the building I help support, we have probably over 400 different applicational software packages installed across the network - it'd be impossible to be familiar with them all. That is where google would come into play if you are asked to fix problems with any applications you are not familiar with. There are five people in my department, I am the youngest at 23 (also the geekiest according to them) and the oldest is the network manager who is around 40.

It wasn't the primary point no, but it was still stereotypical in that he made the assumption the guy who'd be repairing his computer would be a teenager. I'm not taking issue with it though by any means, I find the whole list of IT guy stereotypes quite funny mainly because I come across people in my line of work who meet the stereotypes so well. I meet one or two of them as well, but definiately not the spots or long or greasy hair

That's a bit stereotypical, but don't forget the spots and long greasy hair. They don't call them PFYs for nothing you know

I think she explicitly said she wouldn't sue. And Dravin, I think you managed to say what I meant, but much more eloquently :)

Lol. Theoretically, no, you aren't necessarily safe. If some repair stores are willing to try and log into online bank accounts using cached details, some would likely go to lengths to install trojans on your computer in order to steal these details while you are using the computer. I am so glad that I have no need to use computer repair stores - I'm paranoid enough as it is, there is no chance I'd give my hard drives to any random computer tech to look around. Plus the costs of doing even the most basic of jobs are astronomical.

I would be annoyed too - not only did they completely destroy her emotionally, even if just for half an hour (it's not always easy to recover from a shock like that even when they find out it was false) but they wasted her day, no doubt she had to leave work etc. etc. Normally I would apologise if I had wasted even just a minute of someone elses time, so I would expect an apology when they had make a mistake to that extent. It's not like she wants to sue them, just for someone to acknowledge what they put her through due to someone not doing their job properly. It would have been polite to say the least :) I understand the family of the dead man had to receive the bad news as well, and in their case there was no such relief afterwards. But that doesn't excuse giving an apology - whatever happens to us there is always so much worse that has happened to someone else.

Computer Repair Shops Illegally Accessing Personal Data From Customers' Hard Drives, Sky News Investigation - Sky News Video Player This kind of thing is surprisingly common. I don't think you have PC World in America but they are well known (and hated) in the IT community in the UK as incompetent and extremely expensive. They basically rely on people who have no clue about what they are talking about coming to them, so it's not surprising to me that PC World misdiagnosed the problem - it seems the backstreet store was considerably worse though because they actually tried to steal data including bank account details.

Wow, I'd never heard of those slang names before; I had to look them up. Interesting When I went to Gambia I was used to being called toubab though. That was quite amusing.

It's worrying really how often this happens even with confidential databases. I've never had anything this extreme happen obviously, but my brother went to the bank once to get a quick printed statement of his account. When he noticed the balance was not plausible for him, he questioned it and they took the statement back and printed another one which was correct. It wasn't until afterwards when he told me the balance he had initially been given that we realised he had been given the statement for my account and not his. So this is a bank, the details held on their databases are extremely confidential. Yet the data was clearly not cross checked before being given out.

Erm, just fixed a printer, repaired someones corrupt Microsoft Word document and changed some root network settings and discovered that a second rogue DHCP server on our network was causing all our problems yesterday *sigh* - well, you did ask

Being a bit pedantic I know, but a lot of those statements are exaggerated and/or assumptions. We have a similar common belief in the UK that Winston Churchhill left school with no qualifications but ended up being the prime minister. This isn't actually true at all - he was very qualified. Had to point that out. sorry

Brilliant! Haha. Or what my aunt does to me constantly - append "only if you don't mind" to every request she makes.

The take over happens in August 2009. No-one is 100% sure what effect it will have on the site, but the company who bought it are a legal entity. They say that they will "compensate" the copyright owners for downloaded material - how this will happen I really have no idea. I think we have another napster on our hands. EDIT: Just seen a updated bit on wikipedia: I personally think it's a sad thing that they have sold it. They had such a vast amount of supporters and not just because they could get stuff for free that they would normally pay for, but because they stood up against the music and film industry and their extortionate acts for so long and survived at least one major police raid on their servers (I think the site was down for three hours).

It's a Swedish site and the owners have recently been fined several million along with receiving prison sentences. They have since sold the website to a legitimate company who are going to "legalise" it.

Haha, well if he was serious, he has just gone and announced to the world that he has a safe in his house that contains all his cash. What a 24 carat plonker.

Around here, it's usually "oh my gosh". Or the other G which shall not be mentioned.