Why do they call it a..?
Or
Phil's Help Desk Adventure

Help Desk.

If ever there was a misnomer, this would have to be it.

I think everyone has heard those Help Desk horror stories. The ones where the guy or the girl calls up and mistakes the cd-rom drive for a cup holder. Stuff like that. Basically, the "Ha ha, look at the stupid computer illiterate people!" stories.

But you never hear those stories go the other way... Well here's my story.

I'm a relatively computer literate guy. I majored in Computer Science. (And for about half my time there I actually went to class and stayed awake the entire time.) So when something goes wrong with my computer, I generally know what it is.

But if you work for a big company you're not allowed to fix anything on your computer by yourself. Instead, you have to call the Help Desk. That's exactly what I did when my laptop died.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was part of a pilot program (not pilot-flying, more pilot-gineau pig) to upgrade some software on our company computers. So I leave my machine on overnight so they can get the upgrade going overnight.

The upgrade goes relatively fine except for the fact that my anti-virus software didn't install correctly and my laptop doesn't power down anymore. So they get someone to come to my cubicle to check out both problems. But he can't fix it, so a few days later another guy comes to my desk to try to fix the same problems.

At this point my machine works fine. Except for said problems. I had confidence in the guy so I let him work on my machine while I was at a meeting and later at lunch.

I come back from lunch and in place of where my laptop used to be is a note. It says "Gone to find battery."

Whatever.

A few hours later, the guy who was working on my laptop brought it back. I could tell from the expression on his face that what he was about to tell me wasn't good.

"I'm sorry. Your battery and hard drive died. You'll need to call the Help Desk to get it fixed..."

So that's what I did... call the Help Desk.

To Be continued...