"PC Load Letter. What does that even mean?"
(Cool points for getting the quote.)
It never ceases to amaze me how people ignore error messages on computers. I tend to expect it from the average computer person, but when technically savvy people do it, I want to bang my head against the wall.
Two instances today brought this to mind.
First, I help admin the message boards on a fairly popular site. The site is so popular that the boards sometimes have issues. People leave messages that they had problems, which is good, because it lets us know that something needs fixing, but invariably, they don't put in the error message they get, which is bad, because we can't see their screen, nor can we track it down easily without knowing what the error was. Another one of these came up today and I left what I hope was a fairly nice message about adding error messages onto their posts. This is the one I can understand, though, as the majority of users on that site are not people who delve into the technical back-end of computers for a living.
Second, one of my co-workers is offsite doing a disaster recovery test today. Part of this involves restoring from backup. I got an IM from him telling me something wasn't working in the process, but he didn't tell me the error message. I had to poke around for a while to find the error he was getting; once I did, it was an easy fix. I spent more time trying to duplicate the problem to find the error than I did fixing it. And this is a guy who's very technically competent-- even more so than me in many ways. I wonder if that might be the problem actually, in this case; I wonder if he's so used to knowing everything, that it doesn't occur to him to check error codes against troubleshooting documents, or even to really read them.
Either way, though, it's one of those things I'm a proponent of: error codes are there for a reason. And while many of them are bizarre or even cryptic, usually there's a reference available to decipher them. Makes the job a lot easier. =)
(And if anyone is curious, PC Load Letter means load letter size paper (8.5" x 11") into the paper cartridge (PC). It's an old code from when they had limited memory in printers to display information, and it's just never gone away. Do you feel enlightened?)
It never ceases to amaze me how people ignore error messages on computers. I tend to expect it from the average computer person, but when technically savvy people do it, I want to bang my head against the wall.
Two instances today brought this to mind.
First, I help admin the message boards on a fairly popular site. The site is so popular that the boards sometimes have issues. People leave messages that they had problems, which is good, because it lets us know that something needs fixing, but invariably, they don't put in the error message they get, which is bad, because we can't see their screen, nor can we track it down easily without knowing what the error was. Another one of these came up today and I left what I hope was a fairly nice message about adding error messages onto their posts. This is the one I can understand, though, as the majority of users on that site are not people who delve into the technical back-end of computers for a living.
Second, one of my co-workers is offsite doing a disaster recovery test today. Part of this involves restoring from backup. I got an IM from him telling me something wasn't working in the process, but he didn't tell me the error message. I had to poke around for a while to find the error he was getting; once I did, it was an easy fix. I spent more time trying to duplicate the problem to find the error than I did fixing it. And this is a guy who's very technically competent-- even more so than me in many ways. I wonder if that might be the problem actually, in this case; I wonder if he's so used to knowing everything, that it doesn't occur to him to check error codes against troubleshooting documents, or even to really read them.
Either way, though, it's one of those things I'm a proponent of: error codes are there for a reason. And while many of them are bizarre or even cryptic, usually there's a reference available to decipher them. Makes the job a lot easier. =)
(And if anyone is curious, PC Load Letter means load letter size paper (8.5" x 11") into the paper cartridge (PC). It's an old code from when they had limited memory in printers to display information, and it's just never gone away. Do you feel enlightened?)