oldies but goldies: 9 types of computer users

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Nine Types of Computer Users
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#1: El Explicito
"I tried the thing, ya know, and it worked, ya know, but now it doesn't, ya
know?"

Advantages: Provides interesting communication challanges.

Disadvantages: So do chimps.

Symptoms: Complete inability to use proper nouns

Real Case: One user walked up to a certain Armenian pod manager and said,
"I can't get what I want!" The pod manager leaned back, put his hands
on his belt-buckle, and said, "Well, ma'am, you've come to the right
place."



#2: Frying Pan/Fire Tactician

"It didn't work with the data set we had, so I fed in my aunt's recipe for key
lime pie."

Advantages: Will usually fix error.

Disadvantages: 'Fix' is defined VERY loosely here.

Symptoms: A tendancy to delete lines that get errors instead of fixing
them.

Real Case: One user complained that their program executed, but didn't do
anything. The scon looked at it for twenty minutes before realizing
that they'd commented out EVERY LINE. The user said, "Well, that was
the only way I could get it to compile."




#3: Mad Bomber

"Well, I hit ALT-f6, shift-f8, CNTRL-f10, f4, and f9, and now it looks all
weird."

Advantages: Will try to find own solution to problems.

Disadvantages: User might have translated document to Navajo without meaning
to.

Symptoms: More than six stopped jobs in UNIX, a 2:1 code-to-letter ratio
in WordPerfect

Real Case: One user came in complaining that his WordPerfect document was
underlined. When I used reveal codes on it, I found that he'd set and
unset underline more than fifty times in his document.




#4: Miracle Worker

"But it read a file from it yesterday!" 'Sir, at a guess, this disk has been
swollowed and regurgitated.' "But I did that a month ago, and it read a file
from it yesterday!"

Advantages: Apparently has remarkable luck when you aren't around.

Disadvantages: People complain when scons actually use the word
'horse-puckey'.

Symptoms: Loses all ability to do impossible when you're around. Must
be the kryptonite in your pocket.

Real Case: At least three users have claimed that they've loaded IBM
WordPerfect from Macintosh disks.


#5: Princess (unfair, perhaps, as these tend, overwhelmingly, to be males)

"I need a Mac, and someone's got the one I like reserved, would you please
garrote him and put him in the paper recycling bin?"

Advantages: Flatters you with their high standards for your service.

Disadvantages: Impresses you with their obliviousness to other people on this
planet.

Symptoms: Inability to communicate except by complaining.

Real Case: One asked a scon to remove the message of the day because he
(the user) didn't like it.


#6: Shaman

"Last week, when the moon was full, the clouds were thick, and formahaut was
above the horizon, I typed f77, and lo, it did compile."

Advantages: Gives insight into primative mythology.

Disadvantages: Few scons are anthropology majors.

Symptoms: Frequent questions about irrelavent objects.

Real Case: One user complained that all information on one of their disks
got erased (as Norton Utilities showed nothing but empty sectors, I
suspect nothing had ever been on it). Reasoning that the deleted
information went *somewhere*, they wouldn't shut up until the scon
checked four different disks for the missing information.




#7: Taskmaster

"Well, this is a file in MacWrite. Do you know how I can upload it to MUSIC,
transfer it over to UNIX from there, download it onto an IBM, convert it to
WordPerfect, and put it in three-column format?"

Advantages: Bold new challanges.

Disadvantages: Makes one wish to be a garbage collector.

Symptoms: An inability to keep quiet. Strong tendancies to make
machines do things they don't want to do.

Real Case: One user tried to get a scon to find out what another person's
E-mail address was even though the user didn't know his target's home
system, account name, or real name.


#8: X-user

"Will you look at those. . .um, that resolution, quite impressive, really."

Advantages: Using the cutting-edge in graphics technology.

Disadvantages: Has little or no idea how to use the cutting-edge in graphics
technology.

Symptoms: Fuzzy hands, blindness

Real Case: When I was off duty, two users sat down in front of me at DEC
station 5000/200s that systems was reconfiguring. I suppressed my
laughter while, for twenty minutes, they sat down and did their best
to act like they were doing exectly what they wanted to do, even
though they couldn't log in.




#9: Maestro

"Well, first I sat down, like this. Then I logged on, like this, and after
that, I typed in my password, like this, and after that I edited my file, like
this, and after that I went to this line here, like this, and after that I
picked my nose, like this. . ."

Advantages: Willing to show you exactly what they did to get an error.

Disadvantages: For as long as five or six hours.

Symptoms: Selective deafness to the phrases, "Right, right, okay, but
what was the ERROR?", and a strong fondness for the phrase, "Well, I'm
getting to that."

Real Case: I once had to spend half an hour looking over a user's
shoulder while they continuously retrieved a document into itself and
denied that they did it (the user was complaining that their document
was 87 copies of the same thing).

[callas]

meiner erfahrung nach gehoeren die meisten sekretärinnen in die gruppe 4 ....

[The_Lord_of_Midnight]

Assistentinnen, bitte !

[Tarjan]

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