I’m pretty sure that happens because the user is more careful about what they do, avoiding doing whatever caused the problem while an IT person is watching
My grandma had a prestigious tablet which was bootlooping randomly. The service store claimed it was fine and didn’t honor warranty multiple times. Well, this was a shitty alibaba rebrand anyway.
The computer just trembles at the IT dude’s aura and does what it’s supposed to do because they know what they do to printers that step out of line.
That tweet is obsolete since Home Assistant and ESPHome have become usable
I’d say it’s still accurate for quite a lot of us. Personally I avoid any “smart” device like the plague. I’m kinda done with tech outside of programming. I’d have a dumb phone if it wasn’t such a hassle in today’s society, none of my appliances is connected to the internet (apart from PC and phone), I like using old DSLRs and film cameras because I don’t want to look at another screen when out and about, I read physical books instead of digital, etc. I don’t own a car but if I had one it’d probably be some old piece of shit that just works, without all the smart shit if I can at all avoid it.
I have printers that connect to the WiFi, but they’re turned off all the time unless I need them. There’s no way in hell my washing machine gets WiFi, nor any other applicance like it. And I’m also very distrustful of video doorbells or even worse, those kind of digital locks that unlock with a phone or something. I’m just tired of everything being connected, everything being a subscription, everything being a security nightmare, everything needing power or having to be charged.
I’d be so much more productive if I had a dumb phone but you’re right, it’s a lot of hassle these days
The key is that it should remain fully functional, even when lobotomised.
Kill WiFi, alongside ZigBee and Z-Wave coordinators and all core functionality should remain.
That’s what my house does. If I kill the internet, automations still work, as well as the interface via LAN (I’ve got hairpin NAT set up to make this easier than having 2 addresses in the app), if I kill Home Assistant, all devices still function manually.
I favor ZigBee to WiFi smart devices, although the polluted spectrum in my area gives me some headaches. With WiFi devices when possible I buy premade stuff (so that it’s CE compliant), and flash ESPHome on them, or similar.Yeah, wifi is a crapshoot as to whether it might expect a cloud connection, so I have to research those devices carefully. I’m satisfied with my OpenGarage being on Wifi because I know it has no internet aspirations. I hope that Matter over Wifi devices are similarly local friendly, but I haven’t actually had anything to buy since that was an option.
I’m oretty certain there is not a single printer on the consumer market these days that works without wifi.
Try Brother, set 2 up in the last month, both USB connections
While I use it on WiFi, I’m fairly sure my brother laser printer has a USB connector.
Fear keeps them in line.
I once suggested we make cardboard cutouts of our team to stand next to printers to keep them in line
If you ever feel like you are losing your touch as an IT support person, destroy a computer on purpose.
That’ll bring the rest of them in line.
If you can’t win with love, fear is just as nice and will suffice, to misquote Robert Frost.
It’s part of the class package. We auto-resolve issues under a certain level of difficulty just by being nearby. Pretty nifty.
This only works on others computers.
If the wizard themselves experience a minor irritating tech issue, then it stays permanently and forces the wizard to use a convoluted work around instead of asking another wizard for help (this would fix it)
We should sprinkle IT people around the offices like wifi routers. To project their aura of auto-resolving constantly throughout the workplace. As a programmer I have more of an aura of auto-breaking any system that I’m near so hopefully they cancel out
In my experience, random failure with random auto-fix is exclusively a windows feature. Turning it off and on fixes the majority of windows glitches.
I had a coworker who had constant issues with her laptop. Whenever she tried showing it to me, the issue magically fixed itself.
After this happened multiple times, she would just ask me to quickly touch the laptop to fix it. Worked every time!
I work in IT support.
A solid 80% of all issues magically disappear the second I show up.
There’s a very simple explanation for it – Clarke’s Fourth Law:
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.It’s the whole reason why IT wizards are exempt from the usual office dress code.
The long hair, beards and flowing robes (or baggy pants and XXXL T-shirts) are vital parts of the ritual.This is the actual explanation, and I do tell people when they get frustrated enough. I have the aura, I am a natural tech witch. Just call me and I’ll stand by your PC, scrolling on my phone, while you discover it now works. Bye bye now. Don’t forget to tip your IT guy.
It’s the same with all machines. When I worked news production in television it was the same thing. Something breaks, call in the engineers, now it works once they show up.
I’m in IT, but not that kind of IT.
Last week I afflicted myself with the Location Services are turned off bug by installing the 23H2 update to duplicate an issue a user in my work area was having.
When I called desktop support, we could not replicate the issue after he remoted in.
He closed the Remote Desktop connection, and the issue reoccurred.
He remoted in. The popup vanished as soon as he connected. We couldn’t replicate the issue. He seemed dubious now. He disconnected. It occurred. I got a screenshot. He reconnected. We looked at the remote connection settings. Remote connections were set to override location. Disabled that. Issue presented. We both had a good laugh.Tech Aura. If you have it you understand. If you don’t then you watch in awed frustration as the computer that refused to work 10 seconds ago suddenly starts behaving when I.T. touches it. As an aside you know your I.T. are real wizards when stuff starts working just because they walked in the room or answered the phone. :)
