You Logged Into The Wrong Network

[Jay 2K Winger]

Just got off this call from this luser.

As I've noted in the past, there is a system for virtual desktop environments that The Client uses, which for the purposes of obfuscation I call "MANA." There are two different desktop environments that users can access using MANA. One is our old desktop environment, "ONE," and one is our newer one, "ENVY." For some users, MANA is necessary, as their account is set up for ONE or ENVY, but there are no physical desktops set up to accommodate their environment. So they log into MANA instead to access a virtual desktop for their environment. (i.e., ONE user has only ENVY workstations available, log into MANA to access ONE. And vice versa.)

Luser calls up, she wanted to know how she could get back to her ENVY desktop from CWE. I eventually figure out she's at a "flex center" that is basically just dummy terminals, set up to only allow MANA log-ins.

After logging into MANA, she'd apparently clicked the icon for ONE instead of ENVY and wanted to know how to get back to ENVY.

*headdesk*

I patiently explained to her that she just had to log out of ONE and at the MANA screen, click on the icon for ENVY instead.

Naturally, she wanted me to stay on the line in case something went wrong.

Which it didn't.

But she kept me on the phone for ten minutes while the system logged her out of ONE, and then ponderously logged her into ENVY.

Ten minutes of my life I won't get back.

[MoonCat]

I work with someone like that. The only things I know about computers is what I picked up working on them, I'm about as far from IT as you can get, but she constantly asks me to remind her how to do things like sending an email attachment.

If I don't stop holding her hand (figuratively) she's never going to remember anything on her own. I need to start pretending to be busy even when I'm not, so she'll make the effort to do it herself.

[ComputerNecromancer]

You think that is "complicated" for usrs?

Try the setup we had back around 1990.

We had an IBM mainframe of some sot. People connected to it via 3270 terminals, and PCs equipped with 3270 style keyboards and 3270 "emulator" cards.

We also had a Vax and folks connected to that via VT-100(?) terminals of some sort or via serial ports and terminal emulators on PCs.

Now for the fun. There was a "gateway" between the mainframe and the Vax. So you could log into the Vax from a 3270 (real or emulated). You'd be emulating the VT terminal on your 3270 which lead to "odd" keyboard mappings.

You could also go the other way and get into the mainframe from a terminal connected to the Vax. Again, the key mappings were a bit odd.

For real horror though, consider the poor folks who were running a terminal program on an *old* PC with an 84 key keyboard. And where connecting to the mainframe via the Vax.

So you have the weird key reasignments required to make an 84-key PC keyboard act like the VT keyboard. Which was clumsy enough.

Now, you've got the VT keyboard mapping being *re-mapped to the 3270 keyboard.

It took us folks in microcomputer support several days to work out a cheat sheet for those poor folks. Some of the required key combos were strange to say the least.

[Silent-Hunter]

Wow, that sounds complicated. I've never used a VT-100, but I've used xterm, and I regularly use the terminal that came with the Common Desktop Environment, are those similar?