Computer lab fun

[MadRocketScientist]

My favorite from when I ran the labs was the guy, who was not even a student, who came into the general lab and pestered users until someone took pity on him and logged him into the PC with the scanner. He then proceeded to scan photos of a woman he was stalking on to the PC, some of them were photos of the woman as she got dressed.

His failure came when he tried to upload the photos to his website and found out that the PC had no internet access. The lab consultants were already leary of the guy and when he asked for help getting on the internet, they saw the pics and called me at home. I told them to call the police and I would be in ASAP.

I had him charged with Trespassing and I guess he got in trouble for the stalking as well. Never saw him again.

Another user was an ex-student who would use the lab all the time to surf the web and play games (he had a friend who let him use his ID number to login). He had been doing it for a long time until one day I came in to check on the lab. It was very busy and there was a line of students waiting to use the PCs, so I swept the lab looking for folks who were wasting time playing games or checking sports scores*. I caught him playing online pool and asked him to leave. He actually logged off and got up to leave, which aroused my suspicions (users ALWAYS argued with me or bitched about being asked to leave). I asked to see his student ID and the one he showed me was real old and no longer valid. I told him the next time he was found in the lab without a valid ID**, I was going to call the police right away and have him arrested. Never saw him again either.

*I know it was sucky, and normally I did not mind it if users just goofed around, but when there is a line out the door and people are trying to check email or print things for their next class, it is hardly fair to them that someone is wasting resources goofing off. I was always polite and asked them to log off and leave, which always got me an earful.

**I had 60 computers for 1600 users, I really could not afford to have persons who had paid no tuition using the PCs. Also, users who gave out their IDs or logins usually found themselves without lab privileges.

[Sylvia727]

Due to bad a HVAC system, our server room door is open to help circulate air. (Server rooms get hot! An overheated server is not something you want on your hands.) The "keep out" sign doesn't seem to apply to most students. (It's a tight space with cables everywhere and a simple bump in the wrong spot could make our system admin have a very bad day.)

In high school, I hung around the computer department a lot. I don't know much about them but I was eagar to learn, so the teachers would give me assignments from their upper classes after school let out. Long and short of it, I overheard much of the drama, like the time a student got onto the school's...uh, whatever the technical word is for 'classified', y'know, the stuff only the sys admin should have access to. He told the vice principal instead of the computer department, and she thought he was threatening to infect the system with a virus (he said he could, meaning a security flaw would let him) and suspended him. The computer department got him unsuspended and spent the next six weeks bitching about the dumbass vp.

Anyway, we had a similiar set up with our auxilary server (I assume that's what it was but don't ask me). The computer office could only be reached by going through a computer classroom, and the closet with the server could only be reached through the office. Nevertheless, they caught kids making out in there all the time. I was there when they gave the new teacher a tour of the facilities, and bitched about the problem with the server closet. He asked a few questions, and they went on with the tour.

The next day I came in, and the new teacher had hung a sign above the door: "You break it, you bought it. It costs $10,000." Cut the traffic in half, and those that did come in were a lot more careful

[protege]

Ah, computer labs. College labs are fun, aren't they?

I could go on, about the girl who climbed the fire escape because the main door was locked from the outside, and her boyfriend was in the lab working on a project, and she wanted to be with him...

...or the Russian exchange student who not only got kicked out of college...but deported as well when he brought his computer in for repairs. Said computer was *loaded* with kiddie porn and other nasty stuff.

...or the older woman we called "Dot Matrix," because she was constantly asking how to print things, or managing to jam up the printers.

...or the girl who offered um, "favors" if I'd write her paper for her. Keep in mind that my then-gf was sitting right next to me at the time...

[MaverickGypsy]

Seeing that they are in fact customers of a sort, it might have been better to put
FREE stapler and then bolt it to the desk.

[IT Grunt]

Then there's the computer help. Oye. If your program doesn't compile, here's a hint: read the compiler errors! We use a friendly compiler that tells you the line, very likely what the problem is, and, on occasion, suggests what you might need to change. And no, I'm not doing your assignment for you. Yes, my job duty says I'm to help, but only to a minor degree, as in obvious errors (missing semicolons for example, we're using C++). You were given it to learn programming. If I do it for you, you're not going to learn anything. And I'd get into trouble, maybe lose my job, maybe even kick out of college due to "bad ethics". If you can't figure out the problem, I'm not putting my neck out on the line for you.

Oy.. been there, done that. I worked the labs at school for four years, I saw everything you have listed here. This item, though, was the worst. We were given strict instructions that we were there to fix problems with the PCs ONLY. We were not to give any homework help. There were a few who were tricky and tried to make it look like the PC was having a problem, but the majority were obvious. When your text book is spread out beside you, the problem is exacty what's on your screen... Gee.. that's a tough one.

We had an old line printer as well. That thing was a bear. They used such crappy paper in it, you could not get it out without tearing it unless you were extremely careful. Thankfully, the only system that could print to it was the VAX. All the PCs printed to a Laserjet 3si. (Which was a bear all of its own, given the abuse that thing took. There was a sign that quite clearly stated that ONLY the lab assistants were to change the paper in the printer. Of course, when do users read?)

[Geek King]

I was in your place once, in the general use labs. We had everyone from students wanting to just check e-mail (which was mostly campus mail, the internet was just catching on), to the programmers like myself. It was a mixed lab of Mac and PC, so that added fun to the mix also.

Our programming degree required the equivalent of a Math minor, and had to include a Statistics course and advanced Trigonometry. Probably for the reason you show in your story.

Feel free to share more. Lord knows the labs breed enough stories to share.

[Captain Kidd]

Hmm this got kinda long, sorry.

Ahh the life of a computer lab assistant.

I mentioned these on another thread, but I'll rehash here and add some more.

Signs, I'm starting to wonder if there's any reason to waste the paper to print them as people just don't seem to pay attention.

The stapler is located on a table under a big sign that says "Stapler here", yet 3-4 times an hour (on a slow day) I get to point it out.

We have some Linux and Mac machines. On each of them is a note along the top of the monitor that say, "you must have a Linux account to use these computers." Not that that note helps. About 1 in 5 then get mad at me because they can't log in.

"Are you the lab assistant?" Err, well, I better be since there's a 'Lab Assistant' sign above my head.

Then there's the line printer ... It's the bane of 99% of the freshmen (and a lot of the sophomores and juniors). Now, in their defense, we've determined that the latest generation ( I feel old) probably has never seen a line printer in their life. (And for those here that haven't either; it's a printer that uses a continuous ream of perforated paper. When your print job is done, you simply rip off you pages.) Therefore, we have that thing wallpapered with instructions. Do they read it? Nooo. I'm probably going to be a Graduate Assistant soon and if I get a Computer Science I lab to run, their grade is going to include knowing how to work the printer.

Due to bad a HVAC system, our server room door is open to help circulate air. (Server rooms get hot! An overheated server is not something you want on your hands.) The "keep out" sign doesn't seem to apply to most students. (It's a tight space with cables everywhere and a simple bump in the wrong spot could make our system admin have a very bad day.)

Then there's the computer help. Oye. If your program doesn't compile, here's a hint: read the compiler errors! We use a friendly compiler that tells you the line, very likely what the problem is, and, on occasion, suggests what you might need to change. And no, I'm not doing your assignment for you. Yes, my job duty says I'm to help, but only to a minor degree, as in obvious errors (missing semicolons for example, we're using C++). You were given it to learn programming. If I do it for you, you're not going to learn anything. And I'd get into trouble, maybe lose my job, maybe even kick out of college due to "bad ethics". If you can't figure out the problem, I'm not putting my neck out on the line for you.

Seriously, as I mentioned in my introduction thread, computers seem to do something to people. Take an intelligent person, sit them down at a computer, and a percent of them will become drooling idiots. This one girl was given an assignment to solve a simple math problem via writing a program. One glance at the screen and I knew it wasn't going to go anywhere good. I finally just stopped her (almost by physically taking the keyboard from her) and asked her to write out the equation to solve the problem.
Her: Well, make an integer variable ...
Me: No, no, write out the math equation
Her: Um, x asterisk ...
Me: Noooo.... the equation
Her: Uh. *looks at the monitor*
Me: *gently* No, forget that you're at a computer. If you had to solve this by hand, using a pencil and paper, how would you write out the equation?
Her: *looks at the monitor again* Uhhh. in the main function make a variable ... ?
Me: *deep breath* No, just do it by hand
Her: *looking at the monitor yet again* type in ... ?

This went on for awhile before I finally suggested she might need to talk to her professor for help as I'm not sure what her assignment needed her to do. OK, it was a white lie ... OK a bald face lie as I had the program figured out almost immediately, but this conversation was going nowhere. She couldn't have been that dumb, as the other books she had were pretty advanced subjects. It was a simple math equation too, multiplication of two values and the addition of a third.
x = a * b + c or something similar. Something she could have done in seconds had she not had to have done it via a program. but she got into a "write a program" box , didn't exactly know what to do, and just couldn't get out of it.


The nice thing is, we computer science types are known to be a rude bunch, so we do have some leeway on the sarcastic responses. I'm too nice to be too rude, but as the semester draws to an end, I'm finding myself getting short, especially with the $%&$! stapler.