Sunday, March 26, 2006

The Incomparable Habib...

Let me start by saying this: Habib is a co-worker of mine in the computer department. Habib is not his real name...just a name to help protect the stupid. Habib has been a thorn in my side since he arrived at my workplace. Someone recommended that I should make the Chronicles of Habib...similar to the Chronicles of George (see links) but I don't think Habib does quite enough stupid stuff to write about everyday...but, I will share a couple Habib stories. If you're not a computer person, this won't make as much sense...but, here goes:

So, Habib had been working in the department for about 3 weeks. One of him primary duties is user support. He had one computer that was constantly causing problems...programs crashing, locking up, whatever...forcing the user to reboot. Habib decided it could be a software issue...something I would consider. So, he took the computer from the user and made an image of it. (An image is essentially a mirror-image backup of a computer that can be loaded on another like computer and will restore all the data, software, settings, documents, etc.). Well, making an image was correct. Unfortunately, he reloaded the EXACT SAME he had just taken off the computer back on the machine and gave it to the user. Naturally, the user had the same problems. For those of you confused, this would be like taking a burnt out light bulb out of a lamp and putting the same light bulb back in and not understanding why it still wasn't working. I was dumbfounded and still reference it to this date.

Most recently, Habib was working on a project with volumes of information. The 30GB hard drive in the laptop I gave him wouldn't hold all this information so I gave him an extra harddrive that basically will go in the CD-ROM slot on the laptop. The harddrives come unformatted so I told him that it would need formatted then he could start copying his data over to the new drive. Well, two days passed and Habib came in my office and started pilfering through my software CDs. I don't like people going through my stuff really so I asked him what he was looking for.

"Do you have drivers for that harddrive?" he said. I said "What?". Again, the question rung out, "Do you have drivers for that harddrive you gave me Monday?" I was again dumbfounded. He then told me that the computer didn't see the drive when he put it in. So, naturally, I asked "Did you format it?". I received an answer about not seeing the drive when he put it in so how could he format it. I nearly lost it...I explained to him Disk Management in Windows and how he could format it. I didn't even address the drivers question.

Here's what is wrong with is: 1) Any computer technician should know that the computer can't do anything with an unformatted drive and they should know how to address that. 2) Since when does a harddrive need drivers? What are the drivers going to install to? 3) Why didn't he ask on Monday if he didn't understand? 4) What makes him think he can just barge in my office and start going through my things?

The guy just really gets under my skin. Really. We recently found his resume on a computer...it is hilarious. He talks about all the tasks he has completed at work. Habib said he has setup and managed 10 Windows 2000 and 10 Windows 2003 Servers. That's funny Habib...we don't even have 10 Windows 2003 servers in the entire organization. And, needless to say, the ones we have, well, Habib didn't put the image on or format the drives. Would anyone like to hire Habib away from us? Anyone? Please?

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