!AUTH 110307!31 May 1995 13:53:35 (#3554) Jacob Wolf Gibney Haller Hell User (JWGH )
I'm working in 101. The phone rings. "Hello, Student Consulting."
"Hi, I'm trying to set up Eudora at home, but it's not working, I have some hotsheets, I know I need a disk or something, what should I do?"
(Thinks: OK, maybe she thinks she needs a Eudora cluster disk--fair enough.) "OK, do you have the Eudora application on your hard drive?"
"No. How can I get it?"
"You'll have to come in and get it off the Applications Server. You can get it from any networked machine."
"Oh, it has to be networked? They didn't say anything about that."
(Thinks: How can you get something off the network if you aren't connected to it? Oh, well, never mind.) "Yes, you'll have to come in with two disks..."
"To the CIT? Oh. They didn't say anything about that. Should those be formatted disks?"
"Yes."
"Oh. I don't remember how to do that. I'm on an IBM. Can you step me through the process?"
(Thinks: Grraaargh...) "OK, well if you're at a DOS prompt..."
"I can't do it from DOS. It doesn't work."
(Thinks: Doubtful, but probably easier and quicker not to argue.) "OK, then, go to the File Manager in the Main program group..."
"OK..."
"Now go under 'Disk' to 'Format Disk'." (Thinks: Ah-ha! My job should be done!)
"All right, I select the 'A' drive...It says 1.2 megabytes, is that OK?"
"Yes."
"It gave me an error!"
"What was the error?"
"OK, I'll do it again...It says 'Error accessing drive. Make sure the disk is in the drive and is not locked'."
"Hmm, maybe the disk is locked. OK, eject the disk. In the upper-right corner there should be a little hole in the disk."
"Yes."
"OK, now on the back there should be a little plastic shutter that can slide over the hole."
<pause> "On the upper-right or the upper-left corner?"
"Ummm, it depends on how you're looking at it. It's the hole with the plastic shutter on it."
<long stream of irrelevant babble>
(Thinking: I can't believe it's taking me this long to find out whether a disk is locked or not.) "Look, you're going to be coming into the CIT anyways to get the programs, why don't you format the disks here where we can show you what to do?"
"Well no, because I want to be able to do it again, and I won't know how if you do it for me. Can't you just troubleshoot over the phone?"
"Well but it's a lot easier to troubleshoot it in person, we could see what you're doing and so on...we could show you how to do it."
"But I think the problem is with the disk drive."
(Thinks: This is a battle I'm going to lose. Regroup.) "There should be a hole with a little plastic shutter on the disk. Do you see it?"
"Yes."
"Is the shutter covering the hole, or not?"
"It's covering it."
"OK, it's not locked then. Hmmm..."
"Let me try it from DOS. Maybe it will work now."
(Thinks: I'm out of options. Whatever.) "OK. The command is 'FORMAT A:'"
"Nope, it gave me an error."
(Thinks: Wait a minute!) "Are you sure that it's the A drive?"
"Oh! That's right! It's the B drive!"
(Looks at display on 101 phone that indicates length of call, notices that it is about nine minutes and forty-five seconds) "OK, now I've given you the instructions on how to format a disk; do it again but for the B drive and call me back if you have any problems, because other people might be trying to call."
"OK."
(Thinks: Thank God it's over.)
-jwgh