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Short stories on normies and tech

Since I have a tech job and have worked in this career field for about 10 years now, I’ve come across quite a few situations that I think would make fun stories to read.

The IoT nut:

This is a co-worker of mine who’s pretty big into IoT stuff. Personally I don’t care about installing wiretaps around my house, but this guy wanted to take it to another level. He was going to setup a connected temperature sensor to his shower head!

I laughed at him at first thinking it was some joke, but he was serious! So then I asked him why.

His response was that he wanted to know when the shower water reached a certain temperature so that he could then re-adjust it to his preferred temperature. This would involve cranking on the hot tap first, then walking out and doing a few things in preparation for the shower like grab a towel or something. When the water reached a certain point in temperature, the sensor would send a notification to his phone stating that the shower was ready. He would then return to the shower and adjust the cold tap enough to where it was the desired temp before stepping in.

I told him that sounds like a massive waste of water, and that I just turn the shower on and step into the thing; it doesn’t take long to warm up! But he really wants that perfect temp.

I’m going to get a little off topic now. I think baths are much better in conserving water than showers. Sure, you can take a quick shower that only takes a few gallons of water versus filling up a tub; anyone can do that. But in reality, does anyone really take a quick shower? Be honest now, you know you like spending a good 15 or even 20 minutes in there jacking off and who knows what else. You can bathe in a tub for as long as you’d like and not waste as much water, and then you can route that perfectly fine bath water out to a garden in the backyard! (unless you live in a suburb or city.)

Bathtub > Shower head.

The IoT nut (Part 2):

Guess what else this crazy nut wants to connect to the internet now? His trash can! To be more precise, the trash can lid itself. I don’t know if it would actually be connected to the internet since it’s using some arduino setup. I laughed at him again, and asked what for?

He says that it would be nice to have a trash can lid that would open automatically when you stand nearby it so that you don’t have to touch it. And the reason in not wanting to touch it was because of dirty hands from handling raw meat and plus it would “look cool.”

So I told him that they make trash cans with peddles you can push with your feet that would open the lid. He said that the trash can right now has one of those peddles, but would prefer that it opened on its own and controllable by an app on his phone so that the function could be toggled, that way the cats won’t accidentally activate it while he and his wife are away.

This stuff is a hobby for this guy, so it’s more of that tinkering enthusiast appeal whether or not it’s actually practical or beneficial, so I can kind of understand where he's coming from. Plus this dude is retirement age and probably bored as hell, so I guess why not?

The porch hawk:

There’s a lady at my job that always keeps her phone up on her desk on its own little perch. What is she watching on that phone? Not Netflix nor YouTube or anything like that. Nope; She’s watching the front porch of her house!

If it weren’t for the company wireless access, she’d probably run thru her data plan in a day because she watches that front porch like a hawk! I almost wonder if there isn’t something wrong with her, because I think it’s a little unusual.

Every time I’m at her desk or nearby working on a service ticket, she always has something going on there. One day it’s a family of birds nesting on the porch, another day its squirrels playing in the front yard or the kids getting off the bus from school. Is this entertainment for her?

I asked her what she was looking for one day and she said that she was waiting on a package to arrive in the mail. I asked if she was having trouble with package thieves, and she said that she just wanted to know when it arrived so that she could text her husband to pick it up after getting home from work. I didn’t want to pry any further, but that seems a little silly. Would he not see it after getting back from work anyhow? You can’t just wait and find out after getting home for yourself? Kind of obsessive, no?

This lady must be the modern equivalent to a Russian Babushka that’s always watching the neighborhood from the window, except now from her phone while at work.

Turbo normie:

This guy is roughly the same age as me, 30. He has a wife and daughter, and is ingrained in product brand names, the current thing, plays Disney music in his office all the time, and talks like a fag. He even told me one day that his favorite part about the super bowl are the ads after unsuccessfully trying to talk about sports ball, which I know nothing about. He worked in the marketing department though, so would always parrot that cheesy marketing corpo language whenever talking. We’re actually on pretty good terms though!

Anyhow, since I work in IT he wanted to have a conversation on tech, because you know me and technology, I just can’t get enough of it! /s

So he’s a very optimistic fella and was talking about how the next generation of kids were going to be so unbelievably smart because of AI and all the great technology we have, and how they would surpass all of us today. Oh boy… He’s also very proud of his daughter for being smart (his words), who I believe is now 5 years old, because he raised her up on an iPad (again, his words), has her taking some basic programming for kids class, and knows how to do computer things with Alexa.

So this must be one of those people that I’ll occasionally see with the “Proud parent of honor roll student” bumper sticker on the back of their car, shortly before cutting me off. I’m sure the programming classes will be beneficial, and perhaps she is smart, but something about all of this seems a bit off to me somehow. It’s like some caricature cutout from a TV show. Maybe I’m just too jaded?

I didn’t want to be a negative nancy black pill dispensary on the the matter of technology, internet, and youth, so I just kept a tight lip on it and nodded my head. To lack such self awareness must be bliss.

Doctor Stink Eye and the NumLock woes:

This one’s a little special to me simply because of the setting. I mentioned this one on the About page already. I use to work IT help desk support for a hospital, albeit they had a different name for the department. It seems like every place has some weird title for what is essentially “IT;” I don’t know why. I think they called it “Information Services,” despite us not being very well informed

So the doctors here were to be prioritized over the common scum. They’re practically treated as Christ himself, and sometimes they let it get to their heads too. I had one doctor here one day give me the stink eye when walking past him in the hallway. Never seen him before or ever spoke to the guy, but boy my presence must have ruined his day. He looked absolutely disgusted. No idea why, although back then I was early 20’s and looked like I absolutely didn’t want to be there (because I sure as hell didn’t), so maybe he was displeased by my lazy millennial composure. I use to not comb my hair back then and just wipe it into shape with my hands, and only ever shave once out of the week.

Fast forward some months later and I get a priority 1 ticket for some doctor that can’t figure out how to type his password. Usually password issues are dealt with by a call center, but if the user is exceptionally retarded, then the call center will kick the can down my road. This came from a dictation room where we had these computers setup with the Nuance Dragon speech to text software. They even had fancy microphones that worked really friggin well! They worked unlike any text to speech software I’ve ever seen.

So lo and behold it’s Doctor Stink Eye himself, and he’s PISSED. I see a clipboard with some papers on the ground in the back where he no doubt threw it in a tantrum. He’s zoned into his phone tip tap tapping away on it, and I’m just standing there after saying “hi.”

After an awkward moment of silence, he finally looks up from his phone at me and barks out, “I don’t know what the hell you guys are doing but I haven’t been able to get onto this <expletives> all day!” And slams his phone down on the table.

The classic “all day” line. Heard it a thousand times and it isn’t going to make me budge any quicker than the minute I receive the ticket, so I don’t curr! But I remain tactful and ask him a few questions, like has he tried signing in from one of the other computers beside him?

“No! I want THIS computer to work! The other computers never work, I want THIS ONE fixed!” And then blah blah blah this is completely unacceptable blah blah blah. Alright fine. So I sit down at the computer to take a look at it and able to sign in with my domain account no problem. He’s in the back tip tapping away on that stupid phone while I’m basically just making a show out of nothing over here. After a few minutes of bullshitting around, I ask him to try signing back into it again. Despite him wanting this resolved urgently, he’s too distracted with that stupid phone of his. Wait a minute later and he comes over to try signing back in again.

I watch him closely as he types because I know he’s up to some sort of shenanigans. As he’s poking in his password, I see him activate and deactivate the Caps Lock for each capitol letter in his password instead of using the shift key! Just unbelievable, but it’s also a common habit among the lower functioning… Then as he gets toward the end of his password, he picks up his hand and takes it over to the numpad, deactivates the Num Lock, and attempts to type in some numbers shortly before hitting Enter!

“See it’s doesn’t work!”

And then I said, “Bro… you turned off the numlock to type in those numbers and you need to use shift to capitalize your letters, not Caps” -

“Are you SERIOUS!? Do you think I haven’t tried that already!?” Uh ohh…

And then I hear this loud rumbling come from his gut. He quickly tries to talk over it by yelling, “I’ve been here ALL DAY trying to get on this damn thing. They’ve changed my password FIVE TIMES! I AM NOT TYPING IT WRONG! THIS COMPUTER IS BROKEN AND I NEED A REPLACEMENT NOW!” Yeah, way to completely ignore me and the issue.

Then he jumps up from his chair and says that he expects the computer to be fixed when he gets back from an appointment, and then quickly leaves the room. I can smell shit coming from off of him as he passes by me. He shat himself in the chair; I could even see a wet spot left behind! Grossss!!!

I started laughing my ass off and ran out of the room back to my office to tell everyone that doctor stink eye shat himself!

Red LED lights make the computer go fast:

This was a meme going around I think sometime in 2010? I have a cousin that’s really into gaming, as was I too at the time. However, he was a console pleb while I was part of the glorious PC Master Race. Actually I was running a cheap ass HP clunker up until that point, because console gaming was too expensive for me. I found it more affordable to buy a middling GPU to play my crappy free to play Asian MMO’s than dropping cash on a console and $50-a-pop-per-game. I didn’t have a job back then.

Anyhow he didn’t know squat about computers and was just getting into the idea of buying one. I was all hardcore at the time because I had just built my first proper gaming PC and was all like “bro don’t waste your money on some over priced alienware crap, just build your own lol!”

Then he asks me why my PC has blue lights in it. I tell him because I like the color blue. And then he says “okay, but aren’t the reds for gaming?”

I asked him “wtf are you talking about?” I thought this was some gag at first, but he actually meant it. He even reiterated and said that when they manufacture the computers, the red lights are to indicate that it’s a gaming brand line of computer. This dude fell for the meme!

Somehow he didn’t make the connection that I picked out each part and assembled this thing together, as if that just wasn’t a possibility. I had to show him in detail that I assembled this computer myself with each part and picked out the blue LED fans because I liked that color. He was still confused and thought I was bullshitting him that I built it, as if it would take some rocket scientist to do what I did. He just killed my glory because I was all like “I'm totally a badass for building this!”

He one day bought some parts for a computer based off of a video he saw on YouTube and had no idea how to put it together. I had to help him over a Skype call without being able to see anything to put it together. Miraculously we got it working, but it was short lived. Only a few months later and his mom dropped water down the PC while cleaning his room. RIP.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Comments:

• i hate and love tech-illiterates at the same time x)

  
  Nov 4, 2023 Permalink Reply

• Red goes fasta ya git

  
  Oct 26, 2023 Permalink Reply

• Dont redirect your bath water into your garden pls its full of shampoo!!

  
  Oct 20, 2023 Permalink Reply

• I can relate to the IoT nut story. This guy I work with brags about how he can control his entire house from his phone, and always makes a comment when I have a terminal open. He's a nice guy but very weird. He probably thinks the same thing about me.

  
  Oct 14, 2023 Permalink Reply

• I didn't know that 2010 meme about red lights. Tech-illiterates can be really funny.

  
  Sep 10, 2023 Permalink Reply

• Kids raised on iPads are the exact opposite of smart. They're raised to be socially retarded and aren't able to function in society without a screen in front of them.

  
  Aug 17, 2023 Permalink Reply

  • The most media and technology saturated generation will be the least tech and media literate one. This will only end in tears.

    
    Aug 21, 2023 Permalink Reply

    • It's more of an NPC issue than a generation one. NPCs were always tech illiterate, the difference being that now it's made more obvious with tech being more ingrained into our lives.

      
      Aug 22, 2023 Permalink Reply

      • Fair enough. People couldn't even set the clock on their VCRs back in the day.

        
        Aug 22, 2023 Permalink Reply

      • NPCs? you mean normies?

        
        Sep 5, 2023 Permalink Reply

• It always blows my mind how people who always work on computers refuse to learn even the most basic of shortcuts. They just roll with the same mousepunk set up they always had.

  
  Aug 16, 2023 Permalink Reply

• What is Disney music

  
  Aug 15, 2023 Permalink Reply

  • Just Disney music. Music owned by the Disney company.

    
    Aug 16, 2023 Permalink Reply

• "Talks like a fag?" Lainchanners at it again with the homophobia, I guess...

  
  Aug 14, 2023 Permalink Reply

  • Have you seen Idiocracy (2006)? I recommend you watch it; it's part of a joke bro. -Cozy

    
    Aug 14, 2023 Permalink Reply

  • Well, you definitely can be homosexual and NOT act/talk like a faggot. If you choose otherwise, don't be surprised when people have a negative opinion about you...

    
    Aug 19, 2023 Permalink Reply

    • This.

      
      Aug 22, 2023 Permalink Reply

    • Plus, it's kind of a symbol of performative toxic femininity, as in 'look at me I'm so socially powerful and sexually desirable.' A personality against cooperation. Fag comes from the word burden for a reason. All passive/pursued sexual roles are immoral.

      
      Oct 14, 2023 Permalink Reply