Perpetuating Their Own Importance

I recently recently purchased a new laptop- wee, right?  I would say it doesn't quite live up to the last one I purchased.  The last one I purchased, a Vostro 1500, was indestructible   I dropped it several times, dropped things on it several times, and it kept going.  The keyboard was the contiguous keyboard (where all the keys touch) and the mouse pad worked great.  It was just old, so I replaced it with a newer Vostro.

It has a chiclet keyboard so that food and other garbage gets stuck between the keys.

The shielding on the case is so thin that that the mouse often jumps around the screen, just when I bring my hands to touch the mouse pad.

But as frustrating as this new laptop is, there is one feature that I've liked...until now.

The fingerprint sign-in.

Despite having sliced open my fingers before with putty knives, metal cans, and serrated kitchen spatulas, I thought that having a fingerprint sign-in was a great idea.  And I've loved being able to one-handedly swipe my finger and get into my computer.  Particularly when I'm trying to balance something else (or someone else) in my other hand.

But my cats have decided to teach me a lesson I should have already known about fingerprints:  they don't really last forever.

Whilst attempting to fend off one of my beloved companions in the middle of the night, I found myself craddling a very bloody, very deeply scratched index finger.  The next morning, when I went down to my laptop, I opened up the lid, and thought,


"ERRRRRRRRRRRR"

As my fingerprint was completely hidden in a bandaid, I was glad that there was also a password entry option into the system.

Now that I have the bandaid off, it is obvious that the fingerprint will never be the same.  There is a big long seam through the center of it, so it is (rightly so) not recognized as the same fingerprint.

Once into my system, I went looking for the fingerprint reader software to update the fingerprint.  After all, I am  an administrator on my own machine.

Well, the instructions for resetting the fingerprint were fantastic.  I mean really stellar.

Step 1:  Scan your registered fingerprint.
Step 2:  Scan your new fingerprint.

o_O

I sat dumbfounded.  I couldn't believe Step 1!  I mean, I only scratched my finger- what happens to people that more permanently lose their fingerprints (in, like, a whole finger kind of way?)  Gruesome, but honestly a problem here!

I searched the internet.

Same glorious instructions.

I contacted Dell Support.

The only solution to this problem is a BIOS reset of the passwords in the system.  They offered to do this for me...by having me let them log into the system and just do it.  The last time I called Dell and let them run an Active-X/Remote Session, they blacked out the screen and I lost all communication with them.  I had to hard restart my laptop.  This time, I refused and told the agent that they would just have to walk me through it.

I think that the sound of o_O could be heard half way around the world.  The agent gave me some high level instructions, "You need to set the BIOS administrator password, erase the BIOS administrator password, and then reactivate the fingerprint software.".

It was obvious to me that this agent was just like 99% of all other IT Support and Developers I've met.  They really like to perpetuate the importance of their own existence.  Have you ever noticed how they NEVER want to tell you what they're doing in your system?  I don't know if it's ego or what, but they ALWAYS, hide the monitor from you (if they can), pull up a bunch of windows to hide what they're actually doing, and when you ask what they're doing or to walk you through it, they act like it's so impossibly difficult to explain, you'd have to be a computer Einstein to grasp the simplest of steps.

Having been a professor, a scientist, a graphic artist, and now IT BA, I think that I'm pretty much capable of learning anything, if they only walked you through it like a reasonable person.  I think about all of the testiness that is shown to you when something "bad" happens on a computer- like a blue screen- or even something dumb like forgetting your password.  IT Support must deal with these issues REPEATEDLY, and often REPEATEDLY from the same people.  

Gee, wouldn't it be grand if they just told you how to troubleshoot some of these steps yourself?  Like, "when you see a blue screen, write down the numeric code that comes up so that you can report it to us."

Or

"This is the temp folder to check for your opened work if you system crashes while you're working on something."

But as a group, 99% of them, whether by code or by mass agreement, choose to keep other people ignorant so that you have to keep going back to them for the same sorts of problems. Just think what they could do with their time if they actually cared enough to teach you how to take care of your own computer.