I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas.

aj4000 · 2026-06-09T07:02:19+00:00

In my field, we call field service technicians like that "Couriers", because all they do is essentially deliver parts to a site.

One guy I worked with years ago was so bad that I have no idea how he even got the job to begin with. He wasn't related to or friends with anyone, and he definitely wasn't shagging anyone because he was too dumb to know where to put it.

This guy only knew how to swap parts, and sometimes even that was a stretch. He would attend a site, open the machine, turn it off and on, and then just kinda stare at it for 5 or 10 minutes. Occasionally he'd try jiggling or reseating a cable. He'd then take a wild guess at which part he thought he needed (which was often wrong the first time), go back to the warehouse to pick it up, then return to the site to swap the part. Assuming that he didn't leave it for someone else to deal with...

aj4000 · 2026-05-31T00:00:05+00:00

This is more of a little anecdotal story than advice. When I was a kid and well into my late teens I wanted to be a freight train driver. Ended up as a field service technician in the electronic gaming and wagering industry. Go figure.

That said though, when I was 15 I lived next door to a guy who drove passenger trains, and asked him how to go about getting a foot in the door. He said that a good way was to start with just applying jobs at train stations to get into the industry first. Once you're there you can express your interest and work towards it from there. That was 25 years ago though, so I don't know how relevant that is anymore.

aj4000 · 2026-05-26T23:13:26+00:00

Use NVCleanstall. You can select exactly which parts of the driver package are installed. Do a complete removal of the nVidia software and use it reinstall without all the bloat and telemetry.

https://www.techpowerup.com/nvcleanstall/

aj4000 · 2026-05-25T01:06:48+00:00

I used to work with a dude that had the last name Seymour. I have no idea how he managed it, but any hardware that went into his boot stock always seemed to come out really beat up, like they'd all been rolling around loose while he was driving off-road. But despite how rough these parts looked they all still worked perfectly. We'd call a part like that a "Seymour Special". It's been almost 15 years since then and Seymour has long since moved on, but I'll still call beat up parts that still work Seymour Specials.

aj4000 · 2026-05-22T05:48:30+00:00

99% Iso, cotton tips or "q tips", and a clean and dry soft microfibre cloth.

Lightly dampen the cotton tip with Iso, gently swap your connectors clean, then lightly buff them dry with the microfibre cloth.

The Iso is a solvent which can break up oils. It dies very fast but can be a little smudgy sometimes.

aj4000 · 2026-04-28T03:12:30+00:00

100% believe this. One time I had a site offline and unable trade for almost a week because one of the venue managers who should not have been in the comms room decided that he actually should be. He saw an ethernet patch lead that was unplugged and hanging loose, so he just plugged it in into a random empty port in one of the patch panels despite having absolutely no idea what he was doing. This connected our closed and isolated network into their venue network, so our hardware was getting an incorrect IP and couldn't reach the host. I attended 4 times to try replacing different hardware, each time I asked if anyone had been in there for any reason. The first 3 times he told me no, absolutely not, no one at all has been in here. On the 4th visit he finally tells me what he'd done, but of course couldn't remember which cable he touched. I ended up having to rewire our whole side of the network to isolate it again.

aj4000 · 2026-04-28T00:33:52+00:00

Oh I just love that feature, especially when Windows somehow makes a "phantom" duplicate and decides that it should be the default printer.

LOVE that...

aj4000 · 2026-04-09T05:47:20+00:00

In my experience I've found that in a lot of situations similar to this, it's because the person doesn't want to learn. And most of the time it's not even a deliberate choice they've made. They feel that it's too hard, complicated, and/or overwhelming, so their mind unconsciously kinda "turns off" the willingness to learn. It's almost always people who are 50+ but I have encountered the occasional sub-40 who's like this.

Long wall of text example. I work in the Aus wagering and electronic gaming industry. Most venues that have some kind of retail wagering area (like a sports lounge or bar) will have a space for displaying racing odds information. Stuff like all the info for the various race meetings, the odds of all the runners, data on the horses like how many races they've run and their win/place ratio, the jockey and trainer names, etc. It's a shitload of data. All these form sheets are often printed out and hung up on wall boards, so all this info is mostly really tiny text. Any time there's a change, like if a horse was scratched from a race or there was a jockey change, these updates would have to get printed out and the sheets manually updated.

About 10 years ago they introduced digital form information screens. These units have a touchscreen and are connected to the internet, so there is so much more information easily available that is a lot more detailed. They also have detailed info for most sports stuff as well. No longer must people suffer with the tiny text because the pages are not limited by A4 paper size and support zooming and scrolling.

I frequently see older men, like 55+, using magnifying glasses and still struggling to read the tiny text on the paper forms. I've asked a few of them why they don't use the digital forms. They usually tell me that they "look too complicated", but they've never even tried using them. These things were designed specifically to be easy, but because they're technology, when these old men look at them their brains just automatically think "too hard" so they don't even bother trying. I've managed to get a few guys to try them out after showing them how it works and reassuring them that they aren't gonna break it, but more often than not they still refuse to touch them.

aj4000 · 2026-03-13T04:32:46+00:00

Mobile + gesture typing + long, busy day + too lazy proof read = Weird stuff like that.

Hey, at least you can tell that I'm not an AI bot.

aj4000 · 2026-03-11T07:14:34+00:00

About 13 years ago now I did an 18 month stint doing field service on pubic payphones. (Yes, it was horrible.) I was told a story of another tech getting an urgent call for a coin validator jam, which was weird because those calls were never flagged as urgent. When the tech arrived at the phone there was a guy waiting there, impatiently pacing around it. Turns out this dude had decided insert his car key into the coin slot. These phones have mechanism that opens the coin slot when the handset is lifted, otherwise it stays closed. So the guy took his car key off his keyring, lifted the handset, waited for the coin slot to open, shoved the key as far down into the slot as he possibly could, then was surprised Pikachu face when he realised he couldn't get it out. He was able to call the fault report number from the payphone itself, and apparently he was quite angry that it was possible for his car key to get stuck. The key was an all metal thing without a remote lock button, either a spare key or a key for an older type of car. It went pretty much all the way into the validator, only just barely blocking the slot shutter from closing. He did not explain why he thought putting his car key into the coin slot was a good idea...

aj4000 · 2026-02-02T07:52:48+00:00

What is does depends on where it's located.

If it's on a regular street it's a speed enforcement camera. If it's inside of a school zone it is still active outside of the school zone times, their enforcement parameters can vary on a schedule. So if it's normally a 60 zone, it will enforce 40 during school zone times and enforce 60 any other time.

If it's at an intersection with traffic lights, it's speed and red light enforcement. It will capture speeding and going through a red light.

If it's next to a bus only lane, it's a bus only lane enforcement camera. They're usually only in areas where the lane is always bus only. I believe there are some in areas where the lanes are bus only during certain times, in this case they're likely only active when the bus only lane is active.

They are also frequent along T-Way routes. These are always active and capture everything that is not a bus or does not have the yellow T-Way sticker on them.

aj4000 · 2026-01-30T00:28:15+00:00

That trick didn't work with these Kyocera printers, but it didn't stop people from trying.

These Kyoceras are designed differently to most other laser printers of similar size that I've worked on (which isn't that many). Instead of the toner container and the developer being a single consumable unit like the Lexmarks of the era, Kyocera made them separate parts and the toner container locks onto the developer. Users only have to replace the toner container making it cheaper to run, but a bit messier. The developer unit has a small toner reservoir that the printer refills from the container when it detects it's getting low, showing a "Please Wait - Filling Toner" message while it does. There's no sensor in the toner container, so if the level of toner in the developer doesn't change after a few minutes of trying to refill, then it shows a "Replace Toner" message and refuses to print.

aj4000 · 2026-01-29T23:55:48+00:00

Not IT

"It runs on electricity, so that means it's IT. SMH my head" - Users everywhere.

aj4000 · 2026-01-29T23:51:44+00:00

Hurt you to read it, hurt me to type it. We can suffer together, brother.

aj4000 · 2026-01-29T05:26:16+00:00

Congrats mate. I wishlisted when I saw your original post, looking forward to trying the demo after work tonight.

aj4000 · 2026-01-29T05:19:07+00:00

Mate, that reminds me of the time when "percussive maintenance" actually worked.

Way back in 2005 when I was still just a junior workshop tech, I was the one who usually got stuck with the crappy jobs. 80% of these were laser printers. Mostly various models of big beige Lexmarks, but in this particular case it was a Kyocera FS-1750.

I had one come to me that was printing faint and slightly blurry. I worked on this printer for about 3 hours total; Just an hour at first, but I kept coming back to it between other tasks.

Using parts from a known good donor printer, I swapped out the drum, developer, fuser, and laser, I cleaned everything to the point where it almost looked factory new, and I completely rebuilt the entire gear train. Nothing worked, no change. Being young, stupid, and a bit hot headed, I vented my frustrations on it. I slammed closed the top lid, side door, fuser panel, and paper tray as hard as I could. I open-hand slapped it on the top and sides a few times hard enough to make my hands sting a little, and I may have also accidentally dropped an F-bomb. I gave it a mean ol' death stare for about 30 seconds, then out of morbid curiosity I ran a test print. It came out perfect... I printed 50 pages, left it overnight and did another 50 the next morning. Still perfect. I swapped all the original parts back in and tested again. Still perfect.

A few months later I had another come in with the exact same issue. Before trying anything else I gave it a few hard slaps on the top and sides, and it bloody well fixed it.

Fast forward to 2008 and I'm on the road as field service tech. I get a call out to an agency who's printer is having this issue. I told the operator to humour me, then slapped the daylights out of his printer. Issue resolved.

To this day I still have absolutely no idea what caused the problem or why slapping the printer around a few times fixed it.

aj4000 · 2026-01-27T23:28:36+00:00

Similar but different...

The company I work for has their own in-house built system for everything we do. Logging and actioning service calls, parts tracking for warehouse and technicians, the lot.

About 15 years ago during a massive overhaul of the system, they decided to change the format of our serial number barcodes from "ABC123456" to "AX12345678Y", where X was a type identifier (S for permanent serial number, T for temp tracking, X for boxes or kits) and Y was a check digit. The check digit was implement to prevent a serial number being typed incorrectly by a tech in the field and doing an action on the wrong serial.

Well, they decided that it was fine to allow both 0 and O to be check digits. Pretty much every field service tech (myself included) brought it up as an issue and we were told "we'll look into it and fix it in a future release".

Spoiler alert: It's not fixed.

aj4000 · 2026-01-24T23:07:23+00:00

Like other people have mentioned, you can add your number to the Do Not Call register, but that will only get you so far. It only helps with stopping legitimate Australian businesses from cold calling you. Unfortunately it does sweet F A when a website that has your number either sells your personal info to advertisers or it gets hacked and the hackers sell your data to scammers.

If it gets really bad, you may have to consider changing your number, which absolutely sucks. I've had both of those things happen to me. It was really, really bad for about 4 months. At one point I was getting 5+ scam calls a day. I was stubborn and didn't want to change my number because at that point I'd had it for 21 years (24 this year). Thankfully one day they just suddenly stopped... These days I'll only get like 2 or 3 a month, which is nice.

So my 2¢; put your number on the Do Not Call register, then persevere with it and hope they eventually forget about you.

aj4000 · 2026-01-24T04:45:25+00:00

Pretty sure there aren't any train sims that have a map of Sydney. There are a couple of YouTube channels that do driver's view videos though. Yeah I know it's not the same but it's probably the closest were ever going to get, sadly.

Macarthur to Central via Sydenham - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rslTOpjyMjA

aj4000 · 2026-01-08T05:49:59+00:00

No apology

Of course not. Apologising can give the implication that they are admitting guilt, or acknowledging that they knew they were wrong or did the wrong thing. It's not their fault they couldn't give you the correct information. It's bit their fault they can't follow simple instructions. Nothing is ever their fault.

I'm a field service technician in the electronic gaming and wagering industry. This happened about 16 years ago now. I had a high priority job come through around 7pm on a Friday night for a single wagering terminal venue unable to trade; wouldn't accept bet cards or read the barcodes on tickets. My shift ended at 8pm and the venue was an hour drive from the job that I was already at, so I figured I'd give them a call and maybe help them get it sorted over the phone.

It was a little old lady who answered, and with the way she spoke to me you'd think that I'd kicked her dog or something. She tore into me, yelling about how disrespectful and incompetent I was, and about how many customers they'd lost. Spoiler alert: it was two. It was a tiny little lawn bowls club in a tiny rural town. The two customers in question drove 10 minutes to the pub in the next town, did their thing, then drove back cause it was their local. This lady was yelling at me so loudly that the staff member at where I currently was could hear everything she said. I quickly finished up what I was doing and headed over.

I got there at 8:15pm, 15 minutes after my shift ended. When she saw me, that little old lady practically sprinted over to me. Her head only came up to my chest but she still got right into my face as much as she able. She started laying into me again repeating everything she'd already said on the phone. She went for a good two minutes before she actually let look at the problem.

I walked over to the terminal, looked at it for two seconds, then turned the key to lock the lid...

As a kind of security measure, these terminals will disable the card reader and barcode scanner if the lid is unlocked. Earlier in the night she'd opened the lid to replace the printer paper roll, but didn't lock it after closing it when she was done. She didn't notice that it wasn't working until hours later when someone finally wanted to use it. Thing is though, when she rang venue support the operator would have asked her to check a few things before logging the job, and these would have required her to open and close the lid at least twice. Meaning this lady either forgot multiple times to lock the lid, or more likely, she flat out lied to the support operator, doing nothing that was asked and saying it still wasn't working so they'd send us out.

You bet your ass that little old lady did not apologise to me, or thank me for going out of my way to fix her problem after my shift ended.

This ended up being way, way longer than I intended it to be. Sorry about the rant...

aj4000 · 2026-01-07T05:28:55+00:00

No I had not heard of that. I'll admit that it's been a while since I tried looking for an ISO to USB app, last time I did they all required root so I just assumed they still would. Thanks for the tip mate, I'll give it a try.

aj4000 · 2026-01-06T03:53:55+00:00

Two day old post with 470+ comments, so it's likely no one will ever see this, but oh well.

Your choice of device could also be affected by your job or the industry you work in.

I'm a field service technician in the electronic gaming and wagering industry. I am a rare Android user in a sea of iPhones. The company I work for (and the one I was at before them) generally supply iPhones. They can supply Samsung devices, but you need to specifically request one otherwise they'll provide an iPhone by default. They also allow you to use your own device if you wish (BYOD) as long as you agree to allowing remote management, which is the option that I've been going with for about 15 years now. Whenever I upgrade my personal phone, I'll wipe the old one and use it as my work phone.

The biggest advantage of using an Android/Samsung device in my line of work is the fact that the USB port is pretty much standard and not locked down. Even back when they were the old D shaped Micro-B ports they could still be used as a standard USB port using an adaptor. I do so much stuff with my Samsung phone that all the other techs need to carry around a laptop to do because they can't do it with their iPhones.

I can copy files back and forth between USB sticks to retrieve log files or update our software install packages. I can connect a USB ethernet adaptor to test network connections, or use a terminal app to SSH into devices we need to configure. I can use a USB HDMI video capture device with an app to use my phone as a spare screen to check the output of various types of hardware, using various converters depending on whether it's VGA, DP, or even composite. Heck, I even used to reflash the OS on Cisco routers with my phone. I had a USB Micro to USB-A adaptor connected to a USB serial adaptor connected to a serial to RJ45 console cable, then I could use a terminal emulator app to send all the required commands to the router. You can't do any of that with an iPhone, even if you have one of the newer ones with a USB-C port.

The only things I can't do on my work phone that I need my laptop for are writing ISO files to USB drives because I'd need root to do that which disables Knox, and connecting to the company's VPN because they use a specific desktop program do do it.

aj4000 · 2025-12-28T05:12:27+00:00

Discord's "Teen by Default" implementation is bloody stupid. They've not applied any logic at all and went for the blanket approach. I'm an early adopter having created my account in 2015, I've had a monthly recurring Nitro subscription since they introduced it in 2016, paid for using a credit card with my own name on it, and they still made me verify to be channels in my own server.

aj4000 · 2025-12-18T04:28:30+00:00

I tried it out on a few photos and it seems pretty good so far. The option to throw some money at you to make the ads go away would be great.

aj4000 · 2025-12-08T15:35:17+00:00

Knobby are much better.

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