I spend a lot of each day answering support questions. Many of the questions we get are really good questions. Some present us with difficult investigations that can take hours or even days to understand and solve. A few remind me of a story I heard once from someone I used to work with.
This guy used to provide support for some sophisticated laboratory equipment. Users would call in with the usual assortment of problems and he would help them solve whatever problems they were having.
Occasionally, someone would call in and say that their equipment was simply not working. No matter what they did, the machine would not respond in any way. When asked the obvious question, "Is the machine plugged in to a wall outlet?" the answer was always "Of course it is plugged in." But sometimes, after hours of further investigation, it turned out that the machine was, in fact, not plugged in at all.
So, he came up with a different way to ask the question. He would say, "To solve this problem, I need you to unplug the machine, leave it unplugged for 15 seconds, and then plug it back in." As the person on the other end of the phone carefully followed the power cord back to a wall outlet, they could often be heard gasping as they discovered that the machine was actually not plugged in. After plugging it in, the machine started responding correctly. This approach saved many hours of investigation based on the assumption that the machine was actually plugged in.
Now, I am not saying that we get any support requests like this. I am just saying that sometimes, some random association makes me think of this story.
Michael
