View all posts in the Life of Tech Support series.

Today I went to help a user.  This user had a blue piece of tape over the camera on her laptop.  I laughed quietly when I saw it and she asked what I was laughing at.  I pointed to the tape over the camera and she didn’t laugh or smile, instead she said, “I don’t think it’s funny, I know you’re watching me!”

I tried to explain how I don’t care to watch her sitting at her computer, and with over 1,000 computers to support, I don’t have time to watch her as she types emails.  I also explained that the camera has a small green LED light that turns on anytime the camera is in use.  Didn’t make a difference.

On my way out I said, “Are you sure the blue tape will stop someone with a ‘negative blue filter‘?”  I have no idea if such a thing even exists, but I couldn’t resist adding to the paranoia.

I recently had a MacBook that had a mouse problem.  The client said the mouse was jumping to the top left no matter what she tried.  She restarted the laptop, connected a different mouse, but nothing worked.  She tried using just the trackpad and that didn’t help either.

In the end, it was a Promethan board problem and when I removed the Promethean board USB cable, everything worked fine, including both mice and the trackpad.

Solution was to replace the Promethean board USB cable.

I’m using EMC Insignia’s Retrospect from my Mac Xserve and my clients are set up correctly, but some of my clients will never back up.  What can I do to get these 3 clients to backup?

I don’t know why, but sometimes Retrospect will turn the Retrospect client settings to “Off” after it backs up.  To fix it you just need to turn it back on.

Open the applications folder of the clients who are having trouble backing up and open Retrospect Client.  Click the “On” button and close Retrospect Client.  It will now back up.

Retrospect Client