I'll bet you $10 it's not the cable!

Happened to be on site at our call center to turn up some ports and provide direction to contractors standing up workstations for a new training room. Medium sized project I've been working on for a while.

Walking through the halls, get flagged by one of the call center reps. Early 30s chubby dude with a beard and a Dungeons and Dragons subreddit pulled up on one of his monitors, coulda mistaken him for one of us.

"Are you IT?!"

"Yup, what's up?"

"I need a new one of these." he says, gesturing to the thin client on his desk. "My screen is all screwed up, it's driving me nuts."

Our thin clients have two dvi ports, his monitors are using vga cables into vga->dvi adapters. Display is pretty rough, scan lines are apparent and there's some color shifting. Takes me about a second to diagnose.

"Naw, you need a new cable. I have one in my car, I'll grab it in a minute."

Should have been the end of it. Easy resolution, no problem.

"No, you don't understand. I guarantee you it's not the cable. It's the CPU. I need a new one. I've tried everything."

Okay pal. "Tell you what, let me replace the cable and if there's still an issue I can put a ticket in to order you a new workstation."

"I bet you $10 it's not the cable."

"I'll take that bet."

I have a straight through DVI-D -> DVI-D cable in my car which I had grabbed on a whim on my way over. I don't do too much field work these days but it's nice to have supplies on hand. Swap the cable out, immediately fixes the problem.

Dude actually tried to pay up, cash in hand, so credit to him. I declined, but am definitely going to hold it over his head next time he calls.## TLDR Summary:

Early 30s chubby dude with a beard and a Dungeons and Dragons subreddit pulled up on one of his monitors, coulda mistaken him for one of us. Happened to be on site at our call center to turn up some ports and provide direction to contractors standing up workstations for a new training room. "Tell you what, let me replace the cable and if there's still an issue I can put a ticket in to order you a new workstation." Our thin clients have two dvi ports, his monitors are using vga cables into vga->dvi adapters. "I need a new one of these." "Naw, you need a new cable. I need a new one.