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A Letter On Behalf of the World's PC Fixers
Barence writes "PC Pro's Steve Cassidy has written a letter on behalf of all the put-upon techies who've ever been called by a friend to fix their PC. His bile is directed at a friend who put a DVD bought on holiday into their laptop, and then wondered what went wrong. 'Once you stuck that DVD in there and started saying "yes, OK" to every resulting dialog box, you sank the whole thing,' Cassidy writes. 'It doesn't take 10 minutes to sort that out; it requires a complete machine reload to properly guarantee the infection is history. No, there is no neat and handy way I've been keeping secret that allows you to retain your extensive collection of stolen software licenses loaded on that laptop. I do disaster recovery, not disaster participation.'"
My brother, who isn't averse to saying "you can fix my computer", is a truck driver. Next time he comes to visit me while on vacation I'm going to get him to haul some furniture for me. I wonder if that will be enough to make him get the point.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Generally, programmers are not asked to program for free by relatives. With mechanics, people know they need pay, they generally don't ask for free services unless you are immediate family, or an old friend who owes them. Accountants never do anyone's taxes for free, and you wouldn't ask a teacher to tutor your kids for free. Do you see the difference? It's not the "people are stupid" part that's the problem, it's the "your skills aren't worth anything" part that upsets the PC fixer.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And switched to Linux/Solaris/NetBSD. Now I can claim ignorance when presented with some Windows related issue. And people quit asking for my help when I started suggesting they try Ubuntu instead.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Oh yes, I've tried it many times. Generally, they're already at their wit's end with Windows bloatware, viri, and cheapo printers that don't work half the time. Oh, and lets not forget the layers of WiFi management software piled one on top of each other causing even more confusion.
Ok, so I recommend they try out a Mac at the nearest Apple store. I tell them there's generally only one way to do something in the Apple world, but it works 99.99% of the time, all the time. The floor salesman are so good at Apple, I just let them handle that part.
A week or so goes by after hearing they got a new iMac. At which point they love it, but are still trying to get used to navigating the GUI (as you pointed out). But they're not angry or frustrated. They just happen to be in that discovery mode still. But the best part is when they ask me "Hey, on this Apple, where do I find X feature?". I just tell them the truth. "Umm, good question, not sure. But poke around in this menu and I'm sure you'll find it". Well, they do without further assistance and thus feel satisfied and EMPOWERED. Mission accomplished.
Mac, that shit just works man.
Life is not for the lazy.
I used to do it too, for everyone I knew, friends, work, family etc, and it got really irritating not only because they always called me at odd hours and any time they felt like it, but they also made the same damn mistakes. They aren't stupid, just unwilling, I mean, why bother learning something I show in five minutes, when they can call this idiot any time something goes wrong.
So, I've stopped doing it, when someone asked, I use linux, my knowledge is out of date, I don't have time, and so on. Now, they only call me when they're truly desperate, deadlines looming, sensitive data in danger and so on, and they pay, oh yes, they pay.
It can be worse. I'm an EE, and people I know think I can automagically fix *any* electronic device ever created.
One guy wanted me to fix his neon beer sign. I know just enough about neon signs to know I don't want to mess around with voltages like that.
Sometimes I get lucky. One friend called me and said the ceiling fan he installed is working oddly, and wondered if I knew what was wrong. From 10 miles away. :-/ A sudden brain wave made me ask if he had connected it to a dimmer switch. Sure enough, he had.
Malware makers can impersonate legitimate software makers. For example, google for VLC, and look at how many fake sites there are (the real one is http://www.videolan.org/). Right now, the highest suspicious one is only #5, but if they can SEO themselves above the real site (or buy an ad placement)...
I suggest setting these down yourself, if you're frequently called upon to help. Generally, I've found it actually makes people slightly happier with you - apparently, placing more value on your skills makes others value them more as well.
I find that when you are kind to family and friends, they are kind back. I help people with computer issues and in return they help me in their skilled areas. My dad, while not a mechanic, has a great deal of automotive experience and worked in the industry many a year. He has helped my numerous times with car problems. A good friend who comes to me for computer advice has been plenty happy to help me with home improvement work, as a couple of examples.
Part of being a family is helping one another in ways that you can. That can be emotional support, advice, using your skills, etc. Give and get. Now if the other party is someone who just takes and takes, well then ya they aren't someone who you help, or probably associate with all that much. However you find that in general if you are nice, other people will be too.
I'm very happy to help friends and family and they are happy to help me. Works out well.
I've found that people who are "PC fixers" and work for free, tend to screw up more than they fix.
I used to do computer work for females at work, since I considered it a friendly gesture. (I'm not terribly attracted to girls, btw, most times I was looking for friendship.) Then I noticed that after the work was done, just like straight guys have found, you get entirely shut down. I noticed there were two things going on: 1.) the girl assumed that I was fixing her computer because I was interested in her tits and 2.) actual attraction to said tits has nothing to do with it, i.e. there's nothing I was doing wrong like drooling all over her.
I don't fix anyone's computers for free anymore. I started telling the girls at work that it would cost $100 per hour for a minimum of one hour for me to even look at it, and they stopped asking after about the 3rd time.
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I'm beginning to see a pattern. If others consider your profession a "hobby" rather than a "real" profession, then they may be more likely to ask for free help.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I kept saying that to one particular, anonymous relative who kept needing assistance with his/her computer. Eventually, (s)he did buy a Mac, and guess what? No more virus/malware problems, but this person managed to lose the icons for Word and Excel in the dock (twice) -- one time actually having *deleted* Office entirely, and I'm still not sure how (s)he managed to do that -- and even completely locked the Mac up a couple of times. I use a Mac sometimes too, although I prefer Linux, and have never, ever seen anything like the problems this person has with his/her Mac.
Macs are good, and they are designed to be used by non-technical people, but they are not foolproof. A determined enough user can break a Mac, too.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
The rant was concerning a security problem -- specifically, an unprincipled and careless user installed a lot of dodgy software, got burned, and took the techie's help for granted. The user's behavior is consistent: it's clear she doesn't think about the welfare of others or the consequences of her actions, so it's no surprise that she's ungrateful for the techie's help, and doesn't appreciate the amount of work involved.
I love helping friends and family with computer problems -- but the problems I get are requests for help in installing a hard drive, configuring a printer, or figuring out how to use some software. I usually get generous thanks for helping them.
The author of the rant needs to deal with his real problem: he has lousy friends. That the immediate problems were computer problem is incidental.