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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
Apparently word hasn't gotten out that you "know horses"... Those fuckers are about as fun to fix as eMachines, and substantially more likely to attack you.
Hey, Some of us play Magic: The Gathering. Don't lump us in with those pokemon losers!
It's been 13 years since I did front-line support for home PC's. Back then I spent a lot of time fixing the computers of my relatives.
When I got a job writing and supporting industrial software for a pipeline company I started getting "out of touch" with home systems. Requests for assistance started getting replies beginning with, "I don't know if I can help - I haven't really done that kind of work in a while." Horse crap, to be sure, but it worked.
Now I help my parents when they need it, and recently I replaced a keyboard in my sister's laptop - but requests from cousins, aunts, and uncles have long since stopped.
Play dumb. It Works.
You've never tried this, have you? The sort of person who is easily frustrated by technology but has been barely getting by on windows gets utterly enraged when presented with different UI paradigms. I know because I tried this "fix" a couple of times for people. The problem isn't that either UI is too difficult-- the problem is that you're dealing with somebody who is utterly refusing to learn anything, and handing them a new OS is asking them to learn quite a few things all at once.
It's a perfectly reasonable response. All the computers on TV have a nigh-magical, unerringly task-specific UI (magically only available to the team's 'geeky tech genius') that can do anything the plot requires. In this case, the plot of their personal psychodrama requires magically fixing their machine. And you, the team's geeky tech genius, have just failed....
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
Mechanics who deal with people who figured the 'little oil can light' wasn't anything serious and kept driving.
Mechanics generally draw the line at fixing the results of that for free. Yet computer repairers are often expected to do exactly that.
If you are doing this professionally, fine. You're getting paid to deal with the headaches, you generally get paid an hourly rate to sort it out.
The referenced article refers to someone telling a friend that their problem is not something they can fix in 10 minutes for free. I feel this is totally reasonable.
Ive lost count of the amount of free support I gave to friends and family when I used to fix computers for a living. Some of it I was happy to do either due to the relationship I had with the person or the amount of good will they had generated through our personal history. Others were imposing on what was little more than an acquaintance to avoid paying a professional when they had no intention of ever repaying the favour.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
You just need to learn to say no. This works 100%:
Did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said "Free PC repair"?
You know WHY you didn't see that sign?
'Cause it ain't there, 'cause repairing dead PCs ain't my fucking business, that's why!
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
I think the point of particular bitterness, for the "computer fixers" is that there is something about computer fixing that seems to completely annihilate the social norms concerning asking people to exercise their job and/or job-related skills for free, because of some(sometimes rather tenuous) interpersonal connection.
When it's strictly business, lousy customers and messy problems come with the territory. For whatever reason, though, anybody whose profession remotely touches computers(even if your background in SAN architectures makes you no more qualified than anybody else to reload windows on a hosed box) is liable to be asked to perform a multi-hours slogging match under impossible constraints by assorted acquaintances and relatives of some distance...
So essentially you have 4 angles of attack instead of 1, each with security settings deliberately set to something different instead of something, say, secure? Tell me again how this in any way would limit possible attack vectors. Actually, tell me if you even know what that word means.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
If that does not work, get a copy of the tech support script from... well, pretty much any tech company in existence. Then read it with a sloooooow ruuuural draaaaawwwl. If they interrupt you, then look confused and start over at the beginning.
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.
"If I knew how to do computer, I would help You so you should help me." Well my brother did help me move from my parents' house to my apartment --- ten years ago.
I wouldn't mind if he actually LEARNED something, but he's still stuck at the "how do I make firefox fill the whole screen" or "I have firefox open - how do I get back to desktop?" stage (try minimize and maximize like I taught you back in 1999). He never learns.
Just shut the hell up. I'd mod you down even lower but I see you're already at (-1) you fucking cockstucker. You really should be BANNED from posting
Are you the brother?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
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.
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.
It was a perfectly rational decision; I decided since I didn't have tits, I'd better learn tech skills or nobody would talk to me!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
Dear [Insert Name Here],
I completely sympathize with your situation, but I will not touch your computer. First off, I can't 'just take a look at it.' If I take a look, I promise that I will find things wrong with it. And then, inevitably, you'll ask me to go from 'just looking' to tweak it. Then after tweaking, full on, sleeves rolled up, virus killing, settings-changing, registry-editing, repair mode. Which is what you wanted all along, isn't it? You don't want me to take a look, you want me to fix everything that's wrong, speed it up, clean up your files and complete advanced maintenance tasks which you can't even pronounce, let alone perform properly. .dll isn't being found by what .exe, which isn't running when another program expects it to be and fails silently with no log file that cascades into a waterfall of failure that rivals Niagara on a good day.
It's a fifty-fifty shot on whether I can fix the computer. I'm not really dealing with 'a computer' here, what I'm dealing with is the combined stupidity of every Redmond employee and every developer, decision-maker, and contractor that worked on any piece of software on your computer. Because the thing starts up and POSTs just fine. I'm the poor sap who has to figure out what
And that's only if it's a real bug! You've probably downloaded cracks, and serial numbers (I see you've got the complete Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Edition installed, that's only $2600, I'm sure you bought a legal license...) and oh, what's this, 13 toolbars in IE! Bonsai Buddy! Password Saver Online! I'm sure all these are totally legit, and none of them are software deliberately trying to mess up your computer. That's a whole other ballgame, not poorly designed software but maliciously designed software that will make you part of a botnet, steal your passwords and let someone watch everything you're doing in real time. I'm sure that's going to be really easy for me to clean up, because I'm an expert in the intricate, retarded, ineffective internal design of the Windows security model.
Let's even say I manage to get your computer into some semblance of working order, after five or six frustrating hours (while you watch TV and relax after your hard day at the Dress Barn.) Pray tell what will I get in return? Maybe if you're generous twenty-five, fifty bucks tops? Not even enough to fill up my gas tank. Would you do something frustrating, something you consider vile and degrading, for $5 an hour after you just got out of a long day of work making way more than that and being much less frustrated and degraded? Let's put it this way, what if I walked up to you and asked, "Hey, why don't you do my laundry? C'mon, most of the time you're not even doing anything, the machine does all the work. And make sure it's folded right! How about you scrub my floors on your hands and knees while I watch from the couch? No? OK, make me some dinner. Nothing too special, just a standard egg and cheese souffle, lobster thermadore in a white wine sauce and chocolate mousse for dessert." You'd answer "No?" Wow, what a surprise.
But besides the insulting pittance and the degradation, what I'm sure you'll give me is the blame if anything ever goes wrong with anything on your computer from now until eternity. (About that dinner, don't worry, I'll buy the parts, er.., ingredients. But I'll blame you if you break a dish or the stove goes out two months later.) Because I messed with it. That's because nothing ever breaks, everything is forever and entropy is just a made-up word. (Who am I kidding, you don't know what entropy is.) That's my thanks for fixing the computer.
On second though, how about I don't fix it and I save myself a huge fscking headache and you keep your fifty bucks?
60 mA at 60 Hz? Hell yes that's dangerous. Neon sign transformers don't have enough energy for arc-flash or serious heat damage, but they can drive plenty of current through your heart. They can, however, be trouble-shot safely. If you can draw an arc form the transformer and the short-circuit current is in spec, the problem is the tube or the insulation somewhere in the system. Resistance at the terminals of the transformer (as measured with 10 volts or more) should be at least several Mohm. If it's less than that, replace rotted HV cables and wipe case of transformer and sign tube with isopropanol.
If you can't draw an arc, the transformer is potted in tar and the labor to repair one (if it can even be done) is far more expensive than the replacement. If neither of the above fixes it, you'll have to get a new sign.
The behavior of a switch-mode supply when driving something other than the specified load is somewhat unpredictable, so testing the power supply in that case requires replacement with a known-good part to see if the problem is fixed.
I would say that part of the reason is that the tools needed to fix a PC are typically portable and/or highly available.
But this applies to other areas, the tools for working on cars (except really major repairs) are highly available and portable. Granted good ones cost a lot, but you can do minor things on your car (replacing spark plugs, changing oil, etc.) with stuff you buy at Wal-Mart. The difference is that you're paying a mechanic for their knowledge of how to use those tools. Why don't people realize it's the same thing for computers? Sure many of the tools are available for free, and are extremely portable, but knowing how to use them is the difficult part. It's quite easy for a novice to completely hose their computer using the same tools a skilled PC repair-person would use to fix it.
Having a teacher tutor involves them spending a predetermined (usually) amount of time with a student and that typically resonates in a person's mind as an act that requires pay.
So why do people not have the resonance when it takes 2 hours or more to repair their PC? And why do so many of them, despite obviously not knowing how to repair it themselves (or they wouldn't have asked you), seem to think it should have taken you only 10% of that time?
No, the problem is a lot of people, for some strange reason, think because they can successfully turn their PC on and browse the web that they're qualified to judge how easy and how quickly people can fix their PCs. They won't do the same thing to mechanics simply because they can turn their car on and drive it around. They won't do the same thing to a tutor even though they can read and write. But when it comes to PCs, many, many people are total jerks to those they want (often darn near demand) fix them. And as any IT worker can tell you, this attitude transfers to the office as well. Everyone's encountered numerous employees who think you're taking too long to fix their PC, even though they have no clue what you're actually doing.
But yes, a good solution is to say no. I only fix PCs for people who have treated me fairly in the past now. Everyone else I either politely put off (say I'm too busy, or I don't know what's wrong), or I just politely tell them I don't do PC repair. But I still boggle at the attitudes so many people cop when it comes to PC repair. It just makes no damn sense.
Showing every one that using an OS with limited option limits the options you have.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
U-Matic SP and J-format tape.
your lawn seems to be on my lawn.