The Ultimate IT FAQ

People ask me stupid questions all the time. I’m sure you get asked stupid questions every day too, but I get the same questions over and over and over again. From the same people. I figured that I might as well pick the stupidest ones and post them here. This way I can simply point idiots to a URL and save myself the effort. Of course people I would send to this page tend to have trouble performing such difficult tasks as “clicking on a link” without assistance so likely they will never find this page. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m posting this as a joke.

So I give you Luke’s IT FAQ:

Why is my computer slow?

Because you talk to it. Stop talking to it, stop blaming it for your own stupidity and it will become faster. Also you could probably try not to download and install every single piece of malware you encounter on the internet. But I know you won’t do that so I won’t even ask. So here is a rule: every time you feel like blaming the computer for doing something weird (like being slow, not saving your document and etc..) stop and blame yourself. It’s your fault that it is slow. It is your fault that it ate your document. It is all your fault. Why? Because you are an idiot. When I get spyware or lose work, I’m an idiot to. But for some reason it happens to you all the time, and to me only occasionally. Draw your own conclusions.

I’m getting an error message. What do I do?

I don’t know… Maybe you should (and I know this is a lot to ask) write down the fucking message before you ask this. And no, “Error 0x something something” is not good enough. Write everything down and take a screen shot for good measure. I also want to know what were you doing just before the error happened. Otherwise this is equivalent to telling your doctor that you “feel strange” without actually being able to elaborate on that. Or telling your car mechanic that your automobile is “acting up”. If you don’t provide details, I won’t provide the answer. It’s that simple.

What is taking up so much space on my hard drive?

I’d wager a guess it’s your pr0n folder. Either that, or your email. Yeah, I know people who have 80GB+ worth of Outlook PST files on their 160GB hard drive. But every once in a while, this may actually be a legitimate problem. If your hard drive space seems to be leaking out, and you can’t find where it’s going, it may be the case of a freaky windows update glitch that keeps downloading the same patch over and over again.

Yeah, I was planning to write something funny for this question, but it turns out sometimes it might be a legit concern. Go figure.

My internet don’t work!

Try being less stupid. Seriously, stupidity tends to disrupt wifi just like microwaves. This is why in online games the stupidest person on the server tends to have the most lag. It is a direct correlation and if we are to believe the TV and US journalists correlation always implies causation so it must be true. I actually didn’t measure this, or make any study – just observed the phenomenon myself. But I posted it on the internet, so you know it is a legit study. You can quote me.

Here is the truth: 60% of the “internet don’t work” problems can be resolved by rebooting both your computer and your router, refreshing the page or actually typing in the correct address. 30% are probably things you should talk to your ISP about. 9% are hardware issues and you should probably call the warranty support line. The remaining 1% are the rare cases where the outage is caused by your own stupidity. You either messed up your network configuration somehow, or you went to some shady website and got your ass 0wned by some redirecting piece of shit trojan. So essentially you deserve it.

Thankfully, Chrome OS will hopefully make that 1% go away which is why I am going to forcefully install it on your brain once it comes out. In the future asking me about this problem will likely get you “chromed”. So watch out.

My computer is acting weird. Is it a virus?

No it’s not. You’re just an idiot. Now stop wasting my time.

For some inexplicable reason whenever people phrase the question this way, it is not a virus. When someone says “I think I got infected” or “I think I caught a virus” you know they got 0wned real bad. You know, and they know – everyone knows. If they tell you they “got an error” then it may or may not be an infection of some sort. When they tell you the computer is slow, it may or may not indicate spyware running in the background. But whenever they “suspect” a virus, their machine is usually clean. It’s strange, I know but that’s just how it works.

Let me give you few examples:

My Outlook is acting up, is it a virus? My wifi connection dropped last night for about 15 minutes, is it a virus? My windows update failed last night, is it a virus? I got a blue screen when I unplugged my printer, is it a virus?

Does it sound familiar? If you are asking me any of the above the answer is most likely no, it’s not a virus. Unless you consider human stupidity to be a virus. In which case, yes it is and you’ve got it bad. Also, guess what I’m going to tell you when you phrase your question like this? I will tell you to follow my spyware removal guide. Especially step #9 – that’s the important one. If nothing is found, you don’t have a virus.

How do I hack into someone’s Facebook?

Please die. In a fire. Right now.

I get asked this question all the time and I will tell you what I tell everyone else. I don’t know, because I’m not into the whole script kiddie bullshit. What I can tell you is this: downloading obscure “facebook hacking” tools from shady websites is a really great way to get lots of lovely malware onto your machine. Also, the fact you are even thinking about this makes you a horrible person, and you totally deserve to get 0wned by a script kiddie. Enjoy being part of a botnet asshole.

I’ll tell you this: social engineering works. A targeted Phish is probably the most straightforward and most effective method to get a password from someone who is at least as stupid as you are. But you will probably do it sloppily and someone like Papeghost will come along and rip you a new asshole. Also, I might accidentally send an anonymous email to the person whose account you are trying to crack. So stop asking.

That’s all I have for now. Feel free to add stupid questions you get asked on a daily basis in the comments.