I just became the local computer guy of my little apartment complex. I live with a lot elderly on disability, and they all started asking about boot-leg DVDs, so I obliged. I had experience with making that sorta thing, so I figured Id make a little cash off it. I made a little money, taught my neighbor burn DVDs, and got him a Demonoid account. He got a virus, I fixed it doing what the Dude said up above, using Google and all that, and BAM! Now they wanna pay me 40 bucks a computer to re-install XP on old Dells,. Its easy, its great. Im enjoying it. And Im making beer money. Google = Tech Savy. I Wayne’s World “Im Not Worthy! Im Not Worthy” to everyone who knows how to write code and all that. You are my heroes. Google is my tool. I am…..the Computer Guy.

I’ve been the ‘computer girl’ for most of my family since my dad became such a Microsoft fanboy and lost his skills with anything newer than XP (still not sure what happened…) Most of my friends are nerds, so they don’t need help, but occasionally someone will come up to me panicking because “Some weird message came up!” Then I have to fix it, and it never ceases to amaze me how many viruses and how much spyware they can have…seriously, shouldn’t a computer just give up and die once you reach 50 of these things running at once? And yeah, they deny that they’ve downloaded anything dodgy – it generally turns out that some cute cursor or screensaver or something is malware in disguise, but of course they refuse to believe that and promptly reinstall it as soon as I’m gone. :roll: Some people never learn.

As for people I’m attracted to, I think you’re very lucky if it’s ever got you anywhere. Most guys I’ve met don’t tend to like being corrected or helped by girls, especially when they’re trying to impress her with their leet computer skills…

[…] having stumbled upon this original idea, where the guy tells exactly the thing i want to tell everyone. If you have a problem with […]

@ SapientIdiot:

Dude… I think you are the first man in the history of the universe who won over his high school crush by installing Linux on her computer. I think there should be some sort of an award for that!

@ freelancer:

Feel free to translate. :)

In regards to helping some one i was attracted to, I have to say it actually worked for me.

I met up with an old high school crush through som mutual friends, and ended up hearing about her computer issues. I offered of course to help her out. For whatever reason she decided to drop her desktop off at my place (i think because she still lived with her parents). I installed Linux on it which worked fine. The original problem was someone else had attempted to install XP, but lacked drivers and basic computer skills.

After a few days, her computer was still at my place, and so was she most of the time. A few months later we both decided to pffically move in together and we’ve been together for about 2 years now.

Took the words right out of my mouth. I’m seriously considering translating this and giving it to whomever asks me for help in the future.

Regarding helping someone I’m attracted to… Yes, I’ve done that. And no, it didn’t work :P

@Anna: I was about to post the same link! You beat me to it!

@Luke: As much as I hate doing local neighborhood/family computer work, I always get a kick out of running an ipconfig /all and having the user go “Whoaaaa, that’s so complex and technical! How did you learn how to do all that stuff?” To which I almost invariably reply: “It’s actually magic, I went to wizardry school.”

Also, at least you got somewhat of an education in a computer related field in college. I was an MIS major, which meant I learned diddly-squat about IT and/or computing.

My favorite IT repair story was when I was for an older lady (the elderly are my specialty when it comes to IT; it takes a whole different skillset to help that demographic). I had to download a driver off a manufacturing website. When I opened the website, there was some embedded flash video advertisement playing with someone talking. The lady flipped and kept asking how that man was talking to us. Priceless.

@ Luke Maciak:

…and there are others out there who could do step 1 and 2, but does not follow through on step 3. they will google a problem, click the first link, and just do whatever someone else does without critically thinkin and analyzing to see if the solution applies to their scenarios….often times leading to a whole host of other problems and escalating it to you.

@ Chris Wellons:

Yeah, I’ve been trying to do the whole “teach a man to fish” thing but most people just don’t want to learn. They are like “why should I learn to fish, if I know a fisherman’. :P

@ Zel:

Oh, I usually get the “hey, can I drop off the computer at your house today and then pick it up tomorrow?” thing. Or this:

“Dude, you are a life saver. I owe you a big one for doing this. Really, you’re the man. Listen, I’ll just go watch some TV while you work so call me if you need anything.”

I have yet to find a way to explain to people how not to get spyware on their machines. Every single person who gets infected by something nasty will swear up and down that they didn’t download anything, didn’t go to any shady websites, didn’t try to install any new software, didn’t click on any links and the only website they visited in the last 8 months was facebook. And if I find evidence that this is not true, they claim that the virus must have installed that software, or access that website.

The point is, that clueful people won’t actually ask me for computer help. They ask me for advice, and I’m happy to give it. Or they sit with me, show me what they did, and we try to figure this out together. That I don’t mind. This post was not about these people. It was about the people who have no clue, because they don’t want to have it. :)

Although I like tinkering with computers and fixing other people’s problems, I’ve never become the local computer guy. People usually ask me once but not twice. Maybe it’s because I try to explain what the problem is and how it could have been prevented/fixed, which can take a while. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the people I helped secretly couldn’t stop thinking “Shut up and fix it, I don’t care as long as it works!”. Maybe I just work magic and actually make computers impervious to future troubles :).