17
HogDev
6y

Well, everytime I build a pc for a friend I'll always end up telling myself "this is the last time". Not bc I have a problem with building pc's, I love it, but its the "free of charge" 24/7 IT-support my non techy (techii?) friends expects from me after the build is done I hate.

So here's the deal.
A week ago I built a brand new pc for a friend, as usual (bc he's a good friend) I told him that my "fee" would be a couple of beers and the train ticket up. So I got there, built the pc and we hooked it up to his monitor. About 5sec in to windows the screen went black. My friend started to panic, and I started to check if all the components and cables were hooked up right (tho I've done this a couple of times, shit can happen) but found nothing was wrong.
I had to take the train home, cause it got late AF and I live in another city, but I told him to try another cable. Felt bad AF for not being able to help him.
Flash forward 2 days, my friend started messaging me late in the evening, complaining about how he had tried everything and ultimately had to leave the pc at an (as he called it) "proffesional" who charged him 100$.
I felt even guiltier about that one, asked him if he tried to change the hdmi, but he said that's in The hands of this guy now.
Two days later this PC God gave him an answer.
Guess What he told him?
CHANGE THE ***** HDMI CABLE.
Well, shit..
Afterwards he wanted help installing drivers over fb-messenger.
I love my friends, but man why do I do this to myself.

Comments
  • 5
    I'd no longer feel guilty if they didn't do as i tell them.

    When the hurricane hit the states a few weeks ago, it left many of the roads flooded. I hung outside a local store (VERY small town) and just chilled out. They had a generator with power, so I mooched off it to charge my devices lol.

    But my friends and I would both give directions and the fucktards would do the exact opposite. By the 3rd day, I stopped giving them directions on where to go. The cunts wouldnt listen anyways.
  • 3
    I feel you. I'm broke for as long as I can remember, and that is one of the reasons I started using gnu/linux and free software. After a year or so using it and learning, I was confident enough to spread the good news; you don't have to buy another laptop or crack licences or pay for customer support, there are those things called "FOSS" and "community" that will help you if you're not tech savvy. And when they watched me playing around with the terminal or the desktop interface, some asked me for help... with windows. I tried a couple times they try Ubuntu or something alike, but in time I agreed to take a look to some PC's and laptops. And that was a bad decision, because I learned that most of the time, they brought the problem to themselves with bad maintenance and worse user behaviour. After try a clean and give them some directives on good security practices, they went home and acted like if nothing happened. Aaaand a couple ways earlier, their (again) trashed computer was suddenly my fault.
    With the few ones that asked me to install a Linux distro... some are fine, some not so much.
    But I always end up with a bad feeling after helping a friend with her/his computer. Maybe I don't even help, just transfer frustrations...
  • 1
    @stereohisteria Yeah, its realy frustrating. And its not that I don't want to help, but They never listen to any advice.
Add Comment