That's it, I quit!

dennilfloss

Past Lifer 1957-2014 In Memoriam
Oct 21, 1999
30,549
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dennilfloss.blogspot.com
Another one of my friends has basically insulted me. I have been working on his p133 for a year, tweaking it so that it was working perfectly. We had just installed 64MB PC100 RAM, a 13GB HD and a 56k modem. I had set all his icons, sounds, fonts, colours to his preference. Everytime he screwed up by deleting stuff, I went to his place to fix his OS and programs. We were just about to upgrade him to a nice Athlon cpu and corresponding mobo.

Well, he just phoned me and said that he stopped by Compucentre this afternoon and bought a Hewlett-Packard. Said "I'm paying just $47 a month and it's got a burner. It's so pretty."

Now tonight I have to go to his place, reinstall his programs, put his settings like they were, etc...

I feel like I've just been slapped in the face.

:|:|:|

Stop! (Jane's Addiction)
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,381
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Next time he calls for help, just tell him that it can only be fixed by a certified HP technician. They charge $50 an hour to fix things.

 
Jul 14, 2000
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OH MY I KNOW! i know the type, they ask u for your recommendation on computers, U recommend the typical compatible good piece of computer machinery that u know from experience is good, and easy to repair. and then they go and buy a flatbed compaq with 8 gigs of harddrive space, a 56k modem, and an ati rage pro because the idiot sales rep in the store said it was the best computer on the market.

I have given up recommending computer related stuff to my friends because they NEVER follow them.
 
Jan 30, 2000
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"It's so pretty" *LOL* *tears running down my face* I don't mean to laugh, but geez, I'm a girl with little computer knowledge and I sure wouldn't pick a computer cause it looked pretty (look mommy it has Barbie on it!)...Cars on the other hand...

Don't sweat it, just stop being so ultra-helpful. I agree with vi_edit's advise. Eventually he'll find out he should have stuck with you.
 

Stark

Diamond Member
Jun 16, 2000
7,735
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Were you making any $$ on the athlon system? If not, don't sweat it. If so, your friend should now pay you everytime you fix their system.

btw, they're paying $50 a month for 3 years (i think) = more than $1600. That's a nice system they could have had. They're also locked into msn (or other crap online service) for that length of time. No dsl for them!

It sounds like you've been hand-holding this friend for years. Time to let go. Maybe he'll even give you his old system. ;)
 

purplehayes

Golden Member
Mar 31, 2000
1,517
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Geez Dennil, sorry to hear your having such bad luck with your friends lately. Next thing you know, this one will sign-up for AOL! Maybe you should start charging for advice, that way they will think that it's worth more.

Better luck on the next friend.

PH
:D
 

ltk007

Banned
Feb 24, 2000
6,209
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Tell your friend you can't come over, but give him a great performance enhancing compaq tip.

go into dos and type

format C:
 

dennilfloss

Past Lifer 1957-2014 In Memoriam
Oct 21, 1999
30,549
12
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dennilfloss.blogspot.com
Omygawd, this is just too funny! The other bozo I complained about recently http://forums1.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=197558 just stopped by. He is no longer getting a V770 Ultra. Nonono! He is instead buying a friggin'

Guillemot/Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS 64MB GeForce 2 GTS! (that salesman must be really good)

To make up somewhat for the difference, he is downgrading his monitor to a 15" and now intends to run Q3 at 640x480x16!!! :Q Talk about a waste of FPS!

When he told me that I bit my tongue so hard (to prevent my laughter from drowning my blender) that it still hurts.

I am not a techie, only a simple user who has learned some stuff here and at SysOpt & Ars Technica during the last 18 months...but I have now come to the conclusion that I am surrounded by hopeless morons. :)

BTW, he may register at Anandtech and start asking questions in a few weeks. Be on the look out!

ROTFLMAO! :):):)

Rudderless (The Lemonheads)
 

UG

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,370
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Denis;

Tell the guy with the HP that you can no longer work on his machine because to do so would void his warranty. Problem solved. He can then go play with himself without wasting your time.

As for the second guy, if he isn't giving you respect, don't give him the time of day. Friends should be showing you respect; life is too short to spend on userous, logic-challenged acquaintances who would have you believe they are your friends for their advantage, and your loss.

(I had a bad experience with a userous, hyper-expectant, reality-challenged client the last couple of days which killed my profit on the work I did for him. Your time, like mine, has value and neither of us should let anyone else waste it, nor diminish it.

Next time that person comes through the door, I'll charge him twice what I charged this time, and if he still needs my help, I'll most certainly do less than half what I did for him this time. Then we'll be even, and thereafter he can go play with hiumself because, henceforth, he's Persona Non Grata).

Case closed, life is good. ;)
 

Imaginer

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 1999
8,076
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Next time, set a different splash screen with the words...

"THINKING ABOUT SCREWING? SCREW WITH SOMETHING ELSE!" ;)
 

PCAddict

Diamond Member
Nov 19, 1999
3,804
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I know how you feel. My sister's Godfather hosed me in a similar way. He went and bought a Compaq without even discussing it with me. I've known him for most of my life, and have solved many a computer issue for him. He knows I have been in the business for a long time. I even sold his daughter a system last year. I'm gonna rip him a new one the first time he calls me with a problem.
 

chess9

Elite member
Apr 15, 2000
7,748
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Dennil: He, he. Do we have the same friends? They only want the ambulance when they call for it, and sometimes they change their minds by the time you arrive! Take it all cum granulo salis, and get a hoot out of it. I recently read a quote from Edward Bennet Williams: "The law is a trap." Well, so are computers. These folks will be trapped, and so will you if you let them trap you. Wait till the guy calls and asks you to get rid of all that HP bloatware!

One of my friends called me today. I just finished putting together a PIII 600e at 900 for him. It runs really sweet. "CompUSA has a 733 with 19 inch monitor for $1299"! I told him to repeat after me: "I will not buy, will not buy, will not buy, from HP, Compaq, Dell, Gateway." He is now resting peacefully and may make a full recovery. But I am on standby tonight. :p

Some patients cannot be saved however. As emergency personnel, we must accept the inevitable. Some of our patients will commit computercide, some will suffer terminal spec overdosage, some will join one of the aforementioned "cults", some will never correctly pronounce Asus again. :p

 

Imaginer

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 1999
8,076
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In the university library terminals, everytime you hit the start button or try to access "My computer", it would do nothing but show up the shutdown menu asking for a shutdown or a restart. At a high school computer, the control panel was taken out as well as Windows explorer.

Try doing that. Maybe they would shut up.
 

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,052
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The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. Harlan Ellison
 

Ulfwald

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
May 27, 2000
8,646
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The first time you work on the HP, install a power on password, then the next time he reboots, it won't start. He will call you, do some basic diags over the phone, tell him that he has some new virus, and that you will have to charge him to fix it, cause the &quot;fix&quot; costs good money. Go over there, with a dos boot disk, start the computer, ask him for some water, then when he is away, erase the power on password, then reboot.

Just Kidding :p :) :p :)
 

dennilfloss

Past Lifer 1957-2014 In Memoriam
Oct 21, 1999
30,549
12
0
dennilfloss.blogspot.com
Well I'm back, after having spent 5 hours re-installing his utilities, wallpaper, icons, settings, etc... That was the scariest experience in my computing life. After about a dozen reboots, I have yet to see a BIOS screen. I used the boot tweak in Ontrack's Fix-It Utility 2000 to try to make it show, but no go. All I got is the blue Hewlett Packard screen (I haven't read his instruction manual). I have never seen so much useless software loaded on a PC. That thing is Yahooed! to death. He doesn't appear to have a W98SE disk, so I suppose the OS is on one of the recovery disks.

What he got was a HP Pavilion 6640C http://hp-at-home.com/datasheets/datasheet2.cfm?model_number=6640C&amp;country=us , AMD K6-2 500 with on-board video of up to 8MB and on-board audio. At 800x600x16 (it won't go higher, I tried) there are lots of artifacts, refresh rate is 60Hz and the 2D is the crappiest I've ever seen. The images were much better on his 4MB Trident. The audio? Well, it ain't my Live! Value for sure ;). It's all in a microtower with a CD-RW (HP8000r 4x4x20) but no other CD-ROM and a floppy-disk drive. No other bay that I could see (but it has one front USB port, wow!).

Overall, I'd say that this system felt at least 1/3 slower than my Celeron 500@562 for copying files etc...

BTW, he wants to leave Simpatico and sign with AOHell! I told him to do what he wants (but I feel that a HP on AOL is a beast from the bosom of the deepest hellish pit).

Glory Box (Portishead)
 

yakko

Lifer
Apr 18, 2000
25,455
2
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WOOHOO!!!! Another member.Good old job security.


dennilfloss,

All I got to say is that there is a point where you stop being a friend and start being a dunbass.If he is not paying you for all your help and you are still willing to do it when you complain you sound like a real dumbass.

I have read alot of your posts and normally I have respect for you but you have done this one to yourself.

Computer Love (Techmaster P.E.B.)
 

zippy

Diamond Member
Nov 10, 1999
9,998
1
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dennilfloss, you are too nice when it comes to computers. Sometimes you just have to take a stand and say, &quot;YO, GOOBER, LISTEN TO ME, I'M NOT SELLIN YOU JACK AND I'M YOUR FRIEND...HOW MUCH MORE UNBIAS DO YOU WANT?!?!?!&quot; :)
 

zippy

Diamond Member
Nov 10, 1999
9,998
1
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dennilfloss, you are too nice when it comes to computers. Sometimes you just have to take a stand and say, &quot;YO, GOOBER, LISTEN TO ME, I'M NOT SELLIN YOU JACK AND I'M YOUR FRIEND...HOW MUCH MORE UNBIAS DO YOU WANT?!?!?!&quot; :)
 

jonnyGURU

Moderator <BR> Power Supplies
Moderator
Oct 30, 1999
11,815
102
106
zippy is so right, it's worthy of posting twice.

I had to do the same thing with yakko when he wen't out and bought that Packard Bell of his.

:Q
 

Imaginer

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 1999
8,076
1
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Ah so it is those types of people.

As I have thought before, it takes a smart person to make the machine smart. There are a great deal of uses for a computer, information, work is more efficient, sometimes entertainment, and a utility that can link us for communication. A computer is also a tool, much like a car. It takes us where we want to go in our hard drives, and on internet servers.

So what you are saying is that you set up everything perfectly, then he loads garbage on and tries to mess up things himself? I have done that before. I literally &quot;experimented&quot;. It was the only way one could learn to rebuild countless times. ;) If he keeps doing this and mess up each system every time by installing junk, let the idiot be because he would never learn. In fact, let him join the other idiots online by giving him what he wants.

As for the HP, if I see it, I would freak if I had that! :Q Oh the horror! And I bet he cannot do a CD copy either or add DVD. I seen the small case. Only one CD bay and one floppy bay showing. Micro ATX.... All nicely tucked in. Well, there is an idiot born every minute according to PT Baurnum or something like that. You may have one on your hands.

You could try telling him how you feel. You could try and tell him that for countless times you have fixed his machine from his mistakes. It is high time he starts learning on his own. If he keeps going away while you do your work, then he is really not interested in computers and is a wannabe user. Does he try to tweek on his own? I am sure most people do so. There are mistakes in learning on your own but that is one of the ways to learn well.

dennilfloss, you are one of the most repected here. And a good person. But it is time to draw the line. This guy never listens and it is time to let him make his own mistakes. Let him play on his $47 montly machine. He gets what he paid for. Let him listen to the Compuke salespeople. He might screw up the machine more. Let him fry a hard drive. All mistakes would teach him a thing or two.

Tell him how you really feel. And that a computer much like a car should not be filled with junk for it would not run well. Tell him that if he keeps messing up the computer, maybe he should not use one at all.

Tell it in the nature of a good friend. If you are such good friends, he would understand and reason. But if he is one of those acquintances or a bud, you might get an ugly response. Not a good friend indeed.

That is what I have to throw in the bucket in the tollbooth. Now may I pass?
 

geno

Lifer
Dec 26, 1999
25,074
4
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I know how you feel about ingrateful friends. One Christmas a few years back, my friend got some RAM, a new CDROM, and a new vid card for a present. I talked to him on Christmas day and we talked about what we had got, and he told me. Well, I was heading right up around his area to go to my grandmother's house to see my family. He was telling me how he was gonna spend the $80 to get it installed at CompUSA. I was feeling like a nice person that day, plus I wanted to save him some money, so I decided to go by his house to throw that stuff in quick for him - after all, it was Christmas. I'm in my nice clothes, opening his system and workin my butt off to get this stuff installed quickly, and I finally finish up. He had some leftover RAM and a spare CDROM, and he says &quot;Oh, I'll keep this stuff to give to my uncle&quot;. I was like, &quot;Ok, I would have liked to have that stuff, too bad he didn't offer it to me for saving him a crapload of money...&quot;. So anyways, him and his mom say thanks and tell me that they had to leave. And on top of that - he barely used the computer at all. I mean, I didn't expect anything, but I really went out of my way and saved him alot of money (he didn't know anyone else that could do that stuff) and it was on Christmas Day when I had plans. I dunno, it just cheezed me off a little. Anyways, that was pretty much the last upgrade I did for him.