And I thought @jadedtech was jaded

May 2nd, 2007 by Shaun Boyd

I only met my brother’s ex-girlfriend’s family once — the year they invited our family over to share Thanksgiving dinner. Since we were basically a group of strangers looking to make a good first impression, the table conversation was nothing more than friendly idle chitchat.

When I asked our hostess for more mashed potatoes, she took the opportunity to ask me about myself while dishing out my second helping — “So Shaun, what do you do for a living?”

Hesitantly, I responded: “I work in computer support.”

The transition to silence was immediate. All eyes suddenly turned to me, raised eyebrows all around. If you hadn’t heard my response, judging from everyone’s reaction you might think I said something outrageous like I was a male stripper or a gynecologist — but I knew the awkward silence would soon be broken by an overwhelming outpouring of computer questions.

“Oh wow, a computer guy!” — “So you know how to remove spyware and viruses and stuff, right?” — “Our family computer is really slow, I think it has a virus.” — “Do you have a business card, or can I get your number?”

I politely and patiently answered their questions, hoping that we’d exhaust the subject in a matter of minutes and then move on to something else. As it would turn out, my hopeful prediction was very wrong — the gentleman sitting next to me scooted his seat closer to me to begin an interrogation.

This man I was meeting for the first time must’ve truly believed that I was going to help him with his problem at that very moment. It didn’t matter how uninterested I looked or sounded, he was convinced that I must know the answer he’s looking for and he was determined he would get it.

Situations like this one were common for me. I’ve had eavesdropping strangers approach me with questions about their computer while I was eating in a restaurant. I’ve had oblivious coworkers step in front of me in a buffet line to tell me about their computer problems while I was serving myself food. I’ve had neighbors who spotted me from their window rush outside to coax me into working on their home computer while I was walking to the corner market. My knack for solving people’s computer problems had become so well-known among my neighborhood that these circumstances were near impossible to avoid.

You might be thinking, “So why complain? If your help is in high demand, why not embrace your talents and charge people for your time?”

I tried to for seven years. I’ve worked in the computer industry in various ways — help desk support, web design, consulting and sales, field technician, freelance computer specialist, and whatever other fancy name you want to give “the computer guy.”

I stopped enjoying it. There were certainly times when I enjoyed myself, but most of those times were when my computer talents were still developing. Once I stopped learning new things on the job, I would become fidgety and want to move on to something else.

From my career-hopping experiences in the computer industry, I’ve become acquainted with the Top Ten Reasons it doesn’t pay to be the computer guy:

Reason #10 – Most Of Your Accomplishments Are Invisible

The computer guy never hears anyone tell him, “I just want to let you know … everything is working fine!”

The reality is that people call the computer guy when something is wrong.

As a computer guy, if you work really hard to make everything work the way that it should, and things work fine, then people believe you don’t do anything. Everything you manage to get working correctly or do perfectly will forever remain unnoticed by computer users. They’ll only ever notice that you do anything when something isn’t working correctly, and you are called upon to fix it.

Reason #9 – Every Conversation You Have Is Roughly The Same

When the computer guy dares to mention what he does for a living, the typical response is, “I have a question about my home computer…”

Or when the computer guy first hears about a widespread problem within the computer network he’s responsible for, he can barely begin to assess the problem before a dozen other people call to report the same problem.

Or when the computer guy explains a certain process on a computer to a user who is incapable of retaining the process, he will inevitably need to reinstruct the user of this same process — indefinitely.

Reason #8 – You’re An Expert Of Bleeding-Edge Technology Products, Aren’t You?

The computer guy often finds himself in situations where someone is asking him for advice on a pending investment of the technological variety.

“I heard about (some hardware or software product) that can do (something desirable) for me. I brought you these (advertisements/reviews/printouts) because I wanted your recommendation. Which would you buy?”

Although the inquiring person sincerely trusts the computer guy’s judgment over their own, in almost every instance the real objective of these meetings is to ensure their own immunity from making a risky purchase.

If it turns out to be a bad investment, and they cannot get (the hardware or software product) to do (anything desirable), then you will be their personal scapegoat — “But honey, the computer guy said I should buy it!”

Reason #7 – Your Talents Are Forcibly Undervalued

Thanks to the constantly declining price of new computers, the computer guy cannot charge labor sums without a dispute. If he asks to be paid what he is worth, he will likely be met with the “why not buy new?” argument.

That is, desktop computers are always getting smaller, faster, and cheaper. It’s possible to purchase a new desktop computer for under $400. If the computer guy spends five hours fixing a computer and wants $100/hour for his time, his customer will be outraged, exclaiming “I didn’t even spend this much to BUY the computer, why should I pay this much just to FIX it?”

Reason #6 – You’re Never Allowed A Moment’s Peace

The computer guy is so prone to interruption that he rarely finds an opportunity to work on his own problems. This is because:

Computers never sleep.
Computer problems aren’t scheduled.
Every problem takes time to diagnose.
The computer guy can only give one problem his full attention.
Each user believes their problem deserves attention now.
Consequently, the computer guy has a 24/7 obligation to keep critical computer systems running, while simultaneously juggling everyone’s problems. He’ll often need to forfeit any opportunities to tend to his own needs for the sake of others — because at any moment, of any day, he can be interrupted by someone who wants to make their problem his problem.

Reason #5 – People Ask You To Perform Miracles

The computer guy is often mistaken for someone who possesses the combined skills of an old priest and a young priest. I’ll sum this up easily by example:

“No, I really can’t recover any files from your thumb drive, even if you did find it after it passed through your dog.”

Reason #4 – Your Assumed “All-Knowing” Status Sets You Up To Let People Down

There is no common understanding that there are smaller divisions within the computer industry, and that the computer guy cannot be an expert in all areas. What makes things worse, is when the computer guy attempts to explain this to someone asking for help, the person will often believe that the computer guy is withholding the desired knowledge to avoid having to help.

This is somewhat related to the next reason:

Reason #3 – You Possess Unlimited Responsibility

The computer guy is expected to solve problems. It is difficult to determine the boundaries of that expectation.

Some of the oddest things that I’ve been asked to do include:

Use pirated software to undelete important company files.
Create an Intranet, after explaining I didn’t know how to.
Teach someone how to hide their pornography collection.
Solving problems can range from replacing batteries in a wireless keyboard to investigating why the entire building loses power at the same time every morning. Resolutions can necessitate weaving a 50-foot cable through a drop ceiling, or wriggling under a house on your belly to add an electrical outlet.

Reasons #4 and #3 boil down to this: no matter how often you want to play the role of a hero, there will always be circumstances that test the limits of your ability to be one. It’s difficult to judge when helping someone means doing something immoral, and it’s even harder to admit you are unable to solve someone’s problem — and chances are, that someone will view you as incompetent because you were unable to help them.

Reason #2 – A Life Of Alienation

People only talk to the computer guy when they need him to fix something. Also, when the computer guy approaches a user, they’ll hop up out of their chair under the presumption that he’s there to fix something — as if it would never be expected that he only wants to strike up a conversation.

The fact that the computer guy never gets a moment’s peace can also practically force him to withdraw into solitude. His co-workers don’t understand that he doesn’t want to hear about their computer problems during his lunch hour — he does that every other hour of the day. That’s why the computer guy eats lunch alone with his door closed, or goes out to eat every day — not because he’s unfriendly, but because he needs to escape the incessant interruptions.

Reason #1 – You Have No Identity

It’s an awful experience when the computer guy shows up at a neighbor’s doorstep with a plate of Christmas cookies, only to have the child who answered the door call out, “Mom, the computer guy is here!” He begs for an identity that is not directly associated with computers, but “the computer guy” label walks ahead of him — it simply cannot be avoided. I was given a name and I’d love to be addressed by it.

Having read these reasons, you may believe that I’m complaining. It’s true that I was upset with many aspects of my life as the computer guy, but I’m past the point of complaining.

I took a good hard look at my existence and realized that things were not likely to change in the line of work I had chosen. Instead of just complaining, I took action and began making positive changes in my life.

Working in the computer industry isn’t for everybody. It wasn’t for me. I’ve compiled my reasons for putting it behind me and placed them here, so that anyone who is unsatisfied with their life working in computers might recognize it’s not for them either.

Enter in Remote Support. Big Companies have this type of tool available to all their users. When something happens, an employee will usually call their help desk and the guy there will ‘remote in’ to their system, fix it and the job can continue. Talk about your ‘instant support’ when you need it!

Hi Ho, your friendly neighbourhood Computer Guy here!

Recently, this type of help is available for home users. This requires not much more than plain old windows under more circumstances. If you only have one machine connected directly to your Internet Providers highspeed modem, then you will most likely be able to use the built-in software called ‘remote assistance’ to receive help. If you are running multiple systems with a router, then there will be some issues. Because such support programs use a different network ‘port’ then regular browsing does, you have to configure your router to allow that port to be directed to your system. This is usually beyond the average person that like the ‘plug and play’ way of doing things.

To answer these issues, there are some tools that us geeks have found that work over regular web browsing and need no such configurations of your router! It has become so simple to the point of I can give you a web address to go to, you enter in your name and unique key, you will then be asked to allow the connection to your computer (permission is always required!) and voila! Help is there!

What I love about it is how smooth and reliable it is. It is so convenient that you can allow an ‘unattended mode’ where you don’t have to go to any site, you just need to allow the connection whenever you need it. Saves you a bunch of steps and you are helped ever quicker!

All this only works if your systems is turned on and you are getting an IP address from your ISP(Internet Service Provider).

How much does it cost? Well, considering that if you were to call out a local technician, you’d be looking at no less than $50 per hour, most likely more if the problem is severe (or their pricing model says it’s a $200 charge flat fee!). I’ve seen many techs simply charge by the minute, usually around $1/minute. For me, I like to keep it simple and affordable for my home clients. I charge $25 per hour with a 1 hr minimum. I also allow my home clients to pre-pay and giving them an ever better deal (i.e. 1hr free for every 5 paid for). These types of deals usually work great and suit the average user for a year’s worth of support. Business users should contact me separately for pricing.

So when you are looking for help, consider Remote Support as an affordable alternative for problems not involving connectivity issues. In which case, I can only help you if you are local to me. Although if you are in Europe, I’m willing to fly there and include the cost of the airfare in my bill

Many people believe that their current software will keep them protected because they paid for the service. This is a serious misconception. If you doubt this, try to remove it and install any of the other quality free products (such as AVG) and you’ll hear “I just paid to renew it for 3 years!”. I just went though such a debate with my neighbour recently. This was after his long placed faith in McAfee was shattered by getting infected by a root kit. (Let’s just say it was nasty and McAfee let it through….)

I installed AVG and set it up to auto update/scan every 3am. No muss, no fuss and it works when you don’t usually need the system. Nighthawks feel free to set it to 3PM

While AVG has received the cool VB100 award, there are many on the list who seemed to have as well. What is funny is that Norton is listed there(under Symantec) yet I have gone to many client’s places who HAD Norton installed and were infected. I usually remove Norton and install AVG and BAM, BAM, BAM, 3 or more virus were picked up and removed by AVG. So I have a bit of a hard time completely agreeing with Virus Bulletin’s testing methods of ‘in the wild’ virus results.

Still, every tech will have their own preferences. I stick with what I know works and have had proven results, over, and over and over again.

Since the owners of BBS’s paid directly for the phone line, and while you were on it, noone else could log in (unless you were the super System Operator(sysop) and could afford multiple phone lines, not many could). We learned the value of time and efficiency. Noone passed along ‘chain letters’, because if they did, the SysOp had the power to restrict or outright ban said user from wasting time and money.

Today, people don’t respect the ‘hidden costs’ of e-mail. Just because they pay a flat fee for a monthly internet service, they feel it’s nothing to hit the ‘forward button’ and place a few dozen checkmarks (or better yet, ‘select all’) and fire off a supposedly funny or ‘serious request’ to dozens of people.

Said people don’t understand the costs behind everything. See, someone has to pay for transmitting that information. The more it’s done, the higher the costs. Then those same people wonder why their phone bill (or cable bill) keeps going up every year. Back in the BBS days, my phone bill was $12 per month. Now, try to get one for $22! That’s just the basics with no frills added!

Now, let’s talk about the details of said messages that are currently wasting time, electricity and money shall we?

Having been around, and seen just about every type of ‘please forward this’ email to ’10 of your buddies’, and having run my own BBS back in the day, I have pretty much seen it all. There are only variations on a theme but they are still the same. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Microsoft is NOT going to send you any money, Little Suzie does NOT need a life-saving operation and that virus scare does NOT exist.

From About.com:

“At a glance then, here are the tell-tale signs of a hoax, all of which are common to the more generic G virus hoax:

* ALL CAPS. Legitimate warnings will be written in a technical manner and will not be presented in all capital letters. If the majority of the email is written in all caps, it can almost certainly be discounted.
* Urging recipients to forward the email to everyone (or any number of people) in their address book.
* Describing the virus as being “the worst ever” or the “worst threat on the Internet”. Legitimate warnings may include a severity indicator, i.e. the virus may be rated a high risk, but jargon such as “worst virus ever” will not be included.
* Multiple instances of forwarding, as judged by the number of angle brackets >> that appear at the beginning of each line. For reasons completely unknown, legitimate virus warnings are almost never heavily forwarded. Thus, warning message lines beginning with >>>>> should be considered a suspected hoax.
* Dire sounding language. Legitimate warnings are presented factually with little fanfare and will include ample technical descriptions of the virus with little sense of urgency. Hoaxes, on the other hand, almost always include scare tactics such as WARNING! (Notice the all caps?). “

Replace any topic from virus to ‘good luck’ or ‘missing child’ or ‘get paid’ type of warning/promise and you have a perfect recipe for any piece of SPAM.

Now, on top of forwarding useless electrons, there’s the problem of no respect. There is a severe lack of respect of people’s time. The email you forward was never asked by the recipient, was never solicited and never needed. Most likely it probably contains some sort of virus or spyware even. This then severely complicates peoples lives with the cost of having to get it removed because they only had Norton as ‘protection’ which did them no good.

If I had my way, I’d have a law in place to require people to ask permission to send them ‘spam’. That way we’d save so much time and costs people could actually be productive with their computer useage.

The Computer Guy says “If you are asked to forward an email, search Google for the subject line and see if you get reports of spam or fake emails floating around!”

As of the end of April, there are over 4400 updates and security fixes that Microsoft has released since Oct 2001. That is 628 updates per year or an average of 1.7 per day since release! If you bought a car with that many problems, would you keep it? Even though Mazda just had a recall for approximately 25,000 vehicles (April 2009), that is peanuts compared to the millions of computers that are affected everyday by a Microsoft ‘recall’.

So, updating your system is MANDATORY for security and ‘fixes’. Microsoft also lists possible driver updates. This is where you want to seriously pay attention. many times a company will release a new driver, usually due to some compatibility issue or whatnot, and it can come through Windows Updates. This does not always mean you are getting a better piece of software for your particular component that may be affected. I once had a driver update that completely disabled the wireless adapter on my laptop. Luckily Windows XP(and Vista) has a ‘roll back driver’ option. Simply put, Windows keeps a copy of the old driver for just such instances of problems.

By default, updates are not shown in the add/remove menu. You have to click on the little ‘show windows updates’ box at the bottom of the window. Then if you are having trouble with a particular update (drivers are NOT listed here), you can simply uninstall it, reboot and you should be good. Listen to The Computer Guy, he’s been there!

System maintenance is broken down into two categories, Hardware and Software.

The simplest maintenance is to keep your computer physically clean. A computer uses fans to move air over various components to keep them cool during operations. House air is typically filled with dust and hair. This problem is exponential if you have carpets and/or animals. The problem is that after 6 months, your system has collected enough dust to impact it’s performance. You’ll start to hear the fans more, the systems starts to slow down and/or freeze every now and then. Programs seemingly crash out of nowhere and you get frustrated with it.

Here’s how you fix it. Go to your local computer store, buy a can of compressed air for $8 bucks. Unplug all the cables from the computer, take it to your backyard, open of the side of the case and blast every, single piece inside. Make sure you get inside the power supply! Use up the whole can of air of you have to! Many systems (such as Dell) have a front piece that will pop-off. A lot of dust will be trapped behind that so try and get that off as well.

A word of caution! Do NOT use a vacuum cleaner! The problem with them is that they generate static electricity. One bad zap from that and it’ll fry some component on the inside of your system. Static electricity is not controlled like the power from the power supply and can seriously damage something.

Now, you may be concerned about unplugging everything because you ‘don’t know where all the cables go’. Well you are in luck because current computer cables are all different. You can’t plug them into the wrong port on the back of the computer. So don’t worry about that.

Now onto software maintenance.

This part can be easy too. One of the best programs that I have found that works is CCleaner. (The name is short for Crap Cleaner, very appropriate). This is another great little free program that will keep your system up to date and clean. The main purpose of this program is to remove unnecessary files. Windows and many programs create temporary files but forget to delete them when they are finished. CCleaner finds those files and removes then. I recall one time where I ran CCleaner on a client’s 40GB drive and removed 10GB of files!!! Boy was she happy about having 25% more HD space!

If you do these two things alone, you will save your self hundreds of dollars as well as frustration with slow computers!

The ratings would provide statistics on what people were watching (and listening to for radio). This way the industry to tailor their programming to suit the mood of the audience and ideally generate more money by telling their sponsors where they could place their products.

Well, with today’s connected world, that methodology doesn’t work so well. While the data is being collected, and even with our unspoken consent, every time we do a search on Google or Yahoo, you now see ads that are directly related to the words you are searching for. Welcome to the modern Nielson Ratings.

Now, what is a scary parallel to the boxes put in homes in days past, is a piece of software, lovingly called Spyware. Spyware tries to do what Google does daily, except it usually does it without your consent and even to the point of doing so and giving you no other choice. Simply put, spyware reports what you do and sends that information back to some server on the Internet. In turn, you’ll get a pop-up that is totally related to the site you are visiting but it didn’t come from there. For example, you are visiting a sports site, suddenly there’s a pop-up for ‘basketballs on sale, 50% off!!’. If that site never had pop-ups before, and some sites do have legitimate ones, then you are most likely infected.

Modern web Browsers, like Internet Explorer and Firefox, have gotten a little better in blocking pop-ups but web-technologies are evolving too. There are things calls pop-unders! Like a pop-up but are treated differently in a browser and can get by a many pop-up blockers. There are many more technologies like this as well.

So what can you do? You run an anti-spyware program that’s what! My personal favourite is Spybot Search & Destroy. One of it’s main components is called ‘Tea Timer’. This active little guy monitors changes to your system and give YOU the choice of allowing or denying a change being made to your web browser or computer. Spyware typically likes to chance your default search engine or homepage. Tea Timer asks if you wish this and you can simply say ‘deny’ and you are protected. Now, this is over and above the usual ‘click and scan’ for problems, which is an awesome part of Spybot.

The other reason I like it is that Spybot can be ‘partially’ automated. By partially, I mean that there are a few settings that can be checked and all you have to do is click on the icon. Spybot can be set to automatically update, scan, remove and close when it’s done. How great is that?! A double-click and everything gets done for you!

Technology can be made simple and to work for you, instead of looking like some daunting task that just turns your brain to mush at the very thought of it!

Due to the relative ease of creating a virus for windows-based machines, and the huge, although dropping market share, it is mandatory for any machine connected to the Internet or has data-input of any sort, to have an Anti-Virus program installed.

Having been ‘in the field’ of doing tech support for both home users and big Corporations, I have had exposure to many pieces of software that clients are using to protect their systems. The worst one that I have found has been, none other than Norton. Many times I have have found it to be worse than many infected machines with no protection! Besides being big, clunky and trying to do too much and enforce too many controls, to the point of crippling system usability. Oh yeah, and it costs too.

The best ones I have come across are free! Well, to be more specific, free for ‘personal use’. Companies have to pay for it’s use. I’m talking about AVG created by Grisoft . I can’t tell you how many times I have been called to a client’s place, told they that they are having problems with pop-ups and suspect a virus. When I find out that they have Norton installed, that is the first thing I remove. I usually get “but I just renewed it.” Sorry about your luck. I tell them that they can reinstall it if they like after but I convince them to let me try AVG first.

No sooner than AVG is installed (and many times DURING the install) AVG snags a virus or 5. Then I ask the client, do you want to reinstall Norton? The answer is the obvious one….NO!

So, if you are looking for the best solution, in my opinion, then head on over to the free download of AVG and pay close attention to the links. AVG does have a paid version (with some nice features) but this is usually more than the average person needs.

If you are somewhat technically inclined, I would suggest setting up AVG to run every night. This includes updating and scanning. Best time is probably 3am for most people(unless you are up at that time, then I would suggest 3pm).

You can ask around and see what kind of responses you get from other technicians, in fact I would encourage it! Each one will have their own ideas and opinions on what is the best. I can only speak from my experience, and it is broad, but I will always stand by my opinion.

I have only ever had one person say they tried AVG and didn’t like it. Want to know why? They got a virus. Want to know why they got a virus? They didn’t update AVG on any kind of regular basis. When I told her that I used AVG to clean the hard drive, she didn’t say anything after that.

There is one more reason why I like AVG. It can be automated. While other might be able to, they don’t make it easy or people don’t consider this as a possibility. For example, on many Systems Norton will scan on start up. This causes long startup times and slow system response until the scan is complete. I have noticed that AVG is quicker and much less intrusive to your use of the computer. Better still, simply schedule it for a time when you don’t use the system.

Like your parents told you, always wear protection!