We are not amused

Do you think Doctor Phil makes diagnoses at the neighborhood block party?

“Hey Phil.”
“Hey Steve.”
“ I was gonna ask ya, I have some unresolved mother issues, you think that could make me a sociopath?”
“Well, I just don’t know Steve, do you tend to use other people for your own gain?’
“well… sure! At least sometimes. Ah probably aint nuttin. Hey, how about another beer?”
“why sure.”

Yeah, that doesn’t sound to feasible to me.

You don’t ask a friend who works at Wal-Mart to straighten and organize your pantry shelf, do you?
Do you ask you High School chum, who became a dentist, to yank a molar at the 10-year reunion?

Then why do computer techs get asked to diagnose issues and rebuild systems on the whims of their family and friends?
Sometimes it’s cool, like if I know off hand what the issue is and can take care of it for them, I don’t have an problem at all. For instance, Jay Cee Leigh had a new laptop that was acting up. I knew immediately what the issue was and volunteered to help (I’m cool that way.) I did not have any problem with installing some updates and doing some reorganization/cleanup for her.

Favor for a friend.
Not a problem.
Eazy-Peazy

Monday night Wildcat informs me her friend needs a computer and I was told that one of my 6 systems (yes 6. don’t judge me.) was going to go to her.
Nu-uh!
After push and prodding for more information I finally got down to the real issue. She was getting a tower from her he was keeping the hard drive, So all she really needed was a hard drive.
OK. That’s doable.
I recommended to her that she go to Best Buy and she can get a hard drive pretty cheaply but the operating system is going to be rather expensive.

Now at this point it gets kinda fuzzy for me.
I am pretty sure I was speaking comprehensive English. Working at a help desk, I have learned how to talk in simple and easy to understand references. I leave all the technobabble behind and tend to use the big chief tablet and crayons to explain what I am trying to say.
However, somewhere along this conversation either I got lost or I wasn’t being heard because nothing I was saying would dissuade my wife’s friend from bringing this tower over to my house.
Begrudgingly I agree to look at the tower and I thought I might have a hard drive laying around they could have.
Last Night she shows up with this Dell tower explaining to me that her Pa and Step Ma had bought themselves a brand new $7000 dollar computer system. Complete with 32 inch plasma screen and speakers with bass thumper and built in vibrator with a kick start.
All kinds of bells and whistles.
Also, the aforementioned step ma had spent the day, THE DAY!, reading over the owner’s manual so they would be able to successfully remove the hard drive and give the rest away.
The friend then explains how her father
“read through the manual one more time and then carefully removed the memory and they labeled them one and two and stored them away for future use.”
Mmhmm wait. What?
Now I am suspicious, so I finally take a look at this tower.
I noticed a big hole in her statement.
It was the big hole in the front of this PC where the CDROM drives used to be.
Ma and Pa had researched, read and studied and then removed the CDROMS thinking that was the hard drive.
Oh boy.
I guess it could be an honest mistake but come on people.
Who opens up the back of their TV or pops up the hood of their car and just starts yanking parts “cause they seen it in a picture in the book”
I spend the next 10 minutes explaining what has happened, what needs to happen and I even remove the hard drive for them and stick in the 80 gig hard drive I had laying around.
Gosh, I’m swell.
I explain that once they get the CD drives back all they gotta do is slide them into place and plug them up. Then all that’s left is to install the software and she is good to go.
The room got quiet.
I slowly look up from my little cable and hook up lecture to find everyone in the room is just staring at me like I had just read the Koran to them backwards and in Binary. ( ok that’s just a total computer geek joke, never mind.)

The next word I hear is the royal “WE”.

I fucking hate the royal “WE”.
As in, “WE are off the next couple of days so WE will get it installed and WE will get the system working for you.”

Fuck you, royal “WE”

It always means ME.