annoyed by family's computer problems *RANT*

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Do any of you ever get annoyed when you're family members bug you to fix their little petty computer problems? Since I am an IT guy my family expects me to know everything and that pisses me off sooooo bad. (I don't think i could ever do a help desk position). Like my mom will bug me for some of the most tedious things that i know she's intelligent enough to figure out herself. (i.e. having to show her how to put up an avatar on a forum ) And then why i do go over to look at something as soon I sit down she'll go "what do you think is wrong with it?" errrrrrrrrrggghhh I mean it's like she expects me to know everything. How the f**k am I supposed to know whats wrong with it when I haven't even liooked at it yet??! ! and then she gets upset and wonders why I get angry!

anybody else experience this?

Yes but in a different way from you. People assume that because I have degree in biology that I must know every disease, animal, plant etc in the whole wide world and I get people coming to me with medical problems. It makes me laugh cos I did biology not medical school and these subjects are, in fact, entirely different.

Oh yeah, I get that all the time. But worse then that is that I have to listen to all this crap about "it should be this way, not that way". I think my biggest beef about this is over security issues.

You want to prevent viruses? Install a good open source operating system (Linux isn't the only one ) , and research the topic. Modify your machine. If it's "too hard" then so be it. But know that you chose the easy path.


Also, I do programming, not tech support. (Though being that I program I can understand how a lot of those problems can start)

Yeah, I'm the tech support guy for about 8 friends and family. I don't mind it though; I've come to realise that people who come to computers late will never really get how to use them properly. They can learn the recipe for doing individual things, but don't really generalise those skills, or dig how the system hangs together as a whole. Sort of like me and cooking - I can follow a recipe, but the instant I go freestyle, disaster follows.

So have pity on the poor dudes; you get to help them out, which makes you useful and valued.

i felt like that too, when i had aol(the official disconnect was today and turned all names my dad had and mine into aim names) each weekend, "ITS NOT RESPONDING WHAT DO I (WORD THAT RYMES WITH TRUCKING(USED IN ANGER) DO?!?! THIS IS IT NO MORE AOL!! ! OR STAY OFF THE COMPUTER DONT EVER LET ME CATCH U USE IT AGAIN UNTIL U CAN FIX THE PROBLEM!! !"

( my dad's words)

he was right the change to verizon dsl has stopped the bickering and weekendly arguements and big meltdowns about the computer and endless rebooting of said computer. if it wasnt htat it was some stupid error about printer software or windows (yes im still stuck to microsoft) doing an automatic update. the only problem i do ever have with verizon though is the once in a while connection to internet making me reset modem (pretty easy) since its a westell 327w. along with my own problems i was helping other members and even the aol tech support people in other countries!! with verizon dsl the tech support as far as i know is in usa and they know a bit more about the computer and easy to understand. also the phoen number is soo easy to remember im not looking in credit card statements for the number


no more deleting temporary files, less defragging, scandisking, disk cleaning and no deleting the style.lst file in aol! and no adapter removing or rebuilding or quick restoring of aol and its messed up stuff.

With me it is more like an occasional email from a family member. I'll get one from my Aunt like this:

"Hey. My email won't work and my computer is slow. Can you fix it?"

It is generally so screwed up by the time I get around to working on it that I just format the entire harddrive and re-install everything.

I've done my (un)fair share. Past couple of years though, I've been more interested in not fixing peoples crap. I've bigger fish to fry, like enjoying life instead of getting pissed off at there 1800's horse drawn cart!

I have let procrastination set in; now no one expects me to fix there machine. They still ask, but it doesn't bother me any more to let them down.

My advice now is for them to go get a $300 dell or what ever.

yea

i have the same problem my parents think i am smart Lol.
but i did upgrade thier dinosaur compaq 5020 with 48 ram 300mhz
running 98se. i chucked in 2x 128 sticks of ram. 40 gig hdd seagate
and loaded xp on. and it still was soooooooo slow!

Sometimes you get the impression theyre not even trying at all - If you want to change the time on a digital watch, the watch ONLY has 2 buttons, one of which obviously makes a light come on...

I hate that my parents say I am good at computers and then some one thinks I can remove a virus or adware of fix some problem they caused. I am not good at Troubleshooting. All I am good at is installing hardware, the OS and drivers. If theres a software problem I dont understand I just back up their data onto another hdd and then reformat. I think once theres a load of adware its just easier to format.

I,in actual fact, am very willing to help friends and family with their computer troubles, It was my initial idea to run a wifi connection for the dining room computer, no one had asked me to do it, as it had no ISP on it and wasn't connected to my LAN any other way, my fiancee has had her fair share of problems, her laptop runs slow, even though it is only over a year old and I did install anti-spyware and anti-virus for her, my mother's computer doesn't fair any better as far as speed is concerned and that is possibly a year old now, but my mother hasn't asked me to look at it yet, here at home I only get the odd call for help off people, though I have had to reinstall windows twice on the dining room computer, as well as, as i mentioned in another post, antivirus, and of course wireless internet access

We had some visitors a week or so ago, one computer query that came up was related to their digital camera and our Kodak printer dock, so I gave them a usb cable to plug the camera in and sure enough it was compatible, and just today I was asked to help someone send an email with attachments and I was happy to help

All in all, people asking me for help with computers doesn't bother me one bit

I had to share a computer with my brothers and sisters for quite a while, let's run through the lists of problems I had to fix.

Brother 1 installs Kazaa. Chaos insues. I end up spending quite a few hours of my life removing all the adware (grr, p2p installer *gnashes teeth*)
Next up. Standard assortment of viruses and spyware.
And then I get my own computer. Brother 2 downloads Frostwire off of Limewire (the reason why still eludes me), unleashes a torrent of viruses and spyware which eventually killed it's internet connect and made it so the computer could not connect to my computer or the downstairs computer. Once again, I had to spend a lot of time fixing.

I also had to do light tech support back in high school; teachers computers becoming infested with spyware. Grr.

I'm no tech support - I'm your average computer user, schooled in Windows and Microsoft Office, and knowing just enough past that, that computer handicapped people think I'm an expert and ask me questions that I don't even understand.

My dad used to regularly crash my computer. He loved to play Hearts, but the copy of Hearts on the computer was very glitchy and frequently crashed the entire machine. After losing around 15 pages of a paper I was writing (my fault, I know, I should save more often), I deleted Hearts. He's also the guy who'll get angry that he "can't find what he's looking for" and when you go to help him, he's made 28 copies of the file he's trying to open.

My mom's usually better than he is, but in an incident that still angers me, she killed my old computer. It was a Hewlett Packard, didn't work well, and wasn't advanced even for its time - she bought the lines the salesmen gave her about shared memory being as good as the regular kind. Then she tried to install Windows XP. I told her that the computer couldn't handle it, that she'd fill up the hard drive and kill it. And she agreed not to. And then in a fit of whatever, when I wasn't home, she decided to install it herself, and killed the computer.

Everybody thinks I'm an expert because once I got to set up 5 Macs in a school computer lab. Setting them up mainly involved connecting cords and filling out registration forms. *sigh*

I have had this happen to me as well. It as if the fact that you watch television by means you can fix the TV if it blows up or something. This is an exaggeration certainly but...It's more annoying then anything else. It's just I can't go down, pop open the CPU, and fix it by magic. What I can do is figure out whatever you have to do re: this problem by doing research, see IF I can do anything, and then do it (if it is cost/labor effective). Now of course I do research all the time. I did research, and problem solving in regards to AS and I am no doctor. But this is something different. This is something I am not interested in with someone who sort of but doesn't completely what they are dealing with. And you don't want to insult them because they are family.

I had a variation on this but it wasn't as bad. I know alot about history so someone in my family asked if I had a anything on President John Tyler for their kid's school report. I gave them a couple of books, made some notes, and a primitive map. I wish I got more requests like that.