• 9point6@lemmy.world
    229·
    1 day ago

    After a lifetime of being tech support for everyone I know outside of work, I do not relate to this

    • smegger@aussie.zone
      89·
      1 day ago

      Nobody asks me anymore because I insist on educating them on how to fix their issues. It paid off after a while. They either fix their own stuff or ask somebody else lol

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          41·
          1 day ago

          I’m running into this at work lately. Suits are forcing everyone to move from one email sending service to another to save a few $, and I got stuck tracking the progress of everything that needed to be moved.

          Entire departments that openly told me all they do for the company is manage software to generate reports that get sent out via email automatically. One of their guys is using python. One is using some SQL server plugin that mixes “no code” shit with straight C#. Another is using an entire suite of outdated software that has its own proprietary email generation logic, and the only part they’re using is the email generation. The fucking lead? A god damn vbscript, used to dynamically construct a string that is sent to the command prompt to be executed. That string? Launch an existing PowerShell script that sends an email. I’ve seen the whole thing, that’s all it fucking does front to back. Just fucking use PowerShell straight for the love of all that is holy instead of this awful rube goldberg mess.

          In other departments, people whose entire job description is “I admin and support these three systems” being unable to do literally anything in their systems without relying on the vendor’s help desk for the software. Shit that I was able to find out in 30 seconds with a search that got me the system documentation, they open a support case and are fucking helpless.

          I just want to close the door and get back to working on my stuff, so I can stop taking mental damage from exposure to all the cognitive hazard messes these other supposedly technical teams have shit into existence.

          • Zink@programming.dev
            9·
            22 hours ago

            people whose entire job description is “I admin and support these three systems” being unable to do literally anything in their systems without relying on the vendor’s help desk for the software.

            I have run into a lot of engineers who would better be described as purchasers of equipment. And those roles are often very necessary, especially in fields like manufacturing engineering where you might have a single engineer specifying/buying/managing millions of dollars in capital equipment that makes money 24 hours a day if running and loses money 24 hours a day if not running.

            And the usefulness or uselessness of those individuals varies, just as it does with all people. But to think of somebody with an admin title being SO helpless is pretty crazy. But maybe it’s a win-win for the admin and the software vendor at the expense of the employer, lol.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
        21·
        1 day ago

        This made me smile because it reminded me of building my late best friend’s PC. I had a lot of fun doing it, but I insisted on making him do parts of it so that he would understand the basics of what was going on

    • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
      26·
      1 day ago

      It super depends on the person. But for my SO no problem. For my out of town family lmaooo forget about it.

    • Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      30·
      1 day ago

      For me it depends, when it’s an uncle I hardly have a relationship with randomly asking me to fix his printer because I’m good with computers. Then no think you, I just tell him to google the problem or ask Mistral-AI

      If it’s my close family then I love helping them

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
      23·
      1 day ago

      After 1 year of tech support: “I can fix it!”

      After 15 years: “I’ve never used a computer in my life.”

    • DV8@lemmy.world
      19·
      1 day ago

      Like others stated, if it’s not someone I’m close to, I wouldn’t want to do it. If my partner however asks me for help, being able to help her and solve a real problem she has, brings me tremendous joy.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
      14·
      1 day ago

      Man, I don’t recognize this at all. At work I’m currently in the middle of a two-month project that I think will end up producing about ten lines of code. It’s all about tracking a bunch of stuff down in a gigantic code base and then trial-and-erroring all of it until it works.

      So, my mother-in-law’s phone keyboard switches to French-Canadian? Yeah, I can definitely fix that! My dad wants a mesh network in his house so he can listen to music in the garage? Can do! My kid’s audio player breaks and I need to transplant in a new part? Give it to me! My wife’s computer won’t print suddenly? These little wins (and sometimes medium sized wins!) are euphoric. They keep me from feeling like I’ve wasted an entire day switching one variable, running a build, and then switching it back.

      Sure, it gets annoying when they don’t try anything before they ask, or they keep having the same problem over and over again. But that’s by far the minority.

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      10·
      1 day ago

      Part of it is not wanting to enable people to not even bother trying to do anything on their own.

      But someone who at least tries? Oh yeah, sure I’ll help!:-)

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
      13·
      1 day ago

      Yeah I don’t relate to this at all with computers because of the association with work. But I do with other things!

      A friend asked if I could fix the zipper on his pants. I was very tired, glanced at it and said nah, too much work. You’d have to unsew everything, split the seams apart, and sew back together. But my brain wouldn’t let go of it. I already solved in my bed. So that’s what I did. The satisfaction of completion and the look on his face when I actually just fixed it after saying no was pure dopamine.

    • NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      The last two times I had relatives ask me for remote support to remove the latest super obvious virus they loaded up I just said “Oh, sorry… I don’t really know Windows anymore.” That’s had a 100% success rate.

    • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
      7·
      1 day ago

      Depends on the topic. Friend recently said that his old PC will no longer receive Windows 10 security updates soon and he wants to try Linux, and just wanted quick advice. I had plans but I was over at his house within 10 minutes

    • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 day ago

      Same, if I came home in that condition and the first thing brought up was yet another tech issue, I’d fucking slam the door and go get wasted at a bar.

  • drath@lemmy.world
    51·
    1 day ago

    For some reason the only electronics I get asked for help with are literal e-waste which existence must be considered crime against computing, engineering and even humanity. Because of that, my success rate is less than half of cases. Is it bad, or should I consider it good that people only call me in worst possible cases where everything else failed?

        • fossilesque@mander.xyzEnglish
          10·
          1 day ago
          1. Upgrade my own stuff and servers.
          2. Have spare parts to fix my stuff or quick fixes for friends.
          3. If I can repair it and do not need it, I found some groups that take them for refugees and needy folks or they go by word of mouth to friends in need. I fix them in a very lazy fashion.
          4. I live pretty close to one of the local recycling spots, so I can quickly and safely dispose of stuff I cannot use.
          5. eBay is great.

          I have gotten a ton of free storage this way, makes it totally worth it. If they give me a few old laptops, I put all their data on one drive and take the rest.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
        131·
        1 day ago

        Anything made by Dell is. Try disassembling one of their mini PCs. I don’t know what tools they have at the dell manufacturing plant, but they must not be made of normal matter that’s all I can tell you, because otherwise how have they managed to put a screw that holds the PSU in place, under the PSU itself.

        • fading_person@lemmy.zip
          1·
          22 hours ago

          I’d really give it a try, if I had one. I find some pleasure in trying to fix and find new life for unused hardware, no matter how old or weird it is. Well, sometimes I fail, but I keep it in case I get nrw ideas for it in the future.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        23 hours ago

        what do you do with a laptop that has 4 GB ram and a HDD of the slower kind? xfce is not really more memory efficient than plasma.

        • fading_person@lemmy.zip
          2·
          22 hours ago

          4 gb is pretty reasonable for light usage. The hdd can be formatted as btrfs with compression for better performance. I’d also consider replacing the hdd with an ssd and using the hdd as extra storage, if possible.

      • drath@lemmy.world
        3·
        21 hours ago

        Acers are like that in my experience. The last one I got with the complaint of “being too slow” had half the case empty because they re-used the old case that was supposed to have a CD-drive in it. And, in it’s place, there was a fan with no heatpipes, no radiator, nor even any holes on the bottom, just some spacers so it sucks and recirculates the air from within the case, and blows it somewhere in the general direction of the motherboard, where, a fucking mile away, there’s a G-shaped piece of foil with just TWO fins slapped on top of the CPU.

        The two gigs of ram are, of course, soldered on, and there was already an ssd (though, on SATA and no secondary port either). So I just settled on blowing the dust out and swapping whatever sludge they had for a decent thermal paste, put Xubuntu on it and advised the nearest recycling plant’s address. Of course, I could drill some holes and hack some better thermal solution, but I found that this 5+yr Celeron machine with 720p TN panel is just not worth any effort. It was brand new, btw…

        • nathanjent@programming.dev
          25·
          1 day ago

          I used to read a bunch of webcomics. I had collected a bunch of RSS links to read every day. I joined Instagram a few years ago to see what was happening with my friends. Finding out that some creators are exclusive to that platform was really sad. Going from reading comics in chronological order with each new post following the last to reading in some order chosen by an engagement algorithm was horrible. I’ve since quit visiting Instagram. Engagement can be good for getting more views but the user experience is less enjoyable.

          • Uri@infosec.pubEnglish
            1·
            4 minutes ago

            I still follow some through freshrss. Thats why i always ask people here to drop links so i can add them.

          • Malix@sopuli.xyz
            6·
            1 day ago

            heh, still using bunch of stupidly old rss-feeds for webcomics. Admittedly some of them have turned into just links to their websites, but most of them still work fine! My list of comic rss’ date way back to early google reader -times, if not older.