I hate my life.

[RickN]

I hate getting these requests as well. I can't say no to my family, but they find the most ridiculous ways to ruin their technology...

Missing boot loader segment doesn't sound that bad, you should be able to enter your boot loader command line and restore from a disk drive, but I'm sure you've already finish.

At least it was just the backup drive and not the main drive? Imagine the main drive failing, and THEN finding out you're missing a boot loader block. Yikes.

It took the rest of the drive with it. Now I am setting her up with another drive.

I politely refuse all tech support calls from friends and family and nicely direct them towards a couple of local shops.

I like doing them for family and friends, it is just that about every 6 months this sister catches some kind of CTD.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Yep and I even kicked it. Didn't work.

i never turn down tech requests, i always ask for payment in beer though.

I usually ask for ammo.

Me- "Hello IT. My computer is broke. Can you send someone over to fix it?"
IT- "Sure. What seems to be the problem?"
Me- "Well, to start with, it has a bullet hole in it......"

I have only done that once.

 

[itzkwik]

Let the Smoke out of it! Oops

 

[Shadowrider]

Am I the only one who sees it as ironic that with surface touch screens MS windows 8 and the metro look is attempting to move into vertical hardware integration... Kinda like iOS and OSX... Which google tried with Android for phones, tablets, and chromebooks? I really really really wanted to love android, but it's just become such a hodgepodge mess that I don't want to spend time dorking with it. Even bone stock my wifes phone always had issues with the carrier provided rom, I had fewer issues running Cyanogen Mod but I still had some as well.

No. No you're not.

I too wanted to like Android in a big way but the 1.5 years I had my Samsung Galaxy S was pure frustration. I soooo wanted to like it because I just loved the way google sync'd with it. So I thought. All your contacts, emails, files, etc. in your gmail account was always instantly there upon signing into your gmail account on your phone. So it was a de facto backup for me if I ever lost the phone. The one quirk was the sync was only down from gmail and not up from phone to gmail. But all the quirky and downright dysfunctional apps just killed it for me.

Then I got an iPhone, iPad and shortly after an iMac. I then learned that iCloud in conjunction with all three actually works. It works just as it should with all 3 syncing like one would think. If I turn it on I can take photo/video on my phone and it will be on my iMac at home as soon as the file transfer via cell is complete. I can push all my store bought CDs to every IOS device I have. Sharing files is as simple as dragging them to the shared folder. Done! No jumping through security hoops on all your devices like with Widows. Apple's platform just works and all of them having an almost identical interface is just nirvana. I'll also say the the MS Office for Mac must be the bastard stepchild of MS. At least their Windows versions work because half the stuff I used in Outlook just flat doesn't work so I dumped it and just went to the Mac email client and iCal. No more issues. If it weren't for me having to have Excel I'd dump it completely.

 

[dennishoddy]

I help maintain a 2 billion dollar power plant that is controlled by software.
That doesn't mean I understand how your microwave oven can't work anymore

 

[RickN]

Tech: "Put your Windows disc in the CD drive."
Customer: "I do not have a CD drive, but I did find the cup holder"

 

[MoBoost]

[Broken External Image]

 

[bettingpython]

No. No you're not.

I too wanted to like Android in a big way but the 1.5 years I had my Samsung Galaxy S was pure frustration. I soooo wanted to like it because I just loved the way google sync'd with it. So I thought. All your contacts, emails, files, etc. in your gmail account was always instantly there upon signing into your gmail account on your phone. So it was a de facto backup for me if I ever lost the phone. The one quirk was the sync was only down from gmail and not up from phone to gmail. But all the quirky and downright dysfunctional apps just killed it for me.

Then I got an iPhone, iPad and shortly after an iMac. I then learned that iCloud in conjunction with all three actually works. It works just as it should with all 3 syncing like one would think. If I turn it on I can take photo/video on my phone and it will be on my iMac at home as soon as the file transfer via cell is complete. I can push all my store bought CDs to every IOS device I have. Sharing files is as simple as dragging them to the shared folder. Done! No jumping through security hoops on all your devices like with Widows. Apple's platform just works and all of them having an almost identical interface is just nirvana. I'll also say the the MS Office for Mac must be the bastard stepchild of MS. At least their Windows versions work because half the stuff I used in Outlook just flat doesn't work so I dumped it and just went to the Mac email client and iCal. No more issues. If it weren't for me having to have Excel I'd dump it completely.

Add an Apple TV or 2 to your house and then you you have access to your icloud media on any television connected to it, the ability to stream from iOS devices or stream your desktop from OSX lion and newer and you can use your iOS device as a remote control for the black box as well.

As an Amazon prime member I wish they had a apple tv app but i just stream from my macbook to watch amazon prime. Hulu and Netflix work great though.

 

[been]

I have no idea how computers work. When it comes to anything with programs i am clueless.

 

[Stan Upchurch]

I gave up trying to understand gthe new languages of the computers after
Fortran I. I was an Assembler programmer. Fortran IV blew my mind!

 

[bettingpython]

I gave up trying to understand gthe new languages of the computers after
Fortran I. I was an Assembler programmer. Fortran IV blew my mind!

I learned procedural language code, CL, RPG, COBOL, object oriented coding makes me nuts. It's the way of the world though as processor power and memory become less of a limiting factor inefficient code generated by object oriented compilers has become the norm.