I wish I never told anyone I worked or studied tech. Especially older family and friends, because their requests for help are relentless.
A lot of friends are chill with it, and I don’t mind doing a little bit of help, but sometimes people are who are OFFENDED when you don’t want to help. In the same way a contractor friend won’t remodel your home for free, I am not going to fix every single issue you have with your computer for free. I’m happy to give advice, but i’m not going to work for hours without pay to fix everything.
I’ve been using Linux as an out. “Oh you’re having a windows problem? I got rid of windows 10 years ago, so I can’t really help you with that”.
More or less my response to anyone with an Apple computer.
My mum just does not believe me when I say ‘I don’t know, I don’t use this software’. When I say I have no idea how to get word to do what she needs because I’ve used nothing but latex for close to ten years, clearly I’m just trying to get out of helping, right?
She’s not the only one, either. They always expect you to figure it out. Especially egregious: I didn’t customize my CV for a teaching job. It said I can code a bit. Guess who became the windows support for the older teachers?
I mean… they’re not wrong. If you’ve got the knack and they know it, there’s nothing you can do about it.
My out has been unfortunately true. I got into the corporate IT game. I really have no idea what’s going on in the consumer space if it’s not something I personally deal with.
Which means that when someone asks questions about getting a virus or how to do any little task, I tell them that normally I’d wipe and reimage without a second thought, or tell them to call the help desk.
I do the same thing but leverage networking instead of Linux.
“Sorry, I dont actually know much about computers, but let me know if you want advice about port trunking or configuring a VLAN”
See that’s dangerous though because networks are black magic to most users. Even more so than the computer itself.
Oh I have questions. I’m not going to ask because thread and because I’m smart enough to know it’s not an easy problem, but that sure wouldn’t be the escape you think it is if we were friends lol.
I hate networking issues. But I’ve replaced every foot of cabling, every networking device, and my ISP and I still get intermittent 2 minute network drops a few times a day. I am to the point of suspecting a rogue smart device is doing something malicious. I need a networking guru friend to annoy.
Disconnect everything physically plugged into the router and change the WiFi password.
Add your devices back one at a time until the dropouts start again.
If they start immediately then you’re looking at a modem/router issue (most likely). If they start after adding a device, remove that device and check the network stability again.
When the network drops happen is your modem showing that it’s still connected to your ISP or is the modem in a disconnected state?
The best antidote against being asked tech questions is not to use standard tech 😄
They know I worked at a computer shop so this wouldn’t work 😫