Merry Christmas, Now Fix My Computer!
It’s that time of year again. The time when the technical support person for the family pays a visit. Call it Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever you want, recognize or celebrate. The point is, the holiday season is the time of year when family and friends get together, and people like me get to work.
The many gatherings the holiday season brings has become little more than a captive audience with the family’s resident computer nerd. Even if that nerd is nothing more than someone who is just better with computers than the others in the room. They don’t have to bring much more skill to the table than knowing how to get music in iTunes, and it’s question time.
I’m going to jump to a conclusion here and say that you, the person reading this, are most likely that person. You are your family’s tech support. So, what do you do to avoid (or embrace) the holiday workload?
3 Ways to Avoid Fixing A Computer On Your Holiday
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Be Too Busy
Volunteer to host the gathering at your place, or if that’s not possible, volunteer to bring a lot of stuff. There’s always room for another green bean casserole. Stay busy helping out in the kitchen, offering to get things “while you’re up”, or just playing as much of role as possible in the logistics of the day.
You’ll be seen as incredibly helpful and nice, but the interlopers won’t have the courage to break your stride to ask why they get so many pop-ups.
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Play With The Kids.
Obviously this one is dependent on the existence of little kids. If you have access to them, play with them. They just got a bunch of new crap, they’re dying to play with it and show it off to you. They also probably have some toy that came with little stickers in need of sticking or parts that need assembling.
Dive in, baby, you’ll be the hero to those kids and be seen as too busy by the people wanting you to explain what a firewall is.
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Get Drunk, Fast.
My personal favorite. No one wants a drunk idiot touching their precious bookmarks and photos of their cats. Show up late, start dropping phrases like, “It looks like I have some catching up to do”, and hit that holiday punch. You don’t have to get dangerously drunk, you can even fake it, the point is to scare off any family member that might be waiting for the right moment to ask you how to work their new iPod.Trust me, this one works.
Plan on Failure: 3 Things You’ll Need For Working On Your Day Off
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Universal Boot Disc
If you’ve used this before then you already know how indispensable it can be. If you haven’t seen it, look. UBCD is a must have tool for your tech support toolbox. You can use it to boot the computer into an incredibly useful amount of various utilities. You can check hard drives for errors, clean up viruses and spyware, test the memory, CPU, video, and the list goes on and on.
The number one cause of all holiday-related tech support injuries is spyware. Having this disc with you will make your day a lot easier.
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A USB Thumbdrive
Don’t ever forget your USB drive when going to the see the family, especially during the holidays. More likely than not, someone got themselves a shiny new laptop, computer, iPod or whatever. And without fail, they will be asking you how to get their stuff from one place to another.
With your USB drive you can at least offer to take a stab at it, before quickly explaining that they just have too much stuff for your little stick to handle and this isn’t possible today.
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References
Again, my personal favorite. Not everyone has the testicular fortitude to bring their computer to the holiday meal, nor is the host always the one with the problem. This means you will find yourself in philosophical conversation about how to sell something on eBay, how to back up a computer, or how in the heck to get pictures off of their new camera. The best thing you can do here is make it all sound easy, especially by rattling off a few resources off the top of your head as to where they can find the answers themselves.
Before you go, brush up on the many products and services out there that you can throw at other people. “Well, I use Mozy for my backup, and it’s crazy simple” or “if you type that into Google, you’ll find some insanely easy ways to make that work”. You get the idea.
Wrapping Up
Resistance is Futile
The sad sad truth of the matter is, most of you will fail. I will fail. For some strange reason you decided to have the most basic of interests in computers, and now it will haunt you forever. There is little, if anything, you can do to avoid being the person fixing or explaining how to fix someone’s busted computer on your day off.
You can blame “them” for not getting it, and complain incessantly about the need for others to figure this stuff out on their own. But, whose fault is it really? Just about everyone has a computer that they rely on. And, that computer always has something wrong with it. A small portion of those people actually know how to solve their problems, while the others are left stranded. Who better to ask then their own family? The people who are supposed to be there in times of need.
Would you rather have them asking you for money?
Please Comment!
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15 Responses to “Merry Christmas, Now Fix My Computer!”
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Twitter: FWebDe
says:
Very interesting post!
These are some interesting tips. I’m starting to get tired of being my family’s tech support.
Eric B.´s latest blog | Getting Started With Ruby on Rails
Twitter: FWebDe
says:
Just read this post again, and had another comment:
Don’t follow all of these at once, because some people won’t want some drunk guy playing with their kids
Eric B.´s latest blog | Customizing the Home Page of Your CMS
That’s hilarious. I totally didn’t see that. Good one.
Yeah. No playing with their kids while you’re drunk. LOL. That would definitely not be a good thing.
Hey Nicholas – Nice to see you here. Thanks for stopping by!
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This reminds me that a family members wants me to look at their pc whilst im off over xmas.
David Hobson´s latest blog | Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have split up
I just plead ignorance – its amazing how little I know about computers when I’m around relatives
Anthony Feint´s latest blog | Essential Web Apps for Lifestyle Designers
That’s a great idea, if only I would have thought of it much much sooner. I’ll be doing that from now though…
Thanks for reading & commenting.
Twitter: lionslinger
says:
Such a sensible advice you have given here. I feel guilty for being selfish, perhaps I should give my time to the people I care for.
When you put it like that, yes, we should give our time to those we care about.
Good to see you again, Walter!
Good to have you guys around to fix all our broken stuff alright! The only thing that I would say as a former chef is that at least you can relax and enjoy your dinner while I always get called in to the kitchen to solve some sort of disaster! Ah we love it really
Good one. I never thought of that. It’s safe to say I’d rather be the computer guy than the chef on those days. But only those days, I’d rather be a chef on a daily basis.
Never fails to happen to me, I have no less than 5 family members for which I am their personal tech support.
This Christmas, my mother-in-law, god bless her, downloaded some silly freeware packed with a virus (the kind where it “scanned” your computer for a virus, and now you must buy the so-called “software” to remove the damn thing) that wouldn’t allow anything to be done. Obviously, the hard drive needed to be wiped and the OS reinstalled.
So, guess what we did instead the day after Christmas? I took her to an Apple Store, and now she’s the proud owner of a Mac Mini. Problem solved. ; )
Good choice on the Mac. I try to steer my “clients” (read: family) in that direction whenever possible, in the hopes that my phone will ring less.
Thanks for reading and commenting!