Charles The Technician

More news, man it just keeps coming!

Posted by Charles | Filed under News

Just finished some legal trouble I had, still got some stuff to do with that, I’m kinda not supposed to talk about it but suffice it to say I got in a fist fight.

I quit my job about a month ago and started receiving a nice check from the government in the form of Montgomery GI Bill so my finances are pretty well covered.  However, it kinda makes the content of this site have to change or at minimum get a new focus, if not shutdown completely.  I don’t want to shut down so I’m going to be looking at other ways to be creative and still keep somewhat the same concepts going.  Not like there is a shortage of idiots out there.

I’m going to be upgrading to newest version of WordPress because I’m a slacker and haven’t been doing that, and also will be looking at making another site for personal use.

All in all, it’s going to be a busy weekend.

Love,
Charles~

Idiot of the week: You mean I have to actually run these programs?

Posted by Charles | Filed under Idiot of the week

Lady brought her computer in the shop other day and was furious she had someone contracted a virus. She was getting pop ups from hell and much much worse. Turns out she didn’t have a mild infection she had several virii problems and spyware galore. Wouldn’t have surprised me if someone was using her machine as one of the botnets hubs.

So after having casually said, “It looks like you have a virus problem” as she dropped of the computer she not so casually let me know that she is extremely diligant in making sure all anti-virus and anti-spyware/adware programs are installed and functional and that she doesn’t use any “risky” behaviour on the interenet.

Fair enough I still think she has a virus, she would have none of that though, I was told that it couldn’t be a virus but someone breaking into her system everytime she turned it on and I was to lock it down.

So I took the computer down into the shop and worked on it, ran a few cursory scan s and found that yes, she has a major virus problem.

One of the things we do when we do find a virus spyware problem to be the cause of the problem is we call them up and let them know, and let them know that now that we have diagnosed the problem it is $90 for us to fix it or the regular $35 diagnostic fee if they want to take it away, since they have already paid the diagnostic fee we wave it if they want us to fix it so now it really only costs $55 more.

So I called her up and let her know and again she made it clear that she didn’t want a virus spyware removal she just wanted the system locked down so that no one else could get into it. That it was impossible for her to get a virus and that she was ever so diligant with her virus and spyware removal software.

I asked her to come down to the shop so I could show her a few things that I had noticed while I was running some cursory scans.

Mainly this:

Reasons you are an idiot:

1.) You still argued with me after I made it perfectly clear what was going on.
2.) You think people can hack into your computer when you have no connection to the internet.
3.) When I told you that you had to run the programs and make them perform scan you looked at me like I had told you red was blue.
4.) You still thought it was hackers after all this.

Fuck you,

Charles~

Update, my life.

Posted by Charles | Filed under News

I enrolled in college here this last couple of weeks and have been running around trying to get everything in order with my V.A. benefits and Montgomery G.I. bill stuffs.  I’ve had one teacher decide he wasn’t going to show up for his class or tell anyone else that the class had been canceled all together then he himself schedule me for a different class and then not show up because he had an appointment nor tell me the class he just scheduled me for would be not happening on Thursday.

Not really impressed with him in the professionalism department, however he does appear to know his stuff.

Couple of classes I’ve been in I’ve really enjoyed.  Introduction to Operating systems I thought I was going to have to sleep through.

“This is the Start button!”  No nothing like that, they are even being true to the plural title in the class and teaching some basic Linux usage along side it all.

All in all everything is going pretty good, I’ve been busy as get all but when have I not been in the last year.

Idiot of the week: You mean this new hard drive is blank?

Posted by Charles | Filed under Idiot of the week

Last week we sold a hard drive to a customer that decided they didn’t want us to fix their problem.  It had been determined that their Hard drive had failed and that we would have to replace the hard drive and install their operating system for them.

They didn’t much like that idea, so they opted to purchase a hard drive from us.

Day or two passes and they call us back.

Them:  I purchased this hard drive from you but I’m getting an error message.
Me:      What kind of error message, what does it say?
Them:  Operating System not found.

After going back and forth why that was the case and them being rather upset that a brand new hard drive was supposed to be blank I explained to them in detail how to install the operating system.

Them:  You expect me to do all that?
Me:      No not really that is why I urged you to let us do it for you.

Only so much you can do for people.  I’m tempted to just record every conversation I ever have now so I can play it back to them, something I’ve found rather humerous in the shop owners dealings with some of his problems.

Now I had expected that to be the end of it all, either they bring in the computer and we do an operating system reinstall or they do it themselves, nope.

Them:  It says the hard drive isn’t in there, but I’ve hooked it up, the hard drive you gave us is defective.

Winds up they didn’t hook it up right.  But once they did hook it up right windows installer still didn’t see the hard drive.  Because it was SATA so I had to walk them through how to set their BIOS to “Compatibility mode”.

By the end of all this, it’s somehow still my fault, and I’m the jerk.

Reasons you are an idiot:
1.) I just spent well over a combined total of 45 minutes on the phone with you, for free.
2.) I’ve been upfront with you on every single thing about this purchase.
3.) You wonder why I made it perfectly clear that I will not warranty anything you’ve done, with your masterful do it yourself attitude.
4.) The hard drive you purchased was a steal and a half at 10% of what the local market would sell it for and you bitched unendingly about how we gouged you on it.
5.) I’m back bitches.

Fuck you,
Charles~

Idiot of the week: Multiple Synaptic Misfiring Idiots of Doom

Posted by Charles | Filed under Idiot of the week

Idiot 5: Help I can’t play Pogo!

Ok for some reason 85% of our customers use this website called pogo.com, literally everytime we have an outage the pogo brigade comes out of the woodworks and slams the phones. So pogo had an outage last week and believe me I knew within 15 minutes of their website going down.

Her: Hi this is [Her name I can’t remember], and I can’t play pogo.
Me: You can’t browse any website or just pogo?
Her: Just pogo, I’ve been with y’all for 4 years and usually it’s pretty good but tonight I can’t play pogo.
Me: So you can view google and yahoo and other webpages but cannot view pogo’s webpage?
Her: Yes
Me: Ok making sure, alright let me take a look…nope I can’t pull it up either, they must be down for a bit, give it some time.
Her: You are checking from your internet connection which I’m on as well, the problem is with your equipment I just want to play pogo will you fix it?
Me: I’m browsing from 2 different sources, one is the T1 we use for our dial up customers and one is the DSL which I have for our repair side to keep virus / spyware problems from hitting our main network and as a back up.
Her: Look I don’t care, I want to play pogo and your service isn’t letting me

Now imagine 200 people like this calling for the next 2 hours. I’m not kidding it didn’t let up, and people called back 30 minutes later and some called 4 or 5 times in that 2 hour span. I eventually forwarded the phones to my cell phone and set it to have a message saying pogo’s website is down if you can view other webpages it is not your internet connection it’s just pogo, if you can’t view any other webpage leave a message and I’ll get back with you.

My voice mailbox filled up in 10 minutes.

“Why the fuck can’t I play pogo?”
“You motherfuckers are blocking pogo!”

and on and on and on. I was getting scared and tempted to go grab my AR-15 from the apartment leave it in the tech area with a clip in but no round in the chamber and lock the doors. I expected pitch fork and torches coming up main street any minute.

Then pogo came back up.

“Thanks for listening and unblocking pogo”

In the eyes of a pogo player, pogo can do no wrong.

—————————————————————

Idiot 4: Want my windows reinstalled and set back up.

Guy came in 3 weeks ago asked me to reinstall windows for him, typically what I do is copy over the my documents folder grabbing up all their pictures, music, videos, and documents. Kind of my way of saying thank you and going the extra mile. This guy was an internet customer so I went ahead and copied over his email inbox as well.

Reinstalled windows, setup drivers, setup our dial up connection, installed the basics (AVG, Adaware 2007, Spybot S&D, Adobe Document Reader, Firefox, Flash player) setup his email copied over all his stuff and gave him a call.

Computer went home, guy paid and was happy.

Later that night:

Me: [My company], this is Charles, how may I help you?
Him: I TOLD YOU TO WIPE MY COMPUTER CLEAN, I STILL HAVE ALL THIS STUFF ON MY COMPUTER AND IT’S WHAT MAKES IT RUN SLOW!!!

Note: Hardrive space free != Speed.

I had to figure out who the guy was and let him know but still he went on and on and on.

Me: Ok, typically what we do is copy over all your documents and pictures and set you back up with the basics after we do a windows reinstall, I asked you before we did all this to make sure that you were going to be keeping the computer because when you want to sell it most want it wiped with no personal data on it. Documents and pictures take up very little space and even so, free space on your hard drive does not mean your computer will go faster.
Him: I WANT MY COMPUTER WIPED CLEAN, I DON’T WANT ANY OF THIS JUNK!
Me: Ok then delete it, just select it and delete it.
Him: NO I WANT YOU TO DO IT!
Me: Ok bring in on down here and I’ll take care of it.

So I did, lesson learned: No good deed goes unpunished.

Tune in sometime within a week for more idiots, I promise I’ll post some more quick ones. It’s just been so hectic lately and the idiots so numerous that I can’t find one that sticks out and is post worthy.

Charles~

Idiot of the week: Psyco Bitch from Hell

Posted by Charles | Filed under Idiot of the week, Rants

Not tech related, much more personal. I figured you guys might enjoy this.

I’ve been dating a woman for the last month or so and up until about a little over a week ago it was all going great. I’m planning on starting college in the fall so really getting attached to someone locally isn’t on my list of things I want to do. So primarily my aims have been to be somewhat of a social person. I can’t just sit over a computer all day, on IRC, or in one of the plethora of forums I visit (or am staff on).

So along comes Vicky, I met Vicky while I was out on lunch at one of the local coffee shops about 2 blocks down from the shop. The place was crowded so I asked if I could sit with her. We talked and were having a decently good time. I asked if she would like to have lunch some other time and we did.

Somethings you should know about me, up until last may I was a very religious person. Now, not so much, however I retain some of the morals. You probably think that I’m just some asshole on the internet but really, this page is where you see the worst of me. This site is supposed to be that way, everyone has an asshole side to them and this is mine. Now what I’m getting at is that one of the morals I’ve retained is, I prefer to be a virgin until I’m married.

My initial observation of Vicky was that she was a very down to earth girl, brought up in a Christian home had held on to what she knew to be good and let the rest fall to the way side. She was a tom boy of sorts which is always a plus and didn’t appear to have any of disqualifying factors in what I look for in a woman.

Date after the lunch date (which I consider to be the first date because lunch dates are typically reserved for platonic relationships such as friendships or acquaintances however dinner dates are more for the romantic sort.) this subject just happened to rear it’s head and I stated quite matter of factly exactly where I stood on the subject.

This is where it all the signs of the shit storm that was to come began to appear.

I’m usually very good at reading people, it comes naturally and is enhanced by the training I received in the army especially in the interrogation training. I could not believe how far off I was. By the 2nd real date (Read one lunch date, second dinner date) it became clear to me that she was dating another person, this didn’t bother me because I knew were not exclusive or going steady or whatever the current terminology is so I didn’t care. She also made it a habit of trying to sneak sex into the discussion whenever it was possible or some sort of joke. In itself it’s nothing wrong, however the intentions made it so. She was attempting to get me all worked up.

By the 3rd date she seemed to have lost her self confidence and baited me to compliment her almost throughout the entire night.

By the 4th date she had no clue what she was doing, she appeared nervous and deep in thought about something else the entire date. She was able to carry on casual conversation but anything that required thought was met with monosyllabic answers.

At the end of the 4th date as I was leaving I gave her a kiss and walked away. Not but 5 steps out she tells me to stop.

“You can stop playing your game about being a virgin, and your wanting to move slowly in the relationship, come inside I’m tired of playing games.”

She had surprised me I was pretty sure that such an idea was impossible considering the seriousness of which we talked about it, “No, I was actually serious about all that.”

She seemed a little phased but said, “Give it up already, come inside. Look, I’ll admit I’ve been playing some games with you as well, for instance, I’m not dating anyone else. I just wanted you to think you might lose me and to pass on the thought that I’m a little more valuable then you thought. I know you are basically doing the same thing, pretending to be a virgin so that I think sex with you is something special, and waiting till now to kiss me has been part of your plan to starve me for affection and get me hot and bothered and ready to go at the drop of a hat”

I was dumbstruck, “No, no, I’m very serious about all that, it’s not some game, I’ve never been much for playing games in relationships. If I’m picking on you it’s one thing and the game ends quickly, I shoot pretty straight.” I kissed her on the cheek and left.

Up the road a ways my cell phone started ringing, I couldn’t find it, it had fallen out of my pocket and worked it’s way behind my seat. So I drove on home. The voicemail was pretty much a repeat of all of it and calling me a “fucking player” and a few other nonsensical things. It was hard to pick up some of it as she was half shreaking half screaming through it all.

I waited and called her back the next day to make sure it wasn’t all a big joke, but my calls never got through.

For about the next week I would get a voice mail or text message telling me how big a jerk I am.

Hrm…this is an idiot of the week post might as well do it right.

Reasons you are an idiot!~
1.) You never learned that people quit listening to you when you scream.
2.) Your choice of men and learned behaviour concerning games they play has led you to believe that any man over the age of 14 who claims he is a virgin is a liar and is saying so to get you to sleep with him.
3.) You require sex to feel loved.
4.) You went from zero to psyco in .3 seconds.
5.) You didn’t give me prier warning so that I could time it correctly.
6.) You have tried to break into my webserver 4 times and can’t figure out why your browser is redirecting you to lemonparty (cause you just visited 11 times in a row to the same page.)
7.) You do the same thing over and over expecting a different result (this is a sign of insanity) but keep being forwarded to lemonparty.

Fuck you (Not in the literal sense)
Charles~

PS: What is worse? The idea that there are actually guys out there that pretend to be virgins to get laid, or that there are enough of them out there that predicting this kind of behavior is a learned behavior for some women?

Legislation to push for: Computer Operator License

Posted by Charles | Filed under Rants

I swear to God there is some disease that comes around, and the carrier is the keyboard or something. Why is it that when someone gets within 5 feet of a keyboard they all the sudden lose all common sense? Some people are immune to this, but most aren’t.

Case Study 1: Update my antivirus? Why?

Lady calls me up the other day and wonders why her computer is fucking filled with pop ups and telling her to download this program or that program to get rid of spyware / adware…
Public Service Announcement: If a POP UP is trying to sell you something to REMOVE POP UP’s it’s PROBABLY not legit. It’s like buying protection from the mafia, so that the mafia doesn’t kick your ass…except the mob still kicking your ass.

…I ask her what antivirus / spyware / adware protection programs she runs. She says with confidence (I was impressed), AVG, Adaware, and Spybot S&D.
So her computer winds up in the shop cause I’m not even going to begin trying to fix this with her over the phone. First thing I see, 3827 scans ran on Adaware, last update…..not within the last year. Spybot? Same thing. AVG? Been bitching at her for the last 384 days, it was asking if it would be better for her if it just uninstalled itself.

I tell her she has to update these tools and she goes balistic, “I’m college educated and I work at {X_Named_Lawfirm} and I know how to administrate a computer”.
No lady you don’t, infact I should have dedicated an idiot of the week to you but instead you got rolled up here with the other assclowns. I hope you are happy

Case Study 2: More space = Faster Computer!

Guy calls me up and doesn’t understand what why his computer wouldn’t work, it was working last night, whole shebang.
Me: “What was the last thing you were doing to your computer when it stopped working?”

Him: “I was deleting files I didn’t think I needed to try and speed up my computer.”
OK first things first, more HD space does not mean faster computer(Link!), GET THIS IDEA OUT OF YOUR HEAD, WHERE THE FUCK DOES IT COME FROM I WANT TO KNOW SO I CAN LOBOTOMIZE THE PERSON THAT STARTED THIS.

Second, if it’s in a folder called “Windows” or “System” or “System32″ or “Don’t fucking delete me douchenugget” then it’s probably NOT a good idea to delete it. Was bad enough you had to go through a “Naughty Naugthy User, nothing for you to do here” warning when you try and browse through there.

Case Study 3: “I overclocked my modem and added more CPU to my SATA floppy drive”

People that come in the shop and try and wow me with terminology and wind up butchering it up so bad I cant keep a straight face.

1.) Shut the fuck up.
2.) In very simple terms that you would use with your child tell me what error you are getting or what the problem appears to be to you.
3.) Don’t tell me how to fix it.

This isn’t a new phenomenon but really, people act like they know what the hell they are talking about when they wouldn’t have a clue if it came up and took them out for dinner and a movie fucked them and didn’t return their call. (Xalpharis you bitch, return my phone calls!(LINK!) (Please?))

So here is my solution…
Mandatory licensing computer operators and admins. No license? No login. Why? Because every operating system forces basic users to be admins, here is a hint: GRANDMA IS NOT A FUCKING ADMINISTRATOR. If you cannot demonstrate an ability to administrate a computer you are not allowed to do it unsupervised. Yeah it may be your car, but you better be licensed on it to use it.

Class E license: Basic Windows, can only run what a Class B Admin has installed and approved for use on their computer, has 0 admin privlages. No Internet Access. No age limit.

This is the basic license, no cost, no test, you are required to name the Class B admin that will be administrating your computer prior to you being given your login. Think of it as your learner’s permit.

Class D license: Basic Windows, can install software that does not require admin privileges, can change printers, all things that a Class E can do. Limited Internet Access, Class B approved websites + Email + Limited IRC, instant messaging. Is allowed to access files from CD or other storage device. No age limit

This is the real user license, $25. Basic test dealing with anti-virus, system files, file formats, how to report error messages

Class C license: Admin Learner’s permit. Everything Class D has, can install own software, full internet access, cannot host websites or admin remote servers, can use existing services (Myspace), a Class B Admin may at his/her discretion setup a website or blog for a class C user to post into. May Moderate forums, may OP channels in IRC. Full admin Age limit: 17 years old.

Requires a test dealing with all of the class D material, privacy, safety online, command line operations, naming parts by sight and what they do. (No charge if license granted within 2 years of Class D license)

Class B (Admin) License: Competent Windows Administrator, Full admin access on any computer he is listed as a admin on by a Class D or lower user. Has remote access to all Class E users computer that list him as an admin, must be onsite to see Class D or Class C users computers. May operate 10 websites, no shell access on websites, only preconfigured control panels. Exceptions to this are those packages installed by a Class A admin and signed off as secured, and claim to update as needed. May Administrate Forums and may OP IRC networks.

Test involves Server security, Firewall use, IPv4 and IPv6 principles, diagnosing network problems, basic networking, restoring from backups, how to backup, remote administration methods, batch file usage, command line administration, etc.

Class A (Admin) License: Competent Windows and *nix Administrator, Full admin on any computer his Class B admin’s has access to but only if Class B is logged in. No restrictions but is audited twice a year to ensure that all servers he is administrating over are up to date, 2 strikes and you are out (Class C License instead of Class A).

Test involves more indepth version of the Class B license, use of BASH, routing tables, IRC network operations, scripting, some basic programming.

Then like licenses have restrictions they also have Endorcements.

Programmer: Allowed restrictions of one line up from his own, must take a test to ensure proficiency and understanding in a programming language.

Hardship: Lives in an area lacking administrators, has full admin access of own computer, but same internet privlages of their current license. Is subject to removal if an administrator moves in or is graduated within an acceptable distance.

College Student: Has full internet access, may not admin websites unless license class allows.

Wifi:  You can operate a wireless network, must be atleast Class C+

etc.

For those of you yelling at me to update…FUCK YOU.

Love,

Charles~

Idiots of the month: Us, or so ISP’s think.

Posted by Charles | Filed under Idiot of the week, Rants

I’m really interested in the legality of this, or if it would even be a good court case. You’ve probably heard all this discussion about net neutrality but really this is only vaguely related.

I’m talking about hard limits on the amount of data you can download or upload through your ISP.

It has been proven over and over that just about every ISP starts to throttle your connection or cut it off completely after an arbitrary amount. The usual kill spot is 100 Gigabytes some go as high as allowing 100 down and 100 up before trottling or shutting down completely.

However in selling you a 1.5Mb/s line with no stipulation on download limits or upload limits in any contract or user agreement is the same as (after simple conversion) selling you a:

1.5Mb/s = 0.1875 MB/s contract.
(8 Megabit’s = 1 Megabyte)

or in terms of months, 0.1875 MB/s * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 30 days = 486,000 MB/month.

in the future I’ll use the number 2592000 as 60*60*24*30 = 2592000 to show the whole conversion from seconds to months

486,000 MB/month connection. Which comes in at around 474.61 GB/month (due to the whole 1024 MB = GB.)
Remember how we said there were hard coded limits your ISP do not tell you about? Well lets use math! (it works bitches)

( X / 8 ) * 2592000 = Y
For converting Xbits per second to Xbits per month

or

( Y / 2592000 ) * 8 = X
For converting Xbits per month to Xbits per second

X = Units(in bits) per second
Y = units(in bytes) per month

Because there is a 100 Gigabyte limit per month (100 X 1024=102400 to turn it into Megabytes (102400 Megabytes)) we can toss that in as X and figure out your actual speed per second rate.

(102400 / 2592000) * 8 = .31604 (and about 20 more decimal places)

So really all you have is a .31 Mb/s line that is burstable up to 1.5 Mb/s if 1.5 Mb/s is the advertised rate.

Burtstable is a term used a lot in bandwidth, especially on shared T1’s. When working out contracts if one sold you a T1 with full 1.5Mb/s throughput but really only let you have 512Kb/s burstable up to 1.5Mb/s (when conditions favored) they would get their asses handed to them in court. It’s Fraud.

So why do ISP’s get away with selling their service as if we have 1.5 Mb/s when we really only have a .316Mb/s line burstable to 1.5Mb/s?

Damn good question, I’d like to find out myself.

Reason we are idiots

1.) We sign a contract allowing us to pick up a gallon of milk a week but are shutdown if we drink more then half a gallon a month, and don’t care or don’t question why.
2.) We live in a country that is more then happy enough to sue but we don’t.