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Whereabouts: tech hell

9 comments on Whereabouts: tech hell

Whereabouts: tech hell

: I’ve spent/wasted an incredible number of hours in the last day on technology headaches. I reinstalled Visual Communicator to start making vlogs again (and it’s working now and I still do love the program). And my son’s brand new Dell laptop suddenly died (spent an hour and a half waiting on hold for Dell but then the gave me incredible service and so, try as I might, I can’t complain). But in the end, I couldn’t work or blog or live; I teched. If the toilet died, I wouldn’t go through that; I’d call the plumber. What we need in this world is butt-crack geeks who can just fix this crap for us.

9 responses to “Whereabouts: tech hell”

  1. Misanthropyst Avatar
    Misanthropyst

    Ah, you’ve just run up against the mistaken idea that the majority of people need a general purpose computer, as opposed to a ‘dumb terminal’ configured with the few applications that most people need. Do you know what operating system your refrigerator uses? Of course not.

  2. von Avatar
    von

    We have them down here:
    Geek Squad
    I thought about trying to start something like this, but it just doesn’t seem like it would work that well for so many different reasons…

  3. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    I have been doing exactly what you are asking for over the last 3 years. It is financially rewarding, but utterly exhausting as the stress people are under when I arrive is tremendous. The other factor is that there are so many potential problems that you need to stay up to speed constantly. It is nearly impossible to find someone who will work for longer than 3-6 months as there is nothing to stop them from setting up their own shingle.
    So I am getting out of it, and making my income in a much more relaxing way.

  4. richard mcenroe Avatar
    richard mcenroe

    Nah, the butt-crack geeks use them to post over at Daily Kos and DU…

  5. JZ Avatar
    JZ

    Don’t you mean butt-cracked geeks, that is, geeks that are bebuttcracked?

  6. Scott Chaffin Avatar
    Scott Chaffin

    They would never get paid what they’re worth (at least $50 an hour and more like $100), because everyone thinks they’re an expert. “I use one all the time at work!”
    And after they leave you’ll go right back to the computing equivalent of stuffing entire rolls of toilet paper down the pipes and wondering why the they’re backing up in the kitchen.

  7. Lee Avatar
    Lee

    Get a Mac.

  8. Tony Alva Avatar
    Tony Alva

    No way I’d trust Best Buy’s Geek Squad to do anything on my home computer. My neighbor and resident tech geek works for a group much in the vain Tom does. He has both business clients and individual users (“civilians”) that he supports and is so busy he rarely has an opening on his calender. My wife and I shared dinner with them and another Georgia Geek this past Friday and listened to story after story about dealing not with problems associated with new technology, but with the civilians who are still on 486’s and P1’s running MS Windows 2.1 thru 95. Made me laugh since my dad is amongst this group.
    I’d bet on this cottage industry growing by leaps and bounds as wireless networks and converged devices/media become more common place. It will continue to outpace most civilains’ ability to keep up with how it all works together.

  9. Amy Avatar
    Amy

    A story about this very topic in the BBC Online magazine today:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4387525.stm