"A rōnin (浪人?) [1] was a samurai with no lord or master during the feudal period (1185–1868) of Japan. A samurai became masterless from the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or privilege."
So Theresa, who is someone that I saw once, but never really met, has a problem. She has a pierced tongue, which freaks me out, but that's
my problem. She's the girlfriend of Phil, who is someone that I have met but I don't see a lot. Phil and I hang around sometimes while holdings things like beer and fishing rods. He has a really cool dog named Austin, who seems problem free. Theresa's problem is an HP netbook running Windows XP. The problem is the computer just ain't right. It's a really cute little machine -- much nicer that my eeePC 900. It has a nice big keyboard and a slightly larger screen. I want one, but, as they say, it's not in the budget. She gave the netbook to Brian to fix and he worked on it a bit. He cleaned up some, but not all, of the ugly mess. He managed to blow out the passwords that her ex-boyfriend had helpfully added to the machine, and got rid of a few hundred items that a virus scanner flagged as malware. The system was still
borken: it would not connect to the Internet and it was doing really strange things, and it was doing them very slowly. Brian asked me for help. It seems that since none of us is working, the budget for this job is zero. Fool that I am, I agree to take a look at it. It feels like work, which I like, but pays nil, which I don't like. Aw, snap! I have to quit giving it away.
It's so beautiful! I want to put Crunchbang Linux on it!
Mind you, I am not really an IT person. I'm an electronics technician who went to night school to get a degree in electrical engineering. I was a UNIX system administrator for an engineering group, a CAD librarian, a printed circuit board designer, a sort of general-purpose electronics technician. I used to wire TV sets with about a hundred thermocouples so we could see how hot the components would get. (Pretty hot, sometimes.) I run
Linux for my desktop, I use
Vi and Emacs,
GIMP and
moc. I can write crap-ass software in
C,
C++ and
Python. In short, I am just another jack-of-all-trades, master of none, who is currently unemployed. Life stinks, sometimes. These skills gives me some ability to beat computers into submission. I try to pick up a few bucks sorting out computer problems for people. These are usually not difficult problems involving hardware repair. These are usually simple things related to system configuration and using software, things that someone could and should handle themselves. Finding a solution usually involves asking Google, thinking logically and maybe learning a thing or two.
I get few takers for my services. People do not want to pay. I hear complaints about the lack of service technicians, closely followed by complaints about what service technicians charge. Service technicians tend to want a living wage. Clients seem to like "free", closely followed by "really cheap". At times it's hard to find a middle ground, so I get few jobs, while they keep doing whatever they do.
My pal Brian once charged a guy $50 to sort out a computer. The guy paid him $12, because it only took an hour. I guess computer techs are only worth $12/hour, with no benefits or secure employment. Brian took the $12, and then formatted the guy's hard drive for him, giving him a minty fresh computer. Brian is a natural born
BOFH. The client was not happy. Brian kept the $12. Life stinks, sometimes.
Be afraid.
My aunt's brother is having phone problems. He will not call AT&T to come out and check things out. He says that they charge $80/hour, and he doesn't want to pay that. He thinks that a huge bill will be run up, and that they are out to screw him. AT&T will check the phone line up to the house for free, but he will not even ask for that. He would rather complain about things. Kvetching sure is more fun. He did go out and spend $80 for a new DSL modem, as if that would fix his problem. It didn't. I took a look at things. He has two phone lines, and one is
borken. That's as far as I went. I was not about to chase the line through the house from the second floor, especially since he refused to call AT&T to have the phone line checked to the house. I was
not going to call AT&T for for him; he should know how do do that. As far as I know, it's still borken. Life stinks, sometimes.
So I fixed Teresa's netbook for free. Why not? A loss leader, and maybe I now have another fine friend that I will hear from only when they need me. It took 3.5 hours, mostly because that's how long it takes. He's what I did:
- Wifi was not working, but Brian's Cricket modem worked, so I did not have to fix the wifi now or take the little beast home to my router to get Internet access. You can't do jack without an Internet connection.
- I updated Malwarebytes, which Brian had installed. I like this program; it has done good things for me in the past.
- I ran yet another full virus scan in "limited driver mode" using Malwarebytes, which removed yet more malware.
- I ran Microsoft update. They were 9 updates. 7 or 8 of them were security updates. Why didn't she run Windows update regularly?
- I then tried to turn Microsoft Security Essentials back on. (Brian had turned it off.) It would not turn on. (Insert joke here.) OK. Microsoft's anti-virus program did not work on Microsoft's operating system. It also would not reinstall, and gave an error message with the long hex error code 0x8004ff07. (It should have said guru meditation 0x-long-hex-number, but it didn't. Amigas were so much cooler, even when they screwed up. I miss my Amiga.) Following the hex error number to a Microsoft forum, some guy gave this fix:
1. Uninstalling MSE
2. Reboot.
3. Reinstall MSE.
4. Cancel the update and scan.
5. Reboot.
6. Launch MSE and trigger upgrade via Help, Upgrade.
7. Download and install completed successfully.
Someone from Microsoft urged the parties involved to file bug reports with Microsoft. He gave helpful web links. At times it's hard to find a middle ground. I want Microsoft to run more tests on their code before they release it to the wild. They want me to write bug reports. Neither of these things are going to happen.
- I started on the Microsoft Security Esentials fix. After the first step (remove MSE), I made a command decision: I was not going to reinstall it. MSE blows. Microsoft blows. MSE gets good reviews for malware detection, but I have been having problems with it doing simple tasks, things like updating virus definitions and turning on. So I uninstalled it and replaced it with the free version of AVG. The AVG install told me that I should remove MSE. Since I had already removed MSE, I installed AVG anyway. (Déjà vu: I have seen this before.) AVG works OK, despite the bogus warning.
- I update AVG. I run a configuration scan. I run yet another virus scan using AVG. It finds nothing bad.
- I turn the Windows firewall back on. (Brian had turned it off.) (Insert yet another turn-on joke here.)
- If fixed the wifi. Someone or something mucked around with the tcp/ip settings. Once they were set correctly, wifi worked.
Maybe I should have turned on system restore, but I stuck a fork in it because I was done and Starbucks wanted to close.
After, 3.5 hours the netbook was now working fine. While it did not demand my complete attention the whole time, I had to be there to shepherd the process. For zero dollars. Brian has another job, which is supposed to pay actual US dollars. Some doofus wants us to install
OS X on his HP netbook, and is willing to pay us something for it. Since
Apple really doesn't want you to do
this, it's kind of tricky. This should be fun.
