Thomas has been kind enough to ask me to guest blog on his new endeavor and I am glad to do so. You will notice that I have increased my postings on the Blogger site as opposed to the Serendipity blog...reasons are many and convenience is high on the list. Hint to anyone that cares...if there is anything on the old blog of helios you would like...now's the time to get it.
A word to the wise should be sufficient. This is the only place it will be noted.
Now...We're talking about important things here. Success is important to many. Today's success that belongs to you pays dividends down the road to others, at least in many cases. I've rarely seen it work otherwise. But as in everything, "success" is relative. It is my contention that success is only measured by the depths of previous failures. Those who are given success rarely understand the value of their position.
Paula taught me how to gauge success...at least in what I do.
Paula is not an unintelligent woman. She holds a PhD. in her field and a famous publication relevant to her profession recently published a paper of hers. No, Paula isn't stupid by any measure. Maybe you can help me with the descriptors here.
HeliOS Solutions does in-home and onsite installs for home users and businesses. Our services are growing daily as is our client list. What once was an idea laughed at by many in the community is beginning to look like it may work. One of the many phone calls last Monday was from Paula. She wanted help with her computer. But it wasn't exactly what we were used to fielding.
Sbe was desperate to have us fix her existing Windows machine. She stated that she had so many viruses on it that it would rarely boot but when it did, it was almost useless. I explained to her that "We don't do Windows" and gave her a brief explanation of what we did and how she could benefit.No sale...she thanked us and hung up.
Then called back two days later.
She wasn't kidding about the viruses. ClamAV reported 163 viruses active and we lost count of spyware applications somewhere around 400. It was truly a sight to behold. I have never seen viruses fight each other for dominance. I booted the live cd while she sat next to me and for 20 minutes, I showed her how Linux worked. When I thought she was comfortable with it, I let her have the chair.
Sale made. Three hours of careful instruction and one happy customer.
I wish I could just give her the money back...I honestly wish it were that easy.
Paula's first free "support call" came to my cell phone twenty minutes after I left her Town House.
"I've got another virus. I thought you told me I couldn't get a virus".
"No Paula, I don't think you do have a virus...if you do, you and I are about to be famous. What is going on?"
Unfortunately, she told me. I had set her up with a perfect Wine install. She had a bit of software that needed to run under wine and I had shown her how to install within that environment. Apparently, I wasn't specific enough. It never occurred to Paula that the .exe programs she had used on her XP machine were the vehicles for many of her present viruses. To her, it was perfectly fine to use those same .exe's...after all, she was in Linux, right?
I got there within the same hour and checked her machine. Yep...Windows viruses will reside and create the same havoc within a Wine environment. Now, I've seen it with my own eyes. This time I reinstalled for her and made sure I found all the infected .exe's on the Windows side and deleted them. Since I had made her a live CD of her updated installation, it was easy to get back up to speed. With words of advice and caution I left her with a perfectly functioning Linux Box.
To my best estimation, that lasted about 79 hours.
she called me a bit after 9 pm. Long story short, she decided to go 733t on me and hack her xorg file. While I was glad she got over her fear of the command line, I wasn't particularly happy with the fact that she hadn't backed up her original xorg.conf.
And yes...we provide explicit instructions on how to do so and the importance of doing so.
Instructions she decided to ignore.
"This is not a problem Paula." I spoke with the confidence of a man not seeing the bus coming up on his blind spot.
Doing about 110 mph.
"I want you to insert that disk I gave you...your back up disk. When it boots we are going to copy over..."
"I don't have that disk anymore."
"What do you mean? Did you lose it?"
She was quiet for about two seconds longer than I was comfortable with. I knew by the lapse that it was bad news.
It was.
"well, my boyfriend needed a copy of my music files and my thumb drive isn't working so I thought I could use the space on that disk to copy them over. Now all there is on the disk is that music. I didn't know it would erase the other stuff."
The "other stuff" was her backup disk. I told her that she needed to get a copy of that live cd from the Internet and once she had it, she was to copy over the xorg.conf file from that one to her /etc/X11/ folder. She asked me if I would make her a copy and bring it over.
I said no. She was going to have to learn to do these things on her own. If she broke it, she needed to learn how to fix it.
I didn't hear anything from Paula for over a week. No news is good news as far as she is concerned and most of the scars from her experience were healing nicely...I even stopped having the nightmares in a few days. All was returning to normal. Lessons learned? Don't make the customer backup disk from a writable medium, and always make backups of their critical files...oh let's say...xorg and grub/lilo conf files. That would seem to be a good idea.
I knew from the caller ID that it was her. That number had deeply burned itself into my awareness. I thought I noted a slight tremble in my hand as I reached for the phone.
Paula's boyfriend broke down and bought her a brand new Vista Computer from Dell. In her wisdom, and in remembering how I had told her that Mcaffee Antivirus was the Anti-Christ, she decided to remove it from her computer. Oh no...not through add/remove programs. Vista was way too different and she didn't know how to find the control panel so she just went through all her files and anything that remotely sounded like "Mcaffee" or "Norton" was deleted.
She complained that now it wouldn't boot...not even in safe mode and would I mind coming over with another Linux disk and fix it.
I am weighing that possibility now against consuming copious amounts of alcohol on a regular basis...I don't know, maybe even a venture into the darker side of pharmaceuticals. Realizing either choice can be destructive, I am now calculating which will be the safer venture.
I have a friend who is not only a Geek Extraordinaire..she is an Author in her own right and one of the most brilliant network admins I've the pleasure to know. We have one point of contention between us though. She contends that some people should never be allowed to touch a computer...ever. Sanctions so severe I cannot name them here should be imposed should they breach that restriction. I chastised her repeatedly for these beliefs...How narrow-minded she had become...that was just wrong to think that way.
No my friend. I stand with you on that side of the fence now, fully in agreement and apologizing for my own narrow view of the world and my trust in the human condition.
Some people should NEVER be allowed to touch a computer and I don't care what degrees hang on their wall.
Now...I have an appointment with my psychologist. It seems I break out in nasty hives every time the phone rings.
All-righty Then
h
25 comments:
Incredible! I never imagined to read a story with a big twist at the end. Everything was going to be successful, until.............. it just fell apart.
Regarding some people not being allowed to use the computer: I think I am beginning to understand more about the computer illiterate. It is mostly fear that keeps them from being able to understand a computer system. If they are taught the required applications for their career, they will only use those applications.
The person felt stupid, and they had a PhD. All they had to do was be honest with how they felt. That would have gone a long way with elevating her understanding of a computer. As Robert Kiyosaki would say, she refuses to unlearn and become a child again. Children are better able to absorb knowledge at a young age.
I agree, fear is definitely a big part of many people's problems with computer illiteracy. I play the tech support game with a great many very intelligent people, who have seemed to convince themselves that they "could not" use a computer without someone holding their hand. I have had a few cases in which I have been able to get past their fear, but I wish there was some magic cure for this epidemic.
You should have removed her sudo access, that would have saved you the xorg.conf problem.
Let me guess: Her PhD is in psychology or philosophy? Maybe even History, but you'd think even a History major would learn from their own history.
Ahh.. I feel for you. I have one particular person like this. Once a year her computer and her son's get fixed. Each time, the virus scanner I install gets ignored, and a few of the fake scanners get installed. The firewall gets mysteriously turned off and every known malware resides on their hard drive to the point where it takes several minutes for it all to get up and running.
This time I put Ubuntu on both after they completely wrecked their Windows installs to the point where I couldn't get them to boot, and neither had a usable copy of any OS. This was a few weeks ago, and so far no problems reported. One thing I specifically didn't do was install Wine, or even mention it existed. Given their amazing ability to attract malware, I think it is just too dangerous.
We are *NIXED:
It's too bad Kiyosaki is a fraud:
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/01/26/deconstructing-robert-kiyosaki/
http://johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html
Every mistake made is a new lesson learnt. When you think you have seen it all, something even more absurd comes along.
Keep up the spirits, this is a opportunity to make default linux install even more mistake-proof (politically correct phrase for fool-proof)
Maybe you should have two versions of your software, one for people who reasonably understand computers and one for people like your new customer who think they know "it" because they have a Ph.d
"It's too bad Kiyosaki is a fraud"
Question. Of the sources cited, are the respective authors millionaires by any means? If not, they are simply stating an opinion. Nothing more, nothing less.
The whole point of the comment was that the older a person gets, the more they over complicate things. As a child, more information can be absorbed, because they simplify things to where they can understand them.
People like this should be confined to terminal use only. They are not able to maintain their own environment, they need one maintained for them.
I had a client like this once; I fired him quickly.
I agree with a previous commenter: never leave an administrator account with a user - and certainly not with someone with that track record.
My girlfriend (with NO computer knowledge and NO degrees) has been using Linux for over five years now, with barely any problems at all.
It's just funny that one day she timidly called me at work asking if I knew a huy named "road". I scratched my head and thought for a long time. I couldn't remember any Mr. Road. I asked her how she got that name. She said "Well, we've had a power failure and now he's asking for some Mr. Road".
Then I knew. The filesystem had been damaged so it wanted ROOT access. But since she's French she pronounced it differently!
I so know what you are talking about. I also do technical support for a computer manufacturer company. I do agree with you: "some people should never use a computer". The "best" times were the ones when they were trying to use us instead of going first to a computer class. I hope you'll get over it.
Take it easy.
I usually mention wine to people. I wouldn't show them how to install there own executables with it. If anything I would install what they needed for them.
Tell me about it... The worst noobs I've come across are the ones with big educational degrees and high profile jobs.
The reason being Microsoft's wrong way of projecting them with regards to using the operating system. All they know is that when they see a button click and see what happens next.
I give them basics and tell them, read and know bit more through the links I gave you so that you'll be aware of what an Operating System really is. It works with some people, but with most of them, it won't. Can't help it.
Anyway, its a nice article.
Adios.
I've seen with my own eyes, a much worse case of malware infections. If I'm not mistaken, it happened in 2003, when one of my cousins had her computer infected with over _5000_ diferent virus, worms and other crap.
But, then again, shes in the "average user" category, so it's not that weird - except the number of infections.
What a story. You should have installed Linux for her, and didnt give her root access. Just give her a user id, and you have the root id. If she would allow that. And you could vnc to her computer whenever things went wrong. But make sure she is aware of that.
Getting a Phd not related in computer science has nothing to do with being infected with software viruses. Your logic is distorted. Even Doctor's of medicine is not exempted from infection of real viruses. People who are ignorant about computer systems should be *educated*. YOu also need education. Giving an ignorant user with a superuser account in Linux is plain *stupidity*. Remember that THE best MEDICATION is EDUCATION and PREVENTION. The worst thing that happens is when *A blind leads another blind*.
For years people have asked me, "should I try Linux?" My answer has almost always been, "no, because I don't want to be your personal support jock for the next 3-5 years." That is a decision I will never regret making.
Yeah, Linux isn't hard as long as you use some common sense:
* Don't do anything as root
* Don't use a Window app when there's a Linux equivalent
* For that matter, don't use a proprietary app when there's a libre equivalent
* Don't mess with things unless you think you understand what you're doing
A PhD doesn't automatically make you a computer genius. I know people with degrees think they know everything, but anything out of their field is not in their expertise.
This is a fantastic illustration of how a perfectly good OS (Windows, Linux, OS X) can be completely ruined and destroyed by a 'tech challenged' genius.
Each OS has its merits and each has it holes, but over-confident users will soon make a Casey Jones train wreck out of them and then turn and blame the OS.
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