Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Never Build a PC for Family”.
Let’S talk about a little topic that I call I hate building PCS for people, yeah Luke, I do too. It really does feel like a no good deed goes unpunished, kind of situation. Doesn’T it it does. I like building PCS for specific people, and at this point I pretty much only build PCS for people that I have built PCS for in the past, so I know how they will deal with it. Okay, so here’s the situation.
I built a PC for someone back in like this can’t be right. I think I know okay well, whatever it was a while ago, it was a couple months ago or something like that. Okay, I don’t think you know who it is. Okay, I don’t think you know who it is.
I’M gon na be anonymizing, it fairly see the name uh I mean sort of I. I really don’t think it’s who you think it is no clue who it is not, who I thought, that’s fine. It needs to be completely anonymized um in February early February. I get a message: I’m just wondering how to get my monitor to 144 Hertz, because apparently it’s 60 right now I kind of go all right.
It was definitely at 144 when I gave it to you, which is all I care about. This is one of those situations where the PC wasn’t free, but it was like very, not retail. If you know what I mean like there’s there, there was.
There was some wheeling and dealing that happened to make sure that this person who’s – you know a family friend, definitely got like something a lot better than they would have walked out of Best Buy with sure. So, as far as I’m concerned, I have done my good deed. All this is over yeah.
Our transaction is now complete um, so I kind of go. Are you using HDMI or DisplayPort? Hdmi may be stuck at a lower refresh rate? It’S basic troubleshooting. I don’t know what that means. Sorry, how can I check, and I kind of go you’re gon na – have to look up how to check use Google, okay. Okay, all right, two weeks later, I’ve been having problems connecting my headset mic. When I checked it’s not registering, it doesn’t say the model of headset here I’ll show it to you screenshot I’m, like I don’t know.
If I was in front of it, I might be able to figure it out, but you might just have to find some troubleshooting guides. I get no fewer than one two. Three: four: six: seven, eight, nine ten, eleven twelve messages over the next three days, um that go as far as I’m pretty okay.
I. I really think this is urgent, um, please reply to this quickly. I can’t do anything on my PC and it, and I’m just I’m sitting here, going what’s my incentive to do a favor for anyone at that point, you know like I don’t I want to try.
I I found a I found a website called. Let let me GPT that for you, okay, we’re going to Luke screen we’re going to Luke screen here we go here, we go see if it works. Okay, I mean this is one of those troubleshooting things that is so broad that I’m just wondering what it’s gon na say sure yeah all right I mean this is good. Troubleshooting. So far, is this Bing or is this chat GPT? I’M assuming this is chat GPT.
Okay, I don’t actually know I’ve never actually used this website before I was just thinking like there’s got ta, it has to exist and then yeah it’s performing, Google. It must be way what okay, it’s scrolling down. What is this? What is this bot doing? It clicks the first hit for you. This is maximum tier snark.
I don’t know man wait, it just moves it there I have to click on it. You have to click it amazing, okay, that makes sense that would probably violate Google’s teasencies if it actually clicked a link for you, yeah hilarious, all right, um anyway, I feel like this is one of those am I the things right for basically just saying so. My response, my response to this wall of text is sorry.
I really can’t dig into issues like this. If there’s a problem, you’ll have to shut it down for now and take it to a computer shop or you can try and fix it yourself. I didn’t have anyone to help me troubleshoot, and things usually worked out. Okay tongue smiley face a little bit of sass on the end, a little a little bit of unnecessary sass on the end, but here’s the thing I mean: okay, have you have you read these articles and I’ve heard anecdotally from some a couple of people? I’Ve talked to this about recently one who’s, a teacher and one who worked in an office, and I’ve read articles about this too, that apparently the younger generation, in spite of growing up with computers, is entering the workplace with fewer functional Computing skills.
They grew up with less computer problems because things worked more often. So that’s the thing right is this? Just tough love! That’S that’s what I thought I was doing like look. No, if you want to solve this, if you want to play video games, I didn’t want to pry, but is this a younger person? This is a younger person yeah. So I I got that Vibe yeah, and in that case I I mean I, it seems more. Fair, I don’t know, because I mean realistically, what do young people even do honestly, you’re done you’re done your obligations for the day by like three o’clock. Is that when school ends, I don’t even remember yeah so figure it out like I I’m not trying to be a jerk about it or anything, but that was how I learned the only reason that I’m doing this today that I know any of this stuff is Because I was highly motivated to fix my computer because I wanted to play video games me too, and it’s amazing right.
Kids can figure out just about anything just about anything. I’M surprised yeah that first one they didn’t just Google it because, like my monitor’s, not running at the right refresh rate, whatever is like super Google. What is HDMI super good, and I have to confess that the second problem with the headset is probably a more challenging problem yeah. But I was already kind of in the wrong frame of mind from being asked what HDMI is so.
Maybe there was a little bit of snark, but it’s also true right, like the reality is that I am highly disincentivized to build computers for people. If they’re going to bother me about how they work, when it’s not an actual problem with the computer, I mean. Maybe we need to just pull the audience here. I don’t know how to set up polls.
I forget I’ve got some some people that I’ve been like building computers for since, like High School, but I still build computers for them whenever they need new ones. They never bother me about pretty much anything yeah, just like they’ve, never actually built one on their own and every once in a while it’ll be it’ll, be like you know, like three or four years, or maybe a little bit more but they’ll be like hey, like Uh you still down, I’m like yeah sure whatever they haven’t bugged me since then about that at least so it’s like yeah. Why not? It doesn’t really matter to me like if, if we’re still gon na, have the understanding that, like you, got to maintain it over the next while but yeah I’ll put it together for you, I don’t mind that yeah Chad is pretty universally aligned on this.
I do think: don’t build computers for family, don’t build computers for friends, because every time you do it, you turn into tech support for it forever. I do think, and there used to be a threat on the Forum, and this would annoy the heck out of me, which was yeah. I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it was some something about like um. Is it called Tales From tech support? I’Ve heard that before yeah I think that’s what it was yeah. I don’t remember um. I know there’s a subreddit for it. There was a threat on the Forum, all this kind of stuff.
That kind of stuff used to bother me because a lot of the stories that would end up in there just mocking people were actually just people being like just Gatekeepers yeah like if, if like yeah, okay, don’t build computers for family, except it kind of depends yeah, Like maybe you should yeah, I I did one for my parents back in the day and they haven’t needed an upgrade since then. You know what’s really fun, there’s an NCIX Tech tips episode where I build um, where I fix a pin on like a a Venom. X3 or something like the Athlon X3 uh triple core and that CPU isn’t: oh, no, no Phantom! 720! I don’t know whatever that CPU is in my parents computer to this day, because it was broken and I was like. Can I just have this and they were like it’s a broken CPU get out of here, I’m like okay, cool um so that that still works. They don’t bother me about it, though I built one for my sister um.
She also hasn’t bothered me about it. Thankfully, her hubby is pretty technical, though so she wouldn’t really and that’s like you need to. I will say I have some privilege here, because my family’s quite technical yeah, my brother, both very technical yeah but like if my mom has computer problems, I’m going to help.
My mom with her computer problems, yeah same with my aunt like there’s, there’s and I’ll, like write down on the all the steps on the piece of paper or I’ll record a little video for her of like how to do it and stuff like if this is A family member that you only ever have contact with when they have computer problems. That’S the worst! That’S one thing, that’s its own kind of Realm. I have one of those an extended family member who I literally hear from once every year or two when they want to ask me something about a computer yeah see like that’s annoying yeah. But if this is a family member, that you’re in like pretty consistent contact with or like raised you yeah or whatever else or tries to help themselves, yeah, that’s a huge part of it is, if I don’t have to explain the same thing over and over and Over again, I have a ton, more patience or maybe they’re super, not technical, but they like gave it a shot yeah. You know and didn’t make it worse. Hopefully, yeah sometimes a problem uh, but like there’s, there’s things like that where it’s like man I can just get over it, there’s also other ones that I used to find in those threads, which were people literally just complaining about the fact that they had to do A job like they were this that used to drive me nuts too.
They would like be in technical support right at a company and then they’d be like these idiots have computer problems like yeah. It’S why you’re here you’re welcome yeah like what do you want? Like? Stop stop complaining; they have. They have like things that they would rather not do at their job as well. I don’t know those types of things used to bother me like. Don’T complain about helping people that help you yeah like it should be a cyclical thing. If these people like raised you and you know not completely terrible way, maybe I’ll be on it with that yeah.
Based on how you turned out, I don’t know if you owe them any tech support, wow dude um. I think I owe them lots um, but yeah like if there’s, if there’s I don’t know just don’t be super salty all the time about doing good things for people. But if people are just trying to extract value from you and they don’t care about you at all, etc, etc, etc, don’t deal with that either yeah. I think both of them are valid stances, I’m holding the line, I’m basically just going yep. If I could figure it out, then you can figure it out and if you can’t figure it out, then I already saved you hundreds of dollars. You can take it to a shop. You already did a lot so yeah, I’m over it yep all right. That’S it! .