"Here I come to save the day!"

So I'm fixing someone's computer again...

This time it's not a family member's, so I can be a little harsher than I normally already am when I tell this "person" just what was wrong with their computer, what I had to do to fix it, and maybe what it will cost them. I'm not sure about that last part, I don't want to cause other problems later...

But I'll be damned if I don't feel a little Lewis Black rising up in my soul everytime I set about doing this... it's not like I'm a rocket scientist. I don't know everything there is to know about computers. I freely admit that. What I do know comes from me screwing around on them, and eventually taking some CompSci classes. But that hardly makes me an expert - I don't have any certs yet, and I may never go for them... what this is all leading up to is, HOW IN THE FUCK CAN PEOPLE BE SO STUPID!? When an Anti-virus program expires... UPDATE IT, or get one of the many free ones off the 'net (which is what I did, Avast! makes me proud to be Czech). And people... seriously... NEVER, EVER install programs that you see advertised in a pop-up. Those two pieces of advice would save otherwise intelligent people (sometimes, I'm really throwing that in to cover my family members :) ) lots of misspent time and effort. Or at least save me from it (which is arguably more important). But, alas, I know I'm preaching to the choir here.

Just in case a, shall we say, technologically-impaired person, has happened to stumble in here... I'll list what I do to computers I fix... (short of a format).

1.) Lavasoft's Ad-aware (get it, install it, run it nightly, and FUCKING UPDATE IT EACH TIME - it's worthless otherwise... sorry, pent up issue there)
2.) Avast! Anti-virus (it's FREE, get it, register it, let it work)
3.) Windows Update (because the broken computers always run Windows, don't they? :) )
4.) Mozilla Firefox (who uses IE anymore? Oh that's right, stupid people, and stupid web-site designers that can't code properly and force me to every-so-often use an insecure, piece of shit built by the same people that brought us ... oh fuck, that's another post entirely)