PC Technicians everywhere know the overwhelming feeling of friends constantly bugging them about problems with their computers.  Sure, I love doing that kind of stuff – I am in my “element” when working on computers, it’s who I am.  How much is too much, though?  How much does it take before you are pulling your hair out trying to help people?  How do you stop it once it gets to that point?  Would you seem like a voracious prick to your friends if you start charging them?

We’ll start out by telling you about a week I had a while back.  I was as busy as I’ve ever been (which, if you know me, it’s scary to think of busier than usual).  I was trying to get my personal site ready for primetime in four days, which was a considerable task, as well as trying to fit baseball games, writing, mowing, and some friends into my schedule.  Life was going at 100 MPH, and I was having a hard time keeping up with everything.

2PM Sunday, I start getting help requests on AIM.  Just as I start helping one person with something, another would ask me a question.  The process seemed to be an infinite loop (a programmed loop that never ends).  It got to a point where I was helping five people at a time with everything from AIM viruses to connection issues.  When I got everyone happy (2 hours later), I popped an away message up with some explicit note and went downstairs to get something to eat.

As I’m walking down the stairs, the phone rings.  There is a glimmer of hope that it might be one of my friends wanting to go to dinner later.  My mom answers the phone, and hands it off to me.  Please, be someone asking to go to dinner.  Please!

I answer the phone to the sound of my Aunt’s voice; which I have realized is a sign that she needs help with some form of electronics.  That turned out to be a pretty good guess.  I ran through the standard set of diagnostic questions and deduce that her cheap power supply died.  A simple fix – but it would have to wait until Monday – I wasn’t in the mood.

I get my food and head back upstairs – finally a break!  I knew better than that, though.  I come upstairs to another person asking for help on AIM.  Again, the technician in me comes out, and I help her with her problems.  By the time I get done helping her, it is almost dinner time – I’d blown my whole afternoon helping people with easy stuff that a combination of a quick Google search and a little common sense would have fixed.

I decide its time to leave the computer and do something else.  I decide to turn the History Channel on and learn some stuff – which lasted a whole ten minutes.

This time, my cell phone rings.  I knew it was a friend this time, and was hoping for some good news (a request to get me out of my house, possibly?)  It turned out to be Ali – a very good friend, and a customer (a person who pays you for help) who owns the first custom built computer I had ever done.  She is the one person who I will help any time she needs it – she’s not a rich snob like some of the other people in this town.

She said that AVG had been popping up warnings all day, but when she went to her computer later, it was frozen, so she restarted and got a blue screen of death.  This is another problem that will have to wait until Monday, but with top priority.

At this point, I had lost whatever meaning the History Channel was trying to instill in me, so I decide to go back to my computer and work on my website.  I actually had some quiet time for a while, so I worked away, then grabbed some dinner, came back up and continued to work until about 10PM.