Computers and women; can't live with, can't live without

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Electrofreak

[H]ard|Gawd
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This isn't a question about anything, and it doesn't even really fit all that well into the Operating Systems forum category. But I just wanted to recount an experience of mine and gripe a little bit about the unfairness of it all.

I'm a computer repair guy in my spare time, and I advertise on Craigslist for house calls and I also take dropoffs. I'm 25 years old, majored in Computer Science, currently working on my Network+ and Security+ certifications. I've been fixing computers as a form of income for the last 7 years, and of course, as a kid, I did my fair share of getting into trouble online via a 56k modem. :p

The machine in question is an eMachines my girlfriend bought 2 years ago for about $600. Now, I would never have let her buy an eMachines, but she just kinda showed up with it at the door one day saying she was tired of having to share my computer with me since she didn't have her own.

The machine is a piece of junk. It had driver issues out of the box (GG eMachines) and bad RAM. She dealt with the bad RAM for over a year ("What do you mean you want to open it up and put in new memory?! That'll wreck the warranty!" "Honey... I'm a better warranty than eMachines ever will be.") before I finally convinced her to let me break the tape.

Of course, eMachines hobbles the BIOS so you can't adjust RAM timings etc, so after I picked her up a couple gigs of RAM, I flashed the BIOS to the standard BIOS for the motherboard model # in order to set the settings I needed for the board to accept the second stick of memory (it wouldn't at SPD settings).

Computer worked great for about 6 months. Then, about 12 days ago, my girlfriend hopped onto her computer and booted it up. The POST process took almost 5 minutes before the BIOS even started the memory test (at first I thought the BIOS was corrupt) then displayed an error "Key locked, unlock the key". Wha? That's an error for the case lock, which of course the eMachines does not have. I checked the pins for the case lock inside the case to make sure they weren't shorted out. Absolutely fine. I reset the CMOS. Same issue. Put the CR2032 CMOS battery on a multimeter, it read good. Scratched my head some. Unplugged the keyboard and mouse, booted the computer up, and the error message was gone, replaced by a missing keyboard error. O...K... plugged the keyboard back in, it booted into Windows. Huh. Rebooted the computer. Same error messages, so I used the same keyboard unplug workaround.

This time the computer, after the 5 minute hang before the BIOS self tests (and it was on Quick POST), the BIOS would hang after the system devices check, and wouldn't even allow boot from CD or USB. Further attempts to reset the CMOS, clean-out of the motherboard and heatsinks with compressed air, test of the power supply etc resulted in no success. I chalked up the PC as a loss to a bad motherboard or BIOS, and told my girlfriend we'd have to get a new mobo.

My girlfriend was convinced that I'd pulled some newbie move and fried her computer. She told me she was going to get a new motherboard from eMachines despite my best efforts to assure her that I could put in a new motherboard for her for a lot less than they'd charge (and I've built a lot of systems).

12 days passed, and yesterday we got into a bit of a shouting match over it, with my girlfriend yelling "Look what you did to my computer!" and hitting the power switch. To our surprise, it booted up into Windows without a hitch... the only problem being an incorrect system time and date from my testing her CMOS battery.

What the hell. NOW my girlfriend's arguement is "You were going to have me go and get a whole new motherboard and it's totally fine now! You don't have a clue what you're doing!"

You know, in some ways, women are just like computers. Totally unpredictable and unreasonable.
 
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to be honest i would just insult something she is good at then if she has any sense see would she the analogy and stfu and let you continue about your business
 
I dont comprehend the issue...If it has an emachines warranty, and she makes that big of a fucking deal to work on it, then tell her to call emachines..I wouldnt fuck it with it at all..Not worth the hassle..
 
Computers are nothing like women. As long as you take reasonably good care of them and buy the occasional upgrade or replacement part they'll last a long time and serve you well.

Women simply hate men, and nothing you buy or do will ever change that. :)
 
The first thing I'd do, is get a new girlfriend. If she doesn't have enough trust or faith in you to do what you were trained to do, she isn't the one.

Second, you likely did void the warranty anyway. If you are a true geek, and member of the [H], you'll have enough spare parts sitting around to turn her computer into a better, no hassle clone system than what it is now as an Emachine.
 
jordan12 said:
I dont comprehend the issue...If it has an emachines warranty, and she makes that big of a fucking deal to work on it, then tell her to call emachines..I wouldnt fuck it with it at all..Not worth the hassle..
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But it doesn't always work that way. ;) If eMachines doesn't fix it then it's still his problem.

Like with my fiance. Yesterday she was using the desktop in my sig and trying to access the Pier 1 Imports webpage. Their server was down but my computer and Internet was just being "slow" according to her. Thus she got frustrated at me, until I convinced her it was them and not me, for Pier 1 not being able to maintain their website which is still down as I write this. ;)
 
DeaconFrost said:
The first thing I'd do, is get a new girlfriend. If she doesn't have enough trust or faith in you to do what you were trained to do, she isn't the one.

Second, you likely did void the warranty anyway. If you are a true geek, and member of the [H], you'll have enough spare parts sitting around to turn her computer into a better, no hassle clone system than what it is now as an Emachine.
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Well, see, the problem is that we have a 9-month-old daughter together... ;) And yeah, I've got parts lying around, including spare cases, motherboards, power supplies, CPU, vid cards and RAM, but she's not the type to take a hand-me-down... she's high maintenance, for sure.

DeathFromBelow said:
Computers are nothing like women. As long as you take reasonably good care of them and buy the occasional upgrade or replacement part they'll last a long time and serve you well.
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Hehe, but just like her eMachines, not all women come in the best condition. If you knew her mother, you'd understand. :D

MorgothPl said:
Pics of said problem, and I don't mean the computer :D
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Eh, I'm at work, and the only pics I've got handy of her are on Facebook, which is blocked. Maybe later tonight when I get home if this thread isn't sitting at the bottom of page 2. :p
 
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Vermillion said:
But it doesn't always work that way. ;) If eMachines doesn't fix it then it's still his problem.

Like with my fiance. Yesterday she was using the desktop in my sig and trying to access the Pier 1 Imports webpage. Their server was down but my computer and Internet was just being "slow" according to her. Thus she got frustrated at me, until I convinced her it was them and not me, for Pier 1 not being able to maintain their website which is still down as I write this. ;)
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Works well for me...As long as the wife leaves me alone and lets me fix her machine, we are fine..

If she starts bitching, I hand it back to her and tell her to call HP and let them fuck with it..

i think I have only had to do that twice, since she has had it..She leaves me alone to work on it now. :D
 
She doesn't respect you enough to trust your knowledge. My girlfriend knows very little about computers. She'd believe anything I told her.

The real trouble with girlfriends is getting away with giving your computers more attention. :D
 
jordan12 said:
Works well for me...As long as the wife leaves me alone and lets me fix her machine, we are fine..

If she starts bitching, I hand it back to her and tell her to call HP and let them fuck with it..

i think I have only had to do that twice, since she has had it..She leaves me alone to work on it now. :D
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Should have mentioned it works for me too but once and awhile takes a little convincing. But doesn't work for everybody. ;)
 
GJSNeptune said:
She doesn't respect you enough to trust your knowledge.
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This is pretty much the crux of the problem... we have some trust issues atm. But that sorta extends beyond the scope of this forum, I'm not here for relationship counseling (and no offense everyone, us geeks aren't the best people to give out that kind of advice. :p )
 
GJSNeptune said:
My girl doesn't even have a desktop computer for me to tinker with. :(
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Mine does but it's an older POS she got in college. I've cleaned it up and sped it up a few times but it is finally nearing its EOL. After the wedding she's getting a brand new laptop to call her own so I can get my desktop back and use it for games again. :)
 
Woman + computers = bad mix. I have loaned a few laptops for my gf to use, and each time they utterly fail. Somehow the hard drive gets corrupt, or there is so much crap and 50 toolbars installed that the system comes to a crawl... Same thing with my mom, and sister... Every machine was a brand new image with fresh install and drivers to begin with... and then they use it. My dad is 67 years old, never had a computer until a 2-3 years ago. I recently built him a new Vista box with HDMI output to watch things on his plasma tv, and guess what, he hasn't had any problems! No spyware, no viruses, no shitload of unnecessary programs magically appearing. I think what it comes down to is women just need to stick to technology they understand... like stoves and washing machines... :D



....flame away....
 
My wife used to build computers out of spare parts from her brother and her dad. She had a 486 running Win95 and a dead motherboard (I guess it took about 10-15 min to boot when it worked) when I met her in 1998.

She's gotten lazy over the years though. She leans on me too much for stuff that she could do herself, but it's easier to get me to do it (like re-adding the networked printer to her laptop that I moved from my desktop to the media server).

She doesn't buy computers without my approval. And she knows I do the fixing. Except that first eeePC that I ended up selling after 6 months for an Acer Aspire One.

Everything else I've approved or purchased myself for her with her input.

Now software, and her ipod.. I reluctantly un-copy-protected her music after a stupid itunes DRM debacle resulted in her having to beg apple to let her re-download the music she had paid for (minus some stuff that was no longer available). I told her I wouldn't do it again. I told her to stop buying DRM'd stuff but I know she still does it sometimes. :mad:
 
GreenMonkey said:
Now software, and her ipod.. I reluctantly un-copy-protected her music after a stupid itunes DRM debacle resulted in her having to beg apple to let her re-download the music she had paid for (minus some stuff that was no longer available). I told her I wouldn't do it again. I told her to stop buying DRM'd stuff but I know she still does it sometimes. :mad:
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I've had my wife switch from iTunes to Amazon for this very reason.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I've had my wife switch from iTunes to Amazon for this very reason.
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She does amazon most of the time, but sometimes she still uses itunes, especially for exclusive stuff. :mad: And she was having trouble getting itunes to pick up some of her ripped music for some reason. I'm not willing to troubleshoot itunes issues very much though. I really don't know much about it.
 
The moral of the story is: this woman does not respect you at all.
I for one would NOT put up with that.
From you short story it sounds like she is pretty much an idiot; so she thinks she is smarter than everyone, including you.
DUMP her and save yourself some heartache. This is only the beginning of problems with relationship.
 
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