New stupid tax in force

I have decided I will no longer assist in maintaining cracked versions of software for people.  That includes Windows, Office, you name it.

 

This is because the few remaining people I have been doing this for basically demonstrate zero carefactor about something they’re not paying for, and in my opinion also demonstrate insufficient gratitude about my time taken to fix their gear every time they fuck it up.  It honestly seems to come as a surprise to these people that it’s frustrating doing the same thing over and over again when they won’t learn and don’t care, because they think I’ll happily donate half of my day putting them back on the air.  I also don’t appreciate being guilt-tripped because they’re whining that their business is suffering – if it’s that important to you, either pay someone to turn up on demand, or better yet, LEARN.

 

So here’s the new black:

 

(1)     You will purchase a Windows 7 licence.  Yes, this will cost you money.  I don’t care.  Especially if you have been stupid enough to lose the rebuild disk for the laptop despite me sitting you down and explaining very, very slowly NOT TO LOSE THIS.  I don’t care if you “lent” it to your daughter (who makes more goddamn money than I do) because she liked the look of it and emotionally blackmailed you into doing so by refusing to let you see your granddaughter until you handed it over, then proceeded to lose the box, all the documentation and warranty information (that would have been useful when she fucked the power connector on the thing, wouldn’t it?), and the discs.  Why would she care, she didn’t pay for it.

(2)    You will purchase an Office licence.  See point (1) above re cost and my response to this.  If you don’t like this, try Openoffice.  My assistance will be limited to telling you to go to openoffice.org, and if you’re too dumb to download a single setup file and double-click it then you have no need of an office productivity suite.  Use webmail.  Shout out to my dumb distant relative who actually managed to download and install the Spanish version – despite the fucking installer being in Spanish – Buena suerte, dude.

(3)    If you present me with a piece of hardware, I will plug it in for you.  If it requires drivers, you better have ‘em, or I unplug it and hand it back.  This will be your problem.  I will not spend hours trying to determine what the cheap piece of shit wifi card you bought off eBay is by looking for FCC IDs on the PCB, or staring at "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" in Windows when your Super Happy Fun Time Industries USB barcode scanner is connected.  This means Windows hasn’t got a fucking clue what to do with it, so how am I supposed to know?  See point (1) above.  We have had this discussion enough times that there’s clearly no point in having it again.  You won’t learn, so I am not wasting my time any more.  I’ll waste your cash instead.  Yes, I know it hurts.  It’s supposed to.

(4)    If you don’t have your password to your ISP account, RADIUS authentication, FTP server, web host, mail account, iTunes account etc this is your problem.  You contact them and find it, then call me.  I spent an hour yesterday trying to determine who even hosts someone’s web site that they rely on for a sizeable chunk of their business.  Using that $20 A FUCKING YEAR CheapArse MightWork Webhosting account doesn’t seem like such a good idea does it now?  How long is it costing you in business the $200 you could have gotten reputable hosting with a 24/7 helpdesk for?  Wow, only that long, eh?  Pity their helpdesk is only open business hours… on the west coast of North America.  You should be able to get through to them about 3am, I reckon.  Let me know how much fun it is listening to “Your call is 50^th in the queue.  We thank you for holding, your call IS IMPORTANT TO US!” at international call rates.  Then tell me how much you wish you could still have the VoIP service I set up for you just so you could call suppliers cheaply, but destroyed by insisting on using a $40 ATA and some POS cordless you bought at Aldi, and you won’t fork out for anything better than the last goddamn 512Kbps ADSL service in the country.  The VoIP echoed too much to use?  Wow, I can’t imagine why.  Make sure you say hola to Pablo at the helpdesk when you finally hablo to him.  Don’t get aggro or he’ll drop you back in the queue.

(5)    If it malfunctions after you let someone else touch it, you get them back to fix it.  I’ve had it with repairing other people’s trails of destruction.  It was working when *I* last touched it.

(6)    The two machines I will make conditional exceptions for (because I actually get paid in kind for looking after them) are limited to being rebuilt if you fuck them up due to not caring and just clicking on anything whatsoever that pops up on the screen.  I have fresh images for these machines which I will simply reload, and it’s your problem to reload all of the other crap you’d just die without.  If you’re not keeping everything you want in the ONE directory I warned you I will back up before doing so, you will lose it.  The last time you forgot this, you lost $7,000 in claimable invoices – remember that?  There’s a reason you have a person machine and one for business.  If you trash your personal machine and decide to just keep doing the same damn thing with the business machine because you’d just die if you can’t, it’s going to hurt.  You’ve got an iPad for the precise reason that it’s really, really hard to fuck it up.  Use it.