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Fixing Macs door to door

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Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#201

Post by Projectiboga »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #65
qingcharles wrote: post #48

I did this in the mid 90s. It was really fun to see inside a lot of rich people's houses, the sort that have libraries so big they need those ladders with wheels on to scoot around. I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. One American woman had brought her inkjet from the USA and I hooked it up to a decent convertor, but it wasn't one that converted the frequen…

Just a PSA (not trying to harp on parent commenter, just taking their comment as an opportunity to soapbox) but never, ever, every go into a room or building that is getting smokey from something burning. It's how you N+1 the casualty/death count in a fire. Unlike the heroes in films and movies, you don't have Plot Armor. It is incredibly common that people think they can just go back in holding their breath or stay…

Most likely that printer blew the capacitor by the power feed. It smoked its 'bunch of pixie dust' and was dead. Just the air needed to clear. But yes never go into a burning building, unless you're willing to die trying to save something or someone.

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#202

Post by FireBeyond »

freedomben wrote: post #144
KennyBlanken wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost never the attractive, talented, or regularly-tested-for-STIs-and-STI-free ones that offer the sex...

Indeed. A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment). If you're not picky then some of these people have a lot of experience and are good at what they do. But if toothless/meth-toothed people, usually not recently showered, and sometimes with a fair amount of extra weight is something t…

> A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment).

There was a thing that made the news maybe ten years ago in Washington, maybe a little more. Woman offering "a year of oral sex" for a truck. "No funny stuff, no relationship, nothing else. You give me the truck, we meet once a day, I give you oral. On day 365 I give you oral and you give me the title."

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#203

Post by FireBeyond »

steveBK123 wrote: post #166
gen220 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stories of justifying great expenses amuse me, because I can't help but compare them to Warren Buffet's office (which is mostly sports memorabilia, loose papers, a telephone [1]). >That said, in most cases day trading is basically just high end gambling and a mechanism of turning a large fortune into a small one. Poignant! There are plenty of people and businesses happy to pry off a chunk along the way. :) [1]:…

Warren Buffett is probably the great exception to the rule of Billionaires pretending to live commonly. Most of the other "oh I drive a Honda" or "I live with roommates" origin stories turn out to be factual, but incomplete as we find out they have roommates in a $20M penthouse / commute in the Honda for optics but have a garage full of luxury vehicles / own 27 homes / etc. Kind of like the classic Steve Jobs "hide t…

Even Elon, "I don't own a house" (but I have a holding company that owns several), but "I stay in a friend's $50M home which has a household staff".

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#204

Post by intrasight »

Cyphase wrote: post #146
intrasight wrote: post #20

That was the most fun thing I've read all year. I know we're not very far into the year but I do read a lot. Just an example about a parent requesting tracking be installed on her daughter's phone "One girl waited until her mom left the room to casually turn to me and say 'I will pay you $500 to lie to my mom and say you set this up'." I was offended that this 15 year old thought she could buy me, in large part becau…

s/year. I know we're not very far into the year but I do read a lot./week, and I read a lot./ FTFY ;)

LOL

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#205

Post by busterarm »

wkat4242 wrote: post #191
busterarm wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comment OP here. Most of the people who were my clients were artist types who moved to the public transportation fringes of Brooklyn where rent was the cheapest (at that time). They were barely skating by and usually had pretty roachy apartments. A large percentage of these folks were very into drug use... in a way that it hindered achieving the goals that they moved to NY to accomplish. I took on these clients speci…

Ahh I see. When I was young, Holland was in a very different place. Much less income equality so almost everyone was middle class and pretty respectable.

I thought 90s/00s Holland was supposed to be hardcore ravers paradise with an active cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA scene.

At least that was definitely my experience with gabber back then.

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#206

Post by _lvbh »

ByHookOrCrook wrote: post #168
qingcharles wrote: post #48

I did this in the mid 90s. It was really fun to see inside a lot of rich people's houses, the sort that have libraries so big they need those ladders with wheels on to scoot around. I was hit on by several bored housewives, including one that answered the door in her open robe. One American woman had brought her inkjet from the USA and I hooked it up to a decent convertor, but it wasn't one that converted the frequen…

No you didn't get hit on - americans in the mid 90s were racist toward chinamen

I’m confused. Where does he say he’s Chinese? Also, I would be willing to bet not everyone was racist. 1990s wasn’t too far back

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#207

Post by jnaina »

yardie wrote: post #96

One of the things I miss by reading this post is how empowered CSRs were back in those days. Today, everything is scripted and highly metricized. Going through the customer service line today will get you the run around and lot of toothless solutions. No one can do anything and even "escalation" mostly means handing you off to another powerless CSR to continue the runaround. This post reminds me of my youth. I had a…

Had similar experience with Apple in 2011. My one of my twin's iMac had an issue that the Apple Singapore service center could not fix and I had the run around from them, including a vertical line on both their iMac screen (assuming both were from the same bad batch).

Frustrated, I wrote the below email to Steve Jobs on a lark. Was not expecting a reply. Surprisingly got a call next day, and Apple arranged for both the iMacs to be replaced with new one.

Not sure if Steve actually read my email, or his EA. But the fact that their APAC regional service head was dealing with me personally to resolve this and replace the units, was quite surprising.

From: xxx Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Smtp-Server: smtp.me.com:xxx Subject: Your after-sales support sucks in Singapore X-Universally-Unique-Identifier: 8f59f421-365f-4434-81dc-dd73a17d13e3 Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:53:49 +0800 Message-Id: To: sjobs@apple.com Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1082)

Steve.

I'm a big fan of Apple products. Have always been one. I have constantly = bought Apple products since the early days, from the Apple IIe to all = manners of Apple products since. Heck, I even have a Lisa and a Next = Cube.

But lately, I have been noticing that while your after-sales support in = the US is great (what with your Apple stores and the Genius programs), = but your after-sales support program outside the US sucks big time.

I reside in Singapore and I bought for my 3 kids, an iMac each. One of = the kids iMac have been having intermittent problems since day one. For = some reason the iMac shutdowns down itself spontaneously. Originally = (being a propeller head myself), I thought there was an OS X system = corruption. So I re-installed the system. But alas, no dice.

I then send it to one of the Apple authorized service centers here. They = claimed that they fixed it and they send it back. Within 2 weeks, the = iMac started having the same issues, repeated shutdowns spontaneously. I = then send it to another Apple authorized service center (there are 2 = independent apple authorized service centers in Singapore). This time, = the service personnel claimed that it was a faulty drive and they = installed a new drive. Again, after receiving it back, the problem = persists.=20

A few things that I note:

- The Apple 3rd authorized service centers seem to be paid to fix the = symptoms, but not the root cause - These service centers don't seem to have any quality control in their = repair process. They don't seem to be testing the iMacs overnight for = extended periods to check is if the system fails. They only want to get = the Macs out the door and charge Apple for the service (i have an = extended warranty). - The service personnel seem not to understand simple diagnostic steps. = If an iMac fails repeatedly, surely you would want to check the power = supply or the main board as the usual culprit. Instead they focus on the = drive. Flabbergasting.

I have wasted almost 1 one year trying to get this fixed, while my son = has been deprived of his precious iMac. I have even bought an extended = warranty, but to no avail.

I'm writing to you as a last resort to find resolution to get this = fixed. If I don't hear from you, I will just have to throw the damned = iMac away and get a new one for my son.

Just to show you how rabid an Apple fan boy that I am, here's a list of = the Mac products that I own:

3 iMacs (2009 version) 1 PowerMac 2 Mac Mini (one Intel and one PPC version) 1 AppleTV 1 2010 MacBook Pro 1 2009 MacBook Pro 1 1st Gen Macbook Air 1 Cinema display 1 original 1st Gen iPhone 1 iPhone 3G 2 iPhone 3GS 3 iPhone 4 3 iPods (various) 2 iPads

regards,

xxx

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#208

Post by infertainment »

Aachen wrote: post #177
febeling wrote: post #86

Reminds me that what we really crave is authenticity. It’s the number one rule for writing. Also shows why AI content is so pointless.

Interesting remark to me. I was thinking the whole time what parts may be made up. I'm a really bad judge of sarcasm, let alone actually dishonest content. In the end I'm inclined to believe the whole thing, but it's not particularly authentic , just quite different from my life and therefore interesting. (Some parallels also, as I've done computer fixing for some friends of friends.)

How does interesting and original work compare to AI-generated and most human-generated material? Maybe we could say rather than being merely plausible that it is surprising in plausible ways.

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#209

Post by [deleted] »

wkat4242 wrote: post #150
freedomben wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment). If you're not picky then some of these people have a lot of experience and are good at what they do. But if toothless/meth-toothed people, usually not recently showered, and sometimes with a fair amount of extra weight is something t…

Uhm if you're fixing PCs as I did you don't end up working for meth-toothed people :P Maybe not the most attractive people no, but regular middle-class people at the very least. Especially when you were fixing macs which were even more premium priced here in Europe back then than they are now. I fixed all sorts of stuff but I would not have marginalised clients. I guess it's also why I didn't get such offers :P I did…

[deleted]

Re: Fixing Macs door to door

#210

Post by 2143 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #150
freedomben wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A friend of mine did work in a small town hard-hit by the changing economy, and multiple times had offers of sex (more commonly oral sex) in lieu of payment (or partial payment). If you're not picky then some of these people have a lot of experience and are good at what they do. But if toothless/meth-toothed people, usually not recently showered, and sometimes with a fair amount of extra weight is something t…

Uhm if you're fixing PCs as I did you don't end up working for meth-toothed people :P Maybe not the most attractive people no, but regular middle-class people at the very least. Especially when you were fixing macs which were even more premium priced here in Europe back then than they are now. I fixed all sorts of stuff but I would not have marginalised clients. I guess it's also why I didn't get such offers :P I did…

> he offered me money to come to his place and sort it out myself

This reminds me of a personal experience I had.

Many years ago I was a graduate student at a US university (I'm not from the US).

There's this study room that I used to study from. There was this much older (??) woman who sometimes studied from there. One day out of the blue she asked me if I was good with statistics. I was, and clarified a couple of quick questions that she had.

Then she started trying to set up an appointment with me for a specific day, for two hours, and asked me how much she would have to pay me to teach her statistics.

Wtf?! I was so taken aback I didn't even know what to say. I declined, and just left.

It was weird to me for several reasons: this was the first time somebody straight up offered me money to teach them something. The way she asked me was uncomfortably formal, and if my statistics tutoring doesn't satisfy her then who knows she might sue me. And I'm not even sure if it would have been legal for me to accept money in exchange for this ad hoc service, as I'm not a US citizen.

In my home country (relatively big country in south Asia), if a fellow student has difficulties with certain topics, people (well, friends or friend of a friend) who have a better idea with the subject try to help them out, for free. There is not even a question, or even a thought about monetary reward, from any of the parties involved.

Maybe that's why there's a lot of entrepreneurship in America? If so, then this particular exchange just felt so odd.

I don't know what to conclude from all this.

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