So, I’m not sure if you people know this, but I’m actually a freelance technical support person. I basically spread my wares through word of mouth, sicne I’m generally quick, efficient,  and I DON’T charge $300 to say “Yep, it’s busted, buy a new one” (in general I charge $20/hour, which is reasonable since I’m normally done in 1.5 - 2 hours).

Anyway. I was hired by a regular client of mine to come over and fix their computer. I went over and as usual I started to run some diagnostics, check their systems, ask if they had any back-ups we could work from etc. First thing I notice though is that they have Kaspersky Anti-virus (which is my recommended anti-virus, if you can afford it), which is about to run out in about a day.

So I installed Avast! Anti-Virus, just until they decide if they want to continue paying for Kaspersky.

Immediately the computer craps out on me. The reason is (as I later discovered), I’d been a complete idiot and not checked for compatibility between the two anti-virals, which then decided they hated each other and corrupted themselves. This fucked up the computer enough that it wouldn’t work.

Took me three hours to fix, by which point I was deeply embarassed and thoroughly relieved that this client had not the faintest idea that I was the one who fucked up.

Oh, and the problem I was called in for? Yeah, it turned out her son had been installing bootleg games to her system, and had infected it with 9 different trojans in the process. I removed them all, did a system restore from a back-up, and instructed her to make an administrator account, set a difficult to guess password, change her account to a standard one and ground her son for a month.

I love my job sometimes.