It was one of those weeks last week at Hackaday’s home office. My mother-in-law handed me her favorite power bank and said “it’s not charging”. She had every expectation that I’ll open it up, desolder the weary pouch inside, scrounge a LiPo out of some corner of the basement, and have it back up and running before the weekend. And of course that’s what happened, although maybe it looks a little worse for wear because it was hard to open the sealed case without excessive force. Sorry about that!
Then on the weekend, I finally got fed up with the decomposing foam on the face seal on my FPV goggles. It was leaking light all over the place. Of course I could have bought a new seal, but then I’d have to wait a week or so for delivery. So I pulled the velcro backing off, tossed it in the bed scanner, pulled the image up in Inkscape, converted it to Gcode, and cut out a couple seals out of EVA foam on the laser. Not only are they essentially indestructible, but I was able to customize them a little bit, and the fit is now better than ever.
And then, one of our neighbors bought a new garage door fob, flipped the DIP switches into the right configuration, and couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t open the garage door. Knock knock knock. Using the tried-and-true RF probe that everyone with a scope probe has sitting around, namely hooking the ground pin to the tip and putting the radio device in the loop, it was clear that the sense of the DIP switches was inverted from what it said in the instructions. That was a fun little puzzle.
It was the garage door opener that triggered me to think about how normal people would handle any of these situations. “How do the normies even get by?” were the exact words that went through my head. And let’s face it: we’re not entirely normal. Normal people don’t have a soldering setup just sitting around ready to get hot 24/7, or a scope to diagnose a garage door RF transmitter at the drop of a hat. But these things seem to happen to me all the time. How do the normal people survive? Maybe they all know someone with a scope?
I take it as my service to the world to be “that guy” for most of our friends and family, and I pretty much do it without complaint. “With great power” and all that. My wife is just about as gracious when she’s stuck debugging a parent’s Windows setup, so I’m not saying I’m the only saint in the world, either. Surely you have similar stories.
But last week it made me reflect on how good we’ve got it, and that does make me want to pay it forward a little bit. If you’re one of the people who can, try to help out those who can’t.
My condolences to those supporting family and friends through the Windows 10 EOL.
windows 10 ?
I am still on windows 8.1 for the lone required windows PC. Otherwise it’s all FreeBSD of course.
I just shipped my brother a TPM and pages printed from his motherboard manual PDF.
We survived end of Windows 8.x
We survived end of Windows 7
We survived end of Window Vistas
We survived Windows ME
We’ll be fine. Windows 10 won’t crash or refuse to boot because Microsoft ended support. People would be on their own if the computer were still connected to the internet and new exploit is found.
I find that the existence of “that person” is exactly why I’m reading hackaday. I’m pretty much here to educate myself about all these things that us common people, wouldn’t understand otherwise without “these persons” ! Blogging is a way to share and educate people from their qualifications. It passes on good knowledge.
But there is an ailment that has befallen me, which “normies” go by unaffected: Lots of the stuff (tools / test equipment) that I have gathered will not be used daily and needs some fixing before you can take on the job at hand :)
FAM: “Can you fix my slow laptop? It keeps crashing and is very slow”
ME: “OK, so your kids installed software piracy tools which come with viruses”
FAM: “Kids say you are wrong, they’re younger and know computers better”
ME: (DOES NOT SAY “when I were your kid’s age, I had a job. And the job was with computers. “)
ME: “They’re right. All I know are Macs. You’ll have to bring your computer to one of those stores that will clean it up”
FAM: “But that will COST ME MONEY”
ME: “I only know Macs”.
FAM: “Pffft! MACS are a overpriced junk!”
ME: (DOES NOT SAY “I drive a 20 year old Toyota Corolla, and you’re on your THIRD BMW. Are you really suggesting I don’t understand practical value?”)
ME: “Sure, are but Macs are all I know”. And I repeated this for 11 years since.
They make sure I overhear though “We had to buy the kids laptops again this year, Microsoft let a virus on and all the software on it “expired”. Fixing it would have cost half of a new laptop.”
People use the cop-out “but you’re smart” as a way to not Google and learn. They presume your time has no cost to you, and that you genuinely enjoy fixing things (in the same way they enjoy binging trash TV).
Techies need to show tough love, and say no or feign ignorance.
That ignorance angle only works when the ‘normie’ isn’t smart enough, or doesn’t know you well enough to know it isn’t true. And saying no just isn’t as easy as it sounds if its going to get your Mother/Wife/Husband/etc nagging at you often as to why you are solving the problems you want to solve but won’t solve theirs or their Mothers/Sisters/etc – usually easy enough to just fix it and saves you so much more grief in the long run.
Or tell the example person to choose if he/she wants to believe their kids or you, and then take the computer to the chosen one to fix. A little bit harsh, but the person was harsh first, when implying the kids understand more than you.
Oh in that script I’d just say on line 4 – “well why bother me with this if you already have a ‘solution’ you accept!?” most likely. As if they want my help, probably for ‘free’ they had better be willing to actually accept it.
So depending on just how helpful that “FAM” has been themselves or how far I believe they would go should I ever actually need help they are capable of defines the level of patience I’m willing to go looking for – they would either get that first response in frustration at the entitled assumption they have earned my help for nothing, or the ‘Fine leave it with me, I’ll fix it, then once you are satisfied send the Kids to me to learn how to do whatever caused the issue properly”
But that still doesn’t solve the problem of nagging from the family member that knows you could fix something and have chosen not to in general.
Similar stories from me except I do say. If they want my time/effort/knowledge/experience(for free) then they can damn well have my admonishments too.
Similar with askholes: “What phone should I get?” then they buy some PoS and need help? No GTFO.
Ahaha! This is sooo true, that’s literally me!
Thanks for this, cheered up my evening.
Entirely agree with the different OS excuse.
My relief when all the family got iPhones and stayed with Android (I have Google Pixel, so a quite decent phone).
Now I just can’t be of much help.
But people figure it out somehow
The article is right but fails to acknowledge one thing: we’re also enablers of these behaviours.
If we were not around, they find alternatives, just as you quote people buying new laptops every year -> this is a twisted point though, because commercial shops really take advantage of those who don’t know. That’s unethical.
Semi related, UX designers and engineers for mainstream smartphone apps and especially smart TV OS/app UIs, need to do focus groups of over-60s. My parents constantly struggle with smart TV UIs, and honestly, I am sometimes too. Wildly inconsistent UIs (sometimes swipe up to reveal more, sometimes click in, sometimes neither …), sometimes not clear where the cursor is (especially for those with less than stellar eyesight), multiple text entry bars that are ambiguous (looking at you Apple TV).
The old Verizon cable box system from like 2010 was the perfect UI for TV watching: consistent, clear UIs and dedicated remote buttons that always did the same thing.
Indeed, smartphones are awful and I really hate being asked by all the extended family that actually use the darn things way more than I do how to do something because its so unclear. I’ll still figure it out fast enough, but its so frustrating. The smartphone is so often less intuitive than the VHS taperecorder ever was, and those things spawned jokes on their complexity for a reason…
12:00
–:–
12:00
–:–
…
But at least you could still put a tape in and hit PLAY!
Don’t get me started on modern UI design, it’s absolutely awful.
I recycled my old computer for my parents to access Juno Mail. (Anyone remember that?). Even though my mom couldn’t spell WWW, they hooked it up to dial-up internet. I had streamlined MSIE by getting rid of the “Go” button, since all one had to do is hit enter. It wasn’t until Mom called up with a support request that I realized why that was there: “I’ve typed in a website, now what do I do?”
:facepalm:
Disregarding all the other flaws of MSIE, Microsoft at least had done focus groups with over-60s when they built it.
My wife, a clinical psychologist, can remain in business ONLY because she is married to “that guy”. I agree with all those who wonder how normal people survive.
I accept the the challenge of helping friends and acquaintenances because A) It’s just good manners, B) her friends make VERY good iced chocolate brownies, and C) It keeps me up to date on how normal people use technology.
My day job is deeply embedded / industrial data acquisition / control: My “happy place” is in front of logic analyzers and oscilloscopes, so I really don’t have daily interactions with normies’ use of technology.
I find lots and lots of gadgets thrown away at the dump, they’re in the “battery disposal” pile. I take them home, some of them work out of the box, and some of them I have to open up the case and goose the battery above the minimum voltage to get the charger working again.
And some of them I simply have to replace the AA batteries.
This is how normies survive: when something doesn’t work, they throw it away and buy another. It’s astonishing.
I dragged a 4-channel 200 MHz oscilloscope out of the dumpster at the makerspace and plugged it in and it didn’t work right… because it was set to a weird mode. Setting switches and pushing buttons on the front panel put it back into normal mode, and now I own a 4 channel (better) oscilloscope.
Purchased two very expensive 600 watt 13.56 MHz generators on craigslist for thin money, both work, were sold because the units made a weird sound and the owner was afraid they would self destruct. Replaced the fan and the scary sound went away.
I haven’t purchased a new computer in ages, I simply go to the dump and look through the ones people throw away. I can usually find one there with better specs than the one I’m using, about every 5 years I do this. Linux runs very fast if you don’t let your system get gummed up with malware. (A friend, who is a professional EE designer with a modern system, has commented that my home system compiles things much faster than his.)
This is how normies survive: when something doesn’t work in a way they don’t understand, they throw it away and get another one.
It’s astonishing.
Normies just buy new stuff way more often than needed, and get scammed on shitty maintenance contracts and insurances.
That is how they survive
Look at the average person and then realize that half the population is less intelligent than that.
I am also “that guy” to a bunch of people, and each of them has asked the same basic question – “what do other people do when they don’t have you to call?” Sounds like the answer is also the reason why the thrift store is flooded with functional electronic goodies I can grab for pennies on the dollar.
This is an oldie but goodie that always comes to mind when I think about being “that guy”: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfriends-grandparents-wifi-and-am-hailed-as-a-conquering-hero
I am “that guy” for most of my family and many friends. It was a very busy stretch of years when Windows 7 came out. I had a few older couples at church that I helped routinely and my standard fee was homemade peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream.
I’ll take the normie who gives up over the Dunning Kruger poster child who knows nothing but tries to fix stuff anyway.
I just replaced the shell of a broken Molex connector which would have been a 5 minute job had someone not pumped an acorn-sized blob of hot glue into the chassis in an attempt to stabilize the connector.