[Flint]

Hey, I try to do nice things. Some friends of ours needed a computer, because their house had burned down, and so I fixed up an old laptop for them, to pay bills on and stuff. I loaded it with a fresh, clean copy of XP, MS Office 03, free AVG anti-virus, and free Zone Alarm firewall. This thing was a clean, simple, blank slate.

The dude brought it back a few months later, completely thrashed, so bad that I almost couldn't get shit to stop popping up long enough to even figure out what the hell they did to it. Apparently I’ve been conscripted into a lifetime of technical support!

He had already mentioned that they loaded AOL on it. He thinks they can't live without it because "all their stuff is on it" whatever the hell that means. Well, I can't get the fucking thing to quit popping open, and trying to dial through a phone line that isn't there. And it won’t stop trying, no matter how many times I kill it. Annoying. He also installed McAfee, because it came free with AOL. I guess two anti-virus agents running at the same time is twice as good, huh?

But it gets worse, he says his system is telling him that he has viruses but it won’t fix them without him buying the full version. Huh? I gave you free shit, dude. How could you fuck that up? Well, the real problem is, supposedly, a third anti-virus agent: “XP Anti-Virus Ver 2.4” …sounds official, huh? It “warns” you about viruses, and prompts you to do all kind of crazy shit to “fix” your system, which fucks it up even worse. Where did it come from? And where did all these fucking toolbars and shit come from? He doesn’t know. They just “started showing up” he says.

Let me venture a guess: were you doing a bunch of stupid, reckless porn surfing and clicking on all kinds of shit all over the place like a total fucking dumbass? Yeah? And now you want me to fix it? Hey, I’m sure glad I gave you this computer.

I don’t have the energy to get them off AOL, and I’m not going to reformat the damn thing, so I know it’s useless to even try. I uninstalled McAfee, don’t need it. I ran a full virus scan with AVG, and I’m working on getting rid of the other various things he picked up from the internet.

But… what do I do next?

Either I have to try to teach him why this happened, and how to avoid it in the future (so now I’ll be giving free computer lessons to dumbasses) or he’ll be back in a month with the same problems, or worse. Either way, I just feel like saying “You’re a fucking dumbass. Get a job, and go buy your own goddamn computer, and fuck off and leave me alone.”

Obviously there’s more to the story with this guy, but this computer thing really pissed me off. Fucking idiot.