If only all Mondays were like this...

[mikeymike]

Today went quite well for me too :-)  I had a computer maintenance job today (self-employed), the guy had (no exaggeration here) 644 different viruses on his machine, and 30 odd bits of spyware.  Plus a soundcard problem.

I think his machine was being used as a waystation for viruses/trojans, which was odd considering he's on dialup.

All in all took three hours to fix.  It all adds to the ever-increasing amount of earnings this month over previous months, so I'm happy :-)

[Cyberus]

12k! And you have a degree? WTF?
Surely there are jobs that will pay better than that?

Have you considered doing a masters/phd? When I did my Masters in London, I was paid 11.5k by the EPSRC for a year, beats working (its surprisingly easy to spend money hand over fist in London, but I lived comfortably on that, and invested the excess before I could spend it on beer). Plus I got my own computer with superfast internet, my own desk and shared an office with some really cool people...

[Cyberus]

Cool mikeymike, glad to hear it. Do you get these jobs through word of mouth, or advertising in the local paper or whatever?

Also, from what I gather, you seem pretty good with Windows. Considering I am no expert, but nevertheless know more than 95% of computer users, do you reckon I could do that? I know plenty of people who ask me for help, but I wouldn't ever consider charging them....until now :-D

[KennyR]

Cyberus wrote:
Have you considered doing a masters/phd? When I did my Masters in London, I was paid 11.5k by the EPSRC for a year, beats working (its surprisingly easy to spend money hand over fist in London, but I lived comfortably on that, and invested the excess before I could spend it on beer)

I've considered it, but I'm getting too old and in debt now to live on loans. And getting the phd would only make things harder, I think. I'd be 30 by the time it was finished. Who'd employ a 30 year old who's never had a job? And I'd have to look even further afield for a job that I wasn't overqualified for.

12k will do me for now. Once I have some experience, I can get better and better wages. Maybe then I can try to get that PhD.

But I don't think I'll get that 12k job anyway. I just noticed after I sent my CV that the "professionals" who wrote it up missed out the degree - the most important part of the whole thing! :pissed: Oh well, just another three months to wait until the next time a vacancy opens in Scotland.

[mikeymike]

12k! And you have a degree? WTF?
Surely there are jobs that will pay better than that?

KennyR lives in Scotland.  'nuff said :-)

But there are too many people with/going for degrees in order to keep the salary balance going.  But of course it would be political suicide to suggest that not everyone is intelligent enough to get a degree.

[mikeymike]

Cyberus wrote:
Cool mikeymike, glad to hear it. Do you get these jobs through word of mouth, or advertising in the local paper or whatever?

I pay for leaflets to be printed, then deliver them myself.  A couple of jobs have come via word of mouth.

Also, from what I gather, you seem pretty good with Windows. Considering I am no expert, but nevertheless know more than 95% of computer users, do you reckon I could do that? I know plenty of people who ask me for help, but I wouldn't ever consider charging them....until now :-D

Hard to say really.  It is all down to experience, and whether you think you could stand say a 90% chance of fixing any problem a customer puts in front of you.  All of my customers have been happy to pay for the work because I fix the problems completely and they can see that and are happy with it.  That's the important part.  Good knowledge of PC hardware is quite important.  Out of the way knowledge of fixing obscure Windows problems is needed, like what would cause you to suspect a virus or bit of spyware was at work, and what would you check first.

One quick test (a scenario I encountered today) would help you work out whether you are capable of at least some of the work is this - a piece of spyware is being loaded in at startup, but you've checked all the usual places, registry etc where it could be called, but nothing.  How would you delete the file?  OS is Windows XP.  AV nor Ad-aware picks it up (or can't deal with it).

Knowing how to work out what technology hardware is in the machine, as quickly/painlessly/passively as possible is very useful.  If a customer asks you if that machine can be upgraded, say the CPU in a Slot 1 Intel box, you have to know the answers.  And the answer to the last question isn't "no" :-)

Although a customer recently got hold of a 486/50/8MB RAM box and asked me whether it was upgradable, and I ended up saying pretty much no :-)

Customers like to watch what you're doing as well.  A fast typing speed impresses :-)

And reinstalling the OS is a no-no due to time/cost restraints, as well as pissing off the customer with loss of settings/stuff.  I sell it as a seperate service to those who need it most.

[whabang]

Although a customer recently got hold of a 486/50/8MB RAM box and asked me whether it was upgradable, and I ended up saying pretty much no

:lol:

[mikeymike]

Another really handy skill for NTx users is service tweaking.  It gets rid of half the security issues and saves bucketloads of RAM.

The messenger service switch-off stops them getting Messenger spam (not MSNM), so that's an obvious visible benefit, and not many customers have bucketloads of RAM strangely enough.

[sumner7]

I was struggling with a cold yesterday, so I wish all my mondays weren't like that... :-(