Long story short, I priced out a computer for a friend with the intent of building it, configuring it, and giving it to this person. The amount of the system? Roughly $900. Quote was back from April 23rd 2010.
Unfortunately, this person did not want to “wait” for my installation services. They requested that I send them the shopping cart and that they’d do the install themselves. OK, fine.
Two weeks later I have the following correspondence with this person:
D***o: did you get my IM about the computer?
Jason: apparently not
D***o: oh, well i think its all hooked up right, but I’ve a few final questions
D***o: A) the RAM cooler fan, which header does it go on, pwr fan or sys fan1?
D***o: B) the DVD drive and Hard drive, they’re SATA. of the 8 SATA ports on the mobo, which should I use. I assume the two white ones, since I believe the six blue ones are for a raid
D***o: C) can I install the OS from a flash drive?
Jason: you have a ram cooler fan? awesome
Jason: anywhere you want to install it. I’d probably go with sys fan
D***o: yeah, came with the ram
D***o: okay
Jason: that’s hardcore
Jason: any sata ports you want, but yeah for simplicity sake maybe go with the white ones
D***o: also the video card has a little pigtail for SPDIF_0, should I bother
D***o: the white SATA ports are JBOD compatible
Jason: you going to want to have audio out through hdmi cable?
D***o: i guess not
Jason: then no bother
Jason: spdif is for digital audio out
D***o: that video card barely fit in the case, had to relocate the HD
Jason: it’s a freakin awesome card
D***o: and when I tried to remove it one of the HD screws got crossthreaded
Jason: just move the hd lower
D***o: so the hammer and chisel came out
D***o: after a couple minutes of pounding E***d looked up from the couch and said ‘are you really supposed to use the hammer that much building a computer?
D***o: but I showed him
Hammer? Chisel? On a computer? Oh dear.
I had previously done some work for D***o’s extended family and had left a Windows XP restore CD behind. He decided to use the XP restore CD to install an OS on his new system. On a 4GB 2.93 Quad Core system. 32bit OS.
I told the D***o to install Windows 7 x64 instead, but he didn’t want to wait for that.
Fast forward. It’s now been 12 weeks since the quote, 10 since the hammer/chisel. I was informed by a third party friend that the system was still not up and running yet. So I offered to lend a copy of Win7 so he could at least be up and running for a while. He comes by to pick up the installation DVD. I wait another week and then contact him (shame on me):
Jason: you haven’t installed the OS yet?
D***o: disk wont work
D***o: i try to run setup and it says its not a valid win32 thingy
Jason: no no, you have to boot from it
D***o: oh
Argh. So he booted from XP and tried to “upgrade” to 7 64bit.
I’m definitely not making enough money for this. That’s actually the worst part – giving away tech support for free. I’m no longer going out of my way to provide free services.