WTF?
Very weird things are happening lately.
I’ve tried my best to get out of the “My computer’s broke, will you fix it?” end of the business. Even when I did it regularly, I generally didn’t do house calls. It’s just a lot easier to work here and I don’t have to worry about people’s dogs, cats and personal habits. Recent economics interfered and in the last two weeks I’ve made two house calls.
Last week was to the home of a lady I know from work. She knows I’m in recovery and has even asked my advice about dealing with her son’s active addiction. So imagine my shock when I arrived in the middle of the morning and her husband and some other guy were sitting in the living room smoking a joint. Very good stuff by the smell of it. Given the choice of leaving but being unable to buy groceries, or staying and doing the work (typical spyware removal stuff exacerbated by expired anti-virus) I stayed a did the work. (Successfully avoided the pot.) For the next few days, all I could smell was pot. I’m sure it was mostly psychological.
While I was standing in the checkout at Parkleigh on Monday, a guy called who said he got my number from the GAGV. A buddy had done some upgrades (he didn’t know exactly what) and now most of his porn sites didn’t work. He didn’t want the buddy back because he (the buddy) is straight and the client felt uncomfortable touring gay porn sites with him to show him what was wrong.
Uhhhh, okay. I can see that. Still, it made me uncomfortable too. Basically because what the call reallly meant was, “I’m experiencing sexual frustration.” That the frustation was because of his computer is beside the point. And there was a clear edge of desperation in his voice.
The client lives a hour outside the city and would give me a ride both ways. Guaranteed me at least two hours pay. Fine.
I left a note here and a phone message with a friend giving this guy’s name and phone number with instructions to send a rescue party if I wasn’t back by dinnertime. I made sure the phone was fully charged before leaving and I also know the pastor of the Presbyterian church in that town. So provided there was no bondage involved, I felt pretty sure that if things deteriorated, I could extricate myself, or cause myself to be extricated.
The guy picked me up around lunchtime. Seemed nice enough. Bought me lunch. Talked a lot about drinking and gambling. A lot.
The vodka bottle came out before I even sat down at the keyboard. Fortunately, the guy drinks screwdrivers so I joined him with an OJ, neat.
As I suspected from his description of the problems, it was all Windows XP SP2 issues with the additional security and crap getting in the way of his porn sites. I enabled Java and popups from selected sites and cleaned out some spyware.
It would have been about an hour but he was, umm, very extensive with his testing. Basically, I fixed his PC for an hour and watched him surf porn for two hours while he drank. Oh, and the regular-click button of his laptop broke while I was there. Computer’s six months old. I’ve never seen anyone break one of those buttons before. His apparently gets a lot of use. I recommended a mouse. Easier to replace.
He paid for the full three hours though and I got lunch out of the deal. Better still, he never made any advances and I got home safely. (Riding with my sponsor is good practice for riding with a drunk. Shit, drunk the guy drove better than my sponsor with 19 years of sobriety. But I digress.)
Now, the way this is trending, by Christmas I should be fixing webcams in dungeons run by heroin addicts.
