For at least the tenth time this year (and probably more like the twentieth or more), my dad asked me to "fix his computer", at a most inopportune time. Makes me wish I had one of those assertive
ThinkGeek shirts telling people I won't. Nearly ever program is generating
runtime errors or fatal exception errors, and there's a
metric fuckton of system and other files missing. My guess from what little I've done is that he either has a virus (or three), or one or more of his primary master HD's heads is dead or dying.
Let me backtrack. My dad has no security whatsoever on his computer. None. No
firewall, no sharing limitations, nothing. He has an
antivirus program installed, but it's almost three years old and I don't think he's even done the online updates. On top of that, he's installed shit like
Kazaa (the regular version, not
Kazaa Lite) and other programs that let
spyware and
adware come along for the ride. He's installed
AdAware and some commercial spyware elimnators to attempt to correct it, but it's a losing battle. Moreover, although he'd never admit it, he roams pretty freely around all sorts of sleazy
porn and
warez sites; the kind of places that in real life would be in the dark alley behind the bar that's really a
cocaine-trafficking front. Perhaps most damningly of all, he uses
Internet Explorer, and an older version with known
security holes at that. I've tried to explain to him that this is analagous to fucking a thousand prostitutes without using a single condom, but he doesn't listen - he just let's himself get
gonnorhea and then expects me to cure him.
What irritates me more than anything else is that computers are hardly new to him. He's been using a PC since at least 1990 - back when you still had to kinda know what you were doing to use one. He was cruising around
BBSes when most people thought a
mouse was just an ugly little rodent that stole cheese. You'd think he would be a bit more tech-savvy.
And my mom is just infuriating through all this. She keeps gloating that "her old computer works just fine". (The computer in question is a craptacular
E-Machine with a 400Mhz
Celery processor.) Given her short temper, I've refrained from pointing out to her that it "works" because she doesn't fucking DO anything with it. 95% of the time, she's either on one of
Yahoo!'s
Java games, reading the news, or browsing around
eBay. It's not even that great for web browsing; sites like
Penny Arcade and
MegaTokyo make the whole screen visibly refresh every time you scroll, and graphics-intensive sites like GameSpot are practically impossible.
*sigh*
My parents suck with computers.