A little knowledge is dangerous.

The term A little knowledge is dangerous  expresses the idea that a small amount of knowledge can mislead people into thinking that they are more expert than they really are, which can lead to mistakes (possibly fatal) being made.

I happen to know 2 so called computer engineers who actually do not have a clue yet they profess to be “Good at computers”, from my personal experience of these 2 is that they have fiddled around with windows and put a few cards in a PC at some stage so now they know how to fix a pc/laptop (tablets and phones beyond them at this time).

The cast. F for friend, T1=Tecnician1 Tosser 1, T2=Technician2 Tosser 2.

Sometime ago T2 wanted to build a circuit to control an aquarium for his tropical fish, I suggested using a breadboard to prototype before producing a PCB (printed circuit board) and they can set out the design etc. After destroying some electronic components due to back emf generated by a relay switching in the mains to the heater, I was later informed about this and asked why they hadn’t put “back emf suppression” and of course the reply was HUH?.

I explained the virtues of coils and switching and of course back EMF. The other observation that was made was the crack sound it caused in TV and the radio (of course it will) I explained this to the T2 and suggested using a TRIAC to do the switching as it is solid state and no coils to cause back EMF.

The following day I learned from T2 that he had blown up the board and a PCI card in his PC, after enquiring about what was done (sorting through the drawl that made little sense I realised that no DIAC’s were used and from the obscure vague descriptions that mains had passed through the extra low voltage items thus resulting in meltdown. I asked why they did it that way and they said it was the way a drawing showed (I didn’t ask). I made the statement that They do not have a clue and should never have attempted this. This fiasco continued with my lack of interest as I certainly did not want to hear news of the fish being electrocuted, fried or whatever.
At the time this cost in terms of finance was around €50.00 and a replacement heater would have cost €5-6.

A little (or none) knowledge is dangerous.

Some years later my F was having some problems with the PC and as they do not follow instruction and do their own thing I suggested that they download teamviewer (remote access program) so I can see and do the fix myself I was horrified to find that the boot drive was C: (pretty normal) and drive P: and S: and the DVD drive was V:. So now I see that my F has C: drive for Windows stuff, P: drive for programs and S: drive for Software (don’t ask). These are partitions placed on the same single drive (ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!).

So to find a setting or .INI in program files or data to a folder it could be in C: Program files or P Program Files or S Program Files or Program Files (x86) across those partitions. Note: for most part drives names are flexible until you want to do some real network and or OEM re-install-de-installs.

I got it sorted out it was on S:\Program Files (x86)\

We continued to game trouble free for a while when the T1 was furious that I was allowed to remote to his wife’s (F) PC and chastised F and removed the teamviewer program. Who then proceeded to Fix F’s PC (Fix here means fuck up), removing things like ccleaner and I quote T1 “It ruins your PC and destroys the system”, I’m sure Piriform would be very interested in T1’s theories on this.

So as time went on the PC slowed down as they do when running any form of M$ windows and not nursing them through what they should be performing.

We were for the most part played a 2002 game (now being 2017) but was also playing later games but F was struggling due to a choked PC, but we got through it. Then one days F reported some odd lines and pixels randomly appearing on her screen, this pointed to a driver or hardware failure and some verbal diagnostics were performed that was made difficult by the user not following instructions or reporting exactly what was on screen. After diagnosing that it is probably the Graphics card (but not convinced) and that I could send over my discarded Nvidia GTX8600 1GB ddr3 as I have an Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB ddr4. The offer was refused not by F but T1 or T2.

It was diagnosed by both of the T’s and they decided to rule that the CPU is faulty (I never believed that), I stated that I seriously do not believe it to be the CPU as they are far too reliable and pure substrate that it would be almost impossible to destroy a CPU through normal or even overclocking, I personally do not over clock, if my CPU is too slow I will get a faster one.

Well after removing the CPU and inserting another one they decided that the second CPU is “DEAD” so a third one was put in place and that did work but belonged to T2’s gaming machine.

I asked live on a Teamspeak 3 session how T2 removed and inserted the CPU and after hearing that he turned off machine and pulled out power cord he removed it and placed it in F’s PC, I asked F to talk me through every step they took to remove the CPU and they repeated “I turned it off took out power lead and removed CPU,” to which I replied “well you just nuked it” they argued by saying they didn’t (because they only had a little knowledge) I wasn’t going to mention what they did wrong and if you’re an engineer you will know what they did wrong by what was not stated above.

This fiasco continued for a few days and eventually 3 CPU’s were destroyed, eventually the T2 ordered a new CPU and a second hand graphics card was installed, due to the time lapse it was no longer a detriment to insert a new CPU.

F is now able to play the lower end games as the machine is now less powerful than before, I must also add That F has to now download all of the games and maps that were stored on her PC as these Tossers who worked and killed several parts on her PC are not capable of saving data before performing a repair Fuckup.

Do you know what mistake T1 & T2 did three times?

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IS DANGEROUS