Compute This 12-28-25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Shrock Innovations presents the midwest number one independent computer repair
company with service centers and Lincoln Omaha Papillion des moin
and across the country via the Shrock Desk. This is
Compute This.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning, folks, and welcome into Compute this. My name
is Thor Schrock. I'm the owner of the Shrock Innovations
computer Company. If you'd like to join us on the program,
number to join us is A four oh two five
five eight eleven ten or eight eight eight two five
zero two zero nine to one if you're outside of
the metro area. If you missed last week's program, you

(00:37):
can always pick that up over at Shrockannovations dot com.
Just click on radio show and you can listen to
all the previous shows there. It's also available on YouTube
and Rumble, as well as wherever you get your podcasts
like iHeart or any place like that. You can find
us there as well. But last week, if you missed
the show, we warned you about how graphics cards are
going the same direction as memory and solid state drives

(01:01):
are going into shortage because Nvidia is actually decreasing the
production of consumer grade chips for graphics cards because they're
increasing production of chips for AI. We also explained again
why definition based antivirus just doesn't work anymore. So think
like Norton, malware Bytes, McAfee. You know, the story we

(01:24):
had last week was there are extensions that you install
on your browser to make it do things that you
want it to do. And those extensions can actually be vehicles.
It can be vectors that deliver malware to your computer
at inconsistent intervals and you have no way of detecting
how it's getting into your computer. And because those vectors,
those extensions themselves are not actually malware themselves, your antivirus

(01:46):
software won't detect it. So if you have something like
sofos that watches the behavior of everything that's working all
the time, you're going to detect that stuff just fine.
So as a result, don't install those things on your computer.
If you don't want malware, come on and make sure
you've got sofos instead of something like Norton LifeLock or

(02:08):
McAfee or malware bytes or any of the definition based
antivirus programs that worked so well back you know, from
twenty twelve to twenty eighteen ish, But as soon as
we started getting you know, even automated viruses, people updating
their viruses at inconsistent times, and then of course now

(02:30):
AI updates to viruses. It makes those services completely worthless,
like I don't even know why you're subscribing to them.
We also told you how you can sell those holiday
gift cards if you're looking to make a little extra
cash this holiday season. Excuse me. You can sell those
gift cards that you got for Christmas that you don't
want for cash. So we told you how to do

(02:52):
that on the program last week as well, So if
you miss that show, you can check it out over
at Shrock Innovations dot com. So a couple quick program notes.
We are not live today at Facebook, so if you're
looking for the radio show at Facebook dot com slash
Rock Innovations, we are not doing live video today. We
are terrestrial radio only today, so you got to listen
to us right here on the dial if you want

(03:13):
to hear the program or pick up the podcast later
on after the fact. Also, the there is no after
shock today, so it's just gonna be the radio show.
This is the final radio show of twenty twenty five,
so it's kind of a little bittersweet you know, but
it's the it's the final show of twenty twenty five,
and next week the first show of twenty twenty six,

(03:36):
as we do every year, will be the Thorstra Damas show.
If you're unfamiliar with Thorstra Damas, I am not Thorstra Damas.
Thorstra Damas. I meet with him. I talk with him
on a regular basis, and he makes predictions. He tells
me what he thinks is going to happen. You know.
He he's not straightforward. He's not like, you know, bitcoin

(03:58):
will be at eighty five thousand dollars on you know,
it's not like that. It's more generalized like he'll tell
he'll say that, you know, bitcoin is going to explode,
or you know, digital assets are going to go through
the roof, things like that. So it's more general direction
on things rather than specific you know, dollar amounts and
stuff like that. It's not like investment advice. It's more uh,

(04:22):
general direction of how things are going to go. But
every year, Thorstra Damas makes four predictions, and unlike all
the other psychics and things like that on the internet
that make predictions, but then they only ever talk about
the ones that come true. They never talk about the
ones they got wrong. Every year, we hold Thorstra Damas
accountable by reviewing those predictions that he made last year

(04:46):
for the year twenty twenty five, and then we see
how many of them actually came true. And then we
of course listen to the predictions for twenty twenty six.
And I will tell you Thorstra Damas has a one
hundred percent track record, not ninety five. Not even Rush
Limbaugh only had like a ninety two point eight percent
you know, correct rating or whatever. Thorstra Damas is one

(05:10):
hundred percent. He has never had a prediction that has
not come true. So if there's special interest, you have
somebody that can make that kind of predictions and be
that right that often you really want to listen to
what they're saying. So we're gonna do that one next weekend,
So make sure you do not miss next week's compute.
This program coming up on the program today. The holiday

(05:32):
special is pretty much wrapped up, guys. We are virtually
down to display models at this point. So if you're
thinking about doing a holiday special, or or you were
planning to do one, or you were hoping to get
one for Christmas and you didn't get one, you don't
have much time. If you want to pick one up,
you can still do that in the service centers, but
like I said, we are virtually down to the display
models at this point, so we will be wrapping that

(05:54):
sale up and then making the adjustments we need to
make the pricing for twenty twenty six or specification, because
the cost of memory is just ridiculous and the cost
of storage is getting stupid, and now the cost of
graphics cards is going through the roof and there seems
to be no end in sight. The cost of motherboards
and processors has actually come down a little bit, which

(06:14):
is kind of interesting, but that's because with the price
of everything else going up, people stopped upgrading their computers,
so you can save a little bit on motherboards now.
But buying the new motherboard means you have to buy
the new memory, and nobody wants to buy the memory,
so nobody's buying the motherboard. Same thing with processors. If
you're going to upgrade your computer and buy a new motherboard,
well you're going to get a new processor, that's the

(06:35):
whole point. But then you have to buy the new memory,
and you don't want to buy the memory, so you're
just not going to do the processor either. So we're
actually seeing a glut of motherboards and processors because memory,
a solid state drives, and graphics cards are getting stupid expensive.
So it's weird how the invisible hand works. Unfortunately, I
would hope that maybe the increase in the price of

(06:58):
memory would be offset by the decrease in these other things,
but unfortunately that's not the case. But the good news
here is we might be able to avoid dramatic price
changes or dramatic feature changes because the cost to some
of these other components is coming down a little bit,
especially in the modular desktops. It might help us out
a little And we're looking at some efficiencies to try
to build them a little more efficiently so that we

(07:20):
you know, we can buy in larger quantities. Maybe we're
trying to do everything that we can do to keep
the prices as low as possible so that you don't
end up in a situation where you are paying more
for the computer that you're buying from shock. But I
can tell you with certainty the prices of computers at
all your box stores, they're either going to go up
or the amount of computer that you get for what

(07:41):
you pay is going to go down, kind of like
you know, they shrink the size of the cereal box,
or they put a smaller bag inside the same size box,
or they put more air in the bag, and they
tell you it's to protect the product, you know, keep
it from getting crushed in the package. That's why you
know bags of chips are half full of air. It's
not because we don't want to fill that bag full
of chips. It's because if we did, they we'd all

(08:03):
get crushed in shipping. So the air protects the chips.
That's what they tell you. Anyway, So you know, the
same way that you know food inflated and that happened.
What you're going to see is computers that would have
come with sixty four gigs of RAM will only come
with thirty two. And computers that we're going to come
with sixteen will only come with eight. Computers that we're
going to come with two terabyte hard drives will only

(08:23):
come with one terabyte. But the price will be the same,
and so that's the difference. That's what you're going to
see in the marketplace, and we're really really fighting hard
to make that not be the case at Shrock that said,
you're not going to get a better price on a
computer than the price you see right now. So if

(08:44):
you are interested in computers, you can visit us in
any of our service centers. We have the the O. G.
Shrock just south of fourteenth and Pine Lake Road in Lincoln,
one hundred and sixty eighth in Burke Street in Omaha,
just across the street from the Village Point shopping Center
in Midland's Place Shopping Center in Papillion eighty fourth and
Highway three seventy, and of course ninety five hundred University
Avenue in Western Mooines, Iowa. You can stop it in

(09:07):
any of the service centers, or if you're too busy
to do that, or you don't want to do that,
you can always visit us online at Shrockannovations dot com,
where you can fully configure any of our computers in
any configuration you want. It's a great way to shop
for the computer and see what it would cost you,
and then you know what you could do is you
could say, well, that's what it would cost me now,
and then six months later you can go back and
check and see why it's costing more, and you can

(09:29):
compare the two, but I would encourage you to not procrastinate.
We're going to talk about that on the program today
as well around the service centers this week. Guys, if
you need to buy before the end of the year
for some reason, this is usually businesses follow in this category.
They're trying to get an end of your purchase put

(09:50):
in place so they can book it on this tax here.
If you have a concern like that, if you're an
independent contractor or you know, if you are a sole
proprietor and for ti tax reasons, you need that invoice
to have twenty twenty five on the date. You can
purchase online at Shrock Innovations dot com and it will
email you a receipt of course with a twenty twenty
five date on it, so you can get that receipt

(10:12):
that way. But if you want to purchase before the
end of the year, in some cases we can provide
delivery before the end of the year, but in most
cases at this point we're looking at a January delivery.
Because of data transfers things like that, it takes a
little time to get the computers prepped and ready for
you to take home. So if you're looking for a
purchase before the end of the year, know that if
you make that purchase online or in the service center,

(10:35):
you will get a receipt that's dated the date of
your purchase, so you can use that for tax purposes.
And then if you want to take delivery of the
computer in the new year, we can definitely make that
happen for you in the new year as well. We
actually got that question specifically in the Aftershock last week
if that's something we can do, and I wanted to
make sure I got that out there that we can
do it. The other thing I want to point out

(10:57):
again a lot of business to business end of year
kind of things here. If you are a business and
you're looking for a service provider for your business Shock
business just got unexpectedly beat the heck this week. We
got slammed. Businesses are getting a jump on twenty twenty
six cost cutting, and we had a ton of businesses

(11:19):
asking for quotes this month. And what that requires us
to do is send Jeff for Ben or Austin or
one of the guys out to your place of business
to evaluate what you have, figure out what you need,
and then let you know it's four seventy five per
computer per year. The price doesn't change based on what
you need. But we don't want to quote you that
and then come back and say, and you need to
buy all new computers and have that be a surprise.

(11:41):
We want to give you one. You know, hey, you're
all on Windows ten. That's real bad news. So you
probably should buy new computers. We should probably not do
them all at once. We should probably do some each
quarter and move you out slowly so we don't blow
up your whole business. But in the meantime, we need
to get that party started. So let's get you signed.
A lot of businesses are looking to reduce their IT costs.

(12:01):
And when you're used to paying two thousand, three thousand,
four thousand dollars a month to an IT company to
manage your business's IT and Shock rolls in and says
we can do it for you know, twelve grand a
year a year. You know that's incredible. That's one thousand
dollars a month for those of you who can't divide
by twelve, compared to two three four thousand dollars a

(12:24):
month that everybody else is charging. There is a reason
that more and more, especially small businesses, micro businesses, and
I would say even moderately sized businesses are moving to
the Shrock business model. It just makes more sense to
dispatch technicians based on the ticket difficulty rather than sending

(12:46):
a network administrator out to work on every job. It
just makes sense, you know, It just makes sense that
you don't have to pay for quote unquote monitoring when
the monitoring is all done by AI. Now anyway, it's
not like there's a human being sitting there smoking cigarettes
and eating jelly donuts watching your network activity. It's all

(13:07):
done by AI, and yeah, there's a cost to that,
so we build that into our annual cost. But all
these other providers are still charging your businesses as if
you know, the jelly donut eating guy is still sitting
there watching your computers and he's not there, isn't. It's
an alert that comes up and then somebody calls and
takes an action on it. So when we set up

(13:27):
those automated systems with Shock Business, we don't charge you
money for no reason. You know, we only charge you
when we do things. You pay an incident fee when
you call us out to do something or when there's
an event that happens that requires us to do something.
So you're only paying for the IT services that you're
actually using. You're not paying for access to the services

(13:49):
just in case you ever need them, which is the
model that's been the case for so long. It's such
an attractive model that we actually this week was insane.
I was even going on some calls this week for
Shock Business because it was just that busy. There was
nobody else to go, so I had to take a few.
It was crazy, and it's really cool. I love talking
to business owners and listening to what they do and

(14:10):
how they do it and the challenges that they face,
and then thinking how could I help them in that?
How could Shock help them in that? What does Shock
Business have that could make this run smoother for them?
And you know a lot of times there's an answer there.
And so if you're in that boat, if you're a
business owner and you're looking to at least get a

(14:31):
jump on reducing those twenty twenty six it costs, give
us a call at Shrock Business. You can reach out
to Jeff, you can reach out to Ben Val can
get you in charge or in touch with whoever you
need to get in touch with. But we can definitely
help you at shock business. Reach out to a Shock
Service center and we'll get you in touch with Jeff
and his team over there. Four zero two five five

(14:51):
eight eleven ten eight eight eight two five zero two
zero nine to one. Also coming up on the program today.
I don't know I touched on this a little bit
on the radio show last week, but there's just so
much more to say about it. Have you noticed that
service is just just blows. Customer service is like a
lost art. It died during the pandemic, and we're trying

(15:14):
to bring it back using people who don't have soft skills.
You know what is a soft skill? You know, it's
that making eye contact when you're talking to somebody. Can
you communicate with someone without making eye contact? Of course?
Do people feel more comfortable when you make eye contact
with them? Of course, you know, And of course this

(15:36):
is something that you have to use your judgment on.
But you know, touching someone's arm while you're talking to
them is a really powerful customer service technique. So when
you're talking with someone, you know, hey, how are you doing?
It's been forever since I've seen you touch the arm.
You know, It's not like a You're not grabbing them.
You're not like, you know, unwelcome touching kind of thing,

(15:58):
you know, not to uncle kind of stuff, right, but
you know, just like a polite Hey, I acknowledge that
you're a human being, and I'm glad to see you.
And yes, I know you're here for something for computers
and stuff, but thanks for coming in. I see you.
Those skills just don't exist. So we're gonna talk a

(16:19):
little bit on the program about some of the things
that we do at Trock that we train our people
at Schrock with to try to bring this back, to
bring back the lost art of customer service. Also, we're
going to touch on the required segment about procrastinating your computer,
purchasing your upgrading. A lot of people, you know, you've

(16:40):
heard me preach and preach and preach, and you've heard
the commercials. You've heard all the stuff. If you're in
Des Moines, you're probably sick of hearing it right now
about why you need to buy your computer now and
not procrastinate into the new year. Do you know that
also applies to upgrades. Do you know that if you
don't want to buy a new computer right now, if
you would prefer to continue using the computer that you're using.

(17:03):
This situation is not going to go away until like
twenty twenty seven. So maybe you're not ready for a
new computer right now. Maybe you're not gonna be ready
for a new computer next year, but maybe sometime in
twenty twenty seven you'll be ready for a new computer.
I mean that's like three years, guys, assuming you've been
using your computer for about a year already. Most people

(17:25):
use their computers for eighteen months before they replace them.
If you're in Nebraska and Iowa, we're a little more frugal.
We'll get a couple of years out of a computer.
If you have an older computer, you're like, oh, that's ridiculous.
You know, I've been using the same computer for eight years.
Let me tell you. They don't build them like that anymore.
The battery alone is shot after eighteen months twenty four months,

(17:48):
and you're looking at a three hundred dollars repair bill
or a new computer. And some people just choose to
buy a new computer. That's why they don't last more
than they That's why they they don't last nearly as
long as they use to. The technology is different, the
way they work is different, the margin for error the
tolerance is way lower, you know. It's just everything's more precise,
and people are only buying the amount of computer they

(18:11):
think they need today. So then tomorrow and the next day,
when all their needs change, they're either having to upgrade
their computer or replace it. So we've talked a lot
about replacing your computer, but we haven't necessarily talked about
upgrading your computer and the techniques that you can use
to upgrade your computer to achieve that that higher level
upgrade function without spending all the money on that memory

(18:33):
that is so ridiculously inflated. Right now, to give you
an idea of how bad this is, guys, a stick
of thirty two gig memory was running about seventy bucks,
you know, a couple months ago. Now we're looking at
over two hundred dollars for that same stick of memory.
Nothing different about it, nothing special about it. That's how

(18:54):
much the price has gone up. It is absolutely ridiculous.
And then of course you to stay tuned. Here we're
gonna give you a quick preview for next week's show,
the thorstter Damas Program. We're gonna tell you how that works.
We're going to remind you what some of the it's
not just what some of the predictions were, so that
if you want to start researching it yourself and find

(19:14):
out if Thorstra Damas was right, you can do that
before you hear the program. Because we we're gonna hold
them accountable and we're gonna name we're gonna bring the receipts,
we're gonna name the sources, we're gonna do the things.
So it's gonna be a fun program today. I want
you to stay tuned for the whole hour if you can.
I hope you and your family had a very merry Christmas.
I hope everybody got home safe, and you know, Santa
brought all the littles everything that they needed, wanted and

(19:36):
things like that. And I really appreciate you taking time
to be with the program or with us today, and
that's one of the reasons why I want to make
sure I'm delivering you guys, fresh new content, even at
a time when most radio show hosts are taking time
off and on vacation, because I always hated that when
I'd listen to the radio and you get a guest
host or a best of or ough, isn't there anything

(20:00):
to listen to like? And especially especially if you're in
the service business and you're getting up and you're going
to work, and you're like, everybody else is off, but
I'm going to work. Why And I have nothing to
listen to? But I have to go to work, gurr.
You know, it just makes you feel ger right, I
don't want you to ger I'm gonna give you something
new to listen to. So we're gonna we're gonna do
that for you today on the program. Four zero two

(20:21):
five five eight eleven ten is the number to join us.
Eight eight eight two five zero two zero nine to one.
As we do at the end of every show, we'll
draw a twenty five dollars winner for the twenty five
dollars gift certificate winner I should say, for a twenty
five dollars Shock Innovations gift certificate. All right, we're gonna
take our first break of the program here, but when

(20:42):
we come back, we've I've talked about this a little
bit last week and after the program, a specific example
came to mind of customer service, of me delivering customer
service that I felt was inadequate after the fact, it's
a customer service fail, direct from my lips in front

(21:03):
of employees that I was embarrassed about. I'm gonna give
you the situation. I'm gonna tell you what was said
and how it was said, and I'll let you decide
how could I have handled that one better? Because we
can all improve, we all make mistakes, we can all
get better. But this is what I'm talking about when
I'm saying customer service is dead in twenty twenty five,

(21:24):
Is anybody ever asking how they can get better, how
they can serve a customer better, how they could make
people feel better about their purchase. I don't really get
the feeling that too many places are, you know, asking
that of me, especially not budget places. You know, if
I'm going and getting a sandwich at Jersey Mike's, They're
not too concerned about my sandwich. They just want me

(21:44):
to get at Mike's way and be done with it.
All right, Gonna take that quick break, guys, stay with us.
More of the show coming up next. On compute this.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Everyone has experienced some form of data loss or no
someone who has. It's unfortunate, but sometimes the technology we
rely on simply fails. And the last question you want
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When your hard drive, memory card, backup drive, or flash
drive fails, you turn to the data recovery experts at
Shrock Innovations to get those pictures, songs, and memories back.

(22:18):
You know, not all data recovery companies are the same.
Having the right tools and knowledge to get the job
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data back, turn to the experts at Shrock Innovations for

(22:40):
professional and affordable data recovery services.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
All right, folks, welcome back in. Thanks for sticking with
us for the break there. I appreciate you joining us
here for compute this today. My name's Thor Schrock. I'm
the owner of the Shrock Innovations Computer Company. Four zero
two five to five eight eleven ten is the number
to join us on the p if you are outside
of the metro area. Eight eight eight two five zero
two zero nine one. So customer service is an art

(23:14):
getting people to feel a certain way. There are there
are things you can do, There are techniques you can use.
There are there's training to be had, but realistically the
best way to deliver award winning customer service is to
be genuine with people and to make the effort to
hire genuine people. And when I say genuine, I don't

(23:35):
mean like real people. I mean hire people who are
good human beings, who have empathy, who care. Now, the
problem we have is that in some cases customers have
been so exposed to negative customer service that they just
they come into every interaction assuming the customer service is

(23:57):
going to be negative. They come in hot. And so
when all day long you're in a customer service business,
and those of you work in retail know exactly what
I'm talking about, When you're in a customer service position
and all day long, people are coming at you hot,
and you're de escalating and you're apologizing and you're making
it better and you're giving them what they want, and

(24:17):
you were going to give them what they wanted the
whole time. It's just that from the get go, the
customer assumed they were not going to get what they wanted,
and so as a result, they just they were spicy
coming in the door. And you know, when you deal
with spicy people, all day long. It really drained your
battery like a lot. So I had an interaction in
the Papilions service center that in retrospect, I think I

(24:40):
could have handled better. Let me give you the background here.
We had a customer that came in and he had
the Win reboot loop issue that so many people had
with this last set of Windows updates that came down
that caused your computers to botch the update, essentially causing
the computer to reboot endlessly. It would never boot back
to Windows. So you had to come in and pay

(25:01):
money to have us fix your computer. So this customer
was impacted by this error. It was really bad. His
operating system was very corrupt. It was going to take
five or six hours of labor to unscrew the computer,
essentially to to fix the operating system. So for three
hours of labor, we can do what's called a backup,

(25:22):
wipe and install. We back up all your data, we
wipe the hard drive clean, we install a clean copy
of Windows, and we put all your data back. Effectively,
it's the same thing as fixing the computer. But in
this case, it would have saved the customer two hours
of labor, which is worth three hundred dollars. So we're
talking about charging for three hours of labor here. So
that's four hundred and fifty dollars for a backup wipe

(25:43):
and install. So obviously the customer wasn't super excited that
his free Windows update caused this, you know, which is
again why we encourage you to keep them under warranty guys,
because if you get a botched Windows update on a
Shock build and it's under warranty, you're covered. That's covered
by the warranty. We fix it for free. This guy
was not a Shock modular customer. He had an HP

(26:04):
or a Dell or something like that. So we went
through and we did the repair work on it. We
got the backup wipe and installed. Done, customer comes in,
pays the money, takes the computer home. Everything went textbook right.
He wasn't super thrilled about paying four hundred and fifty
dollars to fix the computer, But it also wasn't our fault.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
It wasn't like he was mad at us. He was
he was upset with the situation. The situation was what
it was, what it was, and our job was to
make it as good as we could make it and
we felt we did that. So the customer takes the
computer home and he calls back into the service center
and he says, well, you know, I brought my computer
into you, and I paid you four hundred and fifty

(26:41):
dollars to fix it, and it's not fixed. I'm like,
oh golly, okay, sir, Well you know what seems to
be the issue. What can I what can I do
to help? But what's not working? Well? Since I brought
it home, I can't get anything to work. Every time
I click on something, it just won't open. Okay, So

(27:03):
let me see if I can get a little more information.
What are we clicking on that's not opening? Are we
talking about getting on the internet? Are we talking about
opening a program like Microsoft Word anything? Anything? Nothing works?
Nothing works. Everything worked before I brought it to you, guys,
before I brought it in, everything worked fine. Now nothing works. Now.

(27:25):
In my head, I'm getting a little frustrated because I'm like,
all right, you're not telling me specifically what's not working,
and that's the information that I need to help you. Furthermore,
let's just be real. You brought in the computer because
it wouldn't boot, So no, it didn't work. When you
brought it in. But that's beside the point. My job
is not to correct. My job is to help. And

(27:45):
pointing out that a customer is telling me things that
are inconsistent doesn't de escalate the situation and it doesn't
provide help. So it's not in my best interest from
a customer service perspective to do those things. So I'm
choosing not to do them. Okay, let's move on. But
he's pulling up, pulling from my battery here, guys, he's
pulling my battery. So let's go on. All right, So sir,

(28:06):
let's let's go ahead and do a specific example. I
can you tell me one thing that you're gonna try
to do right now, Let's try to do one thing
that doesn't work anything you want, and you tell me
what you're doing, and I'll see if I can't get
it to work for you. Okay. So he says, I'm clicking.
I'm clicking on the internet and it opens up and
it says can't be found. Okay, Okay, So we're getting

(28:30):
we're we're opening up a web browser okay, and we're
not getting a web page. So odds are this customer
is on wireless I'm guessing right, sir. Are you on
a wired connection or a wireless connection? What does that mean? Well,
are you to get your Internet? Do you get it

(28:51):
through the antennas on the back of the computer or
do you get it through a wire that you plug in.
If it's a wire, it's gonna look like a fat
phone plug. You know, remember the phone plugs that had
the clip on them that you had to depress the
clip to release. It's gonna look like a fat one
of those that you're plugging into the back of the computer,
the Ethernet cable. I didn't see that when I was
hooking my wires back up. I know I'm wired, but

(29:15):
I don't see that wire anywhere you're describing. Okay, So,
if you're on a wired connection and you're connected with
one of those fat phone cords, chances are your computer
is very close to your wireless router or cable modem.
So the wire coming from your wireless router or cable modem,
if you can trace that from the back of that

(29:37):
device and pull on that wire. I'm nowhere near those boxes. Okay,
those box I'm clear upstairs. Those boxes are in the basement.
Oh okay, all right, So that probably means we're on
a wireless connection. Then there is no wire to find.
That's why you're having trouble finding the wire. So now
we know we're on a wireless connection. Okay, So now

(29:58):
I'm gonna have you looked down by the clock in
the lower right hand corner. Yeah, there's a clock down
in the right corner. There's a clock there. Yeah, okay, great.
Next to the clock, there's a speaker icon. Do you
see the speaker there? Yeah? I see that. And then
just to the left of that, there's an icon for
your network. What does that look like? Well that depends, sir.

(30:20):
Right now, you're not connected to a network. So my
guess is it looks like a globe. Well, there's a
round thing down there that I guess could be a globe. Perfect.
Let's go ahead and left click on the globe so
that we can see what's available for wireless networks. Well
there's three. Okay, what can you tell me what they're named?
Or can you click on the one that's yours? Well,

(30:41):
how do I know which one is mine? Oh? Boy?
Great question. Usually when you set up a wireless network,
you ask you to name the network, and so you'll
give it a name, something that you would recognize. I
didn't set this up, okay, who set it up for you?
Cox did? Okay? So there are three wireless networks there.

(31:05):
Can you read the names for me? Cox Free WiFi,
Cox something or other other other and then some group
of numbers and letters and stuff. Okay, So it's probably
not the Cox Free WiFi. That's probably the free broadcast
WiFi that you use your Cox credentials to connect to.
So it's probably that other Cox one that's set up.

(31:28):
So let's click on the other Cox one. So left
click on that one for me, and it should ask
you for a password. Let me know when it pops
up and asks you for the password. Oh, I clicked
on it. It's asking me for something here. I think
I can type something in Okay, great, So what's your password? Oh?

(31:49):
Why would I know that? I didn't set this up? Okay.
So unfortunately we're going to we need that password. We
have to have the password to get connected. And since
Cox set this up for you and didn't share the
password with you, Cox has a record of that password.
Now I would call Cox for you to get that password,

(32:11):
but they won't talk to me because I'm not you,
so unfortunately, I need you to call Cox and find
out what the password is so that we can type
it in and join the network. Well, I can't believe this.
This is the I never had to do any kind
of garbage like this before. You know, this worked fine
before I brought it to you. I'm beginning to regret
even coming into you. Do you know that I recommended

(32:32):
you to my family. I recommended you to my brother,
I recommended you to my father. You know. Blah blah blah,
blah blah. Sir, you know, I really appreciate your recommendations,
you know, and I understand why this is frustrating. Oh
I'm not frustrated. I'm fing p off, you know it.
Literally he starts cursing, like yelling at me, and now

(32:55):
I'm starting to lose it, and this is where things
start to go off the rails. So I'm gonna take
a quick commercial break, gather myself up for the response
that I give back to the customer when he starts
getting spicy with me, that I could have done better.
And that's the key. If you're in the customer service
business and you do a good job, you don't nobody

(33:18):
has ever perfect. You have to be able to look
at situations that you've been involved with and say, you know,
I could have done better at that, and then identify
what you could have done better. So I'm going to
tell you what I said when we come back from
the break, and then I'm going to tell you what
I could have done better and why I was embarrassed
that one of our part time guys overheard that entire
conversation after the fact, because if he would have talked

(33:39):
to the customer that way, I probably would have pulled
him aside to have a conversation. So I'm going to
tell you what I said coming up next, and compute this.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
When your computer has a warranty and you have a problem,
don't call the manufacturers for help. Call Shrock Innovations. Shock
will contact HP, Dell, a Zeus, Samsung, or any other
manufacturer to arrange a warranty repair at no cost to you.
We know how these companies work, We know the loopholes
and the tricks to get your system repaired under warranty

(34:08):
as quickly as possible. Even so manufacturers can take up
to twenty one days to fix your computer. We'll give
you the option of a fast local repair in one
of our service centers, or provide you with a loner
laptop to use while you wait. We can even back
up your data before we ship your computer, just in case.
The warranty fix includes a hard drive white. Shrock tests

(34:29):
your computer when it comes back from repair to ensure
the problem was solved properly and all of your hardware
works like new. There's a reason Shock Innovations has consistently
voted the best in town. Whenever you need help, wherever
you need it. Throck Innovations makes your computer.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Work for you now.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
You can configure and purchase laptops, desktops, tablets, and more
all at the newshrockannovations dot com. Check out our specials
for one of a kind discounts and deals.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Shock Innovations solid state laptops are engineered locally for speed
and reliability you just can't get from the major national brands.
Each of our laptops starts off with an a Zeus chassis.
We remove the stock drives and memory and upgrade them
with higher performing components. This unlocks the full potential of
the laptop, making the unit up to twenty five percent faster.

(35:18):
This is why Shrock solid state laptops lasts so much
longer than the competition. If your laptop starts out twenty
five percent faster, that means over time, it doesn't slow
down nearly as fast.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Alrighty folks, welcome back in to compute this. My name
is Thor Schrock. I'm the owner of the Shrock Innovations
computer company. Thank you for joining us. I hope y'all
had a merry Christmas. I hope you have some great
New Year's plans coming up. You know, don't miss next
Sunday's program, the Thorstra Damas Show. It's our annual prediction show.
Just like this show is not on is not airing
on Facebook. The Thorst Damas Program does not air on Facebook.

(35:59):
It only airs on terrestrial radio, so you have to
listen to it there or pick up the podcast after
the fact. Four zero two five five eight eleven ten
is the number to join us on the program today
or eight eight eight two five zero two zero nine
to one. I was relating a story, a very long
story actually, but it's got some points to it of
a conversation I had with a customer who was pretty

(36:19):
spicy from the get go. Normally, you know, we have
a system for de escalating spicy customers. We could we
You empathize, you say I'm really sorry you're going through
this right now. If I was going through this, I
would feel the exact same way. So you apologize, you empathize,
and then you say what can I do to make
this situation better? And nine times out of ten, the

(36:41):
customer will ask you for something that's like way less
than what you're prepared to give them anyway, but it's
it's often a small thing that will make the situation
better that's easy for you to do and within your
power as a customer service representative to give. So when
they ask for it and you give it to them,
they instantly de escalate because there's a logically note, why
would they still be mad at you or mad at

(37:03):
the situation? And if they are mad at the situation,
they're not going to take it out on you because
you're giving them what they want. Right So, here I
am in this situation, this customer spicy with me. He
can't get connected to his WiFi, he doesn't know his SSID,
he doesn't know the name of his network, he doesn't
know his password, he doesn't want to call Cox to
get the information. He's upset that it worked before his

(37:25):
computer broke, that he had to pass four hundred and
fifty dollars to fix his computer, and for that price,
as he will tell me here in the call, in
a moment, he thinks I should just come out to
his house and fix it for him now, all right,
So he's yelling at me. He's telling me that, you know, now,
he's cursing at me about how upset he is. And

(37:47):
so at this point I start to lose my cool
a little bit. So, you know, at first he you know,
I was like, Sir, I understand that you're frustrated, and
he says, I'm not frustrated. I'm beeping beep, beep, beep
beep right now. And so I let him finish, and
I say, Sir, I understand that you're beeping beep, beep,
beep beep right now. So, in other words, now I'm
getting lippy. I'm using his I'm illustrating how stupid this

(38:08):
guy sounds by using his own words back at him,
which is childish. And I don't want my people to
hear me do that. I shouldn't have done that. I
don't want them to do that there is no reason
to do that. What did that accomplish? Put that guy
in his place, get him to stop, get him to
call him down. No, he did not, as you will

(38:29):
hear soon. So then he says fine, and he says,
I'll call Cox and I'll call you back. Okay, great,
I appreciate that, sir, think click wow, all right. Who
I go back to doing my things in the shop.
About a half an hour later, the phone rings and
I answered again, and it's this gentleman calling back, and
he says, I called Cox and they gave me this

(38:50):
series of numbers and letters. Okay, great, So that's probably
a password. Usually it's between ten and seventeen characters. Let
me count them one two me, it's like three, four five.
You know, you're like, are you really going to count it?

(39:11):
I don't need you to count them to me, but okay,
I'm just gonna politely listen while you count up to
fifteen fifteen characters. Okay, fifteen character that's an appropriate length
for a password, sir. That's great. Okay, So did they
tell you which network was yours? No? I didn't ask that, okay, okay, Well,

(39:35):
I still believe that the second network the not the
Cox free one, but the second one is yours. So
if you want to go ahead, let's go ahead and
click on that network. Okay, and now we're going to
type in the password, so let's type in those fifteen digits. There,
go ahead and type those fifteen digits in for me.
So he types in all the digits. Takes forever, but
he types in all the digits and so now click

(39:57):
join and he does the password's wrong. Now he's yelling
and screaming at me again, and I'm just like, okay,
how he wants me to come to his house and
fix it for free, which again, I can't fix it
without the data. So you know, the only other option
that I've really the only thing I can think of
here that I could have done differently is I could

(40:19):
have offered to get on a conference call with him
and Cox at the same time, so that I would
be the one talking to Cox, and when they wanted
to validate his account and get his pen and everything,
they could have talked to him, and then I could
have taken over the call and said, I need to
know which SSID we need to connect to, what's the
name of his network, and then what is his password,
and is there any chance that password has been changed

(40:41):
at some point, because you know, you can't really change
your own password with the Cox stuff. Then when they
set it up for you, okay, great, and then I
could have walked him through doing it, perhaps accurately. That's
the only thing that I can think of that would
have been different. The customer did pay US four hundred
and fifty dollars to fix his computer. From his perspective,
he did spend a lot of money to get this
computer fixed. I should respect that, right. So what happens

(41:06):
instead is he just keeps yelling at me and yelling
at me and yelling at me, and finally I'm just like,
this is going nowhere. I'm just getting screamed at. I'm
starting to lose my cool a little bit here, and
I'm like, sir, let me give you an analogy of
what you're asking me to do. This is like you
asking me to get some money out of the bank
for you, and I say, okay, where do you bank
and you say I don't know. And then I say, well,
what's your account number? And you say I don't know.

(41:30):
And then I say, well what's your pin number? And
you said why would I know that? And if you
want me to get money out of the bank, I'm
going to need that information. And if you need me
to get it you connected to your wireless network. I'm
going to need this information and it needs to be
accurate otherwise, you know, I want to help you, sir,
I'm trying to help you. But to help you, I
need this data. And I understand that you want us

(41:55):
to come out and you know, type it all in
for you for free at your house, and I'm happy
to do that for you. I'm happy to send a
technician out, but I can't send him out for free.
It costs one hundred and eighty dollars to send a
technician to your home. Oh my gosh, I can't believe
I paid you. Well, I've recommended you, and I appreciate
your recommendation. Why I'm not going to recommend you any more?

(42:16):
All right, Well, I said, sir, Why don't I do this?
Why don't I schedule you a time to have a
technician come out to your house and if it's something
that we can resolve in two minutes or less on
site for you typing in a password, we'll just call

(42:36):
it good. And if no no no, no, no no no,
I'm sorry what no no no, no, no no no.
I'm done with this today. I've had enough of you,
and I've had enough of this. I'm not going to
screw with it anymore. I'm going to put this away
till tomorrow, and I'll call you back if I still
want your help. Click. I was literally going to give

(42:57):
him what he wanted for free. Now. Could I have
handled that situation better? Absolutely? When I was off the
phone and I looked up and one of my employees
said that analogy about the bank thing was pretty good.
I've never heard you use that one before. And I
was like, that's because I made it. I'm thinking to myself,

(43:17):
that's because I made it up out of anger in
the moment to illustrate what an idiot this guy was
trying to ask me to do something that was literally
impossible to do. But my whole mindset was wrong. My
whole mindset was wrong there. It was wrong from the
get go, was wrong from the moment that guy was
asking me questions. I was not in a service mindset. Now,

(43:39):
if I am running, if this is my business and
I'm sitting here on the radio preaching about customer service
every week. And that is the level of service that
I delivered. Now, granted I usually don't deliver service at
that level. Usually I'm much better than that. Okay, caught
me in a really bad moment, all right, and was
really really nasty to me, and it really upset me.
But people are nasty to my people, and they get

(44:01):
upset to their humans as well. And so the point is,
how could I have done better at that? Well, I
shouldn't have lost my cool. I should have kept my cool.
And when I got off the phone, guys, I was
just drained. I literally just wanted to go home, Like
I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want
to help another person. I just what's the I was like,
what's the point? Like this is this is hopeless. I

(44:23):
mean I was like, oh my gosh. And then of
course that the kindest woman came in after him, and
I got to help her and bring her stuff in
and you know, help her through a problem at the
front counter, and she was so appreciative and so thankful,
just such a cute woman, Like she was just a
cute old woman. I just had a little purse dog
with her, just the nicest little dog. You know, it
was just, you know, I think maybe she was a
therapy animal because I felt better after I petted the dog, honestly,

(44:44):
but you know, it was one of those things where
you know, you have to realize even that takes it
out of you. So from a customer service perspective, we
always have to be trying to get better. So when
I am in a position of helping someone with their
customer service, when I feel like I've been treated poorly,
rather than lashing out at the person that delivered the
service to me, sometimes I'll literally point out to the person, Hey,

(45:07):
you know, I know you're doing your best, and I
don't know what kind of day you're having. I hope
you're having a great day. But the way that you
were talking right now just kind of made me feel
a little bit like you didn't appreciate me being here
and that I was interrupting your day. And you know,
I don't want to be an interruption or a burden
to your day, but I do want to do business
with the company you work for, you know, so just

(45:29):
be aware, you know, be aware. And some people get
really offended by that. They're like, oh, okay, those are
the people that shouldn't be in a customer service business.
So anyway, try to be kind to people. It helps,
But also, you know, sometimes sometimes the best thing you
can do for a problem customer is send them to
your competition. Four zero, two, five, eight eleven ten is

(45:52):
the number to join us. If you thought I overstepped,
let me know. We're going to take a quick break, guys.
When we come back. Final segment here of the program.
We are going to to talk about how the memory
prices and the graphics card prices and everything else are
impacting your ability to upgrade your computers. And there are
some subtle tricks that you can do to actually get
a better performing computer using some of the same technology

(46:13):
you already have. We're going to tell you how to
do that coming up next on Compute This.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Have you noticed that almost every piece of technology seems
to do its best to be disposable. Every day people
talk their phones, tablets, and other electronic devices because they
can't be repaired. Manufacturers have engineered their products to fail
on a schedule so they can extract more money out
of your family budget automatically every year or so. But

(46:38):
what if it didn't have to be that way? What
if you could get the performance of today's fastest computers
with the expansion and upgrade options you used to enjoy,
you just described Shrock's modular desktop computers. Having the right
tool for the job is important, and Shock's modular desktop
pieces packed the performance and flexibility to handle your computing
needs from just checking the email to running a complex business.

(47:02):
Modular desktops are engineered to be easily repaired with widely
available industry standard parts. Every component is selected intentionally to
give you years of upgrade and repair options. It is
not uncommon for a Shrock customer to be using the
same computer for a decade after they bought it. Modular
piecs are the most popular custom computers in the Midwest

(47:22):
for a reason. When you are ready for your next computer,
stop in to check out the modular lifestyle or shop
online at Shrocinnovations dot com.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
Shrock Innovations Data Recovery Labs saves the data the other
guys can't. The next time your hard drive, camera card,
or flash drive fails, let Shrock get your data back.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Computer problems usually don't just suddenly happen. Most failures usually
start out as small issues with few or no symptoms.
Over time, they grow into error messages, blue screens, and
other problems that can be costly to fix. Shock innovations
by annual preventative maintenance check up catches those small problems
now before they can have the tast size and become

(48:01):
tomorrow's costly repairs. During the maintenance check up, our experienced
technicians perform up to eight hours of tests, checks, automated
repairs and optimizations that keep your computer at peak efficiency
while identifying potential issues while you still have options about
how to handle them. When your computer gets its first
check up, it can see up to its twenty five

(48:21):
percent performance improvement and leaves our service center cleaned, sanitized,
and running better than the day you bought it. Just
about every complex device requires maintenance. Your computer is no different,
especially considering the valuable information that passes through it every day.
If you have not had your computer maintenance in the
past six months, you are overdue. Stop in or call

(48:42):
any of our service centers to arrange a free pickup
to ensure your computer continues to work for you.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
All right, folks, welcome back in final segment of the program.
Thank you so much for sticking with us today. The
service centers are open, and we're going to be closed
early on New Year's Eve. Of course we're going to
be closed on New Year's Day, but the rest of
the days we are open and ready to do business.
So if you got that computer, that new technology you
were hoping for and you're having some trouble integrating it,

(49:14):
we're here to help. If you didn't get the new
technology you were hoping for, we're here to help. If
you have technology that has been pretty adequate for you
but you're looking to upgrade or replace it but the
cost is just too high right now, we're here to help.
Let me explain. So my uncle his computer, his motherboard
started dying and the USB ports were you know, basically

(49:37):
dropping out, so it's causing things to connect and disconnect
over and over and making that boom ba boom sound
all the time to the speakers. And sometimes this keyboard
wasn't working and you have to unplug it and plug
it into the USB ports. It was a big mess.
His motherboard was dying, the computer was a decade old.
It was time. So he brings it into the Omaha
Service Center for us to upgrade. And of course, you know,

(49:58):
he wants to have a current computer. He wants to
have the highest functioning computer possible. And I explained to him,
if we move you up to the AM five series board,
which is like what the Holiday Special is built on.
It's what all of our major all of our the
endeavor is built on it, the Venture is built on
that core. If we move you up into that core,
we have to buy new memory. Your DDR four memory

(50:19):
won't work. You need DDR five memory. And right now,
you know, the Venture comes with thirty two gigs of
DDR five memory. So if you're buying a venture and
you're spending eleven hundred dollars on the venture, just know
that roughly uh two hundred and fifty dollars of that

(50:40):
is memory price, just that one stick of ram. Not
the processor, not the board, not the case, not the
operating system. The most expensive thing in the computer is
that stupid stick of memory right now. So I'm trying
to explain to my uncle that, hey, you know, if
we you know, I don't like to charge my family
to do work on theirs. I mean, I don't mind

(51:01):
them paying the cost, but I hate charging because you know,
profiteering on family just never ends. Well, you know, it
just never ends well, And so I'd rather just say, hey,
I'm giving you a discount, so if you're not satisfied
with the service or the product, you can go anywhere
else and pay more for it. And you got a
great discount. I took care of you. I'd rather be

(51:24):
able to say that than be able to say, well,
you know, sorry, you're upset. I sold a computer once
to a family member and we shipped it to them,
and then they got upset with me that they their
Farmville wasn't working, and it was like Farmville is a
Java based game that plays in your browser, Like how
is that possibly the computer's fault? And so then you know,
we do a shock desk and we fix it. But

(51:45):
still we were we were the bad guys. That's why
I don't like doing it. I just don't like doing it.
But he's my uncle. I'm going to take care of him,
so I'm trying to explain to him if we do
the upgrade we can do, we can upgrade your processor
to a better processor than the one you have now.
We can replace your DDR for motherboard with another DDR
for motherboard, use your same memory that you have now,
and save you a significant amount of money. So there

(52:08):
are upgrades where we can improve the technology that you're
using right now, but keep you on the platform that
you're on now so you don't get exposed to these
super high memory prices. So there is especially you know,
if you have a modular computer, that's what this was
designed for to give you these options. If you have
a dollar HP, you know, sorry, you're out of luck.
You had a modular computer or even in some cases,

(52:30):
any custom built computer, it gives us a ton of options,
a ton of flexibility that we don't have with a
name brand computer that was configured to be obsolete within
a couple of years. So with that said, if you're
looking to upgrade your computer or to change the performance
or improve the performance, but you're saying I don't want
to do it right now because these memory prices are insane,
just know that the memory prices are going to be

(52:51):
insane through twenty twenty seven. So if you unless you're
prepared to sit with that computer for two more years,
you may as well do something now. And we have
some options that don't require you to buy new memory
that can get you a much faster computer than you
actually have now. So different hard drive technology, different motherboard
and Northbridge technology, different processor, a little more powerful brain.

(53:15):
And then we take the memory you've got and we
just reuse it in the new computer and we can
save you a boatload of cash. So thanks for listening, guys.
Next weekend we have the Thorstra Domis program. I want
you to stay tuned for that. Otherwise, be good to
each other, be kind to each other, have a happy
and safe new year, and we will talk to you
for the first show of twenty twenty six when thorst

(53:37):
Damas we hold him accountable and we bring you his
new predictions next weekend of another edition of Compute.

Speaker 4 (53:44):
This