I've always been the nice guy and did most of the "side" computer work for "free".
Well... I never accept money from friends or coworkers... I only charge cash when I don't know the person or the work is for a friend of a friend.
Just last night I was at a co-workers house and his kids had completely messed up his PC.
There was over two dozen trojans, 500+ viruses, and about 700+ peices of spyware.
That was almost the worse I've ever seen coming frm a coworker.
I scaned and removed as much as I could. I backed up all his data and did a format/reload.
The viruses did a number on it and it was pretty much unusable. There were skiddies in and out of his PC and I found a number of "hacktools" that they had left behind. Guess they were using it as a jump point... I didn't really care. I just wanted to get it fixed up.
I asked him why he had all that junk on there and what happened to the AV and router that I had installed. He uninstalled the AV because it kept telling him he had a viurs... DOH! He removed the router because he thought it was slowing his connection down. DOH! He got a new router and that still didn't help. So, there are two perfectly good (home "routers") not even being used. I updated his firmware on the better of the two and configured it properly and told him it was necessary that he keep the router in there and showed him internet bandwidth reports with and without the router and convinced him.
So after about 6 hrs of doing all that work (and going out to the bar to grab some drinks and dinner) he asks me how much he owes me. I told him that I didn't really work for cash when it comes to friends/coworkers. That is considered a "conflict of interest" for me. But I told him I was allowed to accept "gifts". He got me a case of good beer. Gave me his "broken" router (which was perfectly fine), gave me a 8 port hub that he had replaced with a switch, gave me a Lexmark print/copy/scanner (X83) (he wanted a new print/fax/copy/scanner) and he even paid for dinner at the bar.
Not too bad for about 6 hrs of work that I was just going to do for free.
Considering I was just going to go home and read if I didn't do the work anyway...
I always end up getting weird "gifts" too...
I got a pair of skiis that are WAY too big for me. I'm still waiting to give those away to someone.
I've gotten tickets to a Flyers game.
I've gotten taken out on a bass fishing trip.
I've gotten older hardware when I upgrade peoples PCs to newer hardware.
Gift certificates to many different places.
I've even gotten someone who works as a florist to send my lady her favorite flowers free of charge.
Most of all... I get beer and dinner.
I have another job next week from this really hot (recently separated) russian chick... she is always so nice and friendly to me. Even gives me backrubs when I'm helping her out. She can cook one hell of a steak too... wonder what I'll get next week?... ;)
What kind of things do you guys get when doing side work?
