People asking you for favors..

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"I Cain't Say No"

I used to friends with a guy who had a gambling problem. I had a high-paying job at the time (high for a college student, at least), so he constantly hassled me to lend him money, since he spent most of the little income he had on gambling sites. When he maxed out his credit cards, he called me every day asking me for my credit card number. (You're probably thinking: "Are you f'ing kidding me!!?") I kept telling him no, but he still kept calling. When his computer broke down, he manipulated me into letting him use my computer so he could gamble.

By then, the friendship was as good as gone, so I thought it'd be fun to sabotage his gambling. So I got into the Hosts file, and mapped all the gambling sites he used to the IP# 127.0.0.1 or localhost (see below). So when he complained, I told him: "Hey, you put spyware on my computer, so it's blocking the sites", followed by a bunch of obscure computer terms. He believed me, and didn't get to gamble that day.

The next day, he hassled me for money again (this time, to take a girl out on a date). I agreed to meet with him, and said: "Here's $20; I'm paying you to get out for my life for good." He didn't believe me, and called me the next day, acting like nothing is wrong. I told him: "You heard me yesterday; we're not friends anymore." At that point, he I knew I meant business. And so, the gambling problem cost the guy a friendship. I never spoke to him since.

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Without getting too techinical here, the Hosts file lets you map web addresses to IP numbers, on your computer only. What I did is remap a gambling site to my own machine's address. Since my computer has no website to speak of (like most), my friend got a "site not found" messge, since by typing in the address he wanted, he was going to 127.0.0.1, rather than the gambling site's server.

By the way, the notorious CoolWebSearch spyware/virus relied on the exact same techique to prevent victims from going to antivirus sites. It mapped them all to 127.0.0.1. I personally saw it, and reset it manually. It's ironic how a comptuer virus actually did some good for me.

I don't really think I get asked to do extremely big favors that often.
I usually do them cuz I'm so nice but I'm no leech magnet. Just guess I lucked out.

I'm no longer a leech magnet (I used to be a terrible leech magnet) as I think people know that I'm no mug anymore who will just do favours willy nilly and then get trampled on. However, if someone I care about asks me for a favour, if I can help them of course I'll do it, I won't think twice about it.