I was asked for directions in Leeds just a few minutes after getting off the train, lugging a suitcase almost bigger than myself (no, I don’t pack heavy, I was going to be there for a year). I wasn’t much help, seeing as I wasn’t even 100% sure where I was going. A few minutes later someone else asked me for the time. I hadn’t even set my watch to Greenwich time yet.
Maybe I look like I belong wherever I am…not such a bad thing, I think.
What the heck does this mean?
I was an English major in college, and I used to proof my roommate’s and a friend’s papers, and I guess they told other people about my vast knowledge of things like spelling and basic grammar. Soon I was the expert on writing. I even once dated a guy who fancied himself a writer (he was awful), and he disappeared from my life (thank goodness) as soon as I carefully but honestly evaluated his writing.
I don’t get this anymore. I wish I could tell you guys what changed, but no one ever asks me these questions at all. (Unless I’m at work, in which case it’s my job to help.)
But when I started working as tech support? I suddenly became the most popular member of my family. I’d get home from work, and then work some more for free.
These days, when I tell people that I’m a programmer, I get one of two responses:
The person brags endlessly about what a loser they are with technology and how they should never be allowed to touch a computer ever again.
“Me too”, followed by endless babble of shop talk.
I don’t really like either response.
I have the same problem. People are always asking me about evolutionary biology. I’ll be at a party, trying to get a dermatologist/web programmer to look at my computer virus, and people will be coming up to me asking, “Hey, just real quick - what do you think are the relative contributions of selective pressure and random drift to speciation events in the Drosophila genus?” and I’m like, “PubMed it, dude, I’m busy.”
Yep. 90% of the calls I got from my family were about why some 3rd party application wouldn’t install or how to set up a printer. My father’s calls would be more pertinent to my expertise, but he’d never listen to what I told him. “Dad”, I’d say, “Wipe your hard drive and install a version of Windows that was released sometime after 1844.”
I’m a computer guy. Specifically I break them. For over a decade now I’ve specialized in overloading, stressing, and generally breaking computer systems. Probably not the guy you want working on your PC.
Enjoy,
Steven
I get the same thing too. I’ve told people that asking me to fix their computer is like asking a bus driver to overhaul their transmission.
Heh. I am inspired to draw up a startup screen for Ye Olde Windowes now.
I’m a commercial real estate agent but enough a of a minor geek I could fix most problems if I had to. When we were in a combined commercial - residential office the people kept wanting me to look at their PCs because (whatever) and it was a huge PITA . It’s a relief in the pure commercial office not to have to have that expectation anymore.
Should be pretty easy, as the screen resolution will be 1x1 with 0 colors.
I’m probably not remembering it too clearly, but it was something like “film post production” or “film special effects.” I was concentrating on trying to pull out into the street, so the details are fuzzy.
Me, too. Especially the Mac thing…I haven’t used a Mac since college and then only briefly. I have no idea about anything on it.
I am amazed that this pedestrian started talking to some guy in a car, not a friend, but…oh. He was hitting on him. Well, that makes more sense. Still weird, though.
I write software for a living. I once worked for a guy who just could not understand why I couldn’t repair computers too. Back in those days hard disks and their controllers were rather iffy and it could be the controller or the disk or both. I had no tools and no training in electronics, but he thought I should be able to look into the computer and figure out why it wasn’t working.
Even if I knew whether it was the controller or the disk, the only thing that can be done really, is replace them. But he once sat me down and explained that my problem was, I didn’t spend enough time in the library researching these things.
It has been 20 years and I still tell everyone he is one of the dumbest men I ever met in my life and I am amazed he didn’t fall down more.
The secret used to be to just say that you only work on Macs. Of course, now, with them getting so damned popular, that’s not as likely to get you out of things.
That’s easy. Just tell them you only work on Linux boxes. The clueless won’t know what you’re talking about, and those that do might actually have an interesting problem.
You can sharpen up those details in post-production.
You look like you know Steve the Fruitbat. So tell me about him. Where did he go to school?
Hehe I only have to tell the truth.
“Yeah I do work with computers, but more of the Corporate Enterprise distributed systems, You know like high volume web solutions on Oracle with extraction and transformation processed…”
Halfway through my first couple sentences I can see the look of" oh my god what have I started" horror and a mental dictum to NEVER EVER BRING UP COMPUTERS IN FRONT OF THIS GUY AGAIN!!
Works every time.
People stopped asking me for computer help when I told them that the cost of me fixing their machine was that they’d have to sit next to me while I fixed it and berated them. “Why the hell did you install these six toolbars? How do people even get viruses anyway? I mean, what kind of idiot clicks blindly on flashy popups? You wouldn’t have this problem if you didn’t send all those forwards. I bet you look at porn, too. You get a lot of viruses from porn. Are you a sexual deviant?”
Ok, not really but I always offered them the chance to accompany me on their Windows reinstall. No one ever took me up on it.
Sounds interesting in a geeky way. What’s the most fun, easiest, challenging, etc systems to break?