Total Computer Meltdown

Why Why Why? Once upon a time, I had three laptops: my personal one, my work one, and my sister had one. Then my sister's caught a terrible virus and I had to bring it in tothe fixit shop. Before she could stress out, I whipped out my handy work laptop and said "use this one until yours is ready."

Well, the gods must have been mad at me because the day after I dropped off hers at the fixit place, my work laptop started acting funny too. This one didn't appear to have the same virus, noooo that would make too much sense. This one decided that it just didn't want to access the internet for some reason. In fact, it wanted to set up an impenetrable firewall just to make sure that access could not be granted.

Grrr. I called my techie friends. "Sounds weird." "Don't know." Of course I have no idea if they truly didn't know, or just didn't want to help me, so I bit the bullet and called my boss. "Not a problem," he said. "I have a spare that you can borrow and I'll take a look at the other one." Sweet.

It all seems to have turned out okay, but I learned two things. One, it sucks to be an IT Guy because everyone wants something from you. Just because I work in a tech-oriented field, my sister assumes that I know more than she does. Of course I do, but it's irritating that she expects me to take care of all this kind of stuff for her. So I finally understand what IT guys/gals go through and why they hate simple people so much. Because a lot of this is using common sense. The problem is that if someone has no experience or interest in technology then they don't have that common sense to work off of. So what seemed obvious to me wasn't to my sister. She just looked at me blankly and I wanted to scream in frustration and accuse her of knowing what to do and just playing stupid.

The second thing I learned was just how married we are to our computers. Mr. Fixit sympathized with my plight: "I could spend two days away from my wife, but not my computer." Wow, is that what we've come to? Sadly, yes. I'm lost without my computer. I literally could not work, since I work from home and I do social media. So if I don't have access to the internet I'm f-cked. My company is planning a retreat to the vineyards in Monterey, and I warned them, "There's no internet up there. And there's barely cell service." This was greeted by complete horror. "No internet?" Someone joked, "You mean, we'd have to talk to each other?" Sad. But I know I'd rather sit in front of my computer and communicate when I want to than be potentially bored and stuck with a real person.

Even as I type that I realize how pathetic that is. But I think I just have to face it: I’m addicted to my computer, I like communicating only when I want to, and I know more about technology than I think. And that’s not a bad thing!!