IT Was Nice

There are a million jokes about computer people. Maybe even more than a million. Computer people get a bad rap, which is not to say that they don’t deserve it . For the most part, they truly deserve all of the jokes on Letterman and SNL, all of the mockery and the shit-talking. They are the keeper of valuable information. Information that would be beneficial for you to know, but is either far too complicated or far too boring for you to even attempt to learn.

They guard these kernels of wisdom like the Holy Grail. You can approach, but beware. Choose poorly and you may as well just start speaking like a Teletubby because they have stopped listening and have branded you a MORON. I get it, really. They spend their entire day helping people who are either completely computer retarded or completely computer retarded but convinced that they know what they’re talking about. I would most definitely punch someone, and so I admire their restraint. Still, those jokes are all based in reality and everyone has their own terrible computer person to tell.

My first brush with a computer person was Mrs. Davis, our “computer teacher” at my elementary school. My school was pretty loose on most practical learning, so it is interesting that we even had a computer class considering that most of our Math classes were completely skipped if our Creative Arts teacher wanted us in the auditorium singing Joni Mitchell songs or learning skat music.

Anyway, “computer teacher” is probably the wrong word for what Mrs. Davis did, since most of the class period was spent with our backs to our Apple IIE’s while she pointed to the many posters she had printed on that awesome paper where it’s all linked and you have to tear the sheets apart, posters that said things like DO NOT TOUCH THE SOFT PARTS OF THE DISK! DO NOT TOUCH THE SOFT PARTS OF THE DISK! and KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE HOME ROW! KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE HOME ROW! DO NOT EAT OR DRINK IN THIS ROOM! DO NOT EAT OR DRINK IN THIS ROOM!

For the rest of the class period she placed paper over the keyboards and we slipped our tiny hands beneath and struggled through the typing program where you played Hangman against the computer . I always got stuck with the computer that had orange writing instead of green, which made me nauseous. Picture for a minute a room full of 8-year-olds being yelled at for peeking at the keyboard, hunching over keyboards as if Mrs. Davis knew that our futures would involve entry-level careers in data entry and wanted to prepare us for the inevitable bad posture and carpal tunnel syndrome. The sweetest vindication I can remember in grade school was Mrs. Davis leaning over to pick something up and ripping the loudest fart in the world in front of a bunch of grade schoolers.

In college ISS was famed for being of little to no help. I learned to rely on myself as a Mac user on a PC campus, which was fine until the week of my Spring finals, which is when my iMac decided that it was time to stop functioning and eat my papers, and I called Apple only to be told that I would have to call 4 other 800 numbers, hold for 2 hours, and finally weep uncontrollably to a man in India who would then attempt to try to help me.

Fast forward to my Junior year of college. I’m home for the summer and my Dad asks me to come to the Apple store with him. Thinking I might at least get an Orange Julius for my troubles, I accompany him into the blinding whiteness of the Mac universe. The store is not very crowded, and my Dad approaches a man in a black t-shirt standing behind a desk. “I’m sorry, sir,” the black-shirted guy says, “Are you signed up in the queue?”

“The QUEUE?!” My dad says, skipping all pretense and bullshit and going straight into are-you-fucking-kidding-me mode,

“Yes, the queue. Go to that computer, click on the Genius Bar icon, and enter your information, including name and a general description of your problem. Your name will appear on this screen when it is your turn.”

My dad does the slow jaw roll and I sign him up for The Queue because he doesn’t have his glasses and he is about to punch someone. Immediately his name appears on the screen above the man’s head and it is officially our turn. The problem is that my Dad needs a new keyboard, which he then has to stand in another line, excuse me, another queue, to purchase.

There are so many tales out there, of IT guys in Star Wars t-shirts sipping Big Gulps and asking you if you’ve rebooted or whatever, that whenever I have a good experience I want to shout it from the hilltops. Take, for instance, my fantastic brother-in-law, who is not only responsible for brining into the world the cutest baby thine eyes hath ever seen, but also for maintaining the technical sanity of everyone in the M*Inerny family. Dude, he made me this website!

My job requires me to work on a Dell. This may be why my iBook is acting up, he can smell it on me when I get home and he’ll be damned if he’s going to respond to my beck and call when he knows where I’ve been all day. PCs are impossible for me to understand. What the shit is an F drive? What is a right-click? Why can’t I just drag it and drop it and have it just be there? The possibilities for error and disaster are endless as soon as I turn on the machine, but so far things have gone pretty smoothly, until today.

Today I called IT for the first time because something was happening and I didn’t know what it was or how to make it stop. And guess what happened? The IT guy was so so so so nice. “Hey, let’s figure out what’s going on,” he said. Seriously, he used the word “let’s” and then HE FIGURED IT OUT AND CALLED ME BACK! AND HE WAS SO NICE!

He could have told me to submit a request the proper way, rather than calling him office and stuttering through the description of what was going on (I think I said something along the lines of, well, when I do that one thing, it doesn’t work. Not usually.) But he didn’t, he was awesome. So thank you, Anonymous computer guy, for using your Super-Human powers for good and not for evil.