Just had my "techie" over last night. I sensed something might be awry with my computer. (Tromp up to the pit, turn on the moniter, turn on the desktop, wait a minute or so, select my icon, .....and leave. Go downstairs, get a cup of coffee, go shave, shower, and get dressed, refill the coffee cup, and go back up to the pit. Still several little icons in the lower right corner to come up! Finish second cup of coffee, .....aaaaaah now we're ready to go!)
I guess I've got the dreaded "start-up fetish". I've heard about it, but now I have to face the fact that I have it. (There must be a 12 step program for it!) All these absolutely, can live without them, need them right at my fingertips, great little thingies just sitting there waiting for me to call on them,.....alas, no more. They are all gone, well almost all.
My techie knows me well enough that as we poured the second full glass of the Australian Shiraz he stopped asking me, "What about this one?" His fingers moved deftly around the keyboard, he never missed a beat, and an hour later my 'puter was going from completely shut down and off to ready to go in under 1 minute and 30 seconds.
"Man do you know how much memory you have?" (Now that's a question us "oldsters" really fear! Is he talking me or the machine? I'll guess machine, just to be safe.
"No, I know I loaded it when I bought it three years ago."
"You got 512 man, ...no wonder this thing crawls."
"So what should I get?"
Whiz, whiz, click, clack, enter, enter, enter.
"That's what you really need , a gig. You pull one of the 256 modules and put in a gig and bam you got a gig and a quarter and she'll just run all over the room for you!"
"Could you flag that page and I'll order it later?"
So after he left, thirty three seconds of contemplation, a third glass of Shiraz, and poof! Dell tells me the gig is on the way! And only 93.75 to my door. This puppy better sing and dance as it's running around the room, I'll tell you that!
Well I better head out for work. The "techie" we use there is an idiot of the mangnitude of Fred Flintstone. My computer was fine yesterday when I went in, the bookeeper's computer was not able to get on the internet, old Ricky Retardo shows up, runs into the server room tweeks this, swaps a couple patch cables around, comes out and closes the door to the "server room" a/k/a cleaning supplies closet, with this really smug look on his face and says, "Ok you're all set, try it now., as he heads for the door without even breaking stride. As his foot goes over the threashold to the outside the bookeeper say's "great, thank you" and with a blaze of light, and a hearty "Hi-Ho CPU!!!" the Lone Techie disappears.
I finish working on the spreadsheet I was working on ten minutes later, do the appropriate key strokes to have it print to our super slick "I do everything but bring you hot women and cold beer" state of the art printer, and NOTHING happens.
I reenter all the appropriate key strokes, still nothing. I call to the bookeeper, "Hey can you print?" She hits a few keys and responds in bookeeperese, (A language of single sylable words, grunts, and groans, of which I can comprehend "NO."
I save my spreadsheet and figure I'll worry about that later. I've got a couple of contracts I need to finish and I've been waiting since Friday for the final ok's from the Board of Directors, so I'll just dash onto my e-mail and check the incomings. (Old fart note: "Incoming" was not a good word to use between 1964 and 2003. Folks, particularly men of veterans ages from the Viet Nam "conflict", would "duck, roll and cover", so just be careful when you use that term around us!)
No internet access!! Well I try again later, let me go on the server and pull down the final version of the contracts from where I put them Friday. SHIT, I can't get onto the server either. Give me a gun! I want techie blood,.....NOW!
Long story short he can't get out til this morning. (It amazes me how they can sense the fact that a warm, 6x8 room with no view, shitty food and lights out at ten for the rest of your natural life REALLY doesn't seem such a big price to pay when your computer goes down right after "Super Techie" announced to the world all was right on heaven and earth and with "the system" and evaporates from the building!)
I want to be there when he shows and torment him into tweaking my machine and PROVING to me it really is fixed and every component of the system will continue to work flawlessly after he does his evaporation trick this time.
-30-
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Oh, an after thought. Supertechie shows up next morning, goes through a bunch of crap I already tried,...leans back in the chair, lifts his ball cap off his head, scratches the head, and utters the most philosophic statement as only a true techie geek could. Are you ready? Put your coffee down so you don't spill it.
Ok,....he looks over to me and says "That's strange, it doesn't seem to recognize the connection."
(Would they really wonder what became of him or just figure he got lost on the way back to his company, shallow grave,...better yet rope around the ankles tied to six old CPU's,...yeah.......
Post a Comment