This is not what I do. That is, I'm not a professional blog writer. This is not a commercial pursuit, an undertaking that puts food on the table or petrol in the car. This is an expression of thought, and hopefully at times, knowledge.
I fix people's computer problems. That is what I do. I could even broaden that to say "I fix people's technology problems". Computer technician. Support dude. Technology consultant. The IT guy. Nerd.
That is me. Every family has one - every business needs one [or possibly quite a few] - and increasingly, our personal lives could benefit from one also.
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We all have a relationship with technology. This relationship changes frequently, morphing like the desert sand-hills, (and sometimes oscillating wildly, moment to moment like some sort of wild, oscillating device) but my experience has shown at any given instant this relationship of humans with tech can be slotted into one of four main categories.
Need, want, love and hate.
Need
You cannot escape it. Communication, business, entertainment, transport, medical. It surrounds us, engulfs us. We all need technology at some point.
Want
That slightly slimmer, slightly faster, slightly cooler and slightly more expensive phone/laptop/camera/gadget has just been released. Want one. Bad.
Love
“What, there’s an app that lets me “insert verb describing previously annoying or laborious task made easier by simple piece of software” on my phone?" Life now complete. Love that.
Hate
“This computer doesn’t fucking work”.
“My phone is fucked”.
“How the fuck do I “insert task that should be impossibly easy but always seems impossibly hard”.
“I hate Microsoft/Google/Facebook/Apple/any or all other tech companies that are seemingly out to destroy life's simplicity and beauty with their ugly, ugly technology."
“How the fuck do I archive my emails.”
"I hate printers".
This is generally where the IT guys comes in . The hate category.
This is generally where the IT guys comes in . The hate category.
Sometimes we get called in at the need stage, but the very nature of a need decries an item or process or solution that is not necessarily wanted. Therefore this category has a very close, almost symbiotic relationship with the hate category. This is something us techs learn early - need is a slippery slope to hate.
If we are very lucky, we can sometimes be involved in the want. Want almost requires a smidgen of love in order to exist - these two have a close relationship, but it would be a stretch to say they share the same symbiotic connection as need and hate. No, want (or craving) and love (or lust) are connected but can still be somewhat exclusive.
On even rarer occasions, a technician/techie/IT guy will find themselves thrust into the love category. This is the holy grail of IT support - love. At this point, people almost irrationally heap as much love on the tech themselves rather than the technology they have really developed the crush for. But we will take anything we can get.
But sadly, it is hate were we languish for most of our days. If not for peoples hate, whether their hate of technology, or a hate of wanting to learn a purposeful way or approaching it, we would not be technicians.
It would be easy of us to hate the hate. We are always there, it is not always fun.
But this blog aims to show a love of the hate is possible. People hate. And rage. And swear. And get frustrated. But the job of a technician, a good technician that is, is to first and foremost remain calm. In my book, fixing a specific problem for someone still comes a huge second place to remaining calm, aware and zen-like during the process of that fixing.
In fact, as we will discover on the pages of this blog, the two (fixing problems and remaining calm) are more related than many suspect...
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