As if you needed more proof…
I can’t tell you how many times I have told my students “As if you needed more proof that I am a total geek…”
Two weeks ago, I was working on a project with one of my colleagues at CSF, and I used my laptop computer all day. I came home, fired up my laptop again, and…nothing. I have no idea what happened, but all the memory fried, and the boot sector on the hard drive went out. Fortunately, I did manage to save all the data from that system.
So, two days later, I’m working on my desktop system, figuring that I’ll need to use that for a lot of my work. As I’m backing up files…blink. The power supply blew out.
I have another system that runs Linux, so I decided to set up my e-mail on it so I wasn’t completely in the stone age. Two days later, I turned on the system and..pfft! I burned out the power supply. So, I have three very nice boat anchors, and I managed to kill three computers in five days. Evidently, we had a power surge that turned my Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) into a computer eater (one of my surge protectors gave its life to protect my scanner and my office stereo). Other than clocks needing to be reset, computers seem to have taken all the damage (I’m currently working with the company that made my UPS to work out a settlement).
I could probably come up with a comedy routine along the lines of “You might be a geek if…”
The truth is that not everyone has three computers to burn out, so I guess that makes me a geek. Further proof of geekdom: My wife’s computer and the computer by the treadmill are both fine.
Jack Clayton Swearengen wrote about our utter dependence on technology, and these past couple of weeks have made me think a lot about his ideas. I work in at least two “people oriented” professions: Teaching and Ministry. Curiously, I found myself as helpless in those areas as I was in my two technology oriented professions: writing and consulting. At one time, technology was a want in my world, but some time over the past seven years, it has become an essential. That fact alone is a bit terrifying.
I, however, count my blessings. It’s true that there are very few people who can say they killed three computers in five days. But the fact is, most people do not have three computers to kill. My colleague, Brad, pointed that fact out to me, and I think it is great wisdom.