I'm a Software Guy

(Alternate title:Making a Short Story Long)

I'm a software guy. My official title is "Software Engineer", but "programmer" is almost perfectly descriptive. There are differences, but I digress (digress - Latin for "will stop talking now"). Normally it might come up like this:

Non-technical co-worker:Something is wrong with my computer.

Me:What does it do.?

Non-technical co-worker:Its been smoking and making sizzling noises... since I spilled a cup of coffee from Starbuck's on it.

Me:Did you bring me any coffee?

Non-technical co-worker:No

Me:Sorry, smoking and sizzling sounds like a hardware problem. I'm a software guy.

The real lesson here is not to spill coffee on your computer. Because even had "Non-technical co-worker" brought me coffee, I could do little about it except point at the smoke and say "well there's your problem"... I'm a software guy. And the truth is as software guys go, I'm not that geeky. I've never read a Lord of the Rings book, only made it through about 40 pages of The Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy, and I've never seen a Monty Python movie all the way through (I am well versed in dropping in quotes from them though, if I weren't I could lose my job). My main hobbies are guitars and this blog... ok, maybe the blog isn't a great argument for me not being a geek, but I grew up in the 1980s, and I am sure of one thing - guitars are cool. As for me being stuck in 1987, that's another issue not related to my job, but at least I got rid of the mullet which:

• I did not know there was a name for at the time
• Did not stand out at the time
• Was probably the worst one in the history of the Northern Hemisphere
  

Most computer guys, even software guys, have really cool "bleeding edge", very fast computers. And I do too, if you live in the year 2000. Now I pretty much own an 1.1GHz boat anchor (and the new boat anchors are up to 3GHz). It is time for a new computer. Unfortunately my wife decided, I mean we decided, that we should have a so called "second child", and it turns out they're expensive to operate.

So I came upstairs tonight all ready to write a really original piece about how the Chicago Cubs seem to be in a slump for the last couple of generations, and as soon as I get into the room I can see that all of the lights on the front panel are on. I have been through this once before. The machine won't respond, I reboot it, and 5 second into the reboot, it freezes up with all the lights on. Fortunately I learned how to fix this last time:

• Take side panels off
• Start unhooking peripherals and rebooting after each one is removed. No change.
• Go to box of random electronic junk, get the multi-meter I was given for free at a trade show by a hardware guy. Use the leads to check the power supply (WARNING - DON'T EVER PLUG ANYTHING INTO ANYTHING ELECTRICAL UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING - YOU COULD BE KILLED - in fact, just forget it, let's say I really didn't do that part, yeah, I didn't do it, I just thought about it, its really immaterial to the story (immaterial - word I hope means "unrelated", but sounds more "writer-guyish").
• Turn the computer on. It works.
• Unplug multi-meter... no, wait, I never actually plugged it into anything, its dangerous. Skip this step.
• Put computer back together.
• Put meter back - I did actually get it out, I just didn't really use it as far as any readers who might hurt themselves and sue me later are concerned.

The act of plugging in, I mean merely getting out, the multi-meter convinces the computer that I mean business, and it will operate without flaw (and by "without flaw" I mean "with occasional spontaneous reboots") for a month or two.

So tomorrow, in my most serious tough guy voice, I'm going to my wife and ask "may I please buy a new computer?" And by "new", I mean refurbished. sitemeter.com now says that my blog attracts as many as four readers per day, so obviously it is important that I have one. Otherwise my current computer may realize that while I can write software, I don't even know what the hell a multi-meter is used for. I'm a software guy.

Wow, now I can wait and write about the Cubs another time.... it'll be a hoot.