Loser Friendly Computer Training

Everything is computerized these days so you’d better know how to use one. Your bank is computerized, your car is computerized, your coffeemaker is computerized and, heck, even your computers are computerized.

It won’t be long before even your socks will be computerized and filled with USB ports and Bluetooth enabled functions and 24 channel sound cards.

“Beep! Warning! Impending foot sleeve incompatibility detected! I am a black sock. Your have a blue sock on the other foot.”

“Leave me alone. No one will notice…’foot sleeve’…?”

“Beep! ERROR #4475C! DUPLICITOUS HUE CONFLICT! I am paired with a non–matching sock! Change at once!”

“Who’s going to see them? I’m wearing jeans.”

“Beep! NULL VALUES not accepted! Prepare to self–destruct! Ten…Nine…Eight…Sev–”

“Okay, okay, okay…”

I don’t have to worry about such matters because I am what the professionals call computer literate. You can tell I’m a professional because I often say important things like: “Is your RS–232 interface paralleled with your DRAM I/O card to avoid the maximum packet collisions in that Linux BitTorrent environment?”

I can tell you’re impressed.

As a result of my vast computer knowledge and experience, I am often asked to help friend and relatives how to solve their computer problems.

I confront these situations by immediately falling to the ground, writhing in pain, and pretending my appendix just imploded. And then I feign death. After I’ve been dragged out from under the table and hit with 4,500 volts from a defibrillator I’m more than happy to help anyone work with a computer.

I have noticed there are two types of people when it comes to teaching computer skills:

Type 1: Female

9 out of 10 women know that touching a computer will give them rectal cancer.

Most women have an unfounded fear of computers which stems from their limited exposure to computers and machines. Machines never hurt anyone intentionally except in those sci–fi movies where the toasters all become super–intelligent and then join with the other kitchen appliances like the blender and go on a mass–killing spree and dominate the world with their mighty and awesome blending and toasting powers. But this rarely happens in real life. Troubleshooting with women typically run along these lines:

“Aaaaiiiiiieeeee!! It isn’t working! I think I broke it!”

“Is it turned on?” I ask.

“What!? It has a switch?! Aagghh! I think I lost it!!”

The conversation goes downhill from there. Once the computer flashes on, trouble really begins. The woman is scared to death, and that leads to problems.

“Okay, now type in your name,” I say.

“What? Now? You mean touch it?!”

“Unless you have some mental powers I don’t know about, yes, you’ll have to touch it,” I say, feeling very much like a Democratic President.

It should be said that nervous people have no sense of humor when dealing with computers. Her hand slowly hovers over the keyboard. We wait. The sun rises. Her hand drifts over to the first key. We wait again. The sun sets. The room grows silent as sweat beads on her forehead. Tension looms in the air as only tension can.

Wham! She thrusts her finger down with enough force to register on the Richter Scale. Then she lightly lifts her hand and repeats the process for the rest of her name.

“Why are you hitting the keys so hard?” I ask.

“I don’t like typing,” she replies. Hmm. The physical strain must be too much. While female may sound bad, she is nothing when compared to the…

Type 2: Male

Ted demonstrates his vast computer knowledge by making text bold.

Most guys are very comfortable around computerized equipment because they experience it everyday in the form of 30,000 gadgets he attaches to his belt everyday. The male computer users expects the computer to do anything and everything right away. Having no use for such things as instructions, general knowledge, or proper care, he is very ill-suited for a computer or, really, anything other than sitting around eating cheese doodles and watching TV.

When I sit down and I show a guy how to perform a few quick computer tasks he picks it up right away and proceeds to wipe out his hard drive, and the hard drive of everyone in a three mile radius, with the push of one button.

“Why did you just do that?” I ask through clenched teeth.

“I’m trying something. Leave me alone,” he responds.

The male computer user doesn’t like to ask too many questions and often puts himself into tricky situations. I usually don’t worry about this except when he begins to ask: “What is the password?”, “Which bank do you use?” or “Why are the Soviets bombing Nebraska?”

Instead of treating the computer with respect, a guy will tend to treat it as though it is an old football buddy. He pushes it around, slaps it on the back, tries to give it a beer and has a grand time with it. He uses DVDs as Frisbees (which do fly well) and hits the monitor in the same way he would kick a tire. At times like this, I like to just sit in a corner and whimper.

Most people, however, fall between the two major types (in computer knowledge…not “male” and “female”). For instance, some people talk to their computers (a bad idea since computers have a big enough ego as it is). Others simply use computers as paperweights (one of the more practical uses). And many see the computer for what it really is (i.e. a really neat way to play games and view porn).

As computers dominate our world, we should all familiarize ourselves with these amazing machines and try to learn as much about them as I have.

After all, you never know when your IP address will match the baud rate of the hard drive and cause your bitmapped internal gigabyte memory structures to re–boot…

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