Zero to Tech

Somehow along the way in my unvaried career (I say “unvaried” because I’ve worked in one library or another since I was sixteen), I became a techie person.  I came to this realization as I was shopping online for yet another computer and was reading reviews and model specs.  I actually knew what they were talking about.  How very strange.

Why do I find this so surprising?  Because when I was a kid even though my brother had every video game system you could imagine, I wasn’t interested.  I was too busy making up stories with my stuffed animals and Barbies to be bothered with that.  The condition got worse in high school because my dad wouldn’t let me take any computer classes.  He was afraid it would drop my GPA.  I really needed a high GPA to get a college scholarship because, goodness knew, I wasn’t getting one because of my athletic ability.  Same rules applied in college.  As if you couldn’t guess, Dad cared a lot about good grades.  He didn’t make this rule because I was a girl.  Andy, my brother, wasn’t allowed to take these classes either.  This really didn’t affect Andy at all because he thought it was “fun” to teach himself how to put together a motherboard.

As a result, everything I’ve learned about computers and technology has been through trial and error.  There been some major errors along the way.  When I was in college for reasons that are still unclear, I crashed my laptop and lost the very first draft of Maid of Murder. This was a traumatic event, which has scarred me to this day.

More recently, I once turned off the library server, thinking, “Shoot, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”  What can happen is you get a very angry phone call from the vendor that manages the server, telling you, “Don’t do that again or else.”  Might I add I wasn’t alone in this, the IT guy thought it was a good idea at the time too.  It wasn’t, trust me.

However recently, I bought a new netbook and was able to load all the programs I needed and hook it up to my network all by myself.  I know, I know you super techs out there are guffawing at this minor achievement, but it was a big moment for me.  Oh and okay, I did send my brother some frantic text messages while doing it because I couldn’t remember my network’s password, which he, a true techie, originally set up.  Sadly, he couldn’t remember it either.

Even though I know more now than I did ten years ago, I am by no means an expert.  What I am good at is asking for help and am blessed to have friends who know a lot more than I do about computers, servers, websites, and the like.  You know who you are.

Oh, and Andy, I expect you to install the new desktop for Mom.  Just because I know how to do it… doesn’t mean I want to.

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