Sometimes you just have to look at the experts and say, "You know what? I'm clueless. Please help me before I destroy something."
That's usually what I say to the nurses at the hospital when a patient wants to make a phone call or something. Hopeless, huh? Good thing they're patient folk.
This computer thing of mine is different. For many a year, as Big Brother explains some of the intricacies of computer hardware, no matter how hard I try to understand, my eyes glaze over and I am reminded of that Far Side cartoon where the dog is listening to his master talk and all he hears is "blah blah blah blankety blah Rover blah blah...." Eventually he catches the look on my face and sighs heavily...poor guy. He then says something like, "You know what? Why don't you just give me that and I'll do it myself" and I know he's finishing it in his head "...before you try to do it and I have to fix it...again."
He speaks from experience. Really.
The man is literally three states away, and I heard that same sigh Saturday evening. The Tall Bald Guy and I took the laptop to the campus library with us to install the whatsie (or download the whoozit, or whatever we were supposed to do to the thing) to be able to get on the wireless internet there should I need it at school. We turned the thing on, we went to the OIT website, we followed the instructions, and...you guessed it. The laptop said, "You want me to do what?"
We tried getting a secure connection, an unsecure connection, a rainbow connection, a French connection--you name it, we tried it.
We printed out the directions lest we remember something later on, and got our books and went home.
After we got home, the Tall Bald Guy continued working on it. He just won't admit defeat. I sorta like that, especially when I know I've overlooked something obvious and I don't really wanna tell him unless I know I can run faster than he can.
After a couple of hours of searching, cussing, dog-scritching (The Dog is really who he comes to see, don't you know), and Diet-Dew-fueled dragging, clicking, and searching, he finds the manual that Big Brother so thoughtfully saved in the bowels of the laptop for handy reference.
You know what? It turns out the wireless internet thing won't work at all unless you've pushed the little round silver button on the front of the thing and that cute little orange light comes on. Whoda thunk?
I do hope I was convincing enough when I said to the Tall Bald Guy, "Well, will ya look at that?" because I heard Big Brother's words come rushing back to me just then-something about making sure that button is pushed.
Did you hear that? Somewhere in Wichita, Big Brother is sighing in disgust, and Sis-in-Law and the Redheaded Munchkin are giggling.
Now I'm going to try and install an Adobe reader on The Young Man's computer so he can do his schoolwork. I am attempting this during the week instead of on the weekend when the Tall Bald Guy is here because Language Arts just has to get done and The Young Man doesn't need any more excuses not to do his work...
Look to the east! If all is peaceful, you will know I have succeeded. If I'm not, the converging storms Gustav and Hannah will surely blow away the mushroom cloud before I'm found out.
Come to think of it, the Tall Bald Guy has developed a disgusted sigh of his own lately...can we blame him?
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