Geek with an Attitude

Wanna hear a dirty secret?  I’m not really passionate about technology.  And by “not really,” I mean, not at all.

I don’t judge technology on anything other than utility and ease of use.  I don’t care how cool stuff looks, I just want it to work.  I don’t care about the newest things on the market, or the next great thing coming down the pike.  I bought a desktop and a laptop last year, and went quad-core CPU on neither of them.   Who the hell needs a quad-core PC these days?  Sure, Outlook might load .5 seconds faster, but it that worth twice the price just to say I have a quad-core machine?  Heck, no.  Quad-core is for chumps, yo.

I don’t own a gaming console, and never have.  I just recently got around to playing Doom 3.  My webcam is at least 8 years old.  With the exception of MS Windows and Office, all the software on my computer is free.  I don’t like mp3 players — including iPods.  CDs are so much better, seriously.  I briefly flirted with the iPhone, but settled on the much cheaper and much more functional and easy Blackberry Curve.  I hate the fact that Twitter exists, and I hate even more that I’m on it.  I don’t like this world we’re in, and don’t feel the need to try anything new.  If I see something I think I might like, I’ll try it out.  If not, I have no desire to participate in the feeding frenzy.

I mean, let’s take Linux, for example.  I really like the idea of Linux, in that it’s free and not a product of those evil geniuses at Apple or those evil dullards at Microsoft.  But the only “flavor” of Linux I’ve ever really been able to tolerate is Ubuntu, because it’s the only one that seemed designed for the needs of the average power user.  I still dual-boot with Windows XP, and you know what?  I use XP way more, because it does everything I need it to do.  That’s right, an OS designed and built in 1992 is my favorite of all time.  If Ubuntu could run things without me having to go to the internet every day to find instructions, I might use it more.  Functionality and ease is all I want.

If you’re thinking that makes me a pretty weird IT guy, I have to concur.  I thought of all this as I was troubleshooting a really obtuse computer problem for a customer today.  It’s ridiculous, this problem.  One of her CD drives intermittently won’t eject a CD until you restart the computer.  Normally, one could live with this problem (and to her credit, she has been for over a year), but now I have to actually fix it.  It’s times like this that I realize that I’m actually a writer, not a computer technician.  This is a real bummer, because I thought for sure I was a computer guy.

*Note to prospective employers:  I was employing irony in the preceding paragraph — of course I’m a computer technician.  I, as a writer, was just being ironic.  Sorry for all the confusion.

** Note to other prospective employers:  I wasn’t actually using irony in the above paragraph, I was just saying so to increase my chances of getting a job.  However, as a writer, I could use irony if I so chose.  Isn’t that in itself ironic, don’t you think?  A little too ironic?

Yeah, I really do think.