The Book Tower

I’ve a confession to make. I’m not all that good with, or knowledgeable about, computers. But because I work in IT I think people expect me to be. I’m good with html and css and web browsers and all the things I profess to know about. It’s just the actual hardware involved that stumps me.

A friend came to stay for the weekend and he kept asking me about laptops. He wanted to buy one and had (wrongly) assumed that ‘I was the man’. I answered every suggestion he made with an unconvincing and barely audible “that will probably be alright”. I got the impression that he was disappointed and surprised at my lack of expertise, and went away even more confused about the subject as a result of my vagueness.

We went wireless at home recently and it took me all day to set it up. My (eventual) success in getting everything to work was due to luck rather than judgement. The several gin and tonics that followed were due to relief of stress and celebration of ‘the happy accident’.

With a lot of modern technology, I am a bit like the man in the Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch who goes into a HiFi shop asking for a ‘gramophone’. Here is a list of computer-related things I just don’t know about:

Memory. I’ve no idea how much memory my computer at home has and I don’t care. I secretly know that it’s loads and loads, more than I’ll ever need. Or at least enough to shut up any of you ‘memory bores’ out there. (Note on memory bores: when they ask you a memory related question and you pick a random amount of memory out of the air, say “one hundred gigabytes”, the memory bore will either a) be so unimpressed that they start laughing and violently shaking their head, or b) be so impressed that they raise their eyebrows to the extent that their eyes are in danger of popping out.)

Networks. Don’t ask me about networks. As I’ve said, my home network resulted from trial, error and mostly luck. At home, my network is good and I’m not going to touch it. At work we have people who are paid to sort out networks.

Ports. I worry about ports.

Firewalls. I worry about firewalls, although I’ve now got one.

Printers and monitors. I get through them very quickly. Our spare room is a printer’s graveyard.

Cables. I have a whole box full of them. No, I have two boxes. And this doesn’t include USBs, which are liberally scattered around the house.

I think it’s because people secretly want the world to be a simpler place. It’s like meeting a teacher and asking about Geography, even though they might be a Maths teacher. Or showing a doctor a bunion if they specialise in earwax. Or meeting somebody from Hastings and asking “do you know my mate Gary?”

So everything to do with IT is lumped together, and I don’t just know about html, css and web browsers but I’m expected to also know about laptops, memory, printers and cables.

And ports. I worry about ports.