B10[mg]

Every geek knows the problem. When you're at parties, and tell people you work (or have worked) as a UNIX system administrator, these people will reply with something like "Ah great, see, I have a computer problem. Whenever I boot, I get this error on the screen". Usually, you try to be helpful and ask for a little more detail on the problem, but that usually doesn't go anywhere else than "Oh, I don't know exactly, I always click on OK."

Not only unknown people bug you with this, also your entire family, friends of them and anyone remotely connected will assume you can do magic over the phone, and you are always looking forward to assist them in trivial problems.

I often wonder if people react the same if I had a different profession. Let's say I'm a professional painter. People will -probably- still come up to me and ask if I can help out, but at least they assume they will have to make an appointment, and pay me some for the effort.

Oh, well, because I've heard these complaints before, I know I'm not the only one and it'll probably never end. Phone calls while I'm having dinner isn't the biggest annoyance anyways. The biggest problem with such people is the total lack of interest in what they are doing.

Not too long ago, I received a call from a certain family members, asking how to resize pictures, so they could be printed. I kindly requested him to save their pictures (they came as an email attachment). After spending 5 full minutes on that task, I instructed this person to open the infamous Windows Explorer and go to the directory this file was just saved in. "Uhh, how would I know? And no, I also don't know the file name".

Where does this come from? If I ask people to file a certain piece of paper, and ask them half a year later where it can be found, the right folder is taken from wherever in no time ...

Maybe it's time for me to wear appropriate clothing to parties, and ask all of my family members to buy me this as a birthday present?

Will they ever get the hint?