Because my workmates know that I have a computer at home, I’m the unofficial computer support person for my team. Why is this?
Maybe I need to get one of those “No, I will not fix your computer” shirts after all.
doG knows, I could use it. I frequently have to help people re-set their screens because they dragged the mouse over a window, and they can’t figure out what happened to their “working area.”
I also help people very, very often with “my blinky is stuck!” type questions.
An all-time favorite request I get: “My little one did something to my home computer, what do I do?” (includes free order of hairy-eyeball maki with T-shirt)
and now, I seem to be the office “spam resource person,” simply because I mentioned in passing that I knew what it was – and that it’s a Monty Python reference, not a lunchmeat reference. And Wa-lah! (TM Trading Spaces’ Gen) I’m an anti-spam expert!
Sheesh. Well, it’s true that I know how to read headers after a fashion, can use the Codeflux Internet Tools Gateway to run a simple whois or dnslookup, and figure out whether or not to send a spam abuse report, and if so where to send the report. And I know a bit about filtering formats and spam blocking (and why they don’t always work).
Hello, I’m a corporate travel agent, and what am I doing later this week? Helping with a software installation for my team in order to free up our technical services person for other tasks. Why? because it’s common knowledge that I’m a “computer geek.”
(insert Deep Thought quote here – my hubby is a computer geek, I’m just his… moll or something)((insert “moll” music from Star Trek episode “A Piece of the Action” here. Snap!))
At least for now I still get to answer SABRE format questions. Sometime in the next year or so, even that interface is changing radically, I might as well enjoy it while I still can.
And if the business changes so much in the next few years that I’m made redundant, I have a brilliant second career as a computer geek-in-training.
Maybe.
