So I made the trek up to Seattle for Thanksgiving. I’m the only one in the family with any knowledge of tech; to everyone else, computers are something that are turned on and off like a TV. Ask them to explain how a TV or a computer work, and you’ll get blank stares. It just works.
Of course, it just works thanks to my herculean efforts. Usually my annual trips home are spent acting as tech support. I’ll spend an hour updating all their systems with the latest patches, installing the latest versions of their software, uninstalling junkware, etc. I’m that guy in the family. Shit you not, but I was up here for a quick trip in August for my nephew’s baptism and for months beforehand, my dad would call me up and complain that his desktop wasn’t working and that I needed to come help fix it.
I fly up for the baptism, check out the computer, and deduce that someone had turned off the LCD and no one had realized that the stupid thing had a power switch. (The switch is hidden and recessed underneath the LCD). They just assumed the computer didn’t work. I flicked the switch on the LCD, watched the system post and boot, and started to swear a bit, because I had bought one of those universal USB drive cables thinking I was going to need to transfer data off a bad hard drive to a new hard drive.
The sheer fact that the LCD was turned off somehow managed to fly over my parents’ heads, my siblings’ heads, etc. Talk about an embarrassing moment.
So imagine my surprise on Tuesday when I arrive and, during a quiet moment, check out the two laptops and desktop in the house.
All the latest Windows patches installed? Check.
Antivirus definitions up-to-date? Check.
Firefox 2.0.0.9 installed? Check.
Oh my fucking god, I’m thinking. This automatic update shit finally works right. Everything works perfectly. I don’t need to do squat. For the first time in like forever, I’m not needed to fix their systems.
And that is my holiday hardware miracle.