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 My
Inner Geek
J. Kevin Tumlinson
I'm a big geek. I like "Star Trek" (most of it,
anyway), and I have a collection of comic books. I have Spider-man paraphernalia
all over the place and I've been known to record things off of Cartoon
Network for later viewing. But what really makes me a geek is my out-and-out
love for electronics and computers.
I've been working with computers since "high tech"
was still a phrase you could say without shame (it's a phrase that went
out with parachute pants and "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo")
I even went to school to become an electronics engineer and worked in
that field for quite some time. The downside to doing that for a living
was that I didn't get to play with the computers the way I wanted to.
So I left engineering behind and went back to college to earn a couple
of extra degrees here and there (one more and I get my free decoder ring!).
My love for technology, however, continues to thrive!
Enter the Internet.
Wow. When the World Wide Web first stretched taut across the planet,
I was hooked for life. E-mail, web browsing, IRC, instant messaging, web
cams -- the Internet brought with it everything I ever wanted out of my
computer! Talk about changing the world, this technology alone has added
thousands of new words and phrases to our lexicon! It sparked a whole
new industry! It changed the face of how we do nearly anything and everything
in our daily lives.
Yeah, I'm a big geek.
But with all of these advances, we've gained just as many new problems.
Just over a decade ago, a virus was something that kept you in bed for
a day or two. Now it can spread through your address book, erase all your
files and cause you hours of frustration in front of your PC. Technical
difficulties used to be something TV stations had; now practically everyone
has them on a daily basis. Junk mail used to be less…pornographic.
How can this be? Technology is supposed to make life simpler, right?
But if you think about it, the automobile was a huge advance in technology
and we still have car trouble. TV was a huge leap forward in communications,
but we still get fuzzy pictures, bad signals, and frankly nothing on the
300 plus channels on the satellite dish.
It's enough to make a geek break down in tears.
So it occurred to me that what people really need is someone to help
them out with this kind of thing. (Shameless plug in 2-3-1…)
That's where I come in. I figure I've got all these years of knowledge
and experience just sitting around, not doing much more than taking up
valuable brain space at the moment. So why not share it with you, the
frustrated public? Why not offer a little tech support to the masses -
something you can use without waiting on hold for an hour. Heck, maybe
even an in-house visit for those particularly pesky problems. What do
you say? Would that be useful?
I thought so.
So let my inner geek be at your service. You can e-mail me with technical
problems at kevin@tumlinson.net or the e-mail below. And if e-mail IS
the problem, give me a call at 979-292-4290 (reasonable hours, ok? I'm
not a 24-hour support hotline!). I'm sure I can help you out with whatever
"high tech" glitch you may be having. Just don't be surprised
if it gets mentioned here in the future.
J.
Kevin Tumlinson is a writer and a schoolteacher living in Lake Jackson,
TX. He will be attending a Big Fat Geek Wedding.
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