“The Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader

MAYBE BEING AN ANACHRONISM IS NOT A BAD THING, AFTER ALL!

(Written 29 April 1998. Published in the Neighborhood Journal. Posted 25 June 2009.)

We live in a state of paranoia. Especially where computers are concerned.

How many of you, for example, put passwords on your computer? Come on, raise your hands. Raise them up. Don't be shy. I see; just what I thought. A whole lot of you.

How many of you will only allow some official guy to touch your computer? Come on, raise those hands again. Just what I thought.

We are becoming victims of our own paranoia. We buy fancy schmancy programs to tell us exactly what to do, but when they crash, well, we are really bumming. I have seen this happen one to many times. I am told I am an anachronism. I have four computers, and not one of them, not one, has Windows 95. Not one of my computers is a Pentium, no sir. And not one of them has a password, either.

Two of my computers are DOS machines. I don't have to worry in the least about security on those computers, because, well, quite frankly, there are so few people anymore who know anything about DOS. I've noticed that when I have worked on DOS, others' first reaction is fear, fear that I will completely screw something up, followed by awe, awe that I actually understand what I am doing. Talk about AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to those who have grown up on Windows and you will be met with blank expressions.

The sad thing is, supposed "computer literate" people understand so little about how computers think, that when a catastrophe happens, like a complete hard drive failure, they must call for the cavalry. Of course, this is a great deal for computer technicians everywhere. What other profession do you know of where people are completely and utterly dependent upon you and only you, besides dictator? I know of folks who will get a second medical opinion, but when it comes to their computer, their computer guy's word is gospel. He is infallible.

I guess I should consider myself lucky, then. I've had both of my 486 computers act up on me recently, and, with the notable exception of being able to locate the appropriate programs to restore my systems (Sorry, Dan), was pretty much able to correct my own computer deficiencies. Of course, I like to file my programs in a way that passwords are not necessary. Call it the nonsensical nomenclature approach. The only problem is, while others may have no way of finding files, well, neither do I, without basically searching every single file I have.

My filing system for diskettes involves not labeling a single solitary disk. The problem with this system is that when I need to find a program, I have to search through about a hundred diskettes or so to find what I need. Great system if you want to prevent "unwelcome guests" from snooping; lousy system if you have a hard drive crash and are trying to find the correct files to restore it. Which is exactly the situation I found myself in recently.

Was working away on one of my 486s, when suddenly it locked up. After performing evasive maneuvers (in the form of rebooting the thing), I, to my horror, discovered that my computer had amnesia. Of course, not being one to panic, I immediately called Dan the Computer Man to see if I had the appropriate diskette to restore my computer's identity. (Why search through a stack of diskettes when you can have someone tell you exactly where what you are looking for is?) After four sometimes very frustrating hours, my computer regained its cognitive ability and has not had any episodes since.

Unfortunately, there are those I know, who, well, how can I say this kindly, don't know beans about computers. Being the good neighborly man (or is that a schmuck?) that I am, however, I have allowed them to pick my brain. As I have typed this column, I have received an urgent phone call from a friend asking me how to bypass a network server that has crashed. Me, being the schmuck that I am, told him.

If I had a penny for every time.... Hmmm...maybe I should've went into computers, instead.

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