Chronophage.net Blog

[Originally Appearing on http://blogs.iphouse.net]

The three most dreaded words a support technician can hear are “It Worked Yesterday.”

That phrase has a hidden implication trailing after it “…so what did you do?”

Well, usually, we didn’t do anything. People can accept that a car, or a furnace, or a TV can break someday out of the blue. We all know that those are machines, and we have some idea of how they work, and that they do break. The problem is, not a lot of people realize that computers are machines too. Sure, If you ask someone if a computer is a machine, they’ll say yes. However, if you show them the inside of a computer tower, they’ll usually shake their head and say “Is that it?”

It’s been clear, over my many years of tech support, that people think their computer is a magical device. And since it’s magical, it should work a certain way. Forever. And when it stops working, some mysterious outside forces conspired to break it.

My brother thinks this way. To him, a computer does what it’s supposed to, and then it stops. Then he calls me, and to him, I cast a few magic spells, prod at it chanting while waving a censor of incense in the air, and it magically stops working. They I mumble in a strange, arcane language about what went wrong. He smiles and nods, and the magic box runs again. For a while.

But when it breaks, it’s the ISPs fault, or his wife “touched something” or a computer virus caused his machine not to power on.

I tell him, it’s not any of those things, it’s him. It’s us.

Computers are beholden to humanity. They suffer from our lazy programming, our dusty houses, our animals that chew on their wires, our neurotic ticks causing our legs to kick them. Computers suffer this day in and day out while we curse them, berate them, and blame them for everything we all ultimately did or failed to do. Did install an anti-spam program. Is your computer is slow now? Did you visit customcusors.biz.co.tg? Is your hard drive always making noise? Did you forget to update your operating system? Is your email program acting erratically?

Do yourself a favor. Update your operating system. Blow out your computer’s fans and vents once and a while. Don’t install every security program ever made. Don’t install trinkets that were programmed by the lowest bidder. Treat you computer well, and it’ll treat you well.

Well, until it magically breaks one day.