Would you trust this man to poke around in your fusebox?

(Taking a quick break from the June Flashbacks today before I forget what I was going to write about...)

If there's one downside (and depending on your situation, it can be a BIG downside) on being slightly knowledgeable when it comes to both computers and automotive thingamajigs, it's that more often than not you'll suddenly find yourself playing tech support when you least expect it. This can be for family, friends, work colleagues, hell even the homeless bloke who yells at invisible people who has a smart phone for some reason.
I'm unofficial tech support using tools I've stolen borrowed from professionals, coupled with minutes of learning straight from Google. And my guarantee is that if I can't fix it, you probably should've found someone with half a clue first ;)  

It's not sexy work. No woman will throw themselves at a guy who sorts out their email problems and now my wife doesn't bat an eyelid when I bravely dive into the router to clear up our wi-fi problems. No porn movie I've ever seen starts with a moustached buff IT guy who has come to 'clean ze Internet cache' and 'Have you tried turning it off and on again' is not a pants dropping catch phrase (if it once was at all.)

I bet when you fix this you drown in sex yes?

It usual starts with 'If you've got a spare sec' and ends hours later with less hair than you started with...

At least the technical problems I've helped solved had a crack at in the last few days has been varied:


THE MOTHER (IN LAW) OF ALL TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

Bless her cotton and nylon blend socks, my mother in law and technology should just not cross paths. Ever. I should replace her phone with a walkie talkie and her laptop with a blackboard when she's not looking and run for the hills before she asks how to recharge the chalk. Over the weekend I went for a family meal of lasagna and laughs and ended up with a small shopping list of things that 'could you fix when you have a spare moment.' Firstly she wanted a usb modem unlocked, so I found a rough guide and proceeded to unlock it to accept the new sim. Since reception in this fairly new house was rubbish, I had to test it outside on the mailbox making me look like I was checking for mail in the letter box...with a laptop.
The Tesltra Elite wireless jiggy didn't have a password and could I please put one on. Easily done but I'm sure I'll get a text shortly asking what that password that she supplied actually was.
Then there was a short guide on how to use iTunes (I really should write one down because I've shown her a couple of times but it's a long time between song updates I guess).
That night I got a text saying her new usb modem didn't have signal...gah...(turns out it was less powerful than the one she was using.)
There'll be more, bet your house on it.


SO LOW YOU CAN'T GET UNDER IT  

My on air boss has quite nice taste in exotic cars which explains the Rx8 when I first met him and then the BMW Z4 he cruises around in now. However the fuse blew in the cigarette lighter (he uses it a lot for phone charging) and since I have a passing interest in all things automobiles (just a passing interest, see Driveanotherday.com for more details) could I a) work out where the hell they put the fuse box in these things and b) change over whichever fuse has blown.
Thankfully brilliant German engineering put the fuse box in the most accessible area I've ever seen in any car, right behind the pop down glove box. There's two tabs in the pack of the box - push them both in and the whole things swings down to expose a very easy to get to selection of fuses. I gave him a quick lesson on how to get to the box and which fuse to change if it blew again and called it a day. Easy!

See, I fixed it!

Until a couple of hours later when he asked if I could take a look at the company Kia's fuse box as somehow he blew that fuse out too...gahhhhh!!!


THEATRE OF THE MIND

My co-host has experienced the glory that is a home theatre personal computer (or HTPC for short) at a friends house and has suddenly decided that he wants one in his lounge room. Trouble is that he knows as much about HTPC's as I know about the inner workings of intricate dance routines on So You Think You Can Bustamove...and I've been reading about them for a bit now (in the hope that one day I'll finally get off my ass and build one instead of just reading about them) which means I'm now the go to guy for every single question he has.
Just this morning I had to explain that no you probably couldn't walk into JB HiFi and pick one off the shelf as most of them are home built. Yes there are probably pre built ones you can buy. No I don't know where you could pick one up today because you'll probably lose interest in them tomorrow. You'll need this. No this. No not that, that doesn't have HDMI. Yes HDMI. Well yes you could add it later. Could I do it? Busy sorry.
I'm sure he'll ask all about them in three months time again.

Funny thing happened at the farm the other day...

If I ever change career paths, I'm going to pretend that I know nothing about computers and even lesser about cars and you should probably only ask me anything pertaining to exotic root vegetables of the Caribbean. Your email isn't working? Sorry, too busy with this potato.
Sure I won't be the lifeblood of any party honestly but at least you won't find in out the back in the party's car park attempting to install someones mp3 player...