Shower thoughts are my way of describing well... the way you can be in the shower, just minding your own business - shampooing or shaving you legs... when all of a sudden, you get this great idea or concept or something. But there you are - in the shower. You can's just jot it down in a notebook because the soap will get into your eyes. You can't punch it into your data buddy because nobbody's that geeky to bring their data buddy into the shower with them, and you can't record it on a tape player since the electromagnetic resonance of all the pipes in the room will render any magnetic recording media useless and full of Teletubbies reruns.
Of course, no matter how great and world changing the shower thought is... you will forget it somewhere between the rinse and toweling off stage. The only hope for the retention of shower thoughts is to immediately Jump out of the shower dripping water and suds everywhere, then make a mad naked dash through the house and lunge upon your notebook (thus taking it by surprise) while simultaneously brandishing a sharp #2 in a manner reminiscant of Norman Bates. Begin writing in a foreign language that you mastered last week while reading the back of a canadian chese food product package, and sing the Star Spangled Banner backwards at double speed to keep the brain so busy that it forgets to forget the shower thought. Then and only then may you have a chance at STR (Shower Thought Retention.)
(The preceeding rant was the product of an attempt to keep a shower thought about somethingorother, and ending up writing this drivel about shower thoughts instead... hmmm, guess maybe the Star Spangled Banner should have been sung in German with a funny cartoon voice.)
Everybody has a computer guru. It could be your lover, your best friend, a co-worker, or even your older brother. It varies from person to person, but if you think about it, you have a computer guru too. This is nothing to be ashamed of.
Your personal computer guru is that person in your life that knows more than you do about all things computer. They are the one you go to when your dial-up TCP/IP doesn't want to let you actually dial-up. They are the one you go to when you can't get windows to recognize that new scanner you just bought. In short, your computer guru is your personal tech support person.
My computer guru is Dawn. She has been programming computers before I could spell the word computer. She has decades of experience. She has changed her answering machine message to indicate that she would be happy to call you back... so long as it has NOTHING to do with computers.
Dawn has a computer guru too.
Surprised?
Don't be.
The whole point is that EVERYONE has a computer guru, even computer gurus... It's all about how high up on the food chain they are. I am Reggie's computer guru, Dawn is my computer guru, Kelly is Dawn's...
Ad Nausium...
I believe that there is that one ultimate computer guru... Guru Prime. Whoever he or she is, they are so digital, they have microchips implanted in their brain. They eat, breathe, sleep, and drink computers. I think someday that I would like to go on a pilgrimage to find this holiest of all hacker-nerd-dweebs. I would like to ask them one simple question:
What the hell was Microsoft thinking when they came up with Microsoft Bob?
Okay, so it's not really that great a question, but nobody else has ever even come close to giving me a satisfactory answer.
Okay, so it's a stupid theory. Well, that's just the way I think.
We are all (hopefully) familiar with the concept of karma. To sum up the traditional view:
There are traditionally two types of karma: good and bad. When you do something bad, you generate bad karma, and that bad karma can only be erased by generating good karma. In the religious pantheons that include the karma concept, such as Hinduism, there is usually an ultimate goal (enlightenment, nirvana, etc…) and that goal requires that one generate a sufficient amount of good karma - usually over many lifetimes (reincarnations)
Computer karma is a little different. You still have good and bad, but it is divided amongst several flavors. You have hardware karma, software karma, technician karma, and upgrade karma. The relationship between the two is a little less concrete than between good and bad karma. There is very little correlation between any form of computer karma and either computer knowledge or general intelligence. I have met some truly gifted individuals who could, merely by the laying-on-of-hands, could crash and burn a RAID-1. (a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks level 1 - A method of storing vital computer data in such a way that it is extremely difficult to cause irreversible damage.) Conversely, I have met individuals who wouldn’t know the on button from their shirt button, but when a system goes down, they miraculously recover with no data loss… when questioned, they reply, "I pressed all the buttons, and it started working again."
Unlike traditional karma, it is not really possible to consciously change your karma from good to bad. Computer karma of all types seems to be a sort of natural phenomenon that is controlled by forces far greater than we are, and on which, we can have but little affect.
Hardware Karma is your ability to make computer hardware devices function correctly. You can have varying amounts of hardware karma ranging from bad, (You couldn’t plug and play a vacuum cleaner without blowing every electrical circuit in your house.) to good. (You could throw together an 800-user local area network with spare parts from a flea market, and have everything work on the first try.)
Software Karma is your ability to use, configure and install all manner of software. Your software karma can also range from bad (you couldn’t make dos boot from a floppy disk) to good (you can write a 1000-line program in assembler and have it work perfectly on the first try.)
Technician Karma is a subset of computer karma that is only found among IT / IS professionals. The best way to describe technician karma is by example: Say a user is having difficulty with a computer in their office. They may have been trying to get it to work properly for hours. They finally give up and call Information Systems, and ask for a tech. The tech arrives, and there mere presence makes the system work properly - without them even touching it. Bad technician karma is also best described anecdotally: It starts out much the same as good technician karma. A user is having a problem with a computer or other complex machine. They call a technician, but when the technician shows up, the device functions properly. After spending a half-hour trying to make the problem reoccur, the technician decides this is a case of good technician karma, and goes back down to their cave to fill out the appropriate report, only to find that the problem mysteriously reoccurred as soon as they were out of earshot. Bad technician karma usually comes with a form of warrantee. An example is: The problem will not reoccur until the technician is 50 miles or 50 minutes away. (Being an aforementioned IT professional, I know only too well of good and bad technician karma.)
Upgrade Karma is also a subset of hardware and software karma. It deals with one’s ability (or inability) to upgrade software and / or hardware on an individual computer. Unlike the other types of computer karma, upgrade karma belongs to the individual computer, and not to the individual attempting the upgrade. Each computer starts out life with an amount of upgrade karma. This amount varies from computer to computer, but functions the same. Every upgrade - hardware or software, uses up some upgrade karma. When the computer’s upgrade karma is expended, it is not possible to upgrade the system further without it imploding. (Note that there is but one way to restore the upgrade karma of an expended machine: sell or give it to someone else. Apparently, the computer will give the new owner the benefit of the doubt. The hardware / software karma of the individual doing the upgrade does have an effect upon the amount of upgrade karma expended on the individual upgrade. Thus someone with good hardware karma may be able to eke out several more rounds of upgrades from a computer than someone with average hardware karma.
This is any object (computer, car, axe, etc...) that used to belong to someone else, and has had every part replaced at least once since it left its original owner. So that you end up with a situation like this:
Your grandpa had an axe that he used for his entire life. At some point, it passed along on to your father. Over a period of twenty or so years that your father has used it, the handle has been replaced three times, and the head has been replaced twice. When your father hands it down to you, it is somehow still "grandpa's axe" even though your grandpa never touched so much as a single molecule of the axe in its present state.
I have probably not explained it very well, but those are the breaks.
My theory is that everyone has several superhero abilities. Some unique, some more common. My own known personal superhero abilities are:
This list is always expanding. As each person goes through life, they discover more and more of their innate superhero abilities. You should examine your life to see where your abilities lie. You will find some powers that are good and some that are bad. The only advice that I can give is not to abuse your abilities, except where you can profit financially or emotionally.
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