I am trying to catch up to my son's level of computer literacy.
This will take me the rest of my life. But true geekdome lures me ever onward.
While putting my personal folder on my desktop the other evening, I asked my son, "On a scale of one to ten, ten being staying up all night, how much tweaking would it take to change this icon on my folder?"
He said, "Oh, well, there you have about a four tweak project on your hands."
"Sure, I said, but what if you had two geeks working on it?"
We then began to think of other computer projects and how many geeks and tweaks would be required for each one and this is what we came up with.
Changing the appearance of your desktop :
1 geek, 1 tweak job.
Very straightforward, but remember to click on the APPLY button or you have to start over.
Reconfiguring your internet software :
2 geeks, 4 tweaks .
This will include calling tech support at least three times, ( be nice to the person, they have a hard life) and don't forget to save your password !
Learning to save your work on a floppy for the first time:
You and one remote geek, 5 tweaks.
The high tweak level comes from opening the floppy 3 or 4 times to make sure that the stuff is really on that little plastic thingy. (Excuse me for a moment, I am going to check my floppys right now.)
Opening a file that someone has attached to your e-mail for the first time.
3 geeks, 3 tweaks.
By the way, if you get more than 3 geeks working on the same project, the tweak level goes up due to arguing.
(And then you find out it is the Dancing Baby you have just worked so hard to open. Oy)
Setting up a computer for the first time and installing Windows:
3 geeks, 9 tweaks plus munchies and long distance consultant geek from Alabama, (our friend Tom who sent us the computer)
Remote geeks do not count as added tweaks because you can hang up on them and the prefered munchies of my resident geeks are chocolate and Doritos.
Added note : be prepared, my son tells me that installing windows requires that you re-start your computer 50 times, allow extra munchies for this.
Changing the icons on your desktop:
2 geeks,4 tweaks.
Plus some program called....what else?, Tweak UI which needs to be downloaded from the internet, this adds one tweak.
Learning to use your word processor :
You and 3 geeks. Tweak level off the scale.
Hopefully, one geek will be remote. Hitting the computer does not count as a tweak, and watch out for those default settings !
These of course are only rough guesses. Depending on the arrogance or argumentitiveness of your geeks, and the speed of your computer, the amount of it’s RAM , ROM and RUM… (rum ?) all of which are among the mysteries of the universe. You may come up with different results.
Happy Tweaking !
Better go to the store right now for emergency munchies, just in case I decide to reconfigure anything in my device manager. See ya in cyberspace !