Those two words are always firmly placed in one's mind when the quad-speed "cup holder" on the front of their system has broken off, or when the jumpers on your network card decide that they're going to change one dark and stormy night. If your computer is on the verge of heading for that big intranet in the sky, you hope that you can call somewhere and get a halfway competent techie. When you're on the other side of the fence, you can only hope that you can get a halfway competent user. This, apparently, doesn't happen as frequently as one would like.
The probability of the former occuring has once again decreased, due to the fact that recently, Through some strange (yet cute) little occurence (that had something to do with a pair of fuzzy dice, an Ultra Slim-Fast(R) shake and an irrational particle accelerator (at least that's my version of it,) I have been lured into this fast-paced career track. After completing training at the end of this week, I will be one of those guys at the other end of the phone, supporting everybody's favorite kludge... Windows95.
I know what you're thinking. "What is this? How in the heck could a generally sarcastic computer geek possibly be crazy enough to go support a product with a "known bug" list that makes entomologists jealous? Especially after it caused a traumatic crash in front of hundreds of people in three-piece suits? Now he's flipped and is actually working FOR Microsoft?" Well, for one thing, I'm not quite at Microsoft yet. A significant chunk of the tech support for Win95 (as well as many Adobe products) is outsourced to Keane, Inc., who I am now working for. Keane handles over 50% of the technical support calls for Win95. For those of you gawking in disbelief at this point, I offer my official explanation(tm) of how the whole mess came to pass:
It all happened in the middle of the night, sipping an Ultra Slim-Fast(R) as I was hard at work on clearing another droid-infested mine in Descent. Suddenly, the screen went blank. Without even a reboot, The Windows splash screen appeared. Shocked at this development, I quickly jabbed at the power button. This had little effect as I looked to see that the walls of the den began to take on a strangely psychadelic shade of 70-s counter-top orange with avacado green zebra-stripes, with random peace signs and flowers appearing at random intervals. The colors kept changing on the walls before I could remember their names (the 70's were quite some time ago, if I recall correctly. In fact, I was only one-and-a-half years old when the decade ended.) At this point, my cat Butcher walked into the den, and immediately turned neon purple. She then started baying at the full moon as the splash screen disappeared.
In it's place, the floating disembodied head of Bill Gates appeared on my monitor, his glasses bearing weird spiraly-spinny things. In a diabolical (yet still geeky) tone, he began to speak. I missed the first few words, as I noticed that the walls had begun to close in. Butcher began chasing a three-button mouse of unknown orgin across the room. It began raining AOL disks. I figured that at this point, I needed to go check into a looney bin somewhere, although I would have preferred to just pad the walls of the den.
At this point, the floating head slowly came out of the monitor and beckoned. Thinking that as long as I was flipping out, I might as well figure out what the head was saying. It wasn't entirely clear, but I could make out the words "Luke...Join me...We will rule the universe together...We will put Windows on every toaster and espresso machine in the galaxy..."
Fighting the urge to disfigure my face and say something stupid, I threw my conveniently-located pair of fuzzy dice (hanging on the monitor, an absolute necessity when cruising down the infobahn, and a whole lot more retro than a dreamcatcher) at the head. The dice went straight through, and Butcher turned her attention to ripping the dice to shreds with her mysteriously-lengthened (and now metallic) claws. The walls were continuing to close in. Amid the psychadelic decorum, Explorer windows began popping up. Even my 386 (which had previously been sitting obliviously in it's little corner) was now displaying Windows95 very very slowly, taking 5 minutes to bring up the "My Computer" window. I picked up the phone to dial the local sanitarium to make reservations. The phone tried to bite off my hand. I was forced to strangle it.
Now that the phone was (quite literally) dead, I had no apparent recourse left other than to buy an Uzi and take out a post office. I then remembered the pile of obsolete junk I have hanging around in the den. Fighting off a horde of mutant gerbils to get to the box, I managed to find a couple of obsolete motherboards, some TK-50s (if any DEC people remember those suckers,) and a cople of wires. Since my Kill-O-Zap was in the shop for repairs, I hastily pulled a set of plans for a homebrew irrational particle accelerator off then net (which was made no easier by the fact that I could only connect at 300 baud) and built the sucker. (Eat your heart out MacGuyver.)
I then pointed it at the head, fired it up, and warped the thing into the next dimension. Unfortunately, I was left with a bunch of twice-mutated gerbils, requiring another shot. Within nanoseconds, reality returned exactly the way it was before this little incident. This was fortunate, especially since I hadn't bothered to save my Descent game before this incident. At least I now had an idea of how to redo the decor of the den. "I've got to lay off the Slim-Fast," I thought as I settled in to blasting more droids.
Unfortunately, the incident would not go away. I found that every now in then, the walls would bear icons corresponding to those on the Control Panel. Every time I was asked a computer question, the answer was to "FDISK and reinstall." soon, I found myself sitting in a 26th-floor classroom bearing a banner on the wall with large, friendly letters reading "We're built for Windows95." It was then, and only then, that I finally asked the question, "Who in the heck is Luke anyway?"
Whether or not you believe this explanation, the fact remains that I am now less than a week away from being one of the guys on the other end of the line. Oh well, when you're fresh out of high school and spend way too much time sittint in front of a computer anyway, it sure beats McDonald's, and the pay is great for an entry-level job. Yet still I end up wondering how I got into this line of work without being carried away by the nice young men in their clean white coats. I guess it's not like Bellevue is next door or anything...
At the beginning of last week, I began a training program with a group of 24 other brave souls, learning the ins and outs of Windows95, as well as the ups and downs (especially since the classroom is on the 26th floor of the Key Bank Tower in Seattle, and the breakroom is on the 11th floor, requiring frequent white-knuckle elevator trips. One day last week, someone got to spend an hour in one of the elevators when they decided it might be fun to try and pull the doors open between floors. The frequency of such incidents (as well as instances of vertigo) will decrease once we all settle on the 10th floor of the building, where most of the Win95 techies reside. Still, for the time being, people put life, limb and sanity on the fickle mercies of the Otis Elevator Corporation just to get their fix of coffee.
Coffee seems to be the lifeblood of any tech support operation, this one being no exception. (Without their supply of espresso, the who Seattle metropolitan area would probably pull a Rip van Winkle, but that's a different story.) A sign on the door of the breakroom requires that at least four coffee pots (and an English major) be in the break room at all times. If that isn't enough, the lobby of the building houses two rival purveyors of souped-up java, Starbucks and Tully's. For those whose tastes don't turn to coffee (such as myself,) an inspection of their cubicle often turns up a stash of some form of soda. The next time that you call tech support, remember that the person on the other end of the line is likely to be wired in more ways than one.
As for Windows95, it's outward appearance belies the huge, technobabble-filled core of the whole thing. Plenty to go wrong. Just remember that next time your hard disk hits the horizontal wind-pusher, I may be the one trying to fix it for you. Be nice to me, or the immortal words of one of the world's great philosophers (Mr. T) will sum it up best... "You better watch out, sucka."