I.T. guy magnetism

With the conventional IT guy, magnetism does not generally involve girls. That doesn't mean that IT guys don't get girls, it just means they have to work harder at it. Because IT guys and girls have more of that repelling magnets interaction (not generally by the choice of the IT guys I assure you).

Unfortunately, it would seem, IT guys have a different sort of magnetism. We attract non-IT people. In droves. And they want us only for our minds. I know this from empirical observation, and was reminded of it today.

You know how it goes because you've either been there, like me, or you've been opposite me, finding yourself drawn to me only for your own selfish IT interests. Be it at a computer store, the office, or a consumer electronics environment that isn't pure IT, but involves just enough IT interfacing to make your mind go ga-ga.

When an IT guy enters one of these environments, he tries to keep his mouth shut, or at least stay low-key. The moment he unzips his IT fly, he finds himself surrounded by non-IT people that think he works for Radio Shack. They have questions, he has answers.


Today I was assisting a family friend. He wanted to get a laptop for his daughter, a recent high school graduate that will be starting her full-ride scholarship at the University of Oklahoma in about a month. My friend has no IT knowledge, but has never abused his connection with me for his own IT gain. Instead of just thrusting his IT needs upon me, he kindly asked for my assistance, and I was glad to do it (perhaps I'll regret that later).

So we went to the Saturday Computer Sale to pick-up a refurb Dell laptop. We tried this once before unsuccessfully, but today we started earlier. And we knew pretty much exactly what we were looking for, which is eventually what we got.

What I found was that in the process of asking for all the right components for this laptop (i.e. hey, there's no internal modem in this thing, are you also selling PCMCIA modems?), I had a difficult time keeping low-key (it was packed, and VERY noisy), and before I knew it, not only were several people in the near vicinity asking a free question here and there (they were even tag-teaming... person #2, apparently eavesdropping, asking a follow-up question from person #1), but before long it seemed like the sales people saw that I was drawing fire and used the opportunity to take cover themselves (can't say I wouldn't have done the same myself in the reverse scenario). I think people started to "assume" that I worked there (a common IT guy problem in computer environments... the oh, you must work here rouse).

Just when I thought I had escaped, and moved on to another booth that didn't even sell laptops, what do you know, there was a familiar face. One of the people that was getting lots of free IT advice at the other booth was there at that next one, too, and with more questions!

It's not that big a deal in the sense that I don't mind too much answering the occasional IT questions. But in addition to maybe not being as qualified to do so as others might be, sometimes you come to feel like you have little choice. It's not like you can turn around and say, no entiendo tecnología de información, right? And you don't want to hold out your hand, asking for $100/hour before you can begin to advise them, lest you uphold the Nick Burns perception of IT guys. Of course, various moral codes and aspects of technical-pride keep you from giving out intentionally erroneous IT info. I guess you could do the whole fake cell phone call, oh my the servers are down thing, and take off running, but that only works so many times.

But alas this is one big digression...