Computer genius

I used to think I was so smart. I guess that outlook changed when I went to High school in NY. Having previously attended a religious school where people were convinced in the existence of a god and spent a great deal of time on rituals devoted to this belief, followed by a public school in the Bronx where I only had to show up for class to blow the curve for everyone, the Bronx High school of science was a lesson in humility.

Conscious of this realization, I went through the next part of my life convinced that everyone had the same potentials, only requiring the desire to learn. Then as I entered the “real” world my perception changed yet again.

I have met some incredible people over the years, and am more then proud today to call many of them friends. However there are other individuals who vex and perplex me. Here are a few amusing examples.

One of the QA testers working on Saga is a great guy with the best of intentions. I’ve given him some advice which I believe to be solid and try to give him opportunities to prove him self. Sometimes however my plan backfires, such as the other day when I gave him the keys to my car with the task of taking a stack of promotional material to Kinko’s for a print test. It was previously my belief that anyone with a driver’s license can get into any car without a clutch and drive 2 miles. I was proven wrong when the poor guy returned flustered and apologetic claiming he had driven my car to the shop in first gear without realizing it.

I’m not really sure how anyone can drive in first gear without realizing that something is wrong. What really puzzles me is that my car has a Tiptronic transmission and the gear shift only goes down to Drive. In order to go above 10 miles an hour in first gear a person would have to purposefully shift the car into Tiptronic then constantly hit the down gear every 5 feet to keep the car from up shifting. I highly doubt this was done. Yet the poor guy is convinced a magical first gear appeared on my gear shifter and is now missing.

This is actually only mildly amusing when I consider the sales guy who helped me buy a new cell phone for one of my staff this evening. After picking my phone, I expected to check out quickly and get back to the office. Cricket a new phone company that has unlimited calling, does not require a contract so there was nothing for me to fill out, nor any plans for the sales person to sign me up for.

I stood in the middle of a mall teaming with Christmas shoppers, afraid for my life watching this young man press what seemed like the same set of keys over and over for about 5 minutes with a blank unchanging look on his face. He didn’t seem to be on any sort of drugs so I expected his expression to change as he got closer to completing my order, yet after 10 minutes, he wore the same blank stare and continued to hit what I realized was the same 2 keys over and over.

Finally my curiosity got the best of me and I stepped over to his side of the counter to explore the situation further. At this point I should have taken a video with my cell phone because there is no way without knowing my distaste for lying that anyone would believe this story. The guy was standing there with a cursor in the price paid cell, trying to enter the correct amount, unfortunately, every time he would hit a key, the cursor would move one cell to the left. At which point he would press the right arrow key to get back into the correct position and repeat the process.

I observed this behavior in amazement for awhile longer, before reaching over and hitting the Num Lock key. His only comment after completing the transaction was, “Wow, you must be really good with computers”. "Ya something like that", I replied as I shuffled away.