Sunday, August 06, 2006

It's All About Me Me Me

DC is the resident computer expert in our circle of non-computer-literate family and friends. He’s entirely self-taught, which I find impressive. He’s self-employed and he manages his own three-computer business network with a tenacity and dedication unparalleled in the corporate world. He throws himself into it with wild abandon. Everything works perfectly all the time, and if it doesn’t, he works non-stop until it is set right again. And he loves helping other people with their computers too. He’s more than happy to take a look at any obsolete, virus-infested, Windows NT4 running machine owned by anyone we know. Friends of friends are fine too. He’ll get an antiquated machine working again, or he’ll assist in ordering a brand new one off the web. He’ll cobble the available hardware and software together to make something usable. He’ll find a hard drive here and a video card there and transform a dinosaur of a machine into a sleek well-performing greyhound capable of handling the latest in video game innovation. And he enjoys doing it. You can see the excitement in his eyes when someone mentions that they’re having a problem, or they need to get a new computer for their kid and does he have advice? He does! He’ll spend every spare hour he has for the next week getting any random computer up and running.

He also has another characteristic that is applicable right now. He’s extremely bad at estimating how long it will take him to do something. Whenever he’s embroiled in a task, work or play, and he tells me how long it will be before he’s done, I always double the number he gives me. Sometimes doubling isn’t enough, but it at least it gives me a ballpark number, and increases the amount of time he has before I start getting pissed at him for keeping me waiting around.

The final bit of relevant information is that DC does all the cooking that gets done in this house. I don’t like to cook (unless it’s cookies, cakes or brownies), and I usually avoid it if I can. And, I certainly don’t help DC cook. He is strictly a solo cooker. He has his system and another body in the kitchen only slows things down.

These three things are all converging into a perfect storm, even as I write. About two hours ago, DC was just about to start dinner, when a friend of his called for some computer advice. He was expecting the call, and had told me that it would take about ten minutes at most. Just a couple of questions. Ten minutes, that’s all. Ten minutes.

Well, he's still on the phone. And like I said, that was two hours ago and I’m hungry and that lasagna is not going to make itself! It’s 6pm now, and the advice well is not running dry any time soon, so I’m betting it will be at least 9pm before we eat. By then my blood sugar will have dropped dangerously low and I will be a raving, irrational bitch. Of course, I would rather whine about it than go downstairs and nibble on a little something to keep me going until dinner is served. And I’d certainly rather whine about it than go downstairs and make dinner myself, or even go get some take-out. There are so many options open to me right now, but no no no, the only acceptable option is for him to stop helping people who really need the help and get down there and make dinner for me, a grown woman who’s perfectly capable of feeding herself.

That’s all I have the strength to write just now. I’ll post again tomorrow if I don’t die of starvation before then.

Sincerely,
Pouty McSelfish

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