When I was growing up, computers were these wonderful things that sat at the back of the classroom (usually one, or maybe two if the class was lucky). If the school was lucky, there was a “computer lab” where you could have access to the latest and greatest in government approved hardware.

My favorite of the time was the Apple IIe. Our school district had so many of them, they handed ‘em out to classrooms (The school district now uses them as very effective door stops). In fact, I got my start with computers by tinkering with a IIe. My first computer experience was hooking up a printer to a IIe, and the wonder of this experience (plug something in, type a command, and print came out!) completely captured me (I was in first grade), and from that moment on I was completely wrapped up in the wonder of computers.

Anyway, I graduated to PC compatibles and DOS. Trying to get a grasp on this computer thing, I got a copy of DOS for Dummies. Near the beginning of the book, they had a paragraph that had some important words of wisdom. While I don’t have the book any more, the message is still with me: “This book will teach you the basics of the computer, what you can do, what you can’t do, and what you really shouldn’t ever do. However, for anything you don’t know, contact your local computer guru.”

Computer Guru? What is this “Computer Guru”?

According to Wikipedia, Guru means “Teacher, in a religious or spiritual sense.” And as luck would have it, I was able to get into contact with Computer Gurus throughout my life. These were the computer equivalents of the small town mechanic: you pull up for some gas and Harvey the mechanic walks around the corner. “Howdy! I heard you pull up. You’ve got a bit of a timing issue, and I think one of your spark plugs are bad. I can change ‘em out in a few minutes, if you like.” It’s almost like Harvey has a supernatural connection to vehicles. He can hear issues, he can smell problems… he’s one with the Motor Vehicle Force.

The same with the Computer Gurus I knew. You walked in and turned on your machine, they’d make a “Hmm” sound (in computer science, “Hmm” is similar to the Indian sacred syllable “Aum” or “Om”. It’s ritually chanted by a computer guru whilst contemplating your computer’s connection to the Universe), type some sacred symbols into the prompt, then tell you the problem and offer to fix it. Most times they would happily fix your computer in exchange for a pizza; sometimes just getting a cup of coffee from the ever present drip dispenser could net you a small fix. And if you were truly interested in computers, you could even ask to become a follower of the Guru. You’d spend your spare time in his or her office, ask meaningful questions about the nature of the Universe, contemplate ancient tomes and user manuals, and take care of the mundane tasks of life (like formatting floppies or installing software) so the Guru could spend their time connecting with his or her latest project (generally spent looking at an arcane flowchart or design document and saying “Hmm” a lot). You knew, one day, with practice and patience, you too could become a Guru, have followers to format your floppies, and say Hmm.

However, the computer industry started changing. User interfaces became simpler, USB made the promise of true plug-and-play a near reality… the command line all but disappeared. Computers stopped being a specialized device and became a commodity. Computers were EVERYWHERE. And there was this belief that computers will become so “user friendly” that there was no need for the long learning process of the Guru.

And for the most part, this has happened. Programs are very user friendly now. There’s tons of documentation, and most don’t expect you to have a PhD in Computer Science to understand them. Workflows have become “point and click link” instead of “chant this esoteric string into the command prompt”.

However, sometimes I really miss my Guru. For example, just this last week, my roommate’s computer (which I built) started randomly crashing. There wasn’t a specific program that crashed, and it didn’t crash at a set time. I knew something was wrong, so I tried to diagnose. ‘Course, Vista being user friendly, the computer would automatically reboot, without showing the Bluescreen, except for the subliminal hint of blue to let you know that the computer had crashed. See, blue screens have “Technical Information” (it says so right on the screen!)… and user friendly computers (1) don’t crash, and (2) are NOT technical. So I was stuck with a computer that wouldn’t run, and a bored Roommate who just realized he has a $1200 paperweight.

As Dr. McCoy would say, “I’m a programmer, not a hardware doctor!” Hardware issues are right outside my realm of experience. I longed for my Guru. I knew how to diagnose; I pulled hardware, changed orders of cards, swapped the memory sticks back and forth… all the standard religious rituals for modern computers. I knew that if I could but approach a Guru, tell him or her my issue, they could give me leads to check. I didn’t have the money to buy all new parts at random; I had to work with what I had. I knew I had all the data for a real diagnosis… I simply wasn’t able to pick out the error. Working the next day at SoftLayer, I mused about my lack of Guru leadership. At the end of the day, I turned to a coworker and said “Now I get to tinker for a few more hours on this stupid computer. I wish I knew a Computer Guru!”

My coworker smiled and asked what the problem was. I told him and he looked at the ceiling. “Hmm” he said. “Could be a power supply issue. Maybe the power coming out of the supply isn’t clean and it’s resetting the motherboard.” Just then, another coworker walked around the corner.

“What about a power supply?” he asked. The first coworker told him the issue. “Hmm,” he said, looking intently at the wall. “I bet it’s a RAM issue. I bet your ram is bad. Swap it out with some good RAM and see what happens.”

So I went home and crosswired some power supplies. Rebooting the machine, I finally got a bluescreen that crashed itself, locking up the computer and letting me read it. “PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA” “Page Fault?” I thought. “Hmm.” My roommate walked in. “What are you doing, meditating? Have you fixed it yet?”

We went to Fry’s and bought some new RAM sticks. Going home, I popped ‘em in and started the machine. And it worked! It’s been running 6 days nonstop. My roommate was really happy. I was finally able to look up the bluescreen message up on the Internet. Sure enough, that specific error almost always pops up when there’s bad ram.

So, where have all the Gurus gone? Where else? They all work at SoftLayer! Whenever I’ve had a software or hardware issue, or an operating system issue, I’ve found somebody here who knows the issue. They look at the wall, say “Hmm”, sip their coffee or Monster (depending on their level of enlightenment), and give me the answer. The guys here are at one with the Network. The DC guys almost seem to be able to FEEL a power issue or a drive problem before it happens. Slales is able to think about your problems and provide a tailor made solution to help. And Development is where all the action takes place; we get to write all the behind the scenes magic.

“You must be some kind of Computer Genius!” shouts my roommate (lucky for me, he’s gotten to play some Call of Duty 4, so he’s already forgotten the previous week of frustration). “No, not yet.” I respond. “I’m working on it, but I’m not a Guru yet.”

I just got off the phone with my father. Actually, I got off the phone almost 24 hours ago, and I’m just now becoming calm enough to write clearly about it. My father had a problem: he was attempting to use a computer without supervision. Now, my father is a smart man. He has a master’s degree from Harvard, he has “A Brief History of Time” on his bookshelf, and he consistently left clicks when I ask him to right click. The exact nature of the phone conversation is boring an unimportant, except for one thing. My father needed at one point to save a document in MS Word format. Since he has a Mac, he created the document in Pages. He insisted that his efforts had been wasted since (he claimed) Pages was unable to save in MS Word format. I tried to convince him that it could save not only in MS Word format, but roughly 15 others, but he was unrelenting. Finally I got him to check in the Export menu “to humor me,” and lo and behold, that’s where all his Microsoft formats were hiding. Why do people ask geeks for help, then insist that the help provided is incorrect?

I am expecting to spend at least half of my Christmas visit fixing their multiple computers, synchronizing their files, uninstalling the spyware they were tricked into installing, and generally explaining to them that no, the computer cannot just “know what you want.” And at every turn, I expect to hear dissenting opinions and accusations that I am somehow “hurting” or “confusing” the computer by what I’m doing.

My fellow computer geeks all across the country will also be making that periodic tech support pilgrimage. Just talking to the other programmers in the office I’ve discovered quite an arsenal of tools that they will be bringing with them. From special screwdrivers and thumb drives to entire operating systems and (in one case) a whole new computer, we go into the holiday season armed and ready to set ourselves up for future tech support calls.

Some of my more memorable tech support calls have been from relatives, usually helpless in the basic skills necessary to diagnose the problem over the phone. My aunt made one historic call a few years ago. They had just gotten cable internet in their small country town, and after a week or so she was having problems connecting to the internet. So after hearing about the problem I told her I was going to need her to look at the modem. We spent the next few minutes arguing about whether or not she had a modem, and whether or not the problem could have been caused by never having a modem in the first place. After concluding that she did have a modem, and it was still where the technician left it (under the sink, good one technician! bravo sir!), I asked her “what do the lights on the modem look like?” A valid question I thought, and a relatively simple one. I was expecting to hear a short list of the lights’ labels and whether or not the light was lit. What did I get? “Well, they’re about a quarter inch wide and about a sixteenth of an inch…no…make that about three thirty-seconds of an inch tall, they’re spaced about a half an inch apart…why are you laughing!?”

Another fond holiday memory is the argument I got into with my grandmother. She wanted to “get a house page on the wide world web.” I managed to correct her to “world wide web” without offending her, but then the real fun started. She claimed that “the world wide web is better than the internet!” I tried to explain to her that web pages were only a very small subset of the internet, and that the two terms really didn’t describe the same sort of thing. She decided to put it to a vote. Proudly marching into the living room she announced to the 40-so gathered people “raise your hand if you think the internet is better than the world wide web!” They all stared blankly at her for a short time. Sensing victory, she turned to me and screeched “SEE!?” and stormed out.

So this year I will gather my toolkit, my extra networking cables, my CDs with avg antivirus, firefox, spybot, hijackthis, and zone alarm, my copies of windows XP and Mac OSX, two different linux live CDs, my thumb drives, and my overworked laptop, and make the trek down to my parents house. Please, if you are reading this and you didn’t recognize the items in that list, do yourself and the geek in your life a favor: Find out what operating system you run* and go out and buy yourself the “For Dummies” book that corresponds to that operating system. That can be your gift to your geek this year. Show them that you own the book that holds most of your answers, make a promise to them to at least open the book before you pick up the phone, and you will see what it’s like when someone experiences holiday joy.

Plus, you might learn something.

*Look at the top left corner of your screen, if there’s an apple there, proceed to “Apple”. If not, look at the bottom left. If there’s a start menu, proceed to “Windows.” If there’s neither, pick up the phone and call the person who works on your computer and ask them.

Apple: Click the apple, and go down to “About this mac.” There should be an entry on the first screen called “Operating system.” That’s the operating system you have, you’re done.

Windows: Click the start menu button and look at the left side of the start menu. Your operating system may be listed along the left side. If there isn’t, hold down the windows key on your keyboard and press the “Pause” key (you never use it, it’s in the top right). A window should come up that says “system” at the top. Your operating system will be the first item under “system”