This is my world

[featherynscale]

My relationship to computers, as summed up in a conversation between me and kittenpants last night:

I don't actually know anything about how computers work. I'm not educated in the field, I don't know all of the terminology, or have any standardized background in the things at all. I do, however, have a kind of Cargo Cult proficiency with them -- I repeat rituals I have witnessed being successful in similar situations, I pray to them and bargain with them and curse them, and kludge together unlikely fixes based on my limited and probably skewed understanding of principle. I am a sort of computer witch doctor. This behavior is, oddly enough, successful about 75-80% of the time, which is better than you can get from most tech support, so I call it good.

Comments

[diermuid.livejournal.com]

I've done a lot of training... and not much of it really helps with fixing decrepit machines as much as it goes over advanced features and what is compatible with what.

For old machines where the person doesn't have the software nor do they want to loose -anything- and they have little money and they just want something fixed that stopped working "for no reason", I'm in the same boat as you... poke around, try stuff that's worked before, take notes, drink coffee. 8-)