Clan Sullivan

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If you are like most people, you probably don't get a lot of opportunities to look at life from the eyes of a Nerd. You think of your computer as a fractious semi-evil being that you are forced to allow in your home because it will theoretically do things for you, like send email and check your spelling. You are right, of course. And most of the time your computer will grudgingly obey.

Once in a while, however -- say, every couple of hours -- it will do something that it is not supposed to do. It will moan about exception errors and page faults, and even tell you about them like some kind of unfortunate person with a long medical history. You will be working right along, and without warning it will say: "Ouch! Ahhh...my RAM sure is troubling me today! Over at address 00E3:34A49F! Why, just the other day the doctor was operating on me and he says, 'Herb', he says, 'this here memory has got to be changed, or it'll be paining ya!' and I says, 'Doctor, ain't seven hundred and fifty dollars this week enough?', and he says, 'Well, do as you please, then; but don't blame me if you have a crash this week, and I have to come back and open you up again!'"

At this point, Herb locks up and dies. You give Herb a smack for wasting half an hours' worth of work, and call the computer technician.

This is where I enter the scene. I come through the door carrying a small black tool box full of magic and mysterious devices:

One used philips screwdriver;

One set miniature screw drivers, with two missing;

A ziplock bag containing 5 pounds of assorted screws;

A receipt book with all the receipts gone;

A twist tie;

Electrical tape, and

All the tools that were lying on my desk when the phone rang.

I walk in the door, remove my coat, and take the case off the computer with a professional flair. "Why are you taking the case off?", you ask.

"To replace the CPU."

"I thought you said that it needed more memory."

"Oh, that was you!", I say, putting the case back on with a professional flair. "Ha, ha. I mistook this for someone else's computer. Oh, yes -- How could I forget ol' Herb? Why, if it wasn't for you, Herb, I wouldn't make half my living."

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

I examine the computer. "Looks like you need a bigger hard drive", I say. "You only have about 15 Megabytes free, so if you try and run too many programs at once, your swap file can't grow and you run into problems."

"What does that mean?", you ask.

"About $190."

"Oh".

Notice the subtleties of communication that come into play here between a you, a Normal Person, and the Nerd, growing from the initial misunderstanding and eventually climaxing at that final point of situational comprehension known as Money. Consider the following example of a technical discussion as it appears to the non-nerd:

Nerd: Sir, your fildrib has too many gascobytes used. It will need to be replaced, or...

Computer user: The fildrib? Didn't you just replace that?

Nerd: No. I replaced the milschlib data line. That's the one that connects to the pong board.

Computer user: The milshlib-thingie connects to the pong board?

Nerd: No, the fildrib does. Well, the milshlib data line connects to the pong board, too, but it's indirect; it goes through the pong router. But that's not broken. It's just that you have too many gascobytes in the fildrib. You'll need another fildrib soon. Of course, it won't make a difference right now, you understand; but your computer will be a lot slower, and it might go out at any time. If it goes out, it could take the drive out with it, so...

C.U.: OK, lets' replace it. How much will it cost?

Nerd: The fildrib itself, it's cheap. Maybe ten bucks or so. But I notice that your computer is an AST.

C.U.: AST? Is AST a bad brand?

Nerd: No, not necessarily a bad brand, but it's got a lot of proprietary, nonstandard parts in it. If we replace the fildrib with a standard, garden variety $10 fildrib, we'll have to replace the case too. That's because the case is a weird shape that won't fit most fildribs. We'll probably have to replace the whole pong card, too, because that pong card was built to fit in a weird AST case, not the standard case we'll have to use. Of course, all this is only true if your fildrib is a type AN4 fildrib, which is the more common type.

C.U.: What if it's not? How can we tell?

N.: Well, to tell the truth, it looks like a CN4 fildrib. That means you'll have to replace two things: The pong card will have to go for sure...

C.U.: What's the other thing?

Nerd: The carpet. CN4s hate yellow carpet.

From the Nerd's point of view, though, things are different. Imagine you are the Nerd, and out on a call. You are trying to explain how to replace a roll of kitchen towels to someone who says he is 'technologically impaired':

You: To replace the paper towels, you just pull back on these two plastic flaps and out drops the old tube. Put the new roll in place, release the flaps, and you're done.

Him: Wow, that's complicated.

You: Yes, uh, I'll go through it again. Why don't you write the steps down?

Him: OK, go ahead.

You. First, pull out these two flaps. Pull out on them. They're made of plastic.

Him: Plastic? I heard about that on TV, I think. Is that the same as ozone?

You: [The same as ozone!? What is he thinking?] Um, no, not quite.

Him: OK. I have it. Pull down on the tabs.

You. No, not down; OUT. This will allow the old cardboard tube to drop out of place, and you can put in the NEW roll.

Him: Right. I put the new one in.

[Crinkling noises]

You: No, wait. Let me back up. Each new roll comes wrapped in plastic, for your protection. You must take off the wrapper! Before you use the new roll!!

Him: For my protection? Is it dangerous?

You: Yes, it's highly dangerous because some people eat the wrappers after they take them off. In the industry, we call those people cretins.

Him: Cool.

At this point, his "notes" will read: Pull tabs down [scratched out] over, towel, wrapper [two little arrows] DANGEROUS. creetinn. If you ask him to replace the towels on his own, he will struggle and break one of the plastic flaps off. Of course, this doesn't mean that the person you are trying to teach isn't an asset to society in his own field; just don't let him near your computer without a chaperone.

Consider the old "I was cleaning the hard disk and..." problem. This type of situation arises when an adventuresome computer user discovers for the first time how to permanently delete files from the system. His eyes light up, and he is now a man with a mission: Clean out "all the old files" (everything that's not nailed down) on the hard disk, or die trying. Herb's not saying anything, he's just smiling and waiting for the Man with a Mission to make that fatal click. This is because Herb is not only crochety and sadistical, he is suicidal. Several mouse clicks later, the computer freezes. The Man breaks out into a cold sweat.

"All I was doing was cleaning out the hard drive", he confesses to his Nerd later. "I must have deleted something important. Is commandcom important? I thought, 'Hey, commandcom? Who needs that?' and erased it."

Herb winks at the Nerd, who ignores him. "It's pronounced command dot com, and it's important. It's the command interpreter."

"What does that mean?"

"About $75."

See how there is a lack of communication not only between the Nerd and the Person, but between the Person and the Computer? Non-nerds will never, as long as they live, understand computers from the heart. It's all stated in the Basic Tenet of computers, which says: If you mess with Herb's mind, he will mess with you.

Look at the issue of understanding in the difference between men and women as applied to machines. Now notice how I said a Man with a Mission a second ago, not a Woman with a mission. This is because all men are pre-born with a very small amount of nerd in them! Why else would our Man With a Mission play with the computers' files in the fist place, in clear defiance of the Basic Tenet? Don't get me wrong: women have a mission too, but a Woman with a Mission means she is fed up and about to inflict the machine with death by stapler. In this case, the woman doesn't understand the computer. The man, on the other hand, doesn't understand it either, but tinkers anyway.

Look at cars for an example: A woman can hear someone grind the gears in a manual transmission and all she will think is, "Hmm, looks like rain." A man, however, will wince and grit his teeth. It is not his car, he doesn't know the driver, and if it breaks it's not his problem. Nevertheless, it rends his heart. He can feel for those poor gears, and it makes him shudder.

I have tried to talk to my mom and sister about this. "When you rev the engine right after it starts, the valves crackle because they haven't any oil for a minute. Please don't immediately rev the engine!", I say. "Doesn't it break your heart? Can't you feel for it?" To which my mom and sister laugh. "Feel for that stupid peice of junk? Of course I don't feel for it! Hahahaha!" (Van, by the way, is only the last name of our vehicle. It's full name is Stupid Van, also known as Dangerous, as in "That van is Dangerous! It stalled on me right in front of a Mac truck! Stupid Van!")

My mom has a sewing machine that she uses. Once long ago, it was packaged in a black garbage bag for transportation. My dad, not knowing the contents of the bag, threw it into the back of our van, irreparably changing it's attitude on life. It has not been the same since.

More recently, I happened to be near the sewing machine while my mom was using it and it decided to rebel. It broke the thread or committed some other minor misdemeanor. Quickly, punshment descended! With a swift thwack she wacked the machine right over it's painted metal top with her scissors, leaving a small divit in it's skull. ("Stupid Machine!") Upon examination, it was revealed that this sewing machine had a number of similar scissor divits across the top -- a veritable record of crimes, listed for public examination. Needless to say, we gave her a hard time about beating her machine like this. There is a moral, though: Before you buy a sewing machine, check for scissor divits. It may reveal valuable information about the previous owner.

Mind you, the idea of feeling for machines isn't like the movie Tron, where, if I recall correctly, the hero is sucked into a computer and falls in love with a peice of software convinently shaped like a woman. It's more like seeing someone deface a peice of artwork or throwing away t-bone steaks.

Of course this doesn't apply to modern art, which many critics hold to be indefaceable. Allow me to digress for a moment.

Just last week I saw a teenager spraypainting a concrete wall, and stopped to ask him about his work. "I'm, like, the new city artist", he said. "I go and put up art, like, all over the city for an annual sum of money greater than the average person sees in his lifetime." I asked him what he was working on now. His answer was short and to the point: "Streaky blobs."

How long will we have to wait until people realize that the trashy modern art is, in reality, nothing more than trashy modern art? Imagine what a modern artist goes through in creating art. He wakes up and decides, "Should I walk the dog today, or create art? Naw, I'll create art." He enters his studio and gets out some paint. Perhaps he is feeling hungry because he only had potato chips for breakfast. So, he feels around inside himself for any passions that might be floating about, and realizes that he is hungry. He then squints his eyes, concentrates, and in one violent pang manufactures as much hunger as he can muster. As he does this, he groans and moves his brush spasmodically over the canvas! This gives him his first bit of art. Because he drew the streak while manufacturing hungry feelings, he somehow feels that the two are related. It does not occur to him that what his hand did and what his body felt might be unrelated. This, after all, is art. He draws a bannana to emphasize his point. Is the bannana lopsided and painted in clashing colors? No matter! This is modern art! To the uneducated, it looks like Bannana Dies in Alien Slime. To him it's Potato Chips Make Bum Breakfast. He will sell it for $5000. If it was slightly obscene, it would go for $10,000 and the university library would hang it in the front hall. If it was openly obscene and crude, the National Endowment for the Arts would give him a $1.5 million grant to make another one.

People could deface this kind of art, and no-one would be the wiser. If you defaced modern art in front of a Nerd, or even a Regular Guy, he wouldn't grit his teeth unless you also rammed it down the air intake of his engine.

Herb, of course, couldn't care less. He just sits there with a smirk on his face. This is because he knows nothing about art, much less gritting his teeth, and if you tried to teach him he could make paper maché out of your email faster than you could say "mouse". Such is modern life.