This MegaBytes!

So there I was standing in the spot I thought was reserved for those “other people”…those people who seemed to have an electronics gray cloud following them around. After all, I’ve had umpteen computers at work and home over the years, workstation and laptop styles both, and never had any major issues requiring me to contemplate my (lack of) options. But there I was, in line in Geek Squad about to befriend the one person standing between my panic attack and an inkling of hope. JT, my personal “Geek”, turned out to be more comforting than anxiety causing so chalk one up for JT! And as long as we’re dishing out niceties, I’m gonna go against the grain of conventional Midwestern modesty and give myself some credit too.

Let me explain. That morning when I arrived at CFgear’s world headquarters, my laptop decided it wasn’t coming in to work today. I received several messages on the screen. Most of which reminded me of a cross between War Games and my Fortran class at the U of Miami back in the day. So in other words, it was talking to me in some alien language, none of which ever bothered to show me any signs of familiar imagery or that ever-so-annoying Microsoft “noise” that I now embrace as the sound of “it’s working”. Nope. Just a bunch of CRITICAL ERROR code along with hours of churning and occasional freezing. I endured that until mid afternoon when I finally came to my senses and realized it was most likely out of my hands and into that of the experts as I sometimes have trouble with duct tape.

But that’s not why I get credit. No sireeeebob. I get smart guy of the year award because I had everything already backed up on my flash drive (flash drives actually…I’ll soon explain). I’m not your run of the mill “back up” guy though. I have back up of my back up. I sometimes back up my back up and leave it somewhere inconspicuous enough for me to forget where I left it. So worse comes to worse I can always spend a few days digging up old flash drives around my house. I can see it now - like a squirrel in search of all his little treasures so strategically buried about.

So once JT discovered that I was one of the lucky ones who actually prepare for computer disaster, he offered me a few options. One to walk away and never look back at my 13 month old laptop. The other being a diagnostic examination of my temperamental machine. While the former option may seem unfathomable for some, there’s a few things one must take into “account” to “figure” out just why that was the direction I was leaning.

First, I only paid $400 for the darn thing. Second, I had all the information I needed already backed up on my many flash drives stashed around my house (somewhere!). And with the least expensive solution JT presenting registering in at about a few hundred bucks and possibly soaring beyond the $400 I paid for the “hardware” (if there was any need to reinstall software or add hardware such as a Hard Drive), I at least had the “option” of walking away and washing my hands of what could just turn out to be the cause of heart failure should the Geek Squaders dig into things only to return my “I should’ve walked away” laptop accompanied with an $800 invoice.

Truth is, I couldn’t decide. And ALL truth be told, I did have to pay my techno peeps to grab a few files off the desktop that I failed to back up within the last few days. But after three days of trying to find my groove with foreigner computers, I knew it was time to get back to Geek Squad and rescue my fickle friend. So I walked in with an optimistic force field and said with conviction that I just wanted “my” laptop back…that regardless of whether it worked or not, I had ALL the information I needed off it and I really wasn’t mentally or financially prepared to tackle a potentially large bill.

JT politely, calmly and expertly said, “Hey, it’s your computer. You can do whatever you want!” That seems so common sense of a thing to say, but as we all know in today’s service world, it’s hard to find folks that 1) have common sense and 2)are genuinely interested in your “inner peace”. So I guess JT gets to chalk another one up…putting him one ahead of me for backing up my files on flash drives scattered floor to floor.