Dammit! I admit it. I'm a frikkin' geek. It burns me to say it, but I'm actually a geek. I do geekish things, say geekish things, and talk like a geek.
Someone can call me and say, "Hey, my computer isn't connecting to the internet well. Why?" I immediately think of at least 13 things that could be going wrong - connected to wrong network, connected to a public network, firewalls, network card errors, something related to the wireless card, is the computer even wireless?! Then the challenge becomes trying to help the person figure out what went wrong and figure out ways to ask without sounding overly geeky and losing them in the first 3 words.
Recently, I was at work where I have a VLAN set up on a switch which is connected to a specific type of router that distributes a T1 line through my VLAN (I'm pretty sure) and it's all connected to a MIB for our VoIP access but the router and VLAN will only be used as a backup for our data. So all of this is tied into my tiny little Linksys router. I'm going to venture a guess and say that made no sense. Sadly - I would have looked at you like you were crazy if you said most of that to me a year ago. I would understand VoIP and maybe VLAN (but that would just be an assumed understanding).
Now, I'm 22 years old and know way more than I want to about networking, static IPs, the command function, utilizing remote desktop, PINGing, and so many other things that could give me insta-head ache if I let it. I had a dude from NYC call me the other day in response to a situation where I had VoIP phones that were smoking. He works for a company that is geekerific. He says, "Kristen, we're not sure this problem could actually be due to faulty equipment." Being slightly snarky, and not feeling that well that day, I responded, "Uh huh, ok. Yeah, it's the equipment." He said, "Alright, well, let's just see." He then asked me a series of questions which were all intended to imply that I had set up the network wrong. I had done everything correctly. He was shocked and sent me new equipment. He said he was surprised and asked me, "What was your major?" I almost didn't want to respond - he didn't even know that I've gone to college. I said, "Interpersonal communication."
That is when I realized I should have gone into a technical field like computer science. I apparently suck at talking to people. For gosh's sake, I said, "Uh huh, ok." In a professional setting!
I network and solve computer issues better than I communicate.
Crap.
I'm a geek.
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