I have become known at my library as the dude who knows how to deal with computers. I’m not in IT, and I don’t know shit about hardware, but I’m pretty good at figuring out what is causing an error, or how to perform a task in a specific program.
I have also joked repeatedly that all I really need to do is stand near one of the student computers in the library and it’ll start working again. I’ve no idea why, but for some reason errors that happen repeatedly just go away whenever I come to look at the computer.
Last week, I helped a student who was having issues with his laptop. Multiple programs had frozen, but he hadn’t saved his paper, and luckily I was able to get it working long enough for him to save three straight days of work that he otherwise would’ve lost. It’s worth noting that I spent most of the time I was trying to fix it whispering, “C’mon, baby, work with me” at his computer, because… just because, okay. It’s what I do, it works, don’t question it.
Anyway, I was around late at work last night, waiting for my ride, when the student worker came back to my office and said there was a small group of students looking for me, and could I give them a hand even though I was off the clock?
Sure, why not.
I came out to find a group of six students, including the guy I helped last week, at a table clustered around one laptop. I rolled up, said, “Hey, what can I help you with?”, and the guy said, “Can you just hang out here for a second?”
Sure, my dude. I’m off the clock, I’m listening to a podcast, I can chill at a table with your group until my ride shows up, if you want.
So I spend some time flipping through my phone, only half paying attention, figuring they’re finishing something up and they’ll ask their question as soon as they’re done. But after a minute, the guy says, “It worked!” and there was a chorus of excitement from the rest of the group. They all thanked me, and excused themselves to go back to class.
Turns out they had a group presentation, and the laptop they were trying to present from had froze up on them. Not knowing what to do, this guy apparently told his group there was a computer wizard in the library, and that merely being in my presence might be enough to fix it. To be fair, he… was not wrong.
I just find it delightful that this has become such A Thing that students are now seeking me out. Not to ask a question, or get some help, but just to stand near their device and share my mythical computer-fixing aura. It’s like being a terribly benign cryptid.
You’re the Installation Wizard’s cousin
Okay, but I’ve had a similar experience.
I’m in college, and on class registration night, the wifi on campus regularly gets overloaded by the hundreds of students making the exact same demand of it at exactly midnight.
My freshman year, when we were registering for the second semester classes, my roomates and some of our friends were hanging out in my dorm to have a registration party (just 6 or 7 of us drinking cream soda floats and watching AHS while we waited for midnight). And we’ve all got our class numbers ready to go, and it’s really just a matter of who can get them all down and hit submit the fastest, and then we’re met with a loading logo and swearing violently as we pray to the internet gods that that one class we have to take isn’t full already, until the internet catches its breath and displays what filled up in the millisecond longer it took us than someone else to hit a button.
We had this guy, we’ll call him Dave because that sounds like an IT name, who immediately got into all his classes with no hesitation. Our buddy Edgar shows Dave his laptop, which still shows it’s loading, and Dave touches the laptop, just turning the screen so he can see, and suddenly Edgar’s screen goes to his full schedule, with all his classes on it.
We go insane. We all shove our laptops at Dave, and he, already knowing his role as the tech god for the next 10 minutes, starts touching laptops. Our schedules pop up successfully immediately.
There are choruses of swearing and “did you get your in?!” Throughout the hall, and neighbors poking their heads into rooms with their laptops or tablets, demanding to know if the internet is working for us.
And then we’ tell them about what Dave’s blessing and Dave is promptly taken by our fellow students and comes back 10 minutes later trailed by random yells of “thank you!” and carrying some candy a few neighbors had left over from Halloween that they gave him as thanks.
So yeah. Tech wizards are rare and wonderful. Dave wasn’t into computers. I think he was a psych major