Throwing rocks

So I spent a great deal of Sunday afternoon/evening dealing with my computer. I had absolutely no internet connection. Around 6, I finally decided to call Comcast after restarting my modem too many times to count. The first person I received was some guy who tried to tell me there was a wiring problem. I didn't really believe that. He then told me that techs were only available between 8 and 5. Not happy with that answer. He then said that he would send an email requesting that a tech come between 4 and 5 tomorrow. I received the ticket number. Then, because he was just repeating the same old BS, I hung up. I immediately called back. This time I got a female tech. We determined that the problem was probably my modem. Makes since as the thing is 9-10 years old. I quickly rushed out to Circuit City to buy a new one. After another 30 minutes or so on the phone, I once more had internet connectivity.

What I want to know is why the men are such idiots? Whenever I call my internet provider, the guy I get on the phone is a total bonehead. Then I call back and get a woman and we totally solve the problem. Knowing this, I should have hung up when the bonehead answered. For this reason alone, I should have run from Sports Guy. He works in IT and was always talking to me about tech stuff like I was a complete idiot. Mind you, before I went into teaching I worked for a non-profit. My primary function there was as the network administrator. And I did some updates to the webpage. Obviously I am somewhat tech savvy. Enough so that when I worked at The Death Star, the guys in IT did a no-no. They got tired of me calling to ask them to install software on this one shared computer in the department. They decided that because I was together enough in their opinion, they would give me administrator privileges on that one computer. Such a corporate no-no but they knew I wouldn't abuse the privilege.

I ended up interested in hardware in a roundabout kind of way. I was the only girl on the block growing up who had a motorized erector set as well as the Radio Shack 150-in-one electronic kit. (This was thanks to being the only child of an engineer.) From the latter, I learned how to read a schematic.

I needed to upgrade the RAM on my first computer because I wanted to do a software upgrade but there were so many types available that I didn't know what I needed. So I opened up the machine, read the schematic, and located the chips so that I could take them into the store. The silly salesperson told me that for $50 they could install the new RAM. I looked at him and said, "I removed the old chips. I think I am quite capable of installing the new chips."

After that, I regularly picked the brains of the IT guys at work when we were on break. Then I went to work for my dad. He was letting a friend, who was also retired from a utility, store computer components in the warehouse. I purchased a number of components from him for a new computer. He left me alone in a room for half an hour with the schematic. Then he came back to test it to make sure that I had made the connections correctly. I had. (He and another of my dad's friends also taught me how to run network cabling. Probably because I was one of the few people in the office who was not afraid of walking along the metal braces of the ceiling tiles in the loft area.) After that I did all of my own hardware upgrades as well as rebuilding when necessary. Until my current computer. When I priced out hardware and software, I decided that for once it was less expensive to buy what I wanted instead of building.

Emotion is my downfall. When my computer stops working, I go into a panic and stop thinking clearly. By the time I was talking to the second tech, I realized that the problem may not be the wiring but the modem instead. Turns out it was.

And now for the stream of consciousness part of this post. Because of course thinking of the idiot tech guys made me think of dating and other stuff.

I think part of the reason why I have tried to not post photos of myself on the blog is a matter of three things. (1) Repercussions from the real world. (2) The whole race thing. If I never said anything, folks would just assume I was just another white chick on the web. (3) The fact that experience has taught me that because people think that I'm attractive, or so I've been told, that I'm also dumb as bricks. I had a boyfriend when I was in law school who tried to explain to me that I would not be receiving my full pay for the summer because they have to take taxes out of the money. What the fuck?! I should have dumped his ass when he said that instead of putting up with the non-stop insults for months. And those times that he made me bleed and then thought that I was a bitch for demanding an apology. But I was in a bad place back then and had very little self-esteem when I met him. I guess he thought that he had met a woman like mom. A woman who made a lot of trips to the emergency room before she finally decided that she had had enough.

But back to the dumb thing? Women like Judy Holliday and Gracie Allen were always idols of mine. Highly intelligent women who knew how to act dumb when it was to their benefit. Because it takes a lot of skill to act dumb when you really aren't.

There are some days when I just want to smack the hell out of a man. Now I just think about it. Back then I started fighting back. And sometimes I drew blood. And I knew it wasn't right to be in a relationship with someone who made you feel that it was OK to draw blood. In anger, that is. I didn't date for two years after that asshole. There were two wonderful guys who I couldn't really appreciate after that. One is still a friend. And there were a lot more assholes. So I took another two year break from dating.

And yeah, I know that I'm still picking some real winners out there. But I'm not taking anymore breaks. Because sometimes technology can be my friend. Want to avoid a guy? Caller ID. Want to dump a guy? Text message. Need some entertainment? Craig's list ads.

But even more important was my feeling of disconnection with all of y'all. Yes, I have internet access on my cellphone but it's a pain compared to using my computer. And now that I'm no longer at the cush job at the university, they actually block stuff on the computers at work. So now I'm feeling a little more balanced. The only question now is what is the next step in my quest for global domination.