Problem? I’ll tell you what your problem is…

Your problem is, the problem is never the problem.

It’s been a constant, in therapy and at Geekfarm, that people will come in and say, “My problem is A.” Inevitably, I research that problem and find it to be sort of true, or sort of not, and talk to the client about it, and as the person is walking out the door (in the case of Geekfarm, walking out with the computer), he/she will say something like “it was also Y, did you fix that?”

Uh, you said the problem was A. Not Y. Don’t expect me to know your songs vanished from your iPod when you plugged it in, or to magically fix the issue, when you A) did not mention it and B) did not bring in the iPod and C) in fact you brought in your Office install disks, which I did not need, thereby proving that you really didn’t know what you meant when you described the problem.

Likewise, if you say to me “I keep arguing with my husband” and get annoyed when I ask you a series of questions designed to diagnose what, exactly, is going on and the results come up “looks like bipolar,” don’t get all shirty about my suggestion that you keep track of when the arguments happen and see if it’s not when you’re feeling very UP or very DOWN, and that you speak to a psychiatrist to discuss medicine that might stabilize your moods and prevent you from gambling away the house or sleeping with the pool boy at the Y, all his friends, and half the local football team. The problem is not the arguing at that point. The problem is your inability to face up to your symptoms. You came to someone for an objective, clinical perspective. Stop spitting at me.

Of the two career paths, computer stuff actually starts to look less complicated, doesn’t it? But a coworker failed the MCP exam the other day, and when I think about all the exams it would take to make it in the computer world, I get a headache and long for a chat with a bipolar person.

The problem is a symptom, not the problem. Like the computer I was working on yesterday that wouldn’t install antivirus software — ten minutes of geeking tracked it to improperly installed Windows. Typically, repairing the installation via the XP install menu didn’t work due to wackiness with the key/registration, and left me in endless reboot-restart-glitch-reboot mode. All the splash screens announcing how easy to use XP is get really annoying when you’re trying to install it for the tenth time. The problem is not the person, or the hard drive, but the hideous paranoid copyright crap M$ does to be certain no one pirates their software.

In short - the problem might really be the problem, or it might be a symptom, or you might think you understand what that little error message meant but clearly your command of the Microcrap Help Language is lacking. Yes, it does require telepathy sometimes. No, you can’t have any of my magic beans. Next time mention all the error messages up front and I’ll chat with the little metal box in more detail.

(This ‘you’ of which I speak is not ‘you who read the blog,’ but ‘you who can’t figure out where the CD goes and think the mouse with the really long tail doesn’t need to be plugged in.’ In other words, I’m venting, oh yes.)