On my terms

When I decided for myself that machine programming is what I want to do, little did I know that I would also have to serve as the global help-desk of all the relatives, non-technical friends that I have.

Ring, Ring.. Ring, Ring..

Me: Hello..
Uncle: Hey Mayank, How are you?
Me: I am fine (Come on, tell me what you gotta ask)
Uncle: Beta, we have run into a trouble. My laptop has got stolen.
Me: Hmm.. (This is going to be tricky one)
Uncle: I had my data on the hard drive (see I know quite a bit, don’t think of me like other ignorant relatives of yours who trouble you with non-sensical questions)
Me: Hmm.. (Ofcourse)
Uncle: Tell me of some technology with which I can take data out of that. I understand we can’t do much about the laptop.
Me: (OMG) So you want to retrieve data out of the hard drive of your stolen laptop
Uncle: Yea.. (Tell me, quick!!)
Me: It does give me ideas about a smart bootup application, but now that nothing of that kind is already installed on your machine, I am afraid that I have no idea about how can that be done.
Uncle: Hmm.. Come again.. (Put it simpler, your nerd)
Me: No, nothing can be done. (I know putting it that simple, I am risking my reputation)
Uncle: But you work in Adobe, right? (You useless fella!!!)
Me: Oh yea, that’s there. (Don’t tell me you are gonna suggest them to throw me out because i can’t retrieve data from a stolen machine)
Uncle: Well then, I think I will speak to a technician I know.
Me: Ok uncle, let me know if he has a solution.
Uncle: Yea, sure..

Want to hear one more, here it is.
This happened once when I was visiting a friend.

Friend: There is a problem in my machine, whatever i type appears in the reverse order.
Me: Wow!! Since when has it started happening.
Friend: It started happening yesterday. Since then it’s like almost impossible to work on it.
Me: Ofcourse, getting used to composing emails and sentences in reverse order will take time.
Friend: This is not funny dude.. Please have a look
Me: Well this looks like a keyboard issue.
Friend: I don’t know.

<we go to the machine, and he shows me typing a few words. The cursor stays at its place as you type, so of-course the words come in reverse order>

I guessed that the left arrow key of the keyboard has got stuck. I picked up the keyboard, and smashed it once. It started working fine.

Friend: (What crap!! That’s not the kind of solution i expected. It’s a computer not a bloody scooter.) Isn’t there like a better solution, you know…
Me: Sorry dude, I wish if I could have achieved this via some fancy software.

He was thoroughly disappointed :). And as you can imagine, my so called reputation went for a toss yet again.