On Computer Glitches

Most of us who’ve been around computers for a long time – let’s say 10+ years – are familiar with the following: Your computer has been behaving like a champ, and one morning, you sit down in front of the keyboard and discover that everything has turned to a combination of suet and cheese.

Nothing makes any sense, so you start down the familiar trails of detecting what might have gone wrong. In many cases, this takes hours upon hours, and when the glitch comes to light, you are embarrassed to confess to yourself that

a. you hit the wrong key or
b. you dumped the wrong software or
c. you should never have let Uncle Charlie check his email on your machine or
d. you operated the machine while under the influence and should have arrested yourself or
e. you might just have taken a second or two to read the damn manual (or download it

and read it, the more common situation nowadays.

What’s far worse, far far worse, is the realization that the solution was right there, fourteen inches from the end of your nose, and you didn’t see it until you had raced around all the well-trod “paths of fruitlessness.”

When you report this problem and its solution, you never, repeat never, talk about the amount of time expended in the search for the solution. Rather, one talks about the elegance of the solution, the incredible (and nearly instantaneous) detective work required.

One never admits that one was like Miss Marple lost in her own village, Poirot on a bender, or Lovejoy unable to identify an east Anglian antique. As the probable villain in the cause, one chooses to be the hero in the solution…easy when one works alone.

Or am I the only one who suffers from this occasional affliction?

Something similar happened yesterday. I had a new satellite dish installed last week. Because it’s still winter here, the crew used a dish in a bucket of concrete as a stop-gap until the ground thaws, and a permanent installation can be made. Worked like a champ, it did…until yesterday morning.

I made sure the dish hadn’t blown over and then began blaming myself, pretty much working through a through e above, just in a slightly different context. After hours of looking at satellite azimuths and transponder assignments, I was getting absolutely nowhere, and frustration was mounting rapidly.

Time for a break, I thought, and I walked out to the end of the drive for the mail. It was a pleasant day, and I noted that much of the winter’s snow had melted as I came back to the house.

Ba-dum- bum!

The snow had melted, changing the position of the dish, and throwing it out of alignment. Ten minutes and some compass work later, the problem was solved. (OK, so it was thirty minutes – give me a break, would you?)

Fifty years ago, I had a math teacher who thrummed the following into our heads: “RTP,” he said. “Read The Problem.” We generally got this when we couldn’t figure out how to structure one of those algebra problems involving freight trains going from Atown to Bville at certain rates of speed. “RTP” was good advice then, and now, and thought I haven’t forgotten it, I occasionally believe that it can be ignored on occasion. At my peril.

The teacher is gone, but the good advice remains. I had let what I thought the problem was define my possible solutions. I hadn’t read it with sufficient clarity to understand all of it.

“RTP. Read The Problem.” Pass it on.