I’ve been a tech guy for a very long time. I was one of those kids who could connect the home entertainment systems and program the VCR much better than any adult seemed to be able to. I was getting the house connected to the internet while most of the household still thought of computers as word processors. It’s no surprise then that I get a lot of tech support questions.
I’m a helpful person, by nature, and with my aptitude for making tech bend to my will it’s not strange for me to get emails, text messages and phone calls asking for my help with one problem or another. Machine won’t boot? Randsomware got you down? Can’t get your windows NT software running on you Mac? I’ve dealt with a lot and one of the things that happens very frequently is something that I’ve dubbed Quantum Troubleshooting.
Quantum Troubleshooting is when someone comes to me with a problem. “Hey Michael, how come I can’t open this application on my phone?” My initial response these days for just about any issue is, “Show me”. (for the experienced among you, this is equivilant to me forcing rubber duck debugging ) I’d say more than half the time the person pulls out their device and attempts to demonstrate the issue. Then magically, it doesn’t happen. This happens so often that I used to say that tech is afraid of me, and refuses to misbehave when I am nearby. These days though I like to think that I’ve changed the outcome simply by observing it, collasping the quantum state into a functional device. If I can figure out how to bottle this I’ll be rich.