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Plumber, Electrician... Digitician?
Alien54 writes "This article from the Sunday Boston Globe describes the rise of a new type of tradesman called, for lack of a better term, a digitician, a label describing the burgeoning army of overqualified, unemployed, or free-spirited computer technicians being deployed to front porches around the country."
Will people now start referring to "digitician's butt"?
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Finally, microwave and VCR clocks across the country won't be flashing 12:00!
Finally, a job that WON'T be outsources to India!! *crosses fingers*
I got to see a lock of female dorm rooms in college that way... okay, that was the only way.
"Yeah, the whole computer needs an overhaul. Your modem is shot, and really, you might be able to get another 1,000 megs out of it, it's not too safe to be ridin' around on the internet like that. And while I was in there I noticed your processor is kind of old, we might want to go ahead and update that for ya. And with that comes driver updates and refits. Should have it by Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest. Here's the estimate."
"500 dollars!?"
"Yes. Legally, I can't even let you take it home because of the modem."
"What's this at the bottom? Rust proofing? Collision insurance?"
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
Only a sissy technophobe would call these people "digiticians". They're already well known as "morlocks".Don't forget to floss!
--
make install -not war
The digitician industry is not nearly as glamorous as the porn industry depicts it to be.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I just had to search for the meaning of a 'Hot Pocket'. For a while there this industry sounded so much more exciting...
Exactly. :)
I am not a Nerd. I am a "digitician"
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Except unlike the other *ticians people find it acceptable to pay digiticians in cookies and soda.
What they don't tell you is that it was $50 to fix the computer, and $250 not to tell Ms. Judge about all the porno.
There's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):
* There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.
$cat
Wife, fed up after three days w/o her laptop: "Why not just pay someone to get the damn thing fixed?"
Geek husband, still working Google and Usenet and getting nowhere fast: "This is Linux not Windows. Free as in beer. Free as Freedom. I can paddle my own canoe, thank you very much."
A knock on my office door. Opening it reveals a user holding their personal laptop as if it were a dead pigeon. In an embarrassed voice they say, "Would you mind? I think it has a virus?" I smile broadly, hand them my rate sheet and say, "I now make house calls." Sweet.
Really? I wish I had known that the other day before I did a fresh install on my new hard drive.
Obviously, this didn't work for George W. Bush.
Prestidigitician: A person who turns an inert box into a working computer.