Cracked Laptop Screen and Observations While Watching "Halt and Catch Fire"

A week ago I managed to crack the screen of my gaming laptop. Thankfully it still works with a monitor - I test it at work, but as it's a new computer I knew that I would need a new monitor because the spares I have floating around do not have HDMI capabilities and my laptop does not have VGA capability. I'll be recycling those monitors or donating them somewhere that can actually make use of them...I have a habit of grabbing and holding onto old tech. Probably comes from my old tech geek years. Years that feel like a lifetime ago.

I bought a gaming monitor and hooked it up to my laptop and my set-up has morphed into a desktop one. And because I write wherever I can, I still needed a portable option that did not consist of pen and paper. Which means I now have a Chromebook to cart everywhere. With it I can still work on pieces that I started on my laptop and saved to OneDrive - it all gets synched up when I connect to a wireless network whenever I can. And the Chromebook is much smaller and lighter. Also, due to the fact that I can't install the huge games I have on my laptop I'm less likely to procrastinate when I'm writing at work or a coffee shop.

It's hard to believe that it's been 14 years since I walked away from doing any sort of tech support. But after a while I was hitting burn-out. With life, with work, with everything.

My experience with computers started back when I was 9 or 10, I think. It was an Apple. Not even a Macintosh at that point - that would come a few years later when I was in high school. The first computer language I learned was something called LOGO. It was an extremely basic thing that would allow you to write a string of code that would control something called a 'turtle' as it moved around the screen and draw simple lines. I remember when I managed to figure out how to make it draw a circle. At that point I was hooked.

But the cost of a home computer was WAY outside of my family's budget. Yet somehow I knew that the cost would eventually end up going down.

By the time I was finished elementary school I was one of the few that was allowed to use the Apple's in the school library during lunch hour. Playing games, or teaching myself more basic coding. Or even using the banner making software that was on the computer. At the time it felt like amazing stuff.

Then I went a year or so without  touching another computer. However, I got the idea to take typing classes in high school. I figured that learning to type would be a benefit when computers became more accessible. What can I say? I was an optimist back then.

My typing teacher and I didn't get along at all. Despite the fact that I had the highest accuracy and typing speed she always got on my case because I would sometimes look at my keyboard while typing. Taping paper over my hands so I couldn't see the keyboard, whiting out the keyboard, and so on. I even showed her articles about typing that said that the version of touch-typing she was teaching didn't necessarily work for everybody, and that some people develop their own way that works better for them.

And then my school brought in a computer science class. I was in Grade 10, age 14-15, and was allowed to take the Computer Science 11 course that was being offered for the first time. A room of brand spanking new Apple IIGS computers. And I was in on the ground floor, so to speak.

I was allowed to take the class because my Grade 9 science teacher had put in a recommendation for me to skip Science 10 and go right into a Science 11 course. At the time computer science class was considered 'science', but for some reason I could never see it. Still can't, to be honest.

Anyhow, I learned Pascal (if you don't know what that is, think about Weird Al's "White and Nerdy"), COBOL, a version of FORTRAN, and Basic. With Apple, you didn't have to know the first thing about DOS because all you had to do was pop a disk into the floppy drive and go. One drive had the program disk, and the other drive was where you saved your work. You learned to back up your work regularily, and not turn off the computer until your work was saved and the disk was removed. Otherwise, you'd lose all your work. I learned that the hard way more than once.

Then, about two-thirds of the way through Grade 10 I moved schools. I was able to get into Computer Science 11 at the new school, but imagine my surprise when I discovered that the lab was all IBM clones. And I had absolutely no clue how to make them work. That began my education in MS-DOS 3.31 from Compaq. Little did I know that a lot of years later Compaq would be a part of my life for a time.

At home during this time we had a Commodore 64, and my step-dad thought he was the cock of the walk. Honestly, the thing was a giant piece of shit, even then. But is was fun to play around with. I even taught myself how to program games on that thing, not that they would have been at all compatible with the computers at school. And then my dad got the itch to look at upgrading and started shopping around.

That plan was eventually sped up a lot when the computer desk he'd been using collapsed. He originally wanted to get a Commodore 128, but I managed to convince him that an IBM clone was the better idea because the Commodore was on its way out and would soon be absolutely obsolete.

I can't recall exactly what my step-dad ended up getting, but it ran MS-DOS 5.0, and with a couple of clicks on the keyboard I could load Windows 2.11 and do stuff easier. I learned how to create my own DOS Shell to make it simpler to open disks when I popped them into the drive. It was not ideal, but it was what we had at the time.

Because I had some programming background my step-dad had me help him with the new computer. And then he discovered that magic that was BBS, and he was lost on it for hours at a time. We had a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that I filled my time with. I beat the original Legend of Zelda a couple of times, and learned to hate Super Mario Brothers even though I beat that game too.

In time I had dropped the computer science classes to focus on art - I actually had a chance to submit a portfolio to the Emily Carr Art Institute, but that got blown to shit while I was on a three week vacation along the West Coast with my family. One of my fellow art students was jealous that I'd been tapped to submit a portfolio and he hadn't, so he destroyed most of my work. Work that had taken me the better part of three years to put together. When I got back from my trip and discovered the destruction I was absolutely crushed. I spent the next week blitzed out of my mind, not getting sober until the week after. After the people from Emily Carr had been and gone.

I stopped drawing, painting, and everything for a lot of years. I was absolutely devastated and was angry at the fuckwit who destroyed my stuff. But I am grateful for the skills I had learned leading up to that moment. Including knowing that I could teach art to 8th graders - in grade 12 I was a teacher's assistant in a grade 8 art class. I learned how to do lettering by hand, commercial design without the benefit of a computer, and so much more. I did put some of it to use over the years when painting windows for a couple of places I've worked at. And my years of doing calligraphy means I've got really fancy handwriting when I put my mind to it.

In the first couple of years since I graduated high school I became a single mom and learned how to sew. While I didn't do much drawing or painting, I had found another creative outlet. And then I went to college and got more computer skills under my belt, but it was much more in terms of using MS Word, and the WordPerfect suite of programs...all in a DOS and Win3 environment. And I got better at typing because I had to have a certain speed in order to successfully graduate from the program.

I took accounting courses even though I knew that I had issues with math - we learned how to do accounting with pen and paper before moving to SimplyAccounting. Which I was less than thrilled with so I would use QuattroPro instead, writing formulas to do the math for me.

While at college I made some massive mistakes in my life, the worst of which was doing cocaine. My attitude at the time was that I would try anything once, and if I liked it I'd do it again. I also believed that I wouldn't get addicted. Needless to say I was completely wrong. I was also dating my dealer - I lived in my parents' basement suite in a nice house that didn't look like a heat score, so I was the perfect cover for this asshole. And by keeping me supplied, he had a place to work from that wouldn't attract police attention. And then a friend made a valid point - if my mother found out that I was doing cocaine that I would lose my kid. Quit cold turkey. Right before Christmas break during my first year at college. I have never been so sick in my life, and I hope to never repeat that experience again.

It was at this time that I got together with a man that I'd known for much of my life - he helped me get clean, holding my hair back when I threw up, helping me in the shower when I could barely stand up. And he bought me my first computer - one of my dad's cast-offs. But it meant that I no longer had to fight for computer time on my dad's computer. We had dial-up internet at this time too. And I had a Geocities website, complete with flashing graphics and all that other horrible early 90's crap. I was also using mIRC and ICQ to chat with people all over the world, and was introduced to the world of furries by participating in what was called SherwoodMUCK, a role-playing game that was accessed via a specific string of code. It was all text-based, and it was loosely based on Disney's Robin Hood movie.

And then I started teaching myself HTML and how to write applets for something to do. I finished my college program in the top 3% of my class and then promptly couldn't find accounting or any sort of office work. No full-time positions were available, and any part-time positions stipulated that the applicant could not have another job. Utter bullshit. So I continued working minimum wage jobs. Until I was hired by a call center.

Remember that bit about Compaq earlier? The contract I ended up on was supporting HP Pavillion laptops right around the time of HP's merger with Compaq. And I was eventually cross-trained to support both brands. Considering that for some of the models the only differences were the labelling on the outside and the motherboard hard-coding. And I figured this out when I was tasked with creating a technical manual that included the blow-apart diagrams for every model that was supported, including all part numbers and alternate part numbers. And I also included a bunch of regedits, including tweaking one that Microsoft had put out for dealing with a common BSOD error. And I'd set it up to be easily updateable as new models came out.

I jumped ship from that contract when it was decided to have us selling add-ons - I'm not a salesperson, and I was hired as a tech, something that my signing letter made very clear. I went to another HP contract where my hardware and networking skills were put to good use. I was considered the network guru, even though all my networking knowledge was acquired on the job. Google is always a tech support worker's best tool.

I remember a few things from my time on this contract. A call when a good ol' boy told me to put a man on the phone and I told him that I would as soon as he did. Or the network tech who called at 10 minutes before close on a Friday demanding that I walk him through setting up an entire network, even though we were only supporting LaserJet printers and confirming that their JetDirect card could see the network and be seen on the network. But he wanted me to walk him through the whole network setup and wasn't going to get off the phone until we were done. I hung up on him as what he wanted was outside the contract's scope of support. Or when I was on the second tier support line and one of our agents called to ask about COBOL, only to tell me after I rattled off the string of code his caller needed that I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about...only to be told that 1) I was the ONLY person on the contract that knew COBOL, 2) that if I provided a string of code that I was most likely absolutely correct, and that 3) COBOL was outside of our scope of support. At the time COBOL was used by banks for all their transactions, and they were using HP LaserJet printers that were adapted to use MICR toners, and actually had their own support line they were supposed to call. Fun times.

While I was on this particular contract I became the person who handled quick turn-around on-site service contracts for major customers. This saw me learn not just monochrome laserjets, but also colour and all-in-ones. I had to be able to select parts to send along with the dispatched tech, based on a bare minimum on information gathered by the agent who took the call. I was rarely wrong.

I ended up going to yet another HP contract. This time it was HP DesignJet - large format inkjet printers. More techie stuff, and I could take apart and put together each model we supported in record time.

And then I hit burn out and knew I needed a change. I decided to go to university, but not for computers. Instead I decided I wanted to be a teacher. I got accepted to a university on the other side of the country, and made that move. Almost 14 years ago now.

What got me thinking about my time doing tech support is watching the series called "Halt and Catch Fire" - a series based on the early years of personal computing. And what I found amusing is that the fictional company that decided to reverse engineer IBM's computer was sort of based on what Compaq did back in the day. I had a damn good chuckle about it. Ditto for remembering all the jumps and leaps that happened during those years. I literally laughed my ass off when I saw Commodores on-screen, and groaned when I heard the modem noises. I remembered the days of the x86 computers...and here I am using a smartphone with more computing power and memory than my original computer. Over 30 years of computer experience - programming, hardware, and software. I have fixed buggy code to make programs run/load properly. I knew the commands to make the dialer turn off call-waiting. I remember using Eudora to access my email before Hotmail or Gmail were out there. I remember helping people confront AOL agents over ID10T or PEBCAK errors. And I will never forget the caller who was upset over breaking her mug holder, meaning her CD/DVD drive drawer. Or the caller that was pissed off that HP was apparently hiring 'retards' because I stuttered throughout the call even though I had removed the Blaster worm/Lovesan virus from her computer in record time, before there was a patch created to fix it.

I'm not sure if it was all the tech stuff that got me down, or the idiots I had to deal with on a daily basis. There was a lot of drama that went on during the years I supported HP products, things that had very little to do with the tech side of things and won't be repeated here. Other than to say that about six months after I left, HP pulled all their contracts from my former employer and pretty much bankrupted the place as HP was the major client. It did have something to do with what happened to me while I was there - basically I got screwed over royally, despite all the stuff I did for the employer and HP, and it was generally felt that if the employer could treat me like shit that what did it mean for the people that never did as much as I did. HP seems to have felt the same way.

I have not kept up on the tech advancements over the past 14 years, although I know I can still replace computer hardware if I need to. And the internet is so much more robust than it was that 14 years ago which means that I can find manuals and websites that will help me figure out what the better computer hardware is. I can still do a fair bit of networking and other tech support - I do it now at work even though that is not my job.

I do wonder if I will ever go back into a tech support role, but I know I have a lot to catch up on. Plus it is much harder to get a tech support job without the necessary alphabet soup attached to your name. Gone are the days that simply knowing all this stuff would get you a job in the industry. Now it's expected for you to have a Computer Science or Computer Engineering degree to even consider applying for an entry level position. Even though much of the time that degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on because while these degree holders usually have a lot of theoretical knowledge, they lack the hands-on experience. Highly educated idiots that think they're better than the lowly pleb who actually knows how to do the actual tech work.

Anyhow, it's probably past time for me to head to bed. It's after 3am here in Newfoundland and I need some sleep.