The Briar Philosopher - Pigs and PCs

There’s something about me most of you probably don’t know. They say everybody’s got a past and I’m no exception. Now, I’m not exactly ashamed of this bit of my past. I was just always a bit confused by it and never knew how to explain it. It never struck me, even at the time, as something that fit in with the rest of who I am. I’m telling it now because I just recently figured out that it does indeed fit with the rest of who I am and why.

For seven years, in the ‘90s I was, of all things, a computer technician. Yep, a computer technician. Never woulda guessed it would you? I built ‘em, fixed ‘em, took them apart and put them back together; hardware, software, networks - the whole ball of wax. I wasn’t just a computer technician. I was the BEST in that area at that time. In seven years I never met a computer I couldn’t fix...and we’re talking hundreds. I’ve never bragged on myself for that before because, as I said, it didn’t seem to fit and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I was so good at it. I can brag now because I figured it out and I’m right proud of the reason.

The main thing that made me the best when it came to computers was that I didn’t just figure out what was wrong and fix it. I figured out why it went wrong and fixed that too. That right there set me apart from most computer gurus at that time. ‘Bout anybody can figure out that a hard drive has crashed and stick a new one in (trust me, you could). But unless you can figure out why it crashed you really haven’t solved anything. You’ve just treated a symptom.

That kind of problem solving isn’t something I learned in a computer class. I never took a computer class of any kind. When I got my first computer I discovered that when something would go wrong I could always figure out why and fix it. I started helping friends with their problems and before you know it I had my own business. Business owners started calling me, at first reluctantly me being a girl and all. They discovered after awhile that they didn’t care if I was a girl because I could do the job in half the time and what I fixed stayed fixed.

I wasn’t born with that kind of problem solving skills and I didn’t learn them in classes or from other computer gurus. So where did they come from? I had no clue until last week. Now I know that I was good with computers because...you’ll never guess...because I grew up on a farm! Told you you wouldn’t guess. I know one seems to be the exact opposite of the other and I guess that’s why it took me so long to figure it out. In truth, however, they have everything to do with one another - at least the fixing them part does.

It was figuring that out that finally made me comfortable with that part of my past and right proud of my computer fixin’ days. It wasn’t an anomaly. It was a natural off-shoot of my raising.

What helped me figure it out was this. A friend called me one day to tell me that an attachment I’d sent out in an email apparently didn’t go through. Even after years of being out of the business my brain automatically went into problem solving mode and I had already spouted out a bunch of possible reasons and variables before he got annoyed and told me he just wanted me to re-send it. I resent it. But I couldn’t let it go. I had to know why. What happened? What was the pattern and where did it break down? That problem got solved and then I started wondering why I’m that way. Why couldn’t I just resend the attachment and let it go?

After thinking about it for quite a while I found myself thinking about pigs. Yep, pigs. I was trying to come up with a solution that made sense in the context of the rest of who I am. I asked myself, “If I were raising pigs (which was also a part of my past) and every morning all my pigs were right where they were supposed to be until one morning one of them was out, what would I do?” Would I just put the pig back in the pen and walk off feeling like I’d fixed the problem? The answer was, “Not a chance.” Neither would any farmer. You solve the problem. You don’t just fix the symptom. The way I grew up, problem solving wasn’t just a mental skill. It was a survival skill.

If your pigs suddenly started getting out, or your canning jars suddenly didn’t seal, or you planted your corn and it didn’t come up, it would be unthinkable to just fix the symptom. You wouldn’t just put the pig back in the pen or the jars back in the pressure cooker or the corn back in the ground until you knew WHY that happened and fixed the WHY, not just the what.

There might have been some farmers that tried it the other way but I guarantee they didn’t stay farmers for long. They would have starved. Most of the computer technicians with whom I was in competition in my past life wouldn’t have made very good farmers. They were all very good at fixing symptoms and they charged an extremely high rate for it. As a result they often had the same computers coming back time after time until their customers got tired enough and broke enough to “give that girl a crack at it.” I never lost a customer. I also never lost a pig or a jar of green beans or a corn crop. And I can finally say I’m proud of all of that.

So, when you take your computer to the shop, it might not be a bad idea to ask the technician what they’d do if their pigs got out. If they say “Put them back in,” walk out and keep looking until you find someone who says, “Fix the pen.”