New-Age Handyman
Before I got married to my husband G. Grod, my grandmother asked me, “Is he handy?”
“Not really,” I replied sadly, thinking of my late grandfather, who built furniture and created electonic gadgets in addition to holding a day job and being a musician. “Not like Poppa was.”
Years later, I have have reconsidered her question, and have a different answer. What she meant by handy was if he was good at those same things that her husband had excelled at–stuff around the house. I have never been good at those things. G. Grod claimed not to be either, but over the years, and especially since we moved into our new old house last fall, he continues to surprise me, such as when he fixed a leaking radiator last December.
Where he excels, however, is in tech support, which I think is the new frontier for handiness. I’m a writer. I adopt technology on an as-needed basis. But when something funky happens, like when I get an error message, I am not able to fix things. G. Grod, on the other hand, is almost always able to fix things. The only time I’ve ever lost data was on my PDA, when I went too long between backups. On our computer, though, I don’t think I’ve ever lost data. Whatever happens, G. Grod is always able to rescue whatever I was working on, oftentimes even though I hadn’t yet saved it. (I am terrible about frequent saving, so he has now set our computer to do it automatically, electronically compensating for my shortcoming.) Additionally, our system hardly ever crashes, error messages are rare, and we have never had a virus.
G. Grod has set up a smoothly functioning system that is technologically progressive, ethically correct and defiantly anti-Microsoft. We use Debian GNU/Linux (cute penguin!
) operating system, and Free programs for things like word processing and email. I type entries in Gedit, a text editor. The draft of the novel I just finished is a PDF in OpenOffice.org Writer. I use two mail programs, Ximian (now Novell) Evolution (cute monkey!
) and Mozilla Thunderbird. As is perhaps obvious, I am more entranced by the cute icons than I am by how these things work. They do work, thanks to G. Grod. Because they work, I can focus on writing; I don’t have to wrestle my words from mercurial electronic programs.
That, for me, is pretty handy.
Over the past few years, I’ve found other writer friends whose partners are technologically inclined, as is mine. It makes me wonder whether we creative types are now seeking out partners with specialized knowledge, in a technology-age form of natural selection.
February 25th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
To be perfectly honest, all I did was grab the biggest wrench we own and tighten a nut on the radiator. Not that handy.
And now that Ximian was acquired by Novell, I don’t think Evolution has the cute monkey icon anymore. Time to switch completely over to Thunderbird.
And don’t forget Firefox.
And if I were really tech-handy, I’d have typeset your novel with LaTeX, or better yet, written custom macros in TeX. And I would have already updated this site with WordPress 1.5 (more Free software, BTW).
February 25th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
We are also a family where handiness is expressed through tech support. My husband is a UNIX sysadmin; he keeps all the home computers running smoothly, and I thank him for it. (He also keeps prodding me to adopt Linux, which I haven’t yet…) Vive le techspouse!
February 25th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
Hmm, I’ve also got a technicaly-minded husband. I’m more of an artist than a writer, but he has saved my computer — and my photographs — quite a few times. He’s gotten me onto Firefox and Thunderbird. I suspect he’s going to change us to Linux in the near future. I second Darice’s “Vive le techspouse!”
February 26th, 2005 at 10:09 am
I think you’re on to something. Certainly Geek-Spice and I have found a very pleasant harmony between her natural Introversion and my tendency toward Extroversion. And on the tech front, Firefox is a great program.
March 1st, 2005 at 2:56 pm
I’m glad to see some proof for my theory. I love it when that happens! Nautile, my theory isn’t limited to writers, or linked to gender. It’s that creative-arts types seek out techies. Sounds like you fit the theory, too.