I'm really sorry that after a seemingly long period of no activity, that I have to come out guns blazing with a post like this. But I got to get it out.

A lot of people think because I'm fluent in computers, that I love nothing more than to sit around and provide free help and advice about anything computer related.

Those people couldn't be any more wrong.

I have no problem teaching people how to do something on the computer. I have always tried to keep the "teach a man to fish" philosophy when showing someone how to accomplish a task on the computer.

But how many times does the man have to be taught how to fish? No matter how many times I repeat and demonstrate, it always seems to go in one ear and out the other.

This inexorably leads to an "over-dependence" on my help and advice which yields such questions as "I can't find the order receipt e-mail for the fishing pole" to requests for MySpace page layouts and optimized iPhone backgrounds of said person's favorite college football team.

This "over-dependence" has the tendency to evolve into plain old apathy and laziness on said person's part. The simplest issues require calling me or sending me an e-mail. Issues that if investigated for maybe 10-30 more seconds would resolve themselves. Issues like "So how do I get the worm on the hook?".

Stop.

At this point, it's safe to say I sound like a pompous ass who isn't willing to help anyone and anyone who uses a computer that doesn't know what I know about it is a complete twit who will only bollocks it up. And I can see where you would think that.

But I don't think that's the case. Like I said, I have no problem teaching or helping until people become over-dependent on that help and start to abuse it. I become a 24/7/365 support line. I might as well go buy a VW Bug, put on a short-sleeve button down and funny little tie.

During the day, when I'm working, is usually the worst (except for lunch when I become an avid Warhawk player). A lot of this work requires concentration, planning, testing, configuring, troubleshooting, etc. These are clients that are paying for my time. So when the IM box appears with someone asking me if they can forward their "better send this to 20 people or you'll have bad luck" crap mail and how to do it - guess what? It just completely derailed what I was doing, thinking about, concentrating on, striving for, etc.

Everyone is guilty of it. Friends will call/IM and ask me when is the best time to format their hard drive and re-install Windows. Strangers will ask if I can come over to their houses and remove spam mail on their computer. My own flesh and blood, my family, will call and ask me "What's a good personal finance program for Mac?" and "How do I install iWork/iLife?". The homeless guy on the park bench in downtown Winter Haven will even ask me if it's completely necessary to include the "ProxyPreserveHost" directive when configuring Apache to proxy to a cluster of mongrel instances.

OK, maybe not that last one. But the one thing they all have in common is they fail to ask me anyone of these sets of 3 simple words: "How are you?", "Are you busy?", "Got a sec?", and "Hey, what's new?". At the very least, you could ask how I'm doing before the onslaught of questions that could be answered if you spent an extra 20 seconds attempting to solve the problem on your own.

So from now on, my answers will be simple. Simple like that movie Rounders when Mike McDermott was asked by Johnny Chan "Y'have it?".

Sorry, I don't remember.