Computers hate me.

Just ask my brother - he’ll confirm that statement.

He was helping me with my personal computer the other day because I needed to get a power-point program put together for an Earthwatch presentation I was scheduled to give.

I had actually hauled the thing out to Palmer so he could work on it for me. I was having difficulties writing discs, among other things, and I needed a way to get my program from my PC to my laptop. He checked it out and said there was nothing wrong with it. So, back at my house, I stuck a disc in the drive and tried to copy the program onto it.

Guess what – it didn’t work.

I called him and he took me thru the whole process, step by step, to be sure I was doing it properly. Turns out, I was doing it properly – and it wouldn’t work for me even though it had worked just fine for him. We tried it with every disc I had on hand, even – twelve of them.

Since I had to get that program transferred, he said I could upload it to his personal FTP site, then download it the next day from my work computer and copy it onto a disc from there. Again, he led me through the whole process, step by step.

Guess what – it didn’t work.

That’s when I finally decided to go and buy myself a flash drive, although my brother thought I should instead buy a handle to attach to my computer so I could just carry it to the presentation.

In my opinion: handling computers is like handling snakes. They can sense your fear, which makes them nervous. That, of course, makes you even more fearful (who wouldn’t be with a nervous snake in their hands?) Pretty soon, it escalates to the point where the snake bites you.