One of my favorite “guilty pleasures” is to turn on the HGTV network on a Sunday evening, and watch Mike Holmes renovate a house. For those who don’t know who he is, let me explain. Mike is a professional contractor, based in Canada, who demands that others in the building trade live up to their word. He often appears at a lovely house where the homeowners describe some kind of problem that they have experienced with their builder, contractor, or building inspector. Mike investigates the problem, turns up more horrors than the owners had imagined, and then – with a large, very skilled, crew – proceeds to demolish things and fix them up better than new.
I revel in this kind of reality television because it resonates with me. In my job, people often call upon me to fix some kind of computer mess. For me, there are two kinds: home computer users and small businesses.
When I work with home computer users, it is often a matter of asking a few questions, and then working through a series of decision boxes. Does the computer have this or that software, problem, or malware? Does the computer respond when this setting is used or not? Has this selection been checked in the program properties or not? It gets to be repetitive sometimes, but there is a basic flow and I can resolve most problems in about an hour. It takes me longer to clean up malware because I use three different system scans.
On the other hand, small businesses present a greater challenge for me because more of them resemble “Holmes on Homes” situations. At this point, the reality show becomes “Larry on Laptops.”