Alan Strikes Back.

Well, Alan is a unique individual. Recently he entered the store with his PC in one hand and a shuriken (throwing star) in the other with a bagful of broken cd’s.

He told me that the inner Samurai had come out, and that the PC was in imminent danger of a major beating. The words sword, knife, nunchaku, death (and destruction) were uttered in the first minutes of our meeting. It became apparent to me that Alan had not only a working knowledge of the martial arts, but a propensity to use it. What worried me even more was the prospect of him applying the same computer-savvy ‘finesse’ to his nunchaku wielding revenge on a totally innocent (and wireless) mouse. (Such a waste of mousing tallent).

As the tension in his voice (mixed with signs of trepidation and nervousness) escalated, despite his obvious stress and sufferance (including sleepless nights), I found it hard to overlook the ridiculousness of the situation. The fact that Alan was close to breaking point over an image from the ‘hubble’ space telescope, and a collection of crappy clips from www.space.com -seemed paradoxically amusing, yet terribly unimportant to me. But being the professional soldier-geek I am, with a perfectly straight face (and obvious concern for the striking edge of his katana) I set about pacifying this misguided 21st century warrior... clearly an individual with a vendetta, for to exact revenge on this poor computer was what he had in mind. The PC had done what any self respecting Windows PC would do when crippled by the debilitating curse of a limited user account.... It failed, it failed again, and eventually, it crashed.

This was the last straw for Alan, He cracked: The inner samurai was released and out came an arsenal of martial arts weaponry that would change the course of Alan’s computing history for ever. Suddenly, a moment of sanity overcame him when the 3rd Shuriken he released from his fists of fury, sliced through an insolent office 2007 (disk 2) cd, sending a shard of brittle spear-like plastic back at his own head. “You won’t win, you bastard” cried Alan, and henceforth, engaged on the ‘many minute’ journey to the computer repair shop with an already submissive PC under his right arm, and bloodied shards of Microsoft office CD’s. This was real, this meant war... This was ummm..... bloody stupid I’ll admit, but true.
So we were back to the wall (in the context of the solution to this hellish situation). To unleash Alan into the ‘real world’ of computing, to give him *dunt dunt dahhh* administrative privileges... would *gasp* mean that he could seriously screw it up and *gasp* truly make our lives a living hell. Well when he told me of his method of troubleshooting (the shruriken attack and sworn oath to thrust the sword through the LCD the next time he saw ‘access denied’) I realised that Alan was ready for his first grading in computer-do.
Like an over-eager student who rushes headfirst into my fist, he now explores the world of windows full access permissions. Seriously scary, but a necessary part of releasing the computerized samurai-geek within. Bonsai!!!