Technical Skills and Freelancing
Here’s hoping you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Mine was busy and I’m sure you’re wondering where I was all last week. I was attempting to set up a new computer and was having a very difficult and time-consuming experience.
You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again. Make sure you backup your system on a regular basis. You never know when some sort of unfortunate technical glitch will send your harddrive into computer purgatory and if you don’t have a backup you’ll lose all of your past and present work. What a drag…
In my case, fortunately, I didn’t necessarily need to use a backup to restore lost files (though I did end up making a new one to transfer files from one computer to the other). I was lucky, though.
While I knew the hard drive on my old PC would eventually die (it was about 8 years old and running pretty slow), I had not planned on my graphics/video card going bad. Believe it or not, it is incredibly difficult to see what you are doing when there are strange lines dancing across your computer monitors on a regular basis.
On Thursday morning I woke up and realized that enough was enough. I had to reboot my computer two times to get the screens to come up properly and it was then that I knew - spend $100+ on a new video card and wait for the hard drive to die or just spend the money on a new computer now and avoid the extra waste.
So off I went to Best Buy - the best place in the area I could think of considering most of our local Comp USA stores no longer exist. I knew exactly what I wanted - a computer with a graphic card that supported dual monitor functioning. The guy at Best Buy said th computer I had chosen would work. He was wrong.
On trip #2 I spoke to a second person who said I needed a new graphic card (or, a second graphic card) or, at the least, the upgraded version of the computer I had purchased earlier. I went home, got all of the other add-ons I had purchased, and went back on trip #3 to return everything and buy the upgrade.
Still, the second monitor would not work. Tech support at Best Buy is insanely expensive so I to an online support site and asked for help. The tech guy there ran me through 3 hours of tests and attempts. Still, no second monitor.
On Friday morning I went back to Best Buy (trip #4) where I spoke to yet another individual. He informed me that the VGA ports on the back of the computer were merely there to look pretty (seriously, there’s nothing attached to them) and that I could only use the DVI and HDMI ports to attach my monitors. Sound Greek? I already had one monitor hooked up to the first DVI port, so he told me I’d need to buy adapters to turn the HDMI port into a second DVI port and then hook an adapter to that to make it into a VGA port. He, of course, sells me the parts I need.
During trip #5 to Best Buy I explained to the salesman that the parts would have fit had there been enough physical space to plug in a large adapter. As it was, I needed an HDMI wire and would have hooked the adapters to that with a coupler. Another $60 in parts? I think not. I went to Walmart and found an HDMI adapter for $13 that would allow me to extend the space.
I got home, thinking things were fine, only to find that the DVI adapters didn’t fit together.
On trip #6 to Best Buy I searched for the correct match to my DVI adapter. With no luck. This time I returned ALL of the adapters (except for the Walmart one and the DVI to VGA I already owned) and went to Radio Shack. They almost solved the problem but were still missing a part.
When I got home I went online and found the HDMI to DVI adapter I need for… get this… $1.43. It came out to $4.43 after shipping.
You’ve got that right. $4.43 vs. the $90+ Best Buy wanted me to pay for extra parts.
What’s my point? My point is that while you don’t need to know everything there is to know about computers you should have enough technical skill to know when someone is attempting to pull the wool over your eyes. You should have the presence of mind to know when something is wrong and the ability to find a way to fix it on your own. You need to do your research in advance and make sure no one is taking advantage of you.
Ever.
Writing should be your #1 passion. Protecting your ability to do your job should be your second!