On Being a Geek and Fixing Things

Let me begin, first off, by saying I love technology in all shapes and forms.  If it has buttons, or a touchscreen, odds are likely I want it.
Take, for example, my desk at work.  Two monitors, check.  External touchscreen PDA synced to act as a tertiary monitor, check.  Touchscreen digital photo frame hacked to act as quaternary monitor, also check.
I am, to mince words, a geek.
I also love fixing people’s technological problems and creating solutions where none previously existed.  Why?  It’s a puzzle thing, to me.  And likely some facet of a deeply-rooted codependent mentality exhibiting itself in a medium that’s comfortable to yours truly.  But that’s neither here nor there.
The point of this post, ladies and gentlemen, is about reason.
Simply because I am a gadget geek and technophile does not mean I have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything with a power cable that has been manufactured in the last 40 years.  I once had someone (who shall remain nameless) call me quite a few foul names and inform me I had “a bad attitude” about things when I told her I wasn’t familiar with her sixteen-year-old dot matrix printer from Korea’s problem with installing drivers onto Windows XP.
Quite frankly, I wasn’t aware that a sixteen-year-old dot matrix printer could still even connect to modern computers, not without some serious hacker-level skills (which this person does not have).
I am also incapable of making miracles happen.  Hardware failure is just that.  A failure of the hardware to perform to its originally designated task.  In other words, it’s broken.  Tweaked out, tripping, stupid, water-logged, corrupted, and hacked things.. those I can work with.  Broken is broken.  Fire a thousand nine millimeter rounds into an engine, and even the best mechanic won’t be able to get it up and running again without replacing some parts.  Why?  Because they’re broken.
Informing you of such misfortune does not make me incapable.  Nor does it make me an “idiot” or mean I have a “bad attitude.”  Ask any of the number of people whose gadgets, cell phones, laptops, and computers that I’ve brought back from the grave and they’ll attest to it.  There are limits to even the best repair-person’s skills.
Although, I must admit.. part of me wants to get my hands on that Korean dot matrix printer and see what those characters would look like on a 6x4 grid per letter.