Gundar, our personal Technology Gremlin, has been instrumental in successfully keeping me from communicating effectively with my computer. I’ve tried reasoning with it, yelling at it and threatening it with bodily harm. I even tried sweet-talking it, but here’s what I’ve learned so far about communcating with your computer: 
1. Doing one successful thing one time doesn’t mean it will work the next time.
2. Doing one thing succesfully one thousand successive times doesn’t mean it will work the next time.
3. Software MUST be kept up to date.
4. Beware of software updates!
5. Not updating your software is BAD.
6. Updating your software may be WORSE.
6. If you configure things correctly, don’t assume it will WORK correctly.
7. If you configure things incorrectly and they work, don’t assume it will stay that way.
8. If you configure things correctly once, don’t assume you will do so again by configuring EXACTLY the same way!
9. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
10. If it is broke, you should have fixed it!
11. If it is broke and you already fixed it, fix it again.
12. If it is broke and you fix it again, nothing will change!
13. If it is broke and you fix it and nothing changed, something will change later after you forgot what it was you did to fix it again in the first place…or was that the second place?
Join me on Friday when I’ll be sharing from the English/Techanese handbook!
