by Beth Lock

I have always had a curiosity about how things work. When I was in high school, I wanted to take Auto Mechanics and Shop; sadly, at that time they were not options for persons of my gender. I had to make do with taking the mixer apart in Home Economics class. So I arrived at the next best solution. I began to hang out after school in garages with guys.

There's a fine art to hanging with the guys. One has to learn how to walk, talk, and think like a guy in order to blend in. One wears sloppy clothes and is not afraid to get a fingernail broken. Running for fritos and cokes and a side trip to the parts store to match a part was the expected protocol at that time. Laughing at the demeaning jokes told about women and the well placed obscenity were all part of the game. All for the sake of learning how the internal combustion engine worked. I was curious, dammit!

Occasionally though, I 'd show up in a drop dead gorgeous leather mini-skirts and painted nails. But this only could happen after "the fact". After the concept was understood. After the engine was tuned in that lovely '68 GTO convertible with the red leather seats. Because guys don't take girls with dirty fingernails and sloppy jeans and T-shirts for rides in their pretty cars, they take the girls in the miniskirts. And understanding how it worked was equal to enjoying the fruits of my labors.

Enter, 1997, stage right. I'd finished my child rearing and had spent as many years eating beans and ramen as I cared to. And, I had discovered computers. Still not financially solvent enough to pay for classes, nor really having the desire to sit in a classroom even if I had, I took my old reliable pathway to learning. *Sigh*... back to the virtual garage.

"Hello boys! Geek talk me!" I'd saunter into the chat room and take my place quietly in the corner, baggy T-shirt and jeans. The boys would get going with all sorts of foreign languages... GUI's and multiprocessors and backside cache's. What the???? I'd occasionally interject... "excuse me, this may be a dumb question but...."

But boys will be boys, and geeky boys are even better. And showing up once in a while in a virtual leather mini skirt made the "dumb question" even more appealing. After all, guys love to teach, and they have an answer for everything. And geeky guys love virtual breasts and leather. (*ahem*... Lara Croft? I rest my case.)

In The Meantime
In the meantime, I added my first RAM chip. I opened the computer all by myself with no one watching me, to catch me if I fell... a heady feeling. Well, OK, I had to install it twice. Sheesh, give me a break. I didn't know you had to push so hard the first time. I was a virgin.

And in the meantime, I kept learning more.
A snippet here and there.
I never knew where
it would come from.

Sometimes in jeans
sometimes in leather
I'd wander the net
in search of whatever
I could find.

A hardware tip?
Oh, praise the lord
while software kept me somewhat
bored.

Grokking on different levels
I'm beginning to grok my computer. Conceptually I am beginning to understand what is going on here. I just love concepts. And now that I am beginning to grok physically how it works, I'm beginning to delve deeper into how it works on other levels.

My computer at work is for working. A tool. It's a 7200/120 with 96MB RAM. With it I keep the books and do promotional materials for our company. It has a 4 GB external hard drive, mostly to store digital photos. In the three years we've had it, we've never had a service call. I've upgraded RAM twice. The system folder is getting a little glutted and I'm close to running out of room on the hard drive, but all in all it's been a great workhorse of a computer. Starts up every time. I can't get friendly with this computer though, they have laws about harassment in the workplace.

But my computer at home is different. Anais is my connection to the world. This computer has to have a personality. (Remember Rosie the Maid from The Jetsons?) I'll admit that at home I use my computer for five things; chatting, browsing, emailing, writing, and learning. Learning the concepts of this glorious machine. Taking it for a "virtual ride."

My creativity with my Mac has expressed itself on two different levels...my practical side, which craves conceptual knowledge. And my aesthetic side, which demands that I write out my ideas, my feelings, my poetry, at times my insane ramblings. Yet I feel as creative in opening the case and tuning the G3 card as I do when I sit down to write. While that may not seem creative to some, it is to me.

So I'll probably stay quietly in the garage for a while
in my baggy T-shirt and jeans
but sometimes I might just drop by wherever
in tight leather
to get you to pay attention
to my question.

© Beth Lock, beth{at}infowest.com, January 2000

Beth Lock writes a monthly column at MyMac Magazine.