Excerpts from a message dated 11-10-99, Andy Roberts to Linda Proulx)

Hi Andy--

    Thanks for the kind words.  I have only a couple of comments to add:

AR>LOL.. Like I said before, I'm not a guru...
  >                  There are several of us in this echo who are slowly
  >withdrawing from even offering free support outside of our immediate
  >family.  And the reason for that is usually because some others
  >either want us to do it all for them (without really making any
  >effort to learn to do it for them self) or they are stuck in
  >DOS-Think or addicted to M$.  Having a guru that doesn't know much
  >about OS/2 is sort of like all 3 of those reasons.  But even worse is
  >when they have setup your system to be so unique that it can not be
  >dealt with using standard tools and methods.

    One of the reasons that I have carefully avoided knowing anything
about the details of Windows is that it allows me to refuse to help any
of my neighbors and relatives who have run into difficulties :-).  For
obvious reasons, I am stuck with being "system administrator" for my
wife's system, which (as does mine) runs under Warp 4 FixPak 5.  Even
though she was a professional mainframe programmer for over 20 years
before she retired, she refuses to bother herself with the grubby
internals of the system she is now using.  Somebody else took care of
those details when she was a professional!

    Because I did the entire installation, including planning the
partition and desktop layouts, and installing all the diagnostic
utilities she didn't know she should have, I can usually diagnose and
fix the ills she runs into now and then.  At least I know enough about
the details of her system to know where to look in the documentation!
(Does this make me an OS/2 guru?)  The other day, I even got her
LaserJet printer to start working again after it had locked up her
system by refusing to feed paper!  I don't know whether it was because I
removed and reinstalled the printer cartridge, or because I removed and
replaced the paper in the "in" tray.  (We don't kick misbehaving
machines these days; the new ones are not built well enough to withstand
such treatment!)

AR>Many of the users of this echo post to help others because they too
  >were novices at 1 time and are returning the favor, like passing on a
  >skilled trade from 1 generation to the next.  Their only reward is
  >the good feeling they get when their advice has led to success.

    Amen.  There is probably a bit of "show off" involved, also.  But I
have the bad habit of sticking my oar in when I see that some newbie is
getting [what I think is] erroneous advice.  Perhaps we all would be
better off if I could just let it go by :-).

    Regards,

        --Murray

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