Sometimes people ask me to help them with their computers. (These are almost always people I know; rarely do strangers ask me.) I suppose it's my fault, as I have apparently given people the impression that I know what I'm doing when it comes to these machines.

While I probably know as much as the average person, I certainly don't know as much as our local "Computer Guy" on Comcast channel 2, Jamey Mellis. I also don't know as much as the people at "tech support." You knowthe people you call who are in a time zone so far away that it's a completely different day; the same ones who answer the phone by saying, "How can I help you very much?"

Many years ago when I first started to use computers, they were so primitive that they would malfunction, on average, every five or six minutes. Sometimes I would see an error that said "SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 323" or "RUN DLL ERROR" or "YOU CAN'T CLICK ON THAT, YOU MORON."

At that point, I would employ the highly effective Computer Repair Alternative Procedure (C.R.A.P.) that called for the user to hold down the CTRL and ALT keys and bang on the side of the monitor until the frustration subsided. Surprisingly, this rarely worked, at least not right away. I would usually turn off the computer and come back an hour or two days later and it worked fine.

But these days computers seem to malfunction less frequently. For instance, right now I am typing on my laptop and there is not the slightest hint of any pr@@@&u*. Everything is running very smoothly.

However, should something go wrong, I will probably be able to fix it due to the fact that I am now more advanced in my computer knowledge than I was in those ancient days of Windows 95 and the C.R.A.P. methodthe days when the Internet was newand very slowwhen "www" meant "wait, wait, wait" and you could go out for ice cream and come back before the entire page loaded.

Now, with over a decade of computer experience, I know that I can't just bang on the side of the monitor. Mainly this is due to the fact that laptops have thin monitors so you really can't bang on the side of it. It wouldn't provide that stress-relieving bang! that the old monitors did. And they call this progress?

I now have all new ways of dealing with problems, some of which you probably use if you, like me, are only somewhat knowledgeable about computers.

For instance, if you are trying to start a program and it doesn't immediately appear on the screen, there's no need to wait forever for

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