The technologically elite pay a price after a while. The price is feeling so weird in public. You know you’ve been hunched over a keyboard too long when you go out of the house and feel immediately out of place.

Go to the store, and all of your technology knowledge does no good – you *still* have to wait in line behind the PEBKAC cases.

Have you used those automatic checker things yet? Where you scan your items over a bar code scanner and bag it yourself, use the touchscreen and pay with the card? I love those, and I never get to use them because some loser has always tried to cram his case of beer through the monitor screen or feed his receipt to the bill validater and the machine is roped off with an ‘out of order’ sign. Or I try to use it, but I have two checkers hovering over me, trying to take everything out of my hands to do it for me because they’re used to helpless customers.

Somebody in line ahead of you is taking twice as long to fill out their check, because they don’t feel comfortable using the check card and the point-of-sale card reader. It has buttons, it’s intimidating. At the door, the theft detector beeps at somebody and they spin around and crash into you in a panic, afraid the marines are going to haul them away. They’re bewildered; they’ve paid for everything! What’s going on? It takes you fifteen minutes to point out the little sensor tag that must have come loose from a product and is now stuck to their shoe.

Social gathering are another challenge. “So what do you do?” “I streamline SQL operations for a LAMP platform on a blade server.” is about the simplest you can describe it, but you still might as well have said, “I’m a voodoo priest who uses chicken bones and goat’s blood to cast out evil spirits.” You’ll get a nice circle cleared around you; people are now frightened of you, you might hack their cell phone with your iPod if they let you get too close. But the bold ones will come forward to the voodoo priest: “I’m having a problem with my AOL email account. Could you look at it?” You know, because they can smell computer on you, and it’s all the same, right? They look at you with such confusion when you explain that that isn’t your area. What, you know magic spells, but not the right one?

Anybody else out there felt that way after awhile? You know this gal does.

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