In most mixed-sex households, the male usually is the main tech support.

Same is true at Casa de Bill-Gates-Is-A-Prick. I would think that would be a real issue in GLBT marriages, is anyone talking about THAT?

Never mind.

I accept the role. I don’t like it, but I accept it. I own Apple but don’t own a MacIntosh computer. Used to, but when the digital divide in pricing got to be more than I could handle and when my work went all PC, I made the change.  Ugh. Since then my life has been one update after another. “Start-run-continue-download-yes-install-continue-wait, wait, wait. Restart-updating-continue-finish-restart.”

I cuss a lot at Bill Gates.

When we moved Nancy’s super dooper embroidery machine – the computerized one where she can download and customize patterns to stitch on everything from underwear to kitchen towels – to Costa Rica, I knew I would be in over my head. She used to schlep the machine back to the dealer fairly regularly when we lived in the old country.

The BabyLock Embroidery Machine can do this…

But I’m getting pretty good at troubleshooting something that I don’t know how to operate.
The big challenge is learning the jargon of sewing/embroidery. Hoops and upper tension and bobbins and lower tension… not in my wheelhouse. And the machine is part mechanical and part computer.

• I have never routinely opened up a computer because the supply of something ran out, or needed to be a different color (thread).
• I never have routinely opened up a computer because the cursor needed to change to heavy-duty (needle)
• I never have routinely opened up a computer to replace a pixelator doohicky (bobbin.)

But this happens all the time with an embroidery machine. Needles break and threads break routinely. Bobbins need to be replaced.

We had one major glitch that required a trip to the shop. Nancy wrote about that here.

Nancy is doing Christmas Gifts and stuff to sell at a bazaar on Sunday. So she’s been toiling away making stuff.

Lately there has been a lot of cussin’

Not by me.

It got so bad at one point she wanted me to schlep the machine BACK to the U.S. to get it diagnosed!!!

RealZ!

So routinely now I am tearing into the guts of a mechanical device to diagnose it. True, that’s not technical support in the traditional sense, but dammit there is a computer controlling the thing, so neener!

The latest glitch turned out to be a damaged bobbin holder caused by a broken needle that caused the machine to display error messages.

Of course, the message was very helpful:

“Needle error.”

Enough to make anyone cuss.