I am regularly asked questions to which I do not know the answer. As a rule, I answer them. Correctly.

I haven't taken a class on anything about computers in over twenty years. I have never received any training on MacOS, Windows, or Linux. I quit using Windows on a regular basis at least 10 years ago. I have never used a Mac for much more than a music machine. Still, I seem to be better at using them than most everyone I know, and I am surrounded by people who are generally pretty smart. Sometimes the questions are about computers or programs that I have control over, so it makes sense that I'd know the answer, but often I answer questions about programs that I don't use or even have access to. The other day I asked in frustration, "Nobody taught me how to do this, why do I have to teach you?" (I didn't actually ask the question of the person, as that would have been rude.) But then it occurred to me that I really want to know just that. "Why can I find the answer to seemingly any question (especially those computer-related) in a very few minutes, usually in much less time than it would take me to ask someone else?" For certain computer questions I will go down the hall to ask our excellent computer staff because there is a certain class of problems that, if you have the luxury of access to someone who works with a particular set of applications every day, you can find out things that you might not have thought to ask. If they aren't there, however, I can usually go back to Google and find an answer.

A long while ago I participated USENET newsgroups, which have pretty much been replaced by message boards on the web, sometimes I would ask questions there. Of course that was before Google, and the number of web-based resources available then was a tiny fraction of what it is now.

For most computer-based problems that I solve I don't bother to try to remember or even document the problem or solution because it is likely that I won't see the problem again, and if I do the solution will have changed. Still, I remember a whole bunch of now-useless stuff--- esoteric DOS commands, and keystrokes for programs I will never see again.

I want to figure out how to teach someone to similarly solve problems. Perhaps I have expertise that I am not aware that I am tapping in to. Perhaps some of the "useless" stuff that I remember is helping in ways that I am too quick to dismiss.

I teaching a course this semester where I try to teach people how to manage web servers and set up Linux Terminal Servers. So I guess I'll this is a chance to figure out this problem.

On the other Hand

There are several problems that I have been working on for a while now and remain stumped. The sound card on my desktop makes this annoying popping and clicking that showed up a couple of OS upgrades ago. I've tried several times now to find a way to make it stop to no avail. I tried for several hours to upgrade this Drupal installation 4.something to 6.10. I got close once, but it fell apart. I tried to upgrade DekiWiki to the latest version and even though I swear I downloaded the latest version and did stuff that seemed to be upgrading the database, it still seems not to be the latest version.

So maybe I'm not so smart after all.