On a recent Saturday morning, I woke up early and took my problems to a bar. The bar was located on Boylston Street at the end of a row of seedy pubs. One night during medical school orientation several years ago, my classmates and I worked our way down that row, presenting ourselves proudly to one unsmiling bouncer after another.
After a short wait, the bouncer led me to a wooden counter at the back of the store and introduced me to a man named Genius Jim.
"What can I help you with?" said Genius Jim, and I told him I had two problems.
The first problem was my phone, which was too slow. Genius Jim asked to take a look. He pressed some buttons, then handed the phone back to me. "You have all these apps running in the background," he said, flicking through several panels of active applications. Many of them were applications I'd downloaded out of curiosity and opened once: Social Girl, a compass, a cocktail recipe generator, an app that turns things you say ("indigestion", "it's tax time") into little songs.
Genius Jim's face was graciously stoic as he made the buttons jiggle and then X'ed them out one by one. I was embarrassed, and not only because he had seen my choice of apps: I'd come all the way to Boylston Street to seek help for a problem I should have been able to solve from home.
"What else?" asked Genius Jim once this was done.
The second problem was my laptop, which had recently started giving me the "kernel panic." This, I've gathered, is the Mac equivalent of the blue screen of death. Now Genius Jim looked concerned. "I'll have to run some tests," he said and asked me to sign a consent form.
After I'd signed, he disappeared with my computer, and I was left to wander around the store and creepily watch small children play. An hour later, I returned to the counter.
"Did you back up?" asked Genius Jim, "Because we need to wipe your drive."
Apparently something had gone awry during the testing process. Now my laptop was suspended in a technological coma, unresponsive to all stimuli.
Another consent form was produced. This time, I had questions. "Do you really have to wipe the drive?" I asked. "Can't you just make it go back to the crappy way it was before?"
No, said Genius Jim.
Seriously? I said.
Seriously, said Genius Jim, looking serious.
I signed the form.
Genius Jim got everything ready. With his finger hovering above the button that would erase three years of work, he asked me one last time: "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Call me sensitive, but it seemed like a loaded question. Kind of like getting your bowel perforated during a colonoscopy, being told that it would take surgery to fix the damage, and then being asked whether you'd like to undergo surgery.
After the deed was done, Genius Jim said, "You shouldn't have any problems now."
I found myself breathing a sigh of relief. At least it was over. At least I could move on.
That's when my laptop -- my blank-faced, factory-setting laptop -- gave Genius Jim and me the kernel panic. This time, it felt less like a blue screen of death than a middle finger.
"That's strange," said Genius Jim.
I checked my watch. It was no longer morning, and next door, the pubs were stirring to life. I wished I'd taken my problems there instead, or even better, simply kept them to myself. But it was too late. I'd sought help, and now there was no turning back.
*
As a medical student, I spend one afternoon a week working in a primary care clinic. Most of the patients I see are young, healthy women. They come in with a cough or simple urinary tract infection; they leave with a cough suppressant or an antibiotic. Once every few weeks, an impressive collection of ear wax walks through the door, and the office happily mobilizes to perform an irrigation. Most afternoons, however, pass without incident.
Primary care doctors have one of the most important jobs in medicine: they are patients' first line of defense. If and when something serious comes along, they are the ones who are supposed to find it and flag it and make sure all the right people get involved.
But things that are serious tend to get mixed in with a lot of other stuff -- stuff that doctors can't do anything about, stuff that they could treat easily over the phone, stuff that other trained professionals could handle equally well. I imagine being a primary care doctor must sometimes feel like sifting through an endless pile of kidney stones in order not to miss a diamond.
Sitting at the Bar waiting for Genius Jim to fix my computer, it occurred to me that he might feel the same way. What are Geniuses, after all, if not doctors for technology? Instead of white coats, they wear lanyards; instead of coughs and UTIs, they fix bugs and RAM. Like primary care doctors, they always have to be looking out for the big bad thing, even if most of their time gets spent dealing with people who have downloaded one too many compasses onto their iPhones.
For everyone's sake, I had to wonder: wasn't there a better way?
*
When Genius Jim finally got back to me with an update, it wasn't a good one. He was stumped, and he'd consulted two other Geniuses, Genius Paul and Genius Joe, who were also stumped. "If you're willing to leave the laptop here for a few hours, we can run some more tests," said Jim. "Get to the root of the problem."
I said: "OK."
Feeling vulnerable, I went across the street to a cosmetics store and bought an overpriced skin cleanser. Then I went to a cupcake store and looked at some cupcakes. I walked several blocks to the river, where some people were falling in love. The afternoon had stirred up a severe wind -- the kind of wind that anorexic girls could ride like a metro -- but these couples were behaving like nothing was wrong. That's how I knew they were in love.
When it was almost time to head back to Boylston Street, my phone rang.
"It's not ready," someone on the other line said. "I'm taking over for Jim. The testing won't be finished by the time the store closes tonight."
I had no choice but to say: "OK."
When Genius Jim finally got back to me with an update, it wasn't a good one. He was stumped, and he'd consulted two other Geniuses, Genius Paul and Genius Joe, who were also stumped. "If you're willing to leave the laptop here for a few hours, we can run some more tests," said Jim. "Get to the root of the problem."
I said: "OK."
Feeling vulnerable, I went across the street to a cosmetics store and bought an overpriced skin cleanser. Then I went to a cupcake store and looked at some cupcakes. I walked several blocks to the river, where some people were falling in love. The afternoon had stirred up a severe wind -- the kind of wind that anorexic girls could ride like a metro -- but these couples were behaving like nothing was wrong. That's how I knew they were in love.
When it was almost time to head back to Boylston Street, my phone rang.
"It's not ready," someone on the other line said. "I'm taking over for Jim. The testing won't be finished by the time the store closes tonight."
I had no choice but to say: "OK."
The next morning, my phone rang again. "Just wanted to update you on the status of your computer," said yet another voice I didn't recognize. "It now works, but in the process of having more testing done, the logic board may have gotten damaged."
What's that now?
"We were running some tests to overwhelm the system. We think that it may have gotten -- overwhelmed."
He went on to explain in detail what might have transpired. Ultimately, he concluded, it meant my computer would need to be shipped to an outside facility to get fixed. For a few hundred dollars.
A mid-conversation Internet search told me that for a few hundred more, I could get a new laptop.
Had they at least figured out what the original problem was?
No, said Phone Genius, they had not. But I should rest assured: the outside facility would be able to run more tests.
That's when I decided to make my laptop Comfort Measures Only.
"Don't move," I said, which made no sense. "I'm coming in."
*
Looking back, I wonder what could have been done differently (if anything) that might have led to a better outcome. I don't have a good answer, but if I had to venture some lessons learned, they would be:
1. It's best not to wake up before noon on Saturdays
2. One really ought to back up
3. In tech -- and in medicine -- a good triage system is everything
4. In tech, and in medicine, no test is free
5. One ought to back way up, New Hampshire up
6. It's good to have a Genius as your first line of defense
7. It's probably smart to have a second line of defense, too
Sometimes I think of my medical school orientation and recall the sight of a hundred future doctors descending upon Boylston Street. That night, the long city blocks seemed to stretch straight into our future. Not everything appears so straightforward anymore, on Boylston Street or elsewhere. Medical school has shown me the uncertainty of being a doctor; Apple has shown me the uncertainty of being doctored. In the time it's taken to write this blog post, my laptop has kernel panicked twice.
Hi, I've been saying to my laptop, could you please be better now?
Reason doesn't back me up on this, but I'm not complaining. For now, at least, it's still here.
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