My Superpower

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I'm pretty sure I have a superpower... Not really, but keep on reading.

Superpowers??? But that's the work of fiction you say. I know right. And you also probably think that this should be in a different part of the WP forum, but hear me out.

My job/career is a helpdesk technician. A very well paid helpdesk technician. This is pretty much what I've been doing in one form or another for the last twelve years of my life. Currently my job consists of supporting fifteen end users directly and potentially a dozen more at any given time with their computer and network use.

My superpower has to do with my job, specifically fixing computers. I seem to have the ability to fix computers with just my presence alone in the same room. That's just coincidence right... right? Maybe. I don't know. I just know that this happened enough that back in college when I was a student tech for the school, my boss figured it out and would call me into the room when stuff would start acting weird on a computer or network and it would start working normally as soon as I walked into the room.

It didn't stop with that job, but it kept on happening at each job. This morning it occurred. One of my users just couldn't get her computer to access the network. As soon as she got me and I walked into the room, it started working. Same thing last friday. A user couldn't get acess to several network resources and as soon as I sat down at the computer to check a few things out to fix the issue, right in front of me before I even could do anything beyond touch the mouse and move it towards the start menu, the access to the network resources started working. I'd blame it on our network sucking, but this doesn't happen across the board, and happens with other random unexplainable problems, and this happens all the time.

At my previous job, others figured out they could get me to come and look at the weird unexplainable problems that even restarting wouldn't fix, and have it start working as soon as I got in the same room or a few feet of the computer. It's like my presence reduces the chaos in the universe as it specifically relates to computers and networks. What this doesn't seem to fix is problems that are explainable, such as a setting change. In no way do I have the power to just be in the presence of a computer and have a setting change, or software install or uninstall. Nothing like that. This is just problems that have no explanation such as software suddently one day just freezing everytime it opens, or blue screens, or network access, or software/hardware failing to work correctly when there has been no configuration change. As soon as I go to look at the problem, the problem stops. The most random time I fixed a computer was when a coworker called me to check it out. I sat down, waited for it to finish restarting, and when it did it still had the problem. I thought about what to do and I was going to explain it to the user what I was going to do to fix it when they asked, but I hit the laptop right in the center of the keyboard area with the side of my hand as if judo chopping it(I know there are no judo chopping), and I didn't even doing it hard. I only did the chopping thing as a joke to show some humor and lighten up the mood, and the computer immediately stopped having the problem it was having and started working. I have one coworker now that jokes that my presence alone puts the fear of god into the computers as he's seen this happen numerous times that my presence alone somehow correlates or causes the computers and network to start working again.

Really, I'd like to think that I'm just lucky enough to walk in the door at the right moment, but this has happened way to many times for it to just be luck on my part. It's almost unnerving.

Anyone else experience anything like this?

All of the time.

People will ask me to look at their computer / router / telephone / television / coffee maker because it is "broken".

I don't even have to be in the same room (or city), but as soon as I agree to look at the problem, they'll say, "Never mind, it's working!"

Most of the time, I don't even have to ask, "Did you plug it in?"

... and I never get credit for it ...

If I were superstitions I would believe the same about myself. I am not. I have many such anecdotes.

Check your building electrical grounds. It's possible either there is more than normal RFI in your building or the systems you are using are more succeptible than normal to RFI and a poor ground is exacerbating it. Having an extra person in the room could be blocking more RFI making the symptoms disappear.

At one time I walked a LOT in my city late at night and would observe MANY streetlights going out as I approached. I was not observing any streetlights going out which were out of my line of sight - most likely because I was not observing them at all, not because they were not going out.

I too had a mysterious Power or Talent. I could intuit how to bust just about any system; This was back in the 80s. They used to call me the Wrecker or the Terminator. Finding the weak spots in a system is the first step in making it robust.

ruveyn