Tappy tappy tap tap

It was quite an eventful weekend. In particular, my experience at church last night was... interesting.

The evening began with Graeme phoning me at the last minute, asking if I would retrieve the laptop and run the projector. That was interesting, but was not the most interesting part of events.

I proceeded to make haste to the church, arriving a mere minute before the service was due to start. So, I dashed up the stairs, hooked up the laptop to the projector, and made ready. That was somewhat interesting, but was not the most interesting part of the sequence of events.

Dave then proceeded to issue me with the files for the projector - the hymn schedule and the slides for the sermon. All very exciting, especially when he noted that the last two hymns were not on the schedule. Moreover, one of them wasn't even in the laptop database; it would need to be added! That was a whole lot more interesting, but still was not the most interesting event.

More interesting still was the discovery that the hymn in question had no fewer than seven verses. Marvellous. Still, I quite like a challenge, so after the first hymn, while there was a quiet spell (technically, I think those are called prayers), I knuckled down and typed in the whole thing. Then, I checked that all the spelling was correct, that there were no typos, and even that the semi-colons were in the right place. After all, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing properly, no?

Anyway, huzzah!

Except that that still isn't the most interesting part of the story.

The most interesting part of the story was to come mere moments later, when during the middle group of hymns I decided to be clever, and add this new hymn to the schedule. A marvellous and clever idea. Imagine my horror when I discovered that the stupid machine had decided not to save those seven verses that I had just painstakingly typed in!

So, I had to re-type the whole thing. Only now, the pressure was really on.

Unfortunately, having to retype the hymn in such a small spell led to a lower standard of accuracy in the typing, and a totally unacceptable error rate. Yes, I made a mistake, missing out a space character in the third line of the hymn. Shameful, I know. (I'm also pretty sure there was a comma where there should not have been, but that one is strictly not my fault; it was in the hymnary like that.)

Anyway, I was lauded for my abilities as a "computer whiz" at this point. This leaves me curious as to what people think I actually do all day. See, although I "work with computers", my job involves relatively little actual typing. Instead, it can perhaps best be described as "professional problem solver", where I spend a great deal of time thinking about complex software systems, and the problems inherent in such systems, and then apply a fix, preferably by doing as little actual work (typing) as possible. So, while I can type fairly quickly, and with a reasonable accuracy, it is strictly an ancilliary, rather than a core skill.

Still, that was my interesting experience at church this week.