Fragile

Nice little xkcd cartoon today; I often feel like this, not because I have a computer science degree particularly but because I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time "fixing" other people's IT problems (especially parents and kids!) Most of the time issues quickly descend into a flaming pit of despair as one problem demands some download or other, that then needs another and so on, like dominoes crashing down. Often, hours later (long after the owner of the particular device has got bored and wandered off) I finally sort it all out and get back to my own business. I find Apple gear is by far the worst culprit, most things are "proprietary" and impenetrable; all it takes is one little thing to go wrong during an install or upgrade and the whole thing falls apart. Pretty soon you are up to your ears in consoles, navigating antiquated Unix folder systems, and desperately trying to remember the syntax of "grep" commands that should have been forgotten in the 80s, if only people knew how fragile it all was.