When I was approached by the owner of a computer integration company concerning a job with his company, I told him I had just recently found the on/off switch on my office PC. To date, that had been the zenith of my computer knowledge.

He explained that his company was recently awarded a state education contract to represent a specific PC manufacturer and that I would be calling on university level staff who worked in the math, engineering and administration departments. He said, “You will be calling on people looking for powerful workstations. They will have researched the computers they want to buy and will know everything you will need to know.” Then I realized my future customers would be a few levels ahead of me on the pyramid of understanding. I would be at the bottom or “can turn PC on” level.

“Why would you want to hire someone as ‘untechnically’ inclined as me to manage this contract?” See how bad it was? I was using a word that didn’t even exist. Then, he explained it to me. “I don’t have any truly great salespeople who can drill down and find out where each university is buying their network switches, who is doing their cabling or if their department needs any ‘out sourcing’. My company needs a great salesperson like you.” Or at least that’s what I heard. 

The next day, I was on an airplane winging my way to a three-day seminar in Houston . This would be my introduction to the world of technology. I attended my first meeting, Java and Your Operating System. That name sounded familiar and I started to feel comfortable because, for years, it had been my practice to kick-start my system each morning with a cup of coffee. This class just seemed to be an extension of that. I chose a desk near the front. I didn’t want to miss one word that the instructor said. Little did I know that he would actually zip through approximately eight words before he would utter one that I was sure was English. I was dumbfounded. Then, I realized the instructor was indeed speaking English. It was just that I only understood every eighth word. 

Suddenly, I realized that I would need to take two different types of notes, one for typical PC things that I would need to remember, while also making a list of words that were alien to me. This became my strategy for the next three days. Luckily, my roommate was an SE, which I would soon learn was a “System Engineer” and he knew how to talk to people who only knew how to turn a computer on. Each night, we reviewed the foreign words of the day’s sessions. I learned that “skuzzy” was a “Small Computer System Interface” and that it was actually an acronym spelled SCSI. I also learned that Solaris was an operating system and it incorporated WABI (Windows Application Binary Interface). My roommate assured me that WABI was not what I had put on my sushi the night before. 

I attended ATM Technology and Its Different Applications on the second day. Finally, something that I already knew! I wasn’t sure how my bank’s ATM fit into this seminar, but I was thankful for a subject that I was familiar with. Maybe they were going to show me how to access my ATM via computer and withdraw money. I didn’t know how that would work, but you have to admit that would be a great application. Then, I found out that ATM was an Asynchronous Transfer Mode. Man, was I surprised and I must admit a bit disappointed. My roomy explained that ATM was a packet-oriented transfer method that uses non-synchronized time division multi-plexing.

Thanks to that seminar I’m a lot more technically savvy and now I work nights on figuring out that money withdrawal thing.