An odd thing has happened.I've gotten used to being treated as a computer (or at least Apple) "expert" over the years. Of course, to friends and family, I'm still just me, but I'm the one in the family who gets the computer questions. Sister gets the health questions, Mom gets the plant questions, Dad gets the auto-business questions, I get the computer questions.

However, now, I have apparently transcended from mere "expert" into a knowledgebase of such dimensions that my family and friends get upset with me if I cannot divine solutions by pure psychic power.

Two examples from today:

• A colleague at a remote location was tasked with installing Mac OS X 10.4 on a machine with no DVD capabilities. The solution is to boot the target machine in FireWire target disk mode and install upon it from a different computer. However, the machine wasn't responding correctly in target disk mode. The installer paused at the "pick a disk" screen for a long time, spinning its chasing arrows and waiting for who knows what.

  This was relayed to me, and I was asked what it meant, or what to do. I said, shrugging, "I don't know. Maybe it takes a little bit of time for some reason." I got yelled at, and asked again what it was doing and what should be done in return. When I pointed out that I do not know every code path for a program (the installer) that I did not write running on a machine I don't own in a location that I'm not at, I got yelled at even more.

• An unnamed family member (who is married to my dad and is no one's stepmother) had a problem with her Entourage database - it needed to be rebuilt. I got a phone call. I thought I remembered how to do it, but it took a few tries to figure out that you hold down Option during startup (it also took a few tries to realize she's running Office v.X, not Office 2004).

  At this point, the software displayed a dialog box that apparently presented multiple options. I was miles away, did not see the dialog box, had never seen the dialog box, and don't use Entourage myself. This is the description and question I heard on the phone:

  OK, it says "Your computer needs to …" blah blah blah blah blah. What do I pick?

  I helpfully suggested that I actually needed to hear the question before suggesting one of the answers. The sighing on the other end was more like I had just asked the waitress to repeat the salad dressing choices for the fifth time.

I don't know if there's some word for this level of guru-ship, but I would really just appreciate it if they would yell and sigh a little bit less. I didn't corrupt anyone's Entourage database, or make the disks not respond correctly. And I'm good, but not psychic.

This is why I think I can't wear certain T-shirts around people that know me.

Update: Welcome MacSlash readers; you surprise me with your comments and expressions of anguish. I'm used to people being frustrated with computers - I was just making fun of my family and close friends here for thinking I'm so good that I can actually see what they see from remote locations. I think there was a bad TV series about that. It was on Fox. But I repeat myself.

By the way, this blog is just me venting steam. If you're actually interested in Macintosh topics, please check out the absolutely free trial to MDJ or MWJ, my day job, where we occasionally use words like "pudding" and "fragmentation." It's great fun.