Computer Conundrums

Both Caron and I work in the IT industry and have on occasion between called computer professionals although quite what that actually means is open to debate. Most of the time it is quite useful being in the IT industry because in general conversation with someone new you always have one of two following conversations, usually the first.

Either it goes like this:
New Person: "So, What do you do?"
Us : "We're both in the IT industry"
New Person: A glazed look descends over the the persons face as they desperately
think of how to change the topic.
New person: "Oh, that's interesting, What do you actually do?"
Us : "Well, Caron is a Business (sometime Systems) Analyst and I try and do as
little as possible!"
New Person: laughs giving him/her enough time to think and then change the topic.

OR it goes like this:
New Person: "So, What do you do"
Us : "We're both in the IT industry"
New Person: Eyes light up, Aha! - fellow practitioners of the dark arts.
New person: "Oh, that's interesting, What do you actually do?"
Us : "Well, Caron is a Business (sometime Systems) Analyst and I try and do as
little as possible!"
Us : Oh shit!, we're going to have to talk about IT all evening, better change
the topic soon.
New Person: laughs
New Person: "I'm in quantum encryption"
Us : Eyes glaze over, where is that alternative topic.

Yes, IT is definitely a conversational black hole one way or another.

Besides the conversational difficulties that IT brings, you also become the general family "Computer" person because, since you work in IT (pronounced "it" :-)), you have to know everything about what is actually an exceptionally large field. Thus it was that my Brother Bruce pitched up at our house with his daughters MP3 CD player and the CD of MP3's that he burnt for it. Problem is that it doesn't work on the MP3 player, nor in the machine that he burnt it on but mysteriously does on a friends Mac. Pretty wierd if you ask me. Caron who is the champion music fundi around here puts it into her laptop and sure enough there is absolutely nothing on the CD - no wonder the MP3 player won't work. As a last gasp, I put it into my linux machine and voila, there are all the MP3's clearly on the disk. We copied them off the CD, over onto Carons laptop and burnt another CD and now it works in the MP3 Player. I should try and figure out why this has happened but I just don't have the energy.