Heroes - First installment

Everybody has heroes, people who save them, help them out (repeatedly) or inspire them to be better people.  I'm going to begin a series of posts about my heroes.  I won't be writing them all consecutively, but I will be letting you guys know, over the course of the next month or so, who I consider my heroes to be.  I'll start out small, with relatively minor heroes, and work my way up to the big mamma jammas later.

Hero #1:  Dan from the computer repair store, and his ridiculously young helper.

Doesn't sound like much, but these guys have talked me down from multiple panic attacks, and fixed my computer so many times, it's not even funny.  They sold me a refurbished laptop a couple of years ago, and since then, I've been in there with everything from viruses, to no internet, to AACK!  Word doesn't work...  Half the time, they don't charge me for repairs, and just fix the stupid thing.

Yesterday, I took in a brand new laptop.  Apparently, my old laptop heard it was being replaced, and decided to dump its operating system so I couldn't transfer my old files to the new one.  Instead of panicking, I took it into the store with a handful of flash drives, and asked if they could either fix it, or get my stuff off of it.  They smiled at me (smiled!  Can you imagine?)  and said no problem, but it would be just as easy to just put it on the new laptop for you.  So I took them my new laptop.  And they're working on it.  With a smile.

It's not their skill that's so impressive to me, although that is pretty impressive.  It's their attitude.  When I walk in the door, they stick their head out of the door that leads to the back and smile reassuringly, every time.  They commiserate with my panic, and tell me it's not a problem to fix.  They have never run their fingers through their hair at me, they've never let out exasperated sighs, they don't tsk me, or shake their head.  Occasionally, I'll get a good-natured chuckle, when I tell them of the latest download I did which installed a nasty virus, but that's about it.

They're my hero, not because they get me out of computer scrapes affordably, but because of their attitude.  They've shown me that a good attitude can go a long way towards fixing a problem, no matter how idiotic.