I wish problems I have with computers really were my fault

 As you know, the website for out for a few days, as Lance explained here.

When I first could not get to the this blog  my thought was

OH, I must have changed some setting by accident. When Lance gets back (he was on vacation) he'll know how to fix it. Bad timing that it happened when he was gone, though prob not an accident- with him on vacation I was at the site more often and had more of a chance to screw things up. AND Lance will tell me what I did and I'll know to not do it again. And I will learn more about how this all works which will help me in the future!

When Lance got back we found out that NO Bill didn't do anything wrong. The blog site company  that we work with did an update and BLAH BLAH BLAH.  Reminds me of the theme behind the TV show Seinfeld: No Hugs, No Learning. At least no learning. I am not in the slightest more enlightened. 

Lance worked with them and YADA YADA YADA the problem is fixed, so I am very happy about that. 

On the one hand I wish it had been my fault so I would learn something.  On he other hand, if it was my fault would it have been as easy to fix? Would I really have learned something? 

When something does not work my protocol is

1) Turn the machine off and on again (e.g., log out and log in again). I want to say 

this works surprisingly often

but I doubt this surprises any of my readers, or is even news to them.

2) Spend at most 5 minutes trying to fix it myself . You will soon see that 5 minutes is a good choice for me.

3) Ask staff or Lance or Darling or my TA  (depending on the problem). 

4) They tell me to log off and log on again. When I tell them I already have they do something magical and it works again. I then ask them:

a) Could I have fixed this myself. 2/3 of the time the answer is no. They don't mean intellectually. They mean that I do not have access to what I need to fix it.

b) Did I do something wrong? I want to know so I won't do it again. about 99/100 times the answer is that I did nothing wrong (I don't recall that last time that I did).

Given a and b, I think 5 minutes is all the time I want to spend to try to fix it myself.