No matter where you work, live or love, the job of the ITG (IT Guy or Gal) is usually a pretty thankless job.

When you’re a small, start-up “homepreneur”, intentionally or not, if you’re lucky enough not to be wearing that hat yourself, the ITG is probably your husband, wife, partner or roommate. If that’s the case, chances are at some point you’ve experienced moments of domestic discontent when technology at the ol’ SoHo isn’t quite as quick and easy As Seen On TV.

Perhaps, you’ve secretly wished you could either fire the entire department or hire a customer service intermediary trained not to mock, smirk, roll-eyes or talk to you like you’re a child. Well, the VP of IT @viciousyoga, who has held the position for almost twenty years, has undeniably earned his tenure, so firing is out of the question. However, during a recent prolonged and bumpy total Snow Leopardization of the Hoffman-Ingber household, there were definitely a couple of days when I would have paid a significant sum to avoid a few of these scenes with my own beloved resident Nick Burns.

That’s why we both laughed so hard while we watched the most recent episode of our new favorite TV show, Modern Family. (You can watch the full episode there on abc.go.com. However, ironically, if you’re on a Mac and use Safari and have survived your own Snow Leopardizing, abc.go.com does not support OSX 10.6 at the moment, but Firefox will work.)

Like Phil Dunphy, the love of my life has recently expressed an interest in purchasing a souped up home theater. Since I can see 2 broken DVD players, an AIWA mini stereo without functional CD or cassette, a VCR (that works!) from 1985 and about 7 remote controls from where I sit, I can only imagine how much fun that project will be for me.

On the other hand, I also could not have imagined the ultimate customer service excellence I experienced after my last post. I was truly surprised and delighted to discover that between hitting the “publish” button and brushing my teeth and jumping into bed with him, my dear ITG had worked his ninja hacker magic on the interwebs, logged in to my computer and stealthily placed in my iTunes full MP3 versions of all of the Lullaby Renditions of Nirvana, even though I was once again barely making my self-imposed daily deadline of posting by midnight.

Like he’s done a zillion times over his long career as my CIO, co-CEO (Experience Officer), co-CPO (Parenting Officer), best friend and, yes, Head Cheer Leader for all of my endeavors, he set that box around my heart on fire. I didn’t even have to ask.

So, even if it’s legally ill-advised to make out with your IT Department, consider sending them or him or her a thank you note next time some random upgrade that you think has nothing to do with you seems to go off without notable disruption to your day. Or maybe just because most days you can get most of your work done most of the time.

They’ll love you for it, even if they won’t marry you. It’s a hell of a job, and it’s harder than it looks.

Thank you, ITG. You’re the best. Even when it’s complicated.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Blogging, Fun, Marriage, Music, Relationships, Technology, Television, humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.