There is a certain liability to working in the computer field — everyone around you automatically assumes you know how to build them. This is silly. I drive every day, live in a house, and eat every day, but that doesn't mean I know how to make a car, build a house over the weekend, or wash dishes.

I am a fair hand at learning software. Give me a new program, and inside of a day, I'll have mastered it, or I'll be able to fake having mastered it, which is almost as good. It's said that the fastest way to learn a new program is to first screw it up royally and then have to fix your mistakes, and through years of practice I have developed this tactic to a fine art.

Yet the illusion persists, and so every now and then a coworker, a friend of a friend of a friend, or a casual acquaintance I haven't heard from since 1987 will sidle up, looking sheepish, and ask if Intel's new 3GHz Pentium 4 and 875P chipset will work with ATI's new Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. The answer: I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

The innards of my computer are a complete mystery to me, and one I have no interest in cracking. I work in an office where new advances in computer technology are regularly discussed, and when the topics start turning to numbers, processor speeds and brand names I just continue to smile politely and hope no one notices that my eyes have glazed over into the glazed, yeasty goodness of a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

When I need to commit a hardware upgrade, I do the same thing you would do: I sidle over to a computer-savvy friend and sheepishly say that my computer is broken, please make it go. He'll roll his eyes and ask why I don't do it myself, since plainly any 6-year-old could handle setting up a four-station wireless network, and then, as always, I'll have to remind him about the smoke test.

"Smoke test" is a term my computer-savvy friend Dan has used for years. It refers to the point in computer hardware installation when everything has been plugged or attached or crammed back in, and the computer is turned on. The joke is that if no smoke comes out, you did it right.

Five years ago, he helped me install a new hard drive and sound card, watching over my shoulder with the amused expression of a parent watching his toddler tie his shoelaces to each other. I followed his instructions precisely and stepped back. He plugged it in, grandly announcing that the smoke test had begun.

My computer started smoking. A lot. And made little hissing and popping sounds besides.

After frantically yanking the cord out of the wall and cracking the smoldering computer open we found that I had contrived to somehow plug a power thingie where a data thingie should have gone, despite the complete incompatibility of the attachment thingies, and was consequently pumping 120 volts directly into my sound card.

I still don't know what that means, only that it seems that you shouldn't do it.

Dan seemed profoundly disturbed by the fact that the smoke test failed and was therefore no longer a joke. There was a definite sense of loss, I think.

I suggested that he change the name to the 'smoke with hissing and popping sounds test' but his world had been shaken enough. He knew I was intelligent, and therefore surely I could install a simple computer component, so my continued ignorance of things electronic had to be a deliberate ruse of some kind. Meanwhile I kept fanning away smoke.

So a word to the wise to anyone preparing to sidle at me. I may look like a computer geek, act like a computer geek, and have all the subtle social graces of a computer geek, but I haven't the necessary skills for a computer geek. My advice for even the smallest computer hardware task: buy a new computer that already has what you want.

Or you could go ask my friend Dan.