"Bellying Up to the Genius Bar"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media Group

If this column is being read by Apple CEO Tim Cook, known to a certain ubiquitous Twitter user as Tim Apple, it means two things:

1. He has way too much time on his hands.

2. He should acknowledge that I am a genius.

I attained this lofty status after I bought a new iMac and enlisted the services of Yash Sharma, who works in a nearby Apple store.

I went there because my previous iMac was 10 years old, slower than a tortoise with a broken leg and the technological equivalent of me: a geezer.

I took the new computer home and called Apple Support for help in setting it up because I was afraid I would plug it into the wrong outlet, hit “Control-Alt-Delete” and bring down the nation’s power grid.

Everything was fine except for the unfortunate fact that I couldn’t transfer data from my old computer to my new one. So I had to take both machines to the store.

“Are you backed up?” Yash asked.

“I had an upset stomach after dinner last night, but I’m feeling much better now,” I replied. “You’re getting a little personal, don’t you think?”

“No,” Yash said, very patiently. “I mean, do you have an external hard drive?”

“I have a hard drive, but it’s not external,” I said. “I didn’t want to put it outside. What if it rains?”

This, of course, was before I became a genius.

At 21, Yash has already achieved that designation, which qualifies him to help customers like me who otherwise would have to rely on their grandchildren for technical assistance.

“Sometimes with older computers, you have to reboot,” said Yash.

“My definition of rebooting,” I told him, “is to put your foot through the screen. We have a new computer system at work and the best thing I can say about it is that it makes the old one look good. Still,” I added, “I don’t think anybody ever ran through an office yelling, ‘The typewriters are down!’ ”

“Probably not,” Yash said. “So it’s a good thing you came to the Genius Bar.”

“Do you serve beer at this bar?” I asked.

“We don’t have a liquor license,” Yash replied.

“That’s too bad,” I said. “Since you’re 21, you could have a cold one with me.”

“After your computer problem is fixed,” he said, “you could go to another bar and celebrate.”

That was easier said than done because even Yash had trouble transferring the data, so he had to bypass the hard drive and hook both computers to each other so my information could go directly from the old one to the new one.

“This could take a while,” he told me.

The estimated time for completion was 8 hours and 49 minutes. The store closed in about an hour.

“You’ll have to leave them here overnight,” Yash said.

“It’ll be like a hospital stay,” I noted. “My machines will have a double room in the ICU: Intensive Computer Unit.”

“It usually costs $99 for this,” Yash said, “but we won’t charge you because you’ve already done $99 worth of work yourself.”

“I’m 65 years old and I haven’t done $99 worth of work in my whole life,” I said. “But thanks.”

I received a call the next morning to say that the operation was a success. When I picked up the computers after work, I said to Yash, “I’ve learned a lot from you. In fact, I feel like a genius.”

“Maybe you could work here,” he suggested.

“Tell that to Tim Cook,” I said. “And tell him to start serving beer at the Genius Bar. The first round is on him.”

Copyright 2019 by Jerry Zezima