Other peoples computers

The Help Desk was working on my laptop for about 5 hours today trying to solve a firewall/printer problem. For some of that time I went over and worked on a co-workers machine. It was almost like trying to write left handed. I've done a ton of little tweaks to my computer and have a bunch of tech specific software that no one else at the TOUR has. This got me thinking about tools. While I think of a computer as a tool, it's really more of a workbench where you put tools (software) and use them. And it's even possible to go a step beyond that. Using a programming language you can build new tools to do whatever you want. Those tools can in turn be used to create new ones and so on, increasing geometrically. We tell kids they can be anything they want when they grow up. Programming is right in line with this. Inside a computer environment you can create basically anything you want, and the tools to help you create are getting better every day.