Not "no one" but I can say with a real sense of seriousness that people are getting dumber and less capable of troubleshooting or even sorting out what years ago might be considered common knowledge situations. I realize this is a "get off my lawn" moment but I honestly believe that knowledge, on how to do stuff, being passed down from generation to generation, is behind us... and this is not a good thing at all.

I am not getting on anyone's case; I am one of the biggest offenders of this. I think that my generation might actually be the first ones that made this happen and if you are younger than me perhaps you are just "following the same path" i took.

I had (and still have) a father who knows how to do literally anything. I grew up with him refinishing basements, performing repairs on cars, completing complicated plumbing projects, installing and repairing irrigation systems, literally building a bridge (a small one, but a bridge nonetheless,) and installing ceiling fans and cabinets et al.

I know how to do almost none of these things.

I believe we have primarily Atari and then Nintendo to blame for this. It was the 80's and well i was at the age where I would likely learn some stuff about life and how to fix things by a combined membership in the Boy Scouts and the fact that there wasn't much else to do. Video games changed all of that. I am quite certain that I would absolutely clean the floor with him if I was against my father in almost any video game at all. But if we were both given a basement and a blank check to refinish it using only what we already know mine would be the one on the left and his would be the one on the right.

When I speak to him about this he would tell me about how his elders knew so much more. They didn't have a Lowes or a Home Depot or even anyone to help them. They would arrive on a plot of land and find timber because it was growing there and build stuff out of it like barns and even houses. This isn't going back 200 years either, this is just the start of the 1900's and you really have to admire that.

No support, very little tools, no electricity (in most situations) and no hardware store for the most part to provide you with pre-cut, treated timber, and you build a house. I built a tree-house once when i was about 10 years old. By the time it was abandoned it was a few planks of 2 by 4 in a tree that was not on my property and I was likely trespassing, and my eyes swelled shut because the tree in question was covered with poison oak.

What I am trying to say is that my generation and all the ones after it are construction and mechanical failures, with rare exceptions. All I can say is that I certainly hope that everyone out there (like myself) that somehow managed to have a father that knew how to do EVERYTHING and yet you managed to take away almost none of that knowledge.... i certainly hope that this tech-oriented job works out for you (me), because we are seriously f**ked if it doesn't.