Being ‘the geek’ in your family or friend circle can sometimes be an onerous task. You realize pretty soon that if you’re good at technical matters – if you solve a computer-related problem for somebody once - you’re forever ‘doomed’, so to say, to be the tech support guy everyone will be calling up when something goes kaput. Not that I mind, since it feels nice if I can help out somebody in trouble or who needs a bit of advice.

However, this can sometimes become a problem, or at the very least a horrible experience that you want to forget. You could go deep into troubleshooting and then find out that the proverbial ‘plug wasn’t switched on’. Or, as it happened with my class 12th Board computer practical viva, end up being grilled for the better part of an hour just because the guy came to know the student in front of him is the president of the school computer society.

A similar situation cropped up a few days ago. Dad’s friend had thrown a party and had a few videos which were shot there, so could I please collate all the files into one single video, convert it to another format and give it to them? I agreed, because it isn’t a terribly difficult job to do of course. (Just kidding. In case you’re ever able to successfully edit and export videos in Linux distros, the heavens burst open and angels shower gifts upon you. No documentary evidence of this exists since not a single person has been able to accomplish this task. Ever.) Alas, I did not know that horrors that awaited me.

I wasn’t there at this particular party – and in retrospect I’m glad I took that decision. I tend to avoid any such parties which involve lots of relatives and / or family friends since I’ve to spend the whole evening grinning a fake smile that makes said relatives and / or family friends ask me whether I’ve come to kill Batman.

I started playing these short video files which I would soon have to compile just to get an idea of what I had to edit. Not that I needed to do much since I was asked only to combine all the files into a single long file. While I was doing this, I came across a video that was so incredibly gay that it’s funny. (I’ve obscured the video so that the people involved aren’t personally identifiable. The video was edited in Windows Movie Maker on my new laptop; I had to reinstall Windows since quite a few functions on my laptop weren’t working properly in Linux. Video editing in Linux is a bit like astrology – favourable stars must align perfectly. Rupert was rising in Capricorn – or something like that – so I had to use Movie Maker.)

Watch the gayest Bollywood dance here

Note that the guys in the video probably aren’t even drunk (they’re kids) or asked to do a dare (they’re kids). Damn, I spent so much time ROFL-ing after watching this video that I couldn’t bring myself to completing the task at hand. I can never complete this task because I’ll just keep laughing and then I’ll lose my sanity. When I say “I’m ROFL-ing”, dude, I’m NOT kidding. I am actually rolling on the floor laughing.

I eventually just emailed a link to download Windows Movie Maker.