I was sitting in a restaurant one evening with several businessmen and they were talking about networks and computers. I am an artist and a writer and I wasn't paying much attention until one of them said something that definitely caught my interest.

He said, "Often times when a person is called because a network or a computer system went down, the diagnosis takes more than a certified computer expert or even a competent computer technician, it takes a Wizard to find the best solution and get it back on line in the shortest period of time!" So I had to ask, "What do you mean a Wizard?"

Then he said, "Let's use baseball as an analogy. A lot of people can hit and throw and run and maybe even be good enough to be on their high school baseball team. That doesn't mean they can play professional ball in the minor leagues and most of those players never get to go to the majors. Now suppose one of them does go to the majors. When they get to be one of the best players on a major league team then they will be to their ball team what a wizard is to the computer business. They play above their physical talent and even above their thinking ability, they play with their heart and soul. They see things before they happen! They see things other players do not see."

He went on, "A computer wizard must draw on more than they can read in a book or learn in a class. They have to think as far in advance as a chess player who thinks a dozen moves ahead. They have to be able to think of all the qualities of each computer and at the same time consider the network and all of the connections and check all individual functions, collectively and analyze the thousands of things that could go wrong and intuit the specific thing that did go wrong in the particular situation."