My silicon-and-telecommunications-wire tales of woe don't worry me nearly as much knowing that even the most knowledgable and self-sufficient run into stubborn problems.
I know my limits when it comes to computers. Two years ago I was lucky enough to be forced into gutting and overhauling three computers; since that trial-by-fire I've become familiar enough with interior components and corresponding manufacturer quality to build units from scratch. My tasks at work include application and operating system maintenance, and one of my occasionally paying hobbies at home - audio engineering - involves a good deal of tweaking for performance purposes, so I hold valuable non-coding troubleshooting expertise among laymen (e.g., most of the people I know).
Networking and personally dedicated servers are, to me, as fire was to primitive man: I fear it. Simple tasks I can handle, like uploading and downloading, installing Movable Type, changing preferences or permissions at the office, finagling our intranet data server and bumbling through a home network (which is still not quite complete at my apartment). I even managed to set up my MT database in MySQL after abandoning the inevitably disk-limitation-corrupted Berkeley DB; I believe I was following explicit directions for the database but it's still a fuzzy memory of unnatural achievement, not unlike that of a parent who lifts a '70 Chevy Caprice to save his trapped child.
My proficiency ends there. Coding? "Linux Box"? Leave that to the CS graduates - the guys in college whose practical jokes on acquaintances apparently included installing an active-desktop background consisting of a JPEG screenshot of the desktop, with functional shortcuts surreptitiously rearranged. When I install hardware or update drivers, I prefer to let the little man inside flip switches and communicate to me through exchanges that require responses no more complicated than "Back" and "Next," and the occasional "Finish." Not to say I can't doggy-paddle: between third and eighth grade, I taught myself some GW-Basic for a handful of graphic sequences and unfinished text adventures (some relatively impressive results with a random-number combat system, as a matter of fact). And, just last month, I rigged a moldy AT machine with obsolete PCI slots to play the soundtrack from an equally venerable program out through an ancient 8-bit Soundblaster and into my recording equipment. But as I've said before, I know enough to be dangerous and precious little else. I try to stay abreast of new technology and how in the world to use it correctly. It's a fun and unpredictable relationship.
Hats off and best wishes to those of you in a do-si-do with mankind's own silicon embodiment of the 80/20 Rule. "I think I know what I'm doing, therefore I am."