I employ a couple of really smart guys, both younger than me, who help me maneuver the ever changing Internet, regarding email servers, web site hosts, domain names, operating systems, and other things too technical and confusing for my baby boomer brain. I count on these guys to explain trends that measure “hipness vs. dinosaur thinking,” and to translate techno terms into English. When it comes to techie language and making decisions about things I only half understand, at least I have my guys.

Or so I thought. let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you make a decision with no facts or understanding, and then realize it never really mattered in the first place.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been in the midst of self-publishing my memoir, studying the relevant social networking sites, getting a new web site designed, and learning how to make my own changes. I made progress with all of it – until my email got stuck, right when I was preparing an “email blast” to let my people know the book was finished and available for purchase. But when I turned to my guys for help as usual, they were at odds about how to fix the problem, each adamant that their way was the right way, ready to draw their virtual swords and fight each other for what they thought was best for me.

“Tell him to do such and such,” each instructed me, as if I were in the middle of a fight between my parents. Their efforts to “make my life easier,” oddly resulted in three sleepless nights and a brain drain beyond description. When I finally introduced them to each other and asked them to please work it out, this is what happened.

“You guys, of course, can do whatever you want,” one wrote the other, “but it’s my belief that System A is a great resource we’d be blowing off here for no good reason. That’s my 2 cents.”

“System B is not an inferior service,” the other countered. “There are pros there to keep Andrea’s email within the realm of the domain host server, especially when it comes to manage and marketing. I appreciate your support earlier and I look forward to Andrea’s prosperity.”

It didn’t feel like they were considering me at all. My dick is bigger than your dick. Isn’t that what they were ultimately saying? Three days in, my emails building in cyber space with no solution to access any of them, I chose one guy off the cuff, realizing that this fight could go on into perpetuity. Neither was about to back down until the window to market the book was closed so I had to make an uniformed decision. Of course, the winner was smug; the loser was bitter and I had to calm him down and remind him we could always change courses if it didn’t work, something he should have been telling me.

It’s all over now, my new web site is “live,” my email is intact, my Iphone matches my desktop and I’m getting ready to do an email blast via a 19-year-old social marketing genius who was introduced to me by a client. But I have to say, I feel a little worse for the wear, having survived the clash of the techies and hoping I never find myself stuck in the middle again.