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Why am I telling you this? Because as I wasted a sunny weekend ordinarily spent around the pool trying to get my various gadgets to talk to each other, I rued the fact that I needed a personal CTO. And I did that as I was throwing one of my gizmos against the wall in frustration. That sort of solved a problem, but it wasn't a good look, personally.

CTO? It's one of those terms like B2B, B2C and CDMA that have emerged during the tech avalanche that we, the Average User, are supposed to know, instinctively understand and talk knowledgeably about lest we be ostracized as Luddites. It means Chief Technology Officer, the highly paid geek hired to design and manage your I.T. platform that every business magazine says you need -- or become toast as the cliché goes. It's a growth business and CTOs are suddenly becoming board members on fat salaries. They are corporate Asia's new best friend.

That's all great at work but what about at home. As I was grappling with my various tech dramas at the weekend, I figured I could use an HCTO (a home CTO) when it all goes wrong. Someone I trust -- not a shop assistant in search of a commission -- to tell me that if I buy that scanner, it won't work with my laptop and my office will end up being a bit like the Malaysian military; lots of great hardware from lots of sources but a real headache when it comes to maintenance.

I looked around the debris of my home office and rued what a sad figure I had become, what a hostage to technology. And it was raining, so, no swimming for this boy. There in the 'Global Headquarters,' as my friends call it, my wife and I have enough equipment to power a good-sized business; a month-old P3 desktop, three laptops and another in service, a scanner, CD writer, laser printer, Zip driver, cable Internet access, two fax machines, three telephone lines, a MP3 player, DVD, CD, TV, two Palm Pilots and two other PDAs, a digital camera, two mobile phones. And I haven't begun with software: Real Jukebox, Napster, four online accounts, seven (seven!) e-mail addresses, our own domains, blah, blah, blah. They are all supposed to talk to each other. As Sun Microsystems' Scott McNeely says, "it's all about the network?" What he didn't add is, "when it works."

O.K., most of it works fine, but I'm sure I could finesse it all further, streamline it seamlessly. I know I can do it, but I haven't yet downloaded movie files, burnt them to a CD and played them on the television. For free. And the reason I haven't is because it takes time to figure out the process, buy the cables, do the file transfer.

The time I spend troubleshooting my gizmos is time not spent elsewhere. O.K., so the pool will always be there, but I wanted to get my "Global HQ" functioning efficiently for the days when I'm not supposed to be around the pool. The days when I'm trying to earn a living, in order to pay for all this paraphernalia Bill Gates tells me is necessary to simplify my life.

Dire Straits sang "I Want My MTV" a decade ago, and Wired recently adapted that to the Internet Age with, "I Want My MP3." Right now, I Want My CTO.

Eric Ellis is Southeast Asia and Technology Editor of the regional finance portal AsiaWise.com

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