My grandfather's workbench was a disgrace. The sawdust from his band saw left a dull coating on tools piled in no discernible order.

To make things worse, many of my grandfather's tools were ugly homemade monstrosities. If you pawed through the litter, you'd find strange implements he created by grinding down the handle of an old pair of pliers or a discarded file.

While his tools were often crude, the work he did with them was not. At any time there were beautiful custom-made, muzzle-loading rifles hanging on the wall awaiting the last touch of shellac on a stock, or for the chemical process called bluing that would create the lustrous gleam on metal parts.

My grandfather and his workshop are long gone, but his relationship with tools may hold some lessons for the modern world.

Let's start with a question: What have you done with your computer lately? You've spent a lot of money to buy it. You've spent time maintaining it with anti-virus software, installed programs to keep spyware away, and tinkered with firewalls and routers to keep hackers out.

But what have you created with it?

If you're like most people, you've spent most of your time poring over specifications for some new computer that will work twice as fast, daydreamed about a digital camera with better resolution than your old model, and hung out on Web sites where those passionate about the Mac-vs.-PC war did battle.

You've spent a lot of time thinking about computing.

But --- other than e-mail and the Web, or killing a space alien in a computer game --- have you done anything worthwhile?

If you haven't, you may have become a slave to your tools --- spending more time polishing them than using them.

I see more and more of that with my friends. To be honest, I see it in myself. I have 64 pages of a novel written. There hasn't been time to write because I've spent so many hours keeping my computer running. I haven't had a chance to edit several hundred of my digital photos because I've been too busy messing with a balky DSL connection.

So what's a person to do?

First, spend some time figuring out what you intended when you bought a computer in the first place.

If it was to keep in touch with friends and kinfolk by e-mail, then see how well you're doing. Give yourself a failing grade if you've only had time to forward jokes but not enough time to tell your friends what is going on in your life. I'm saying you should spend more time writing and less time tinkering.

Maybe your computer was intended to make a hobby more fun --- as a way to edit digital photos, or to help you draft plans for home improvement projects, or to do research about your family tree.

If you're spending more time on maintenance than the intended use, then reapportion your computing time in favor of the tasks that it was intended to do.

Cut back on maintenance if you must. What good is a finely tuned computer system if you have no time to use it? Get a good anti-virus program and set it to update itself automatically. Make sure your firewall is turned on, and then forget about it. Give up the time you've spent comparing the brands of uninterruptible power supplies and buy a good one and forget it.

Stop messing with your tools so much and start using them.

The good thing about Clyde's message is that --- unlike ponderous questions that require knowing the difference between megahertz and megapixels --- it shows the true path to computer genius.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself if you use a slow dial-up connection, or if you're still stuck with an ancient computer.

Perfect tools aren't needed for perfect work.

tecbud@ajc.com