Mental illness vs. mental health and computers

Dear reader,

Mental health is just as much a part of health as physical health. I have several friends who are "over the edge" emotionally. They all react far too much to external events. One of them is a certified genius, but because of his constant over reaction to external events cannot hold a job. Let me give you a concrete example. I will call this friend John. John is so super smart that sometimes it literally amazes me. He writes html code freehand without any programs to assist him. He knows UNIX and DOS commands extensively. He has rented a remote server to host web pages and he sets up and manages this entire server in UNIX at the command prompt. No simple interfaces for John. They just get in the way. He is hosting my personal web at http://polybids.com/ and several others I am developing. He can set up an entire hosted domain on his server in under half an hour, entering complex esoteric commands at the UNIX prompt. He is definitely a genius. He cobbles together computers from discarded parts other people throw away, and they actually work.

Any way, periodically John will call me up and threaten to commit suicide because his server is down. Or somebody at the place he is renting his server from has closed down port 25 and now he cant get or send email and it is obviously the end of the world. John will seriously be considering jumping off the bridge and ending it all. It's like "my computer crashed and I am doomed.... I might as well die."

Now when my computer crashes, it annoys the **** out of me. But I don't want to die. I just want to get a much better computer. And I immediately begin reinstalling Windows XP or whatever I need to do to get the computer up and running again. So why is it that some people seem to be ruled by their emotions? Is this a form of mental illness, or, is it just a series of poor choices?

Think good thoughts
David A. Youngs
polybids@yahoo.com