Free Tech Support

Anyone else who reads this and considers themselves a geek is probably in the same boat as me. The more I do with computers and tech stuff, the more my family & friends view me as a free tech support guy. It started out when I was in school with my parents asking me simple stuff about setting up their email and such. That wasn't so bad. Gradually it spread to where my extended family was calling me about the simple stuff as well. As soon as my neighbors learned I was a CS student I became the first person they'd call whenever they had a computer question or problem. It went up a step when a year or so ago I helped my brother wire his apartment for ethernet so he could play his Xbox 360 in a different room from his computer. Apparently I am the only person who can use a crimp tool.

I find it funny how people seem to think I can solve problems with just a simple telephone call. I had an uncle call me because his computer was stuck constantly restarting and not loading the operating system. Somehow he thought I could just tell him to hit some magic key (right next to the Any key) to fix the problem. And it's not like I can just drive over to his house to fix the problem. He lives far enough away it'd cost me roughly $50 in gas to drive there and back. It would be cheaper for him to take his PC into a tech support shop and pay the $30-$40/hour they charge.

Now, I don't mind helping people with simple stuff or giving advice when I'm visiting or actually there in front of their computer. Doing support over the phone when they aren't able to converse on the same tech vocabulary level is very frustrating. With my family, I'll get calls while I'm driving down the road and have no frame of reference to what they're doing, and sometimes they're not even able to articulate what the problem is exactly.

I really think people should have to go through some sort of introductory course on how to use a computer before they actually get one. I think the biggest problem when it comes to computer problems, bugs, viruses, etc is user education level. A computer takes time and effort to keep in good working order, just as does an automobile. People think it's important to take care of their cars - get it washed, change the oil, etc, but they seem to think a computer will just take care of itself. Then they wonder why their computer runs so slow and is plagued with problems just a few months after getting it. Then again, you could always go overboard, as a friend of mine does, in that he reformats and reinstalls his entire operating system every few months just to be sure nothing is on there he doesn't want.

We're all in this together

Mere

As it turns out, one of my friends actually went and got famous. My friend Kyle plays bass guitar for a band Mere. Recently they were selected to be part of the official Team USA Olympic Soundtrack. So, just to reassure everyone that I'm not, as Kyle puts it, "a communist who hates Team USA" I've included the support pic on my blog for the time being.

Cognitive Surplus

This is a great video of a presentation given at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this year. Clay Shirky gives a great explanation (plausible) as to the reasons behind the explosion of user created content on the web and the immersion everyone is experiencing with social networking sites. Enjoy.

The Machines Are Alive

I swear the more processors and memory we put into our computers, the more likely the are to come to life, if they haven't already. Processing power has grown so fast that most PC's can handle workloads that weren't even imaginable ten years ago. Just the other day I had my computer at home ripping a DVD, converting videos to another format, uploading a data backup file, recording live TV, using VoIP, streaming video my Xbox 360, and playing a video game -- all at the same time, without even so much as a hiccup.

With all this new computing power at our fingertips, I'm amazing our computers haven't started talking back to us yet. Then again, that's likely a software issue. But I am willing to say that I've seen some technology start to take on personal attitudes, if only at a base level. Where I work, the developers all share a common network enabled printer. It gets used fairly regularly by all of us. After a few weeks we've all started to notice that our printer seems to have something against one of the developers, and against him only. In the year or so that I've been there, I've yet to have a problem with that printer. Every time I use it, it works flawlessly. The same goes for almost all the developers, except this one guy. For him, the printer likes to give a 'Paper Jam' error message on a large percentage of his printouts. When you check the printer, there is no paper jam. You just open one of the trays and close it again and all is fine.

The last few weeks we've tracked how often this happens. For all the other developers we get that error about one in fifty. For the unfortunate guy, he gets it about four in five printouts. It doesn't matter what time of day, how many pages, what tray he prints from, or from what PC he initializes his printouts, it always seems to give that bogus error message for him and him alone. Every time it happens we can all hear his verbal frustrations and almost on cue, the entire development team bursts out laughing. If the printer doesn't learn it's place, it may find itself in the same position that unfortunate printer did in the movie Office Space.

In news of the stupid...

Have you ever seen the commercials for Lifelock, an identity theft prevention service? They're the ones where Lifelock spokesman and CEO Todd Davis starts off the commercial by stating his real social security number and then tells you how secure he knows his identity is secure because of Lifelock. Well, in what had to have been expected by most of the intelligent world, news broke today that Mr. Todd Davis' identity has been stolen. Can't say I didn't see that one coming...

New Gamerpic

Some may have noticed my new gamerpic. Those that know me know that I am neither a Pepsi nor a Coke man. I stick with the good stuff. One of these days I'll make the pilgrimage to Dublin, Texas to taste the real good stuff.