The 36" Monitor

So.... I might have acted a little rash. Maybe my geekiness got the better of me. Maybe my lack of sleep affected me. My wife believes I've lost my mind. Who knows she might be right, but I would never admit it to her.

Here's how it went down. I was surfing Craigslist when a posting for a free 36" monitor popped up. I calmly took a deep breath and then mashed out a very well thought out e-mail.

A Week In Poorly Taken Pictures

Last week for me, was spent in training. During the week I was living out of a hotel with expensive televisions, tiny soaps and a broken microwave oven. It was a interesting place with an imposing building and beautiful facade sporting cheap veneered furniture and a standing queue at the complimentary breakfast counter. Looking back on the pictures I took, I only have one from my hotel room. It's

20 Things I Learned From Troubleshooting

Do No Harm. You can and will make it worse if you're not careful.Celebrate even small successes. This keeps you sane.Searching the internet for a solution to your problem with a random Microsoft error message is akin to playing Russian roulette with yourself. Your odds pretty much suck.Everything is fixable. Sometimes that means thinking outside the box or other times it means dropping that box

Excuse Me For Making An Idiot Of Myself...

Awkward. Awkward and outgoing. It's a strange combination, and probably the number one reason I'm so prone to having these horribly embarrassing encounters with people on a regular basis. See my side bar if you need a dose of feel good. After which you will say to you're self something like, "Sweet mercy. This guy is a walking crisis. Do you honestly believe anyone can have that many embarrassing

Weighing In

I am overweight. Of all the members of my household, my bathroom scale is the most aware of this fact. It is aware of it, because I frequently hoist my girth upon it and ask it a simple question."Have I lost some of me?""No. You seem to have found more of you.""Crap."Apparently over the years it has begun to see a pattern. If I go up. I get on it again, just to be sure."Are you positive?""

A Marketing Tale

I've been working in IT for over 15 years now and in the corporate environment since 1998. In that time, most places I've been at have not wanted for much in the way of computers. All in all the computers were always up to date and reasonably fast. Certainly adequate for whatever task was needed of them. Irregardless of this effort, nothing was ever good enough for the sheer vanity that was the

Intimidating Servers

When I first got into computers I was 14 or so. The man who helped us get it all plugged in said something interesting to me."After doing this for as many years as I have" David Smith mused, "I've come to the conclusion that all computers have personalities."As he was 40 and I was 14 I did what all folks my age do. I dismissed the old man of being senile, and set about using my computer to play