computers

The Summit of Mount Nerdly

It probably doesn’t come as any big surprise to most of you who know me that I call myself a geek. I am familiar with computers, one might say. I have dabbled in code and graphics design and network administration, internet systems, databases and even paintbrush. Heck, this very site you see in front of you was hand-coded from scratch to finish using nothing more than Notepad++ by yours truly. Meh. Not a large achievement there, but I’m proud of it. I like it. Anyway, I still do some things sometimes that make me step back and blink, and sometimes even go so far as to turn my head and frown, thinking, ‘Damn! I really am an insufferable geek. A ridiculously overboard, head-to-toe nerd to the highest power.’ This here’s one of them stories.

Let me back you up a little bit though, just for the sake of the journal. I took a computer lit and a computer programming class when I was in seventh grade. I did exceedingly well at both, as the language and theory just sort of “clicked” with me. It just made sense. The hot teacher, therefore, invited me back the next year to be her lab assistant. I wish this had some kind of awesome twist to it where I told you stories of being stuck in the lab alone with her on several long, late nights, but alas – nothing like that ever happened. Now my English teacher, on the other hand…

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  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:5 mins read

Making the Switch

I know I’ve spoken a lot lately about going open-source. You probably remember my award-winning column called Open-Source My Life, because you remember how it made your skin all bumpy with chills when you realized you could liberate yourself from the oppressive hand of the big boys. I know you also have probably been sitting there hitting F5 every several minutes for the last few weeks, hoping a new column would show up on the site. I know, I know. And I’m sorry. As it turns out, I have learned lately that Haycomet is a lazy writer. She drags butt around the office and almost never writes anything. I see her standing in office doorways and at cube openings, coffee in hand, just talking to all the other SpaceBrew employees.

It’s okay though. There are still plenty in the archives for you to check out. (out which you can check? meh) So anyway, I have one more column to write about going open-source, and I’d like for you to read it. I promise you won’t be bored by it, and it won’t be two thousand words, and you might actually learn something. And it may change your life. The column, not the topic. So read on, my laconic friends.

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  • Post category:science
  • Reading time:8 mins read

Open-Source My Life

Here in the last several months, I have begun to embrace the open-source. I have gone off the corporate teet, one might say. I no longer support the big boys just because they come standard and they’re the most well known and popular. Just because they’re the most well known does not always necessarily mean they are the best. And since I have stopped supporting the big guys, my life has gotten markedly better. Allow me to explain.

You see, there are some products out there whose brands have become synonymous with the product they’re selling. Kind of like how everyone says, “Hey, I have some chunky green snot with some hard furry flakes in it, can you pass me a Kleenex?” Facial tissue would be the proper term for it, without applying the brand name. Another popular one is “Hey guys, let’s set up some plastic cups on the Ping-Pong table so we can see them chicks’ boobs!” Table tennis is the brand-detached term for the game.

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  • Post category:rant
  • Reading time:9 mins read

Bacon Talk: Video Games

Dude. It’s time we talk about video games. Seriously. Why haven’t we covered this yet, Haycomet? We’ve had how many Bacon Talks now? Welcome, friends, fans and enemies, to this week’s edition of the award-winning feature we call Bacon Talk. For those of you wondering what we mean by Award-Winning, let me give you a list of the awards this feature has won:

  • SpaceBrew’s Best Features of 2010 presented by SpaceBrew
  • Brandon Spacey’s Favorite Blogs presented monthly
  • Haycomet’s Recommended Reading a very prestigious award
  • Jessica Simpson’s “You Gotta Have Someone Read This To You!” presented by Space

So there are a few of the many awards this feature has won. I mean, we’re not trying to brag or anything. Trust me, friends, the Bacon Talk is not near as good as the Bacon we eat while talking! Ain’t that right, Hay?

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  • Reading time:9 mins read

Bacon Talk: Cell Phones

Good morning, Haycomet. That’s a very nice bonnet you have on! How’s your bacon? I’ve been really enjoying these little Friday-morning Bacon Talk get-togethers. It’s a great way to start the day, and I always know my weekend will get a little bit better jump start.

Well this morning, I’ve been thinking about connectedness… again… And I started getting a little uncomfortable. Again. Yes, every time I think about how connected we are as a society and as a people, I get a little sad inside. And it’s not because I fear technology, but rather, I fear our dependence on it. Gone are the days when I could leave the house without a phone and access to my six email accounts, facebook, my website, my bank account and my stock portfolio. And just being sad or uncomfortable about it doesn’t seem to be enough. It won’t spur me into changing my ways and leaving the house technologically naked. And for good cause, too. I’m expected to be connected for work as well.  So how connected are you?

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  • Reading time:8 mins read

Techmophobia

Have you ever had to provide technical support to anyone? Namely someone in their 40s or 50s? Well, if you have, you have probably noticed they had what I like to refer to as ‘Technophobia’. The root word of that is ‘tech’, which comes from the Latin word ‘teach’, which means to show someone how to do something. The ‘phobia’ part comes from the ancient Korean word ‘phear’ which means you’re afraid of something. So basically they’re afraid to teach something. Wait. I messed that up. You know what? Forget it.

What I’m saying is that most 40- and 50-year-olds are “afraid” of “techmology”. And I don’t mean they think the computer is going to wake up at night, start saying “PAK CHOOIE” and push grandma down the stairs. What they’re afraid of is that they will mess something up if they even dare click the Tools menu with the mouse button. And what this results in is technical support calls, wherein I am called upon to perform a rudimentary service on a machine to which I have no physical access. Usually when I’m sitting on a beach with a can of Corona in my hand and several pretty ladies dancing in their bikinis (or out of them) for me. Or when I’m on the back patio with a can of Bart’s Backyard Brew in my hand with my wife and all her hot friends dancing for me in their bikinis.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

The Day of the Turkey

I guess to those of you in New York, it would be Day of the Toikey. Well either way, I hope it’s a happy one. I thought I would sit down here on the sofa and write a little post to fill everyone in on what’s been going on lately. It’s nice to have a family day with Step and the girls. We don’t have the boy this week, but it’s still cozy. We’ve historically always gone to the parents’ houses or to be with extended family, but today we decided to stay home and have our own intimate little turkey eating experience.

I haven’t had internet connectivity at home over the last few months, and working the odd hours and schedules that I work now haven’t had the time or the passion to update the site. I brought home a modem last night from the Clear guy to try it out and see what kind of connectivity and speeds I get, and was amazed at how the first thing I wanted to do was write a post on the Brew. Lucky you.

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The Incredible Shrinking Medium

I’m always amazed at how far we’ve come in the last hundred years with technology. It’s crazy that only a hundred years ago we had just invented the telephone, and now we have cellular shit, that doesn’t physically connect to anything, that can send pictures and texts and porn instantly to anyone else with a cell phone. Through the air. I still have trouble understanding how an analog phone worked, transferring voices across a wire. But here we’re sending that stuff through the air. And it’s digital. What?

But I really came to talk about media formats today. Well, cameras would be one qualifier: we used to use photo plates in our cameras. And film. Remember film? Ha! Now we use memory sticks and whatnot. And the idea is apparently to make them as small as possible. Seriously, give it a rest, people. My phone has a one-gig micro SD card in it. It’s smaller than my pinky fingernail. But it holds a gig worth of pictures and music. And porn. What the helling hell.

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  • Post category:science
  • Reading time:4 mins read

Not a Happy Customer

If there’s one thing I hate more than slamming my finger in a rusty door, or stepping on a squeaky nail, it’s got to be incompetence in customer service. When I’m in a store inquiring about a product, your sales staff should know the answers to all my questions. Whatever happened to training the employees on the merchandise they are selling? When I worked in the Wal Mart Photo Lab, I took time every day to stand there reading the boxes of all the cameras. I learned what the best features were on every one of them, and was able to effectively compare and discuss intelligibly the best options for the customer. So if I go into Best Buy or Circuit City, why can I not expect someone working in the television department to do the same thing?

There’s nothing I hate more than asking someone a very specific question and having them look at the damn tag. Dude, I can do that myself. And already have. For instance, yesterday, I was in Micro Center, picking up an IDE/SATA I/O controller board for my home PC. I’ve troubleshot the problem down and determined that the root cause must be a bad IDE controller on my mother board. And since the computer I built is around three years old now, it’s a little outdated. It’s still a bad ass machine. I have a Pentium 4, and a good amount of RAM. But you know how quickly technology upgrades and supersedes itself. So my point is that it’s hard to find a socket 775 mother board that still supports the type of memory sticks I have. DDR2 is the new thing.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read