The Pinged Hobbit

One thing I hate is being lied to. I like honesty, tell me the truth and I might be a bit upset but I will appreciate you for it. You will go up in my estimations for your honesty. Tell me a lie that I find out about and well, you’re in for a quick route to my most hated list. One thing is for sure I won’t do any kind of business with you. I’m not the only person with this point of view I am sure, everyone hates being lied to and in this day of search engines it’s much easier to be caught out than you would think. Continue reading »

Picture the situation, your waiting for that all import file sending through by email. It’s got something inside it that you urgently need. Maybe it’s an image for your project at university, maybe it’s important information for that quote your putting together. Finally the file comes through, you save it to your desktop and then extract it from the zip file. Then you you go to open it only to find it’s in a format that your computer doesn’t have a program to open it. What do you do? Continue reading »

Sometimes there is that one tool you really need to run on your PC that can only be run from command prompt. Now every one know that in any recent version of Windows you can open command prompt by opening the Run window and typing in cmd, or you can go to the shortcut in accessories. Continue reading »

Microsoft have recently tried to improve the support they offer users of their software. Attempting to make it easier for them to solves the problems they find. It actually sounds like a good idea, I mean who better to help you with your problems with Windows than Mircosoft themselves! Continue reading »

1. We work weird (night) shifts…
Just like prostitutes.

2. They pay you to make the client happy…
Just like a prostitute.

3. The client pays a lot of money, but your employer
keeps almost every penny…
Just like a prostitute.

4. You are rewarded for fulfilling the client’s dreams…
Just like a prostitute.

5. Your friends fall apart and you end up hanging out
with people in the same profession as you…
Just like a prostitute.

6. When you have to meet the client you always have to
be perfectly groomed…
Just like a prostitute.

7. But when you go back home it seems like you are
coming back from hell…
Just like a prostitute.

8. The client always wants to pay less but expects
incredible things from you…
Just like a prostitute.

9. When people ask you about your job, you have
difficulties to explain it…
Just like a prostitute.

10. Everyday when you wake up, you say: “I’m not going
to spend the rest of my life doing this.”
Just like a prostitute ……..

In my day job I deal with the installation and support of IT software for businesses. I share the role of managing the department with a colleague. As part of my responsibilites I have to recruit new engineers from time to time. Personally now that I have experience of both sides of the coin I have no more liking for the recruitment process than when I was looking for a job. As a candidate its an awkward process, from the start when you first apply you are never sure to get a response from an application and even if you get to interview you are going to probably be nervous as hell. From a recruiter’s point of view, looking at a CV does not always give an accurate picture of the candidate and when you get them to an interview you might get the wrong impression due to nerves.

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One of the problems about knowing anything about IT is that family and friends are always asking you for advice or help with their computer problems. I don’t mind helping when I can but it can be damn annoying at times. Recently I’ve encountered two computers where the are reporting that the PC was infected by a trojan and that the only way to remove it was by downloading and paying for some supposedly great anti virus software that most people have never heard of. Now people like me are technically savvy enough to know that quite a lot of links are not safe to download. Unfortunately not everyone who uses a computer knows to stop and think before they download something. they just merrily click on a link and let something download to our pc.

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Previously I’ve talked about how Peer Production and Collaboration are important elements of the way the open source community works. In Peer Production, a group of people join together in a loose organisation to channel their talents into creating some form of tangible product, but they do so with out the normal trappings of a hierarchical structure common to most businesses today. The direction taken by a project is governed by a consensus of the participants creating it rather than by a decision sent down from on high. I touched on how this could lead to faster product development, because new features can be created without having to be given the go ahead from on high. Allowing others to create separate utilities that integrate with your own, allowing them to talk openly with you and have unrestricted access to your information (API’s in programming terms) can lead to a greater number of additional features that can be beneficial to your own needs as well as that of a partner firm (take the example of Facebook, where opening up their site to allow other developers to build applications that link and actively promoting them has allowed them to grow into one of the strongest Social Networks going)

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One of the main aspects of my job is training clients in the use of one of our software packages. Training a person or a group of people on a piece of software can be one of the easiest things in the world or one of the hardest. It all depends on the people you are training and your own confidence in your knowledge of the software. I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last 3 and a half years training people on various software packages, working with anything from 1 person to groups of 10-12 individuals. There are a few things I have picked up over this time that I’ve found useful, stuff I though might be helpful to other people taking on a similar role Continue reading »

For a long time now I have always tended to use open source software where ever I can. I run my blog on wordpress, I use Firefox as my web browser, I use Open/Neo Office, I haven’t gone quite as far as running Linux on a PC I am using full time just yet but thats mainly because I am too lazy to set about learning another OS at the moment. One of the amazing things about the

http://www.speedy-b.com/open source movement is that for all the excellent solutions out there, the majority of mainstream IT is still done using paid for software. Be that the OS (Windows) or the other things (Microsoft Office) Continue reading »