10 Things Your Tech Guy Wants You To Knkow

I jacked this from another site...but who cares, right?

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
3. I am OK with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not OK with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just can’t always fix everything.
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them. I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.

Geocities is Now Dead

Geocities.com is now dead. That's right, the popular free hosting provider has been dumped. Yahoo announced quietly that there will be no new Geocities sites any longer. I've been building websites for a long time, and some of my fondest memories of learning the trade have been building crappy angelfire and geocities websites for friends, bands and more. It's funny to me that people still use the free hosting source, but it's not too out of the ordinary, I guess. It's a sad day for free tech though, that's for sure.

Old Email Ad

We've come a long way. BoingBoing posted this awesome photo. It's just a scan of an old Honeywell ad that had a graphic representation of EMAIL! Electronic Mail, so rad:

The Government Needs Hackers

If you're an IT professional and are really good at network protection, the U.S government is looking for you. They have recently opened up themselves to get taken out from the inside. I'm not sure how much they are willing to pay, but they need hackers and they need them now. If you can hack, if you are really good at programming and protection, this could be your chance to make some dough.

The U.S. government is seeking some good guys with hacking skills to shore up its weak computer networks. In order to do the job right, the ideal candidate will have the ability to get inside the heads of the bad guys -- whether they're mere mischief makers or serious foreign spies -- and stay one step ahead of them.

For more information and so much more check out technsworld.com

Credit Card Hacking

This has been all over the tech news for a while. It's nothing new to me. My friend used to do crap like this for fun, but never took it too far. He just wanted to prove that our information is easily taken away. He was weird. Anyways, here is a video of some Credit Card Hacking from two sides of the perspective, and it's more of a warning video than it is a how to video, so don't get too scared.

Facebook Protesters Hit The Streets

The Streets of France were hit hard with protesters holding signs and hoping for civil change. But what kind of change could they be yearning for? Is it genocide, civil liberties? Nope. It's none other than a Facebook Design change!

Apparently, a few people have gathered in Paris to protest against the changes in Facebook, and Alex van Herwijnen was nice enough to send us some pictures he snagged while visiting the French capital. The protesters can be found at the Arche de la Défense, holding signs saying that they’re against the new version of Facebook and that they want the old one back.

What a load of crap. These people must have no lives, to really band together over a website design change? Man, what a load of crap.

More info via Techcrunch.com

Youtube Deletes You

News broke out this morning about how hulu and youtube are teaming up to basically end the "you" in youtube. That's right, you will soon not be able to promote yourself on youtube...so they say. If you're inclined to be scared....here is a video that explains more about it.

Netflix Blu Ray Sucks

Apparently more and more people are complaining over what is going on with Blu Ray and Netflix. Netflix recently rolled out Blu Ray dvd rentals and they were sending them through the mail. However, it seems that Blu Ray takes a beating and will not play.

Netflix naturally blames the post office.

I blame Netflix's stupid envelope mail packaging, but whatever.

You can read more about this and other developments via wired.com

Time Warner Quits

After much complaint and sorrow from users all over the internet and the world. Time Warner Cable seems to have thrown in the towel on their bandwidth tier pricing. This is great news for everyone in the tech world. However, it doesn't really effect me, since I have the slowest internet at work and that's that.

Check out all the news posts in regards to this.

Slashdot.org, Consumerist.com , Wired.com

Power Hogs of Tech

Here is the best statement I've seen in a long time in regards to power and tech. Not political power or anything, we're talking about energy and how the tech industry sucks the life out of electricity and then some. The best part is the opening line of this quote, which is so true. Internal politics and poor leadership are the number things that I've seen in Tech that force unsustainable business models. Like the one I work for.

"Internal politics and poor leadership on sustainable IT strategies are among the top reasons preventing organizations from practicing proper PC power management — to the tune of $2.8 billion wasted per year powering unused PCs. According to a recent survey, 42 percent of IT shops do not manage PC energy consumption simply because no one in the organization has been made responsible for doing so — this despite greater awareness of IT power-saving myths, and PC power myths in particular. Worse, 22 percent of IT admins surveyed said that savings from PC power management 'flow to another department's budget.' In other words, resources spent by IT vs. the permanent energy crisis appear to result in little payback for IT."

Src - Slashdot.org

Download Cap Update

photo and info src - Wired.com

New York Democratic Representative Eric Massa called TWC's proposal to switch its 8.4 million cable broadband customers to metered internet billing an "outrageous plan to tax the American people."

Oh yeah! Finally someone is stepping up!

If you don't know what's going on, then you should really pay attention to more news. You should consider that Time Warner Cable wants to cap the download ratio that you have.

This is not too uncommon in places like Alaska, where bandwidth is crucial.

They are seeking to make the most money they can. However, today news broke out that someone is stepping up to help consumers out.

For more information check out wired.com

Asinine Assignments

You know what's the worst assignment in tech? Making asinine content management systems. CMS systems are popular and make work easier for everyone. However, making them sucks, and it's made even worse when NO one uses them. So creating a large CMS platform is a terrible thing to have to make.

No, I take that back. It's made worse when you have to show the end user how to use it!

If those things don't soil you completely, consider the fact that these CMS platforms often go unnoticed and unused. I've built several accounts for the company I work for and they are collecting cyber dust and NO ONE ever makes use of them at all. It creates a terrible notion that I am just a Yes man.

In fact, that's all tech departments are, Yes men to your face, only to squabble behind your back.

CompUSA Returns From The Grave

Yep, Compusa went out of business last year and liquidated all of its stores. They had an unsustainable business model and evaporated.

However, this morning I read online that they are back with an all new plan. They are going to do what they did before, suck. They plan on switching over to rock bottom prices and more competitive ideas that will fuel their business to competition yet again. They have 30 new stores throughout the U.S and they have completely remodeled their stores and what not.

I don't trust them. You shouldn't trust them, and this is bad news. What if other companies decide to go bankrupt, kill their stores and rise again with the same name?

I don't know.

This sounds fishy, and you should treat it with skepticism. The tech world shouldn't have these zombie companies coming back for more.

Read more about the zombie tech retail world via Wired Magazine Online.

Mountain Dew Throwback

I just caught wind that my favorite drink is going to take a step back and start producing soda with SUGAR!

Cue in the "System of a Down Song"!

That's right, the Pepsi Cola company is tired of people and their nit-picky attitude towards High Fructose Corn Syrup and so they are going to make an all sugar sweetened soda!

I for one am excited and so are my cubicle land mates because that's all we drink in the tech office. We were sponsored by Lost Energy drink at one point, then we got a sponsorship with Red Bull, then it was Gatorade, and even Propel Water...but if Mountain Dew ever wanted to sponsor our crew, we'd drink so much of it that we would probably die.

We're fiends for the Dew, and while we work on extreme sports crap all the time it seems only natural that the company is going back to its sugary sweet roots.

This is great news for me, since I love the Dew.

On a lighter note, I did manage to try cane sweetened "Jones Soda" but it was disgusting to me.

So bring on the Throwback!

news src - The Consumerist

The Clueless Manager

In the world of tech there is always the manager that was hired for his past experience as a "manager". These guys know topical vocabulary but don't know how to implement lines of code or anything like that.

But there is a small growing amount of workers that are being pushed into the management chair and they are uncomfortable. These guys get clueless due to lack of work, or their work now consists of trolling other people's work for mistakes and then fixing them.

It's give and take really.

More giving then taking sometimes.

If a line of code goes bad, the tech worker doesn't get yelled at, the manager does. However, there are times when the whole department gets a tongue lashing, but these moments are rare.

I'm lucky, I've recently made the transition to management and it's been a real mixed bag. There are moments when there is nothing else to do but just sit and wait for problems, while there are other times when a more proactive endeavor is needed. it's a conflicting position.