Tech in the Trenches

Habits can be habit forming

On June 14, 2012

I’ve been talking about walking to work for months. It was a little too cold this winter and the motivation to get up and walk to work.

I didn’t know how I was going to feel about walking. I didn’t know how the walks would go. I didn’t know if I would be able to keep up the walking when I did start.

I was excited about the opportunity to walk home after a long day. Being outside and enjoying the evening after being cooped up all day was a welcome change. However, the morning walk to get me to work was daunting. I am not a morning person and getting up and out the door earlier than I had been was holding me back.

Just as I struggled with going to the gym, I was missing the point. It didn’t matter how far I walked or how often I did, I needed to get up and go. The hardest part of exercising is sitting on the couch, tying my shoes and looking at the front door. Everything after the front door is easy by comparison.

When things break

By Carl

On June 13, 2012

In Observations

I am enjoy fixing things myself. I love to dive into repair projects and nurse ailing devices back to health. I am a tinkerer and a believer in the Self-Repair Manifesto.

I love the feeling that comes from completing a repair project. I love making something once broken into something useful again. I love that I don’t have to replace, but that I can repair. I love turning the screws to expose the secrets locked within a computer or game console or even tightening down a loose handle on a pan.

It alarms me as we move into more of a disposable culture. Less and less often are we as consumers able to repair what we own. Now I am not advocating everyone become experts in all things and repair their belongings. However, I do think there is room for repair that is being slowly taken away and knowledge which is being lost.

Take the cobbler who can repair and make a study pair of shoes that can last many years. My shoes wear out in a matter of months and I am forced to buy new ones.

With every update, Apple is making their computers less serviceable and turning them into black boxes that only the anointed Geniuses can repair. This is alarming not only because I work in tech support but also in the increasing reliance on the company’s that make what we use and their whims and in some cases, ability to stay in business.

J.D. Bentley got to the heart of my concern with a piece today.

“I’m too stupid to live,” I thought.
If we depend on others to make everything for us, we’re at their mercy. We’re not really alive in certain ways. Of course, our economy venerates perpetual growth and perpetual growth requires spending and consumption, so my predicament, I’m sure, is not so uncommon.

But that’s no excuse. I should be self-sufficient enough that I don’t have to frivolously spend money to replace a perfectly good and useful device.

He is talking about his trusty bathroom scale that had journeyed with him through his weight loss and health enlightenment. It had a seemingly small failure, a faulty foot, but nonetheless needed to be replaced.

We have all been through the feelings of a trusted possession failing us. It can almost feel as if an old friend has betrayed your trust and abandoned you before its time. There is a feeling of helplessness that comes with being unable to repair the damage done by years of use.

Even when we have the time to repair something, we can be our own worst enemies as Patrick Rhone writes in When Friction is Fiction.

All that angst. All of that procrastination. Moot! Did not need to happen. Instead of digging in right away when I got the grill and spending twenty minutes to discover this fix, I spent five to write it off for a month to still spend the twenty I would have anyway. I felt kinda stupid actually. Probably deservedly so.

He had received a broken grill with the necessary parts to repair it and put it off for months because of the perceived time and effort it would take to repair. And in the end, the time spent worrying was a mental block as the repair was even easier than originally thought.

This has got me thinking about the nature of what I rely on and who I am really relying on. What happens when it breaks? Can it be fixed? Do I have to buy a new one? What if the one I like is no longer made?

Life has taught me things will break. It’s not if they will break but when. Everything breaks down eventually. Even when cared for, everything eventually wears out. It is only a matter of time.

When that time comes, what happens next?

Tech Support Triumvirate: Keeping Windows Updated

By Carl

On June 12, 2012

In Observations

I work as a computer technician and half of my battle is keeping computers running happily. The other half is keeping them updated and secure against potential threats. There is a triumvirate of software I’ve found and employed throughout the years to make keeping Windows installations up to date painless.

Ninite

The first is Ninite. This fantastic little site is perfect for fresh computer builds. It saves time having to download and install the latest versions of browsers, media players and plugins.

The idea could not be easier. Go to the web site on your Windows or Linux computer and select the applications you want to install. Download the single, small installer.

The installer is small because when it runs, it goes out to the web sites of the application’s you’ve selected and downloads the newest versions. This assure you always get the newest version of the software every time.

Ninite will install software that’s not already present or update existing software to the newest version. If it detects the software is already updated, it will skip the application and move to the next one on the list.

The installer is small and perfect for thumb drives or network shares if you’re using a standard computer build. It saves me from having to remember exactly which applications I need to install and which I haven’t. I run Ninite and when it finishes, I know I am up to date and ready to move on.

If you have a large organization, then Ninite Pro is your go-to tool. It offers the same trouble-free updates along with silent installs, no nag screens, centralized management and a pile of other great features.

FileHippo

I was introduced to FileHippo by a friend and my life has never been the same. FileHippo is a repository of nearly any free application you could ever need.

I used it recently to retrieve an older version of Safari when I encountered a bug in Windows XP with the Safari 5.1.x versions. It’s been an invaluable resource for rolling back software updates to combat bugs, incompatibilities or if a customer simply upgraded and didn’t mean or want to.

In addition to hosting older versions of thousands of applications, they have a free Update Checker that can be installed or run standalone from a USB key. The Update Checker will scan the computer and present a list of all the software out of date that FileHippo support and provides links to the latest versions.

FileHippo will not automatically download the applications like Ninite will, but it supports a larger number of applications.

PatchMyPC

PatchMyPC is a new tool in my kit I recently found via the excellent Technibble. This application can be installed or run off a USB key and will scan the computer for the updates to the most vulnerable and often updated applications and install their updates silently in the background with a single click. This means keeping Flash, Acrobat Reader, Skype, Java and around 50 other applications up to date with little effort.

Along with keeping vulnerable software up to date, it can also install other applications and keep them up to date in the future. It is possible to always ignore a certain application and it will never be checked nor updated. This is particularly useful if an important application uses a specific version of Java or another application that can’t be updated or changed.

PatchMyPC combines the auto-checking of FileHippo with Ninite’s auto-installation for the best of both worlds. It will even check Windows Updates for available updates and include those in the update making it nearly perfect. The trade-off being a smaller list of applications supported but the developers are adding applications as they go so it will get even better as time goes on.

Customer Service

I spend a lot of my time updating software, patching vulnerabilities and making sure my customers are running the most up to date software and this can be very tedious and time-consuming. These three applications make my job easier and allow me to dig through error logs or perform other research or maintenance while the applications are updating.

Anything I can do to save time is a benefit to myself and my customers because it’s my job to get them up and running again as quickly as possible so they can get the work done they need to do.

I am constantly in the pursuit of better tools to get my job done faster, and correctly every time so I can offer better service to my customers. These three applications allow me to do that and they are indispensable parts of my toolkit.

Eternal Adolescence

By Carl

On June 7, 2012

In Observations

There is a lot of worthless reality television. I popped my head from behind my iPad this evening to see two people at the dentist. This was not a storyline. There wasn’t anything funny going on. They were just sitting at the dentist about to get dental work done. Seriously.

This is what passes for television? I enjoyed watching television from the 90s with a storyline. I have enjoyed Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (after I made it through all The Next Generation). I have started watching Stargate SG-1 again in addition to various other movies Netflix has to offer.

Kyle Baxter wrote a great piece tonight, The Eternal Adolescence of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Beavis and Butthead—once the epitome of idiotic, crude humor—both seem smarter in comparison to these reality TV show characters, and the show itself does, too.

I watched the show back during the original run periodically and it was very dumb. It very funny. Now, it doesn’t seem to stupid. At least the show had a point, a plot, and an attempted to tell a story.

I think it’s very telling how the quality of television has dropped to the level where these adolescents seem smarter by comparison.

Beavis and Butthead once reveled in being the lowest of the low for television, using it for laughs, but also using it for satire. Now it no longer is. Perhaps that should give us pause about the kind of culture our generation is watching and, therefore, supporting.

I remember being a boy and wanting to be like a professional basketball player. I wanted to be a zookeeper. I wanted to work with animals or for National Geographic. Not to say I had the best role models, but they were not celebrities who reveled in being ignorant drunkards.

Freedom is killing you

By Carl

On June 5, 2012

In Observations

Julien Smith’s post Give in to the machine gets to the heart of a problem I’ve always had when I had too much free, unstructured time.

Freedom is killing you. This is the problem most of us with day jobs have too. We’re so used to being told what to do during the day that we never let our own internal machine develop.

Think about it: Would you even have graduated high school if you weren’t forced to be there?

Would I have followed through and finished high school? My gut reaction is to declare, but of course! It’s what you do to get a job and move up in life. But honestly, I’m not sure if that’s really the case for me. I don’t know if I would have stuck with it if I didn’t have to. I had other desires and ambitions.

I wanted to write and I was fascinated with print design and the fledgling web design industry. I had a lot of interests that didn’t seem to coincide with what school was trying to cram into my head.

After I graduated high school and went on to and college my free time grew immensely. With that new-found free time I didn’t apply it to my studies. I didn’t apply it to any great craft. I didn’t apply it to much of anything. I slept some. I drank gallons of Mountain Dew in a vain attempt to feed my creativity and to learn as much as I could about the world and specifically web design as I thought I could.

I took classes, I did ok in them but I never excelled like I had in high school. All my life I had been told to work to my potential and push myself because I was smarter than that. Then, when I was in college, all that exterior prodding goes away. Sure, I didn’t fail out of school and I knew enough to keep my grades up fairly well but the fire was gone.

The motivation was gone. I had worked and worked hard to get into college which was supposed to be a challenged and I wasn’t challenged. I drifted through and for the first few years of my life out of school I didn’t have a fire underneath me.

I worked hard at whatever job I happened to be doing but the fire and drive wasn’t there. I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I had to motivate myself, I had forgotten how to be self-motivated.

I don’t mean that in the “are you a self-starter” job interview question kind of way. I always worked hard at my jobs. Often times too hard for what I was getting in return in either money or respect. But I continued to work hard because that’s what I knew would eventually lead to better opportunities.

A couple of times since graduating college I’ve tried to in a freelance capacity. I’ve tried to work as a web and print designer and that dream ended with a parade of poor choices.¹ I’ve tried to work in tech support as a remote worker and there wasn’t enough structure for me. I entertain the idea of becoming a freelance writer, technical or otherwise. But every time when I really think about it and get down to it, I prefer to work in a structured environment.

I like the security of money and time off. I like the security of having a consistent income and having the freedom, albeit comparatively limited, to do what I want to do with my life when I am not at work.

There is a trade-off with freedom. Sometimes too much can be just as bad as too little. When there is too much freedom, I lack the discipline to make it work in my favor because it was always a should and not a must.

Hindsight is always 20/20. ↩