Shift Happens

And now, a plug for the makers of this video:



So tell me, did you know? What does it all mean?

As we look back historically, we see the Renaissance, the Victorian Age, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Gold Rush.

What might be said by historians 100 and more years from now when looking at artifacts and sources we now produce? What might they call this age? Granted, the artifacts with which they are able to work might be holographics instead of wear-worn diaries and letters found in attics. What is the result of memorializing ourselves, our time, so completely? Might this be called the Pre-Paperless Age?

I <3 Aunt Lynda

I am not a programmer. I just play one in my internship. Sure, sure, I have been able to write HTML since 2.0 was new and Notepad was the only place to write it. I picked up some CSS here and there along the way. Real web development programming languages? I’m lost like an old Commodore 64 in an underwater ghost town. So things were looking grim, needing to play Web Developer blind. I talked some MIS pals and the random network admin demi-god, and I emailed a professor who moved away years ago. Only understanding every tenth word I heard, I felt lost and alone.

I had to find some solution, some way to turn my non-programming self into a web development noob. Enter good ol’ Lynda.com. Unlike other online tutorials, here I found not only learning videos with follow along flash screen shots, but also an organized plan to follow. Before subscribing I watched some of the free videos, and meandered through their library.

In Lynda’s library I found tutorials for everything from MS Word to Perl. At $25 a month, this is a great deal. Currently marching my way through what I must learn to complete my internship and already I am anxious to march through more. Given enough time in Lynda and dinking with what I learn there… maybe I could become a web developer after all.

The best part about Lynda? College? $5,000 for 16 weeks. Lynda.com? $25 for a month. Unlike my last Monday, Wednesday, Friday class in sub-aquatic fiber manipulation, I’m learning specific and applicable job skills on Lynda. No, no, I do not suggest we all abandon college and sit at home on our futon’s and get our learn on. But I’ll tell you what… Lynda.com as a supplement to college? Unbeatable.

Keep it under wraps

I love Scrabble and because I have very little time to spend over a board waiting silently while someone takes their turn muttering under their breath and referring to a dictionary made of paper. So I instead play online whenever I can find a friend to play.

My Literati pal lost interest so I haven’t played in quite some time. Another English major friend of mine told me Facebook has an online game, Scrabulous. This means registering for a social networking site so I can play a few games while writing a paper, watching a movie and eating popcorn in all my multi-tasking glory. All hail the Alt+Tab function!

Like other popular social sites, it asks that I set up a profile. It asks for a picture, birth date, where I live, work and go to school. Before entering anything I know I must make a decision. See, I’ve seen the profiles of others who feel comfortable putting every part of their lives online for their friends to see. After all, who but their friends will care enough to read it? It is a great way for friends to stay in touch and involved in each others lives for those without the time or interest in telling the same car accident or speeding ticket story to every friend and family member who might like to know. It is fun to share photos and videos and leave comments and find old friends.

However, there is another side to these sites and it is something of particular importance for me, and anyone else who is about to graduate and seek fame or fortune in their chosen field. You see, the fact is, we are not the only ones who seize the power of the internet to improve our lives. Employers seeking candidates too have the Google-Fu. Anonymity is a myth. They will Google your name and if you have completed the profile, your phone may not ring.

You must take care and make decisions about what you will or will not reveal. Potential employers want to be sure they are interviewing the best possible candidates and they know that we all put our best foot forward when searching for a job. Your resume may be polished but an internet search of your name might reveal it is all just so much white-wash.

How likely is that HR person to want to meet you if they find your online profiles and read about last weekend’s drunken orgy where you threw up on your best friend and your sister bailed you out the next day? Do you really want them to read your rant about getting D’s on exams or not going to class because you stayed up all night beating up your roommate’s WoW guild? They certainly do not want to see the bared and lettered asses of you and your friends misspelling the name of your college sports team.

Think you can put things like that on your profile or blog and be safe so long as you take it down before the resumes are sent? Well, the truth is that just because you took the spicier tidbits of your life offline, does not mean they are GONE. That’s right, the internet is being archived. Think of it like Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Express. Deleting something does not mean it is gone.

If you really must socialize on these kinds of sites and fill out the profile according to what might get you the most dates, I have a few suggestions.

1. Get another email address. One you will use only for social networking sites or only for professional contacts. Do not use them interchangeably. And no, “crazybabe69@email.net” is not an acceptable address to give out on your resume.

2. Come up with an online identity. Do not associate your real name with this identity. Call yourself “The Wizard” or “Hot Girl” or “NASCAR fan” or whatever it is that means something to you. Use this for your screen names, your profiles and anywhere else you might reveal more about yourself than you want the Pope to know. Give this name to all your peers, but not to anyone who might help you find work.

Yes, yes, I know you’re very clever and I almost hate to break it to you but, there is always someone out there with stronger Google-Fu than even yours.

When you are searching for a job, watching the calendar and the impending school loan repayment start date, do you want the thing that stands in your way to be you? Do you want potential employers looking at a picture you dressed in clothes made entirely from potato peels and electrical tape and taking body shots off a stranger?

Technical Support Games

From assembling the discount lawn mower you bought at Wal-Mart to calling Iomega for help with plugging in your fire-wired partitioned cross platform portable hard drive into your old MacBook’s USB port, we have all had to reach out and touch one technical support department or another.

Having worked in technical support in the past, I was under the delusion that I could communicate with some of these wannabe Bastard Operators from Hell. Communicate? Yes… well, to a point. Get what I need? Well, I will let you make that determination yourself.

Fall dawned on my junior year at WSU Vancouver and I decided that having a laptop would turn me into a master student. Think of the time it would save! I could take more effective notes, more complete notes… notes at all! Efficiency! Productivit… yeah, it’s all about being able to IM my friends on Meebo, check my Gmail, play Bejeweled in all my multi-tasking ADD glory while looking like I’m concentrating.

My shiny widescreen dual-processing HP Pavilion finally arrived with its Lightscribe DVD/RW Burner and 12 cell lithium ion battery. I happily lugged my laptop all over campus until three weeks before the end of spring semester when I booted, well, tried to boot my machine. Instead I got a Beeeep Beep Beep. A long beep and two short ones. Huh? I RTFM. I used a campus computer to Google my beeps. I re-seated the RAM and discharged the battery. No luck. This is not a PEBKAC or ID 10 T error.

Resigned to the inevitable, I dialed HP technical support. After going through one of the shorter phone trees I’ve come across, I finally reached a real, breathing, presumably thinking, human being and after holding for only moments. Communicating was difficult, being as I reached a surely outsourced call center somewhere on another continent. Finding no solution after plowing through the first two tiers of technical support, I was told I would have to send it to them for repair.

My problem in this was that the semester was almost over. Taking 17 credits and so close to the end of the semester, I was in a panic. I spent two hours repeatedly re-seating my RAM and discharging the battery and got it to boot at last. Not trusting it would ever boot again, I quit carrying it, and left it on, sitting on my desk. I left it on for 6 weeks, opening and closing hundreds of files, using a dozen different applications.

The semester well over, I sent my laptop in for warranty service. A few weeks passed and it came back. Opening the packaging, I found two ‘Quality Assurance’ department letters inside, thanking me and assuring me that my computer was now full repaired and the work was quality reviewed. Great. I hit the button and what did I get? Beeeep Beep Beep. Incredulous and speech-full, I called my technical support friends again. I plowed through the first two tiers of technical support again. When the third tier tried to troubleshoot the problem, it became unfortunate for him in short order.

Once again, I packed my machine and sent it away. This time it was returned to me quickly. I hit the button and what did I get? Juice! That was July of last year. It came back with a fun new quirk, but work it does. I do not mind that the DVD tray ejects randomly. I know that it is randomly because I kept a keystroke log to determine why. A tad OCD of me, true. It eventually stopped as inexplicably as it started.

Last week, here in my final semester as a Digital Technology (DTC) student, I rebooted my machine. This was a mistake. Beeeep Beep Beep. Here I am again, counting on some more of that amazing HP up-time and not wanting to part with my machine during a semester. Frustrated with inept technical support, I must remind myself to remember what it is like to sit in a box taking call after call. CACTUS!

Last week I was called to a friend’s house to make the call to tech support for her. It seems she bought MS Excel 2007 upgrade and not the software. I called Best Buy and when their in house version of technical support did not know the difference between Windows Vista and Microsoft Office, I hung up and drove to the store myself. I just regret that I cannot do so with my laptop.

Surely I am not the only one to whom this happens? Have a tech support nightmare to share? Please do!