Time for minecraft!

I have been watching guude and BdoubleO and they have inspired me to not only purchase minecraft but to start my own let's play series. The first of these videos is available here. Please watch rate and subscribe ;) if this goes well this will become a regular thing.

Shadow for a day

I recently had someone come in and shadow me for part of a day for a paper they were writing. For those of you who have no  idea what an IT person does it may surprise you!

Driving up to the semi-large brick building I assumed what I was getting into. It was a standard business-conducting type building covered with tinted windows and a sign stating the name of the business. Outside I met a tall man wearing khaki pants, a blue polo shirt, and tennis shoes. I expected to see a man wearing a suit and tie but instead was greeted by a man with a picture I.D. lanyard around his neck, glasses, somewhat un-kept hair and a key ring with at least 20 keys dangling from his belt.  “Hi, I’m Alden and I am the systems support tech. I am responsible for everything that is plugged into a wall in this building and half of the things that aren’t,” he says to me as I am suddenly getting the hint of the massive amount of responsibilities this I.T. guy has.

          I walk into what I had pictured as an office building through a set of tinted sliding doors and step onto a rug that says ITT Technical Institute in a vibrant royal blue. I am not in a place of business but in fact at a career based trade school. A type of school that has always had a presence but has become increasingly popular in the last ten years due to changes in the economy and people wanting an education past high school in a non-traditional setting.  I follow Alden past a secretary’s desk and follow through a hallway lined with linoleum tiles to a door. The front of it reading Systems Support Tech, however once the door opened I was greeted with a separate sign reading, “Go Away.”  I was given the distinct impression that this individual does not play well with others, unless the others happen to have a keyboard and a motherboard. Alden puts out fires for a living. No, he doesn’t climb a ladder into a burning building or rescue a kitten from a high tree branch, Alden spends most of his time receiving emails with headlines stating urgent, please read now, or  the more common occurrence is getting phone calls with the first sentence being, “This isn’t working.” This IT guy is in charge of keeping 240 student computers and 80 administrative computers connected to the internet at all times, kept up to date with the most current software and computer security measures, and educating users on the basic know-hows of standard operations for using the network he keeps running. If someone so much as isn’t able to log into a computer on campus, Alden gets a call and has to fix the problem immediately.  Walking into his office is like entering the world where computers go to die. There are whole computers, computer parts, wires, screws, empty computer cases, computer monitors, printer parts, and somewhere among the chaos is the resemblance of a desk. A mad scientist lives here and he likes to experiment and bring to life computers. As I sit down on the only scrap of a seat available in his office the fire alarm goes off. Alden gets a page that the printer script isn’t working. For us non-tech people it means that the printers won’t print and there is no one else available in the building of over 400 people that have any clue how to make the printers do what they are supposed to do because Alden is the only one employed to fix these problems and let’s face it, who would want to be under this constant pressure and not get paid for it.  So the lone IT guy and I set out for our first wild-west adventure to the LRC room, which is also known as the library. My eyes and mind try to keep up with what he is doing as he surprisingly sits down at a computer to fix the printer. I was under the assumption the in order to fix a printer, one sits down at the printer, not a computer. He pulls up at least four different diagnostic windows to find out why the printers aren’t printing and after about 20 minutes of reading computer languages and terminology that I can’t comprehend he figures out what the problem is. Unfortunately for Alden in order to fix the problem he has to log onto every one of the 240 student computers and make a small edit to something having to do with the printers and re-run it. Someone like me would think that the printer not printing would be a relatively easy fix and wouldn’t think twice about the time that would be spent fixing the problem, but after putting out this fire with Alden, a new appreciation emerges. If this is considered a small fire, what does the uncontrollable wild fire look like? That is when Alden leads me through a few locked doors and opens the door to the server room. This room looks like a bowl full of colored spaghetti with all of the colored wires connecting the important things that keep this building running. If someone wants to be an Information Technologist, they better know their colors. There are gray, black, purple, blue, powder blue, white, red, yellow, and orange spaghetti noodles throughout the room. Without this room and its multi-colored rainbow of wires, none of the computers in the entire building would be able to talk to each other, print, or access the internet. This room is the most vital of all the locked rooms that Alden has access to. This 5 foot by 4 foot room is the heartbeat of the building. My assumption of what an IT guy does has been completely turned up-side down and we haven’t even hit lunchtime yet. There is a lot more to taking care of a building full of computers than just sitting in an office and goofing around on the internet. Without our electronic friendly computer guy our businesses, schools, and even our homes would not be able to function in the ever growing tech savvy world. These workers are under appreciated and often forgotten about unless something goes wrong. So in asking Alden why he continues to be the IT guys he laughs and says, “Something has to pay the bills. Really though, I get to tinker with electronics all day long.” So how do you avoid over working this computer firefighter? Reboot your computer and take it slow. Nine times out of ten turning it off and on will fix your problem. 

iPad 2 full review

Sorry it has taken me so long to produce another lost I hope to be able to post on at least a monthly basis... But we will see.

This device is a fairly solid device, but is not quite worth the money. Their are other devices that are just as capable for less, or with more hard drive space.

When I first got the device I was estatic. First I did not purchase this device but actually one it from a micro center contest. The first thing I noticed is that it hS to be connected to a computer running iTunes before you can do anything with it. This is a mild annoyance for me, but let's say you send one of these to someone who does not have a computer you better make sure they have access to a computer, or set it up before you send it or it will just be an expensive shiney paper weight to them. With as mich as this device is capable of you should be able to do all of these configurations from the device itself.

The iPad 2 has a dual core processor and gps/3G capability and between 16, 32, and 64GB models. The one I have is a wifi only 16GB model. Although the cost for these devices is high in my opinion compared to price and performance. While it is able to handle multiple task and running items in the background I had crashed it within the first week of owning it. I had to look up how to restart it from a frozen screen as it would not respond to any input including holding down the power button. The design of the ipad2 is much changed from the iPad without changing the screen resolution or size. The new essentially 2 plane design is much slimmer than the original iPad. This has both pros and cons. On the good side it is easier to put into a backpack or briefcase without taking up much space, but on the other hand it is much easier to drop now. Also with both the new and old iPad they have an brushed aluminum back which while stronger and better looking than an all plastic biddy makes it feel slick, and you will need to buy a case to keep from dropping it.

The new cases that are available from apple for the iPad 2 are innovative and will help dramatically increase battery life by putting it to sleep when the cover is closed they do not help with the slickness factor. When holding one with the new cover in the store I felt like it was not attached well enough. While the magnets will hold the cover in place with general table use holding it in your lap or in your hand it will come off and you will be left holding a $50 cover while your iPad goes crashing to the ground.

Now that I've got my frustrations out of the way let's talk about some of the good. First it has a huge screen at 10 inches where most tablet devices rank I. At 5-7 inches. This allows for great viewing of movies and the games on it. Also a lot of the most popular games for the iPod iPhone have been remade to take full advantage of the new real-estate. One of my favorite game is dismount. It is simply a game where you push a rag doll down some stairs to see how much damage you can do to him. on the iPhone it is a little difficult to get the setting just where you want them to maximize the fall trajectory but on the iPad this is no problem at all. This theme continues with most games that have been converted over to the iPad.

Let's talk about apps. There are hundreds of thousands of these that were designed for the iPhone iPod that run great on the iPad in either native mode or in 2X mode to make them more visible. Add that with the already thousands of apps for the iPad itself and it is hard to compete with. Setting the iPad on my desk and watching Netflix movies while reading, and tooling around on the Internet is great. Then when I need to go wait on an install I can just pick it up and take it with me. It is also great for taking quick notes to review latter, or creating checklist of things I need to get done in a day. And with wifi available almost everywhere it is a great calendar device. I take it with me to doctors appointments and when I schedule my next appointment I just put it into the calendar and it syncs with my email calendar.

Overall it is a fairly solid device. For the tech o enthusiast like me it has it's limitations and I wish it was more open without void g the warrantee (jail breaking). I also wished it had a standard USB port so I could hook up a USB drive, keyboard, and mouse. For your apple enthusiast it is a a must buy, but then again you probably already have one. For your avid movie watcher it is nice to have. For kid entertainment on long car trips it replaces the gameboys and Sega game gears of old. All things being said I would not have paid for this device, but getting one free I will not complain.


As a side note this entire review errors and all was written on the iPad.

something phishy in my inbox

Have you ever seen an email in your inbox that didn’t look right?  Have you ever received an email that said your bank account has been compromised and that you need to log in to reactivate your account, or something similar? I have received this email this morning which is clearly a phishing attempt. I will now help you to recognize these bogus emails, and what to do when you receive one.

"Dear valued customer :

During our usual security enhancement protocol, we observed multiple login attempt error while login in to your online banking account. We have believed that someone other than you is trying to access your account for security reasons, we have temporarily suspend your account and your access to online banking and will be restricted if you fail to update.

confirm your update by clicking the link below:

 Log on to www.bankofamerica.com/update

Please Note:

If we do no receive the appropriate account verification within 48 hours, then we will assume this Bank account is fraudulent and will be suspended. The purpose of this verification is to ensure that your bank account has not been fraudulently used and to combat the fraud from our community."

The first red flag on these types of messages is that it does not use my name. It starts with "Dear valued customer" a real bank email usually addresses you by name either first and last or last only.  The next thing I notice is that it does not include a phone number to call. Another thing is that you will notice spelling errors or wrong word uses. un/fortunately most IT people struggle with spelling and grammar and if spell check doesn't find it it is okay in our eyes.

Now lets hover over the link and see where it is going to direct us. By hovering over it I can see it is going to take me to "http://www.laterthanever.org/store/media/online.bankofamerica.com/boa/" this means the root domain is http://www.laterthanever.org/ not https://www.bankofamerica.com/

So now that I know this is not a legitimate email here is what you need to do, at the bare minimum click the spam button on your email client. a step better is to forward the email to phishing-report@us-cert.gov . This allows the government to track down those responsible for these scams, and notify web hosting companies that the site has been compromised.

So hopefully when you see emails like this in the future you will be able to spot the fakes, and please take the extra second to forward these emails to phishing-report@us-cert.gov so that those responsible for these crimes can come to justice.


Now if I can just get someone to hello me get my never heard of before relatives money out of Nigeria...
-Your company's IT guy
Center4nerds.com

It begins

I have long wanted to be a technology reviewer, and have always wondered how to get started. after much thinking and procrastinating I figured a blog was a good place to start. I will start by reviewing the technology I have laying around the house and stuff I directly interact with. Eventually I would like to get a point where manufactures and vendors to send me stuff to try out. Any help I can get accomplishing this would be greatly appreciated. So for now it will remain with this post and hopefully I will be able to post something once a week.

(side note) anyone know someone who can look over my post for grammatical errors spell check doesn't catch everything ;)

Your company's IT guy