Professional Geek By Day, Mom At Night

My co worker Patti often says this.. She is very right and sometimes it becomes to literal as well.

So my story begins the other day. This lady brings in her computer, her vonage, and her cable modem. Well we cant test her modem / vonage here. But we offer to test her computer and if her computer was fine come to her house and test the rest of her setup. Well her computer was fine so I went to her house. She had labeled her modem as a monitor for one. I determined it was her cable modem and advised her to go to cox communications to get a new one.

Well, the next day she calls up and says her keyboard is not working. It is wireless. I tried to explain to her how to connect the keyboard to the wireless adapter via pushing the connect buttons. So it took her about 5 mins to find the connect button on the bottom of the keyboard… she pressed the buttons and it did not work so.. i then told her to replace her batteries. She actually asked me if a AA battery was smaller than a AAA battery.. LOL ok well she got them replaced and still not get her keyboard to connect.

The next day I come to her house to hook up her new modem and connect her keyboard. After a few attempts at the connect button with failure, I decided to check the batteries. She had them in backwards. So I switched them around to how it should be and wahlah it worked… ??

serious short between keyboard and seat…

So some say you cannot network Windows 7, Vista, and XP. Well they are wrong. Its quite simple. Make sure all computers are on WORKGROUP. not homegroup, not mshome, but WORKGROUP. Vista and XP will be able to see windows 7.. yes… but windows 7 wont be able to see vista or xp..

Windows 7 Work Group Set Up:

Right click “Computer” — > Goto Advanced System Setting — > Click on “Computer Name” Tab At the bottom it says Network ID and Change. Click Change.. the makesure workgroup is checked and it says Workgroup. click apply reboot.

I work in a male dominated field. What gets me is when someone calls asking for tech advice, they ask for one of the guys. And I explain to them that I AM A TECH or THE TECH. They get cocky with me. Also if I just so happen to be up at the front counter when someone walks in and they ask for one of the guys and I am like well you are looking at them.

I had one guy come in the other day. His screen enclosure on his laptop was broke. He explained he had the part and just wanted someone to install it for him. I told him it would be a minimum of and HR charge. He was like well it should only take 15 mins, and one of the techs should be able to do it that quickly. I said Im sorry sir but its going to be at least an hr charge. He treated me like I didnt know what i was doing / talking about. I explained to him I am the tech. He didnt want to believe me. I just nicely said, ok well i’ll put it on the shelf and have whom ever picks it up give you a call with a price quote. I had one of the “guys” call him and they told him the EXACT SAME THING I DID. Minimum of $65.

Just because Im very young, pretty, and FEMALE, doesnt mean im not smart.

So my friends looked at me weird… I was excited about the launch of windows 7 all week. You ask why they looked at me weird.. LOL.. Because I already had windows 7. I had a RTM from my company. (RTM = Release To Manufacturer) I advise people to go out and get it. This is something Microsoft DID NOT FUCK UP.

I don’t recommend doing and upgrade, unless you have Vista. If you have XP, just go buy and new machine. They are fairly cheap. Best Buy and Walmart sells them for around $400 for a laptop. (this is in florida people)

Win7 looks like a sexy Vista and runs like XP. I have several programs that I was unable to install on Vista due to compatibility issues, but I had no problem installing them on Win7.

It took about 15mins to install and all of my drivers were preinstalled as well and.. i loved the fact i didnt have to hunt down sata (f6) drivers. It automatically detected.

Did you know that you can run many different applications from a USB flash drive. Including Mac Os and Windows? My co-worker shared this information with me the other day. So I went the website and found some great tech programs to use in worse case scenarios when doing house calls.

Here is the link! (Link will open in new window)