Ok, we've all see the Windows For Dummies books, the guides on how to use MS Word and Excel, and the technical among us scoff and roll our eyes at these books... but the average consumer gobbles these things up, the dummies books sell better than any technical programming manual, everyone it seems is buying these damn books. You'd think then that we'd have a more technically literate population. We don't, even the people who buy these books still have no clue. You want to know my theory as...

Outsourcing has become the largest problem for the IT industry since the dot-com bomb. However, it is not the last major shake-up we'll see in this industry, nor is it a sign of its eventual demise in the US. IT is just advancing along the same trend as every other form of technology throughout history. First there is the point where only masters and experts can participate, making these individuals very valuble, then slowly the number of people who can use/work with the technology increas...

I'm what you would consider a bit of a Internet veteran. I don't go as far back as the mainframe days, in fact I'm mostly from the age of the Macintosh and the first PCs... but I've been online for quite some time now (earliest net memories involve BITNET, Gopher, Archie & Veronica etc...). I've been using the WWW almost from the beginning of it (I used to have the first release of NCSA Mosaic) and I've been involved in online communities off and on ever since. I've seen a lot of attempts m...

I've been gaming for over 15 years now, having started on the Atari and moved on to the NES, Sega Genesis, and the newer crop of consoles. I've also been gaming on PCs for just over 10. I'm accustomed to the release day ritual of making the trek to the local WalMart or EB to pick up a pre-ordered copy of whatever the newest hottest game is, coming home and loading it up and playing for the rest of the day. This started in a time where I practically had to beg mom to drive me out to the ...

This is a sort of follow-up to my previous article asking for help in how to land a job as a fresh college graduate. The consensus was that I needed to either develop a very specific set of skills or try to get in with a smaller company as a generalist and work my way up. At this point in time I'm realizing that I can't really afford to spend the next several months not really making money while I try and train myself into a more focused job candidate, so I'm looking to take the second path of...

Ok, here's the deal, I've recently graduated from Penn State University with a B.S in Information Sciences & Technology with a minor in IT Telecommunications. I've worked for about 8 years total doing tech support work of varying difficulty (from simple troubleshooting to overseeing two computer labs to running my department's servers and doing most minor network work) through High School and College. I can easily work with Windows, MacOS and just about any variety of Linux (some of the pure ...

This is inspired by a LiveJournal post one of my friends made last night and one of the responses someone made to it. Here at Penn State, we have a Distinguished Speaker series where we get people ranging from Ben Stein, to Danny Glover, to F. W. De Klerk. Last night it was Maya Angelou, and while I stayed in to avoid the bad weather we've been having, one of my friends managed to make it out and came back positively glowing. Here's a few select lines from her entry: She told us that adul...

I just finished my third or fourth run through Warcraft III (Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne), and I've been keeping an eye on the upcoming release of World of Warcraft. What Blizzard has done is created a far-reaching story, one with twists, turns and more individual plot threads than you can count. The series started with a seemingly simple story of evil (orc) aggression against the forces of good (humans, elves, dwarves and their gnome friends) in a struggle for the world itself, and h...

The major theme of my few articles on here to date has been that of change. Emotional change, professional change, geographic change etc... I've graduated from college, getting ready to move into the working world and move to a place I've never been before, where I don't know anyone and I'm hours away from the nearest friend or relative. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't terrified, that the mere thought of changing this much didn't make me want to climb back under the covers every morning and j...

Every time things in life seem to be going poorly, there's always some annoying friend who has an unnaturally up-beat attitude about life and feels the need to force it on all the poor unfortunate grumpy people around them. They'll offer helpful comments like "Well, it's not so bad, you could have " or "It'll get better sooner or later"/"Good things come to those who wait" It's like listening to a modified version of your parents when they tried to instill virtues such as patience and manner...

I am a computer geek. I have been tinkering with computers for as long as I can remember, and started building systems completely from scratch about 4 or 5 years ago. My PC was a hand-crafted labor of love, constantly upgrading bits and pieces every few years to keep it bleeding edge and performing well. This probably cost me $6000 total over the past 4 years (from initial build to today). This past weekend, my power supply blew, taking the motherboard, RAM and CPU with it, as well as one ...

Once the euphoria of actually having made it through college has passed and you've received that little piece of paper certifying that you are a smart person, the reality of life begins to set in. The main question most people seem to be facing at this point is "What am I going to do with the rest of my life" and another of more immediate concern "Where am I going to find a job?" For me, I'm currently ignoring the first question as it seems too soon to try and figure something that major out a...

Well, another year has come and gone, and with it's end, a lot has changed for me. Just a few days ago I graduated from college, bringing to a close almost 17 years of schooling, and now I'm on the brink of what quite literally is the rest of my life. This is such a profound change in direction and operation that it's hard for me to really wrap my head around. It's frightening and exciting, joyous and depressing. With that in mind, there are a few things I'm hoping to see happen in 2004... ...