2013 was a rough year for 404 Tech Support. Beginning April 17th, 2013, the site traffic plummeted and has yet been able to recover. Along with the traffic went the site revenue, which took the site from being a self-sustaining hobby to a costly one. (I wrote more about that traffic swing in a previous article, so I won't go into it further.) Since ads weren't bringing in … [Read more...]

I have never been a waiter for a restaurant. However, because I have been a patron, I think I could do a decent job being a waiter because I would try to do all the things that I have liked and not do the things that I disliked from my other perspective. However, I know it's not that easy, and there would be a lot of situations that would come up that I am not familiar with, … [Read more...]

As I have done several times this past year, I spent some time this weekend volunteering at my local library shelving donated books for an upcoming book sale which will raise funds for the library. During this process I had a new, entertaining experience. I prepare the donated books to be in their best condition. For example, I unfold dog-eared pages and pull out paperclips … [Read more...]

All of the acronyms in IT can make for quite a bit of alphabet soup. When you are trying to find a job you might come across even more of these acronyms that might complicate understanding the posting and its requirements. Of course, you have common languages and technologies like XML, HTML, SQL, and PHP as well as positions like DBA, CIO, and CTO but there are even more … [Read more...]

In a conversation with a coworker the other day, we got onto the topic of "the cloud". To summarize, it seemed the marketing genius behind 'the cloud' knew exactly what they were doing. From an IT Pro perspective, the sentiment seemed to swing drastically with just the change of terminology. Outsourcing: "Booo!" The Cloud: "Yay!" Even servers in your own data center have … [Read more...]