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Riding Shotgun with Adam

Geek Squad is a comin’

Today I had lunch at a local burger place. I try to eat a hamburger a week just so I don't forget how bad they are for me.

While I was eating six Geek Squad guys came and set down at the table next to me. For those who don't know, the Geek Squad is Best Buy's computer repair team. Essentially they are a bunch of kids with book learning but little real-world experience outside of the routine jobs that they do on a daily basis.

As I heard them talk I began to wonder if it is truly possible to Wal-mart-ize computer help. This comes from a very biased point of view admittedly. My business is in direct competition to the Geek Squad.

Castellini on Computers gets bumped again

The radio business is just that. It's a business.

I recieved a call this week from the station manager to let us know that AM 1100 KNZZ is going to be bumping the first half hour of our show off the air locally. It seems that there is a new local real estate show that is paying to be on starting at 11a.m. every Saturday.

Listeners will still be able to listen via the Internet and call in to the show at our regular number, but KNZZ has made the decision to not air our show for the first half hour.

As you will likely recall, they just started airing our entire program a few months ago after cutting the last 30 minutes off to run colon and prostate health infomercials.

Books on CD are a wonderful thing

Just like Rick, I also spend a lot of time in my car driving from one appointment to another. Lately I have discovered the joy of reading, both traditional books and audio books.

All through school I was never much of a reader. In fact, it wasn't until college that I actually kept up with reading the required text and that was only in classes that I enjoyed like American Government and Creative Non-fiction (yes that was a real class I took).

Late last year I installed a nice bookshelf in our bathroom and since then I have read about 5 books and too many entire magazines to count.

File Management: Why is it so hard to figure out?

As I have mentioned before on the show and in these articles, I teach the local basic computer classes for the Parks and Rec. department. I teach the classes as a four-part series in which I dedicate an entire two hour session to file management.

Teaching the concept of how your computer organizes information is a huge struggle for me. I don't think it is because if my teaching technique or the inability of my students to comprehend the topic.

The reason that file management is so difficult to teach and comprehend is that it isn't sexy, it isn't tangible and it is isn't universal in it's use. By the latter, I mean that each person can apply the concept differently.

I love my Treo

Today I helped a couple setup their brand new Motorola RAZR phones. These are do-it-all phones, or at least they do a lot. They have built-in cameras, they do email and Text messaging, they have Bluetooth radios and that's about it.

Motorola RAZR

RAZRs are very popular right now because they are thin and they do a lot. But they aren't very easy to use. Granted, they are some of the easiest cell phones to use, but that doesn't mean that they are easy to use.

In order to check your voice mail, you have to hit the little mail button, then go through a menu to choose voice mail (as opposed to text message, email, and about three other kinds of mail). Everything involved several menus.

I am sensing a theme here

I am sensing a theme with my work lately. Late last week I had to tell a client that their entire hard drive had crashed and nothing was salvageable.

Today I taught some computer classes for the local Parks and Rec. I enjoy teaching these classes because I get to tell people about the importance of things like backup and broadband Internet.

After that class my first client had just bought a new computer and she needed me to transfer data. She had replaced her old computer because it kept locking up and giving her errors.

As I transferred her important files I discovered what had been causing the problems. Her hard drive was nearly dead and many of her files were gone completely.

It’s a computer emergency

Lately, I have seen too many real emergencies. Sometimes I get calls that are "emergencies" like the kind where the grandkids have come over and deleted the solitaire icon from the desktop.

But, then I get real emergencies. Lately I had one client whose hard drive motor suddently quit. Today I saw a dentist's office where the server with all of the software kept shutting down suddenly. Then, the worst yet, I am working a little bit with a local financial institution whose server crashed – not a small business either.

In all but one case, the client has complete and current backup, but even having backup doesn't help keep the ship afloat when a major crash happens. Sometimes the entire ship has to be put in drydock for a week or so to get things figured out.

Maybe I should run a backup today

I spent much of my day working with a client who had lost everything on his hard drive. The motor died. We checked with a couple of data recovery services on the web and one said it would cost $1100 to recover, the other said the price would start at $599 (lowest possible estimate).

I have seen clients lose important information before and it is heart breaking, but it was what my client said later that I think is of note.

People often ask us how often they should back up or how they should backup. While the answers to these questions vary, there is one time that you should always backup everything that is important.

Three ways to scroll

Whenever I tutor people on their computer, I always tell them that there are five ways to do almost anything in Microsoft Windows, but there are no wrong ways.

When I pick a particular skill to teach, I choose the method that is 1. universal and 2. involves the least amount of steps.

There is one exception where I teach three methods. When I teach people how to use the scroll bar in a Window I think it is important to show the fast way, the slow way, and the way that moves up and down a list at "reading speed."

The slow way: Every scroll bar has a little triangle at the top and at the bottom. You can move one item at a time through the list by making quick mouse clicks on either on the top or bottom triangle. This method is great when you want to carefully browse through a list such as a list of "Smiths" in an online phone book.

Take the stickers off

I setup a new printer today and the thing was covered with stickers. I am not talking about the pieces of tape that hold all the parts in place for shipping – there were a lot of those too. I am referring to the stickers that advertise the fact that this printer prints. Or that this printer is "Great for photos!" There was even a sticker that said that it was. "Easy to use and setup!"

Why do they put these stickers on the printer? They also put them on new computers. If the computer or printer is in a box then wrapped in two layers of styrofoam and plastic bags, why do you need all these stickers?