Monday, January 09, 2006

Computer Geek First Class...I will explain

After a comment I received, I will explain why this is called
Computer Geek First Class

I am a computer technician at Dawson College a very big CEGEP or Jr College. I receive lots of printed publications and junk mail. I wanted a way of tracking how my address was getting around.

On all the forms I fill out there is a space labeled "Job Title" or "Position" Feeling a bit silly one day, I entered Computer Geek First Class Well..as you can imagine, I started to receive this particular publication with that on the address label. I had a good laugh.

It didn't take too long before I started to receive other mailings with the same information. Sometimes it amazes me that no one actually checks these things.

Now you know the rest of the story!

Thursday, January 05, 2006

I've been on Holiday...YAY

Hi Everyone!!

As some of you may be aware, I'm a computer technician (cough*geek*cough) at a really big Jr college. My life is somewhat controlled by the cycles of the school year, with one difference; I can take time off almost any time I want. This year I took my big trip in September. You can read more about that here: My trip to London. To continue, I also sometimes take time during the semester, maybe a week at the end of November. This year, because of other obligations, I wasn't able to take any time until now; the week between the holidays. I really needed the break!

Although work is not stressful; most of my days are pretty consistent, there are days when I feel like a human pinball; Some days I don't see my office.

During my time off my broadband router died, went belly up, crapped out, fell down-go boom...you get the idea. I needed a replacement. I setup a linux based firewall appliance, Smoothwall Express It will run on almost anything. I had an old P2 233 MHz with 256MB of ram, I needed a CD-ROM drive for the install and a floppy for backups. I was on my way!

It has been up and running for almost 3 weeks, not a wimper or a complaint for it. As with most Linux systems, it just runs. With the help of the Smoothwall Community Forums I added a couple of modifications that make the system even easier to use. I'm not sure if I'm more impressed with myself or the Smoothwall box sitting in the corner of my office. It is worth a look.

A big hello goes out to anyone visiting from The Langa List

HELLO!!



Ok time to do some work :-)