This has been a thing with me for quite sometime now, but after poking around on Yahoo! Answers for a bit, it has come back to the fore-front.  In other words, this is a real hot-button issue for me that needs to be touched on in a most desperate way.

Just so that you are all aware, I've been in the IT field since my separation from the Air Force in 1999 (and it was a secondary job responsibility for the 10 years I was in the military), and I've come to realize that with the explosion of technology there are many, many people out there (young and old alike) that struggle just to grasp the basics.

One of the basics that I'm going to refer back to time and again is computer maintenance.  As the title of  this blog eluded, your computer is a complicated and delicate piece of machinery that needs regular care and maintenance, just like your car does.  Otherwise, bad things happen and you have no one to blame but yourself when they come to pass.  If you don't change the oil in your car for 150,000 miles, you don't run screaming back to the dealer that sold it to you to demand that he fix it for free when it breaks, do you?  I should think not.  Or better yet, given the same scenario, you surely wouldn't blame the company that manufactured the tires, right?

Alas. with computers, people point the finger of blame in the "tire manufacturer's" direction with infuriating regularity.  They do absolutely no maintenance for years and when things go tragically wrong, who do they call?  Their internet service provider (ISP).  "THE INTERNET IS BROKEN!  DON'T YOU PEOPLE KNOW THAT I'M TRYING TO RUN A BUSINESS HERE?  I'M LOSING 150 BAZILLION DOLLARS A DAY!  What do I do for a living?  I'm a day trader (or better yet:  "I sell widgets on E-Bay")."

First, let me state the obvious:  day trading and selling used books and junk on E-bay is not a job, no matter how badly you want to believe it is.  It's an interesting hobby, maybe.  Based off a recent Reader's Digest article that my father pointed out to me, it's more likely a mental illness, not a career.  Seek therapy if necessary, but get over it.  Every tech that you try to impress with that "self-employed millionaire" line is rolling his or her eyes...trust me on this one.  With that said, I'm brought comfortably to my second point:

If you're making sooooo much money from widget sales and cornering the gold market (at the same time, no doubt), why are you ignoring the regular maintenance of your most valuable business tool and trying to use a network that was designed for residential, recreational use to run your multi-platinum-bar producing business?  Why don't you have a computer company like Dall-Tech working for you (you had to know that was coming) and a T3 line with 24/7 up time running in to your computer?  Pry open your wallet, Mr. Gould!  You don't drive a broken-down Yugo over back country roads when what you need is a Ferrari on the Autobahn is what I'm saying here.  The rule that applies to everything else applies here as well:  You get out what you put in.

Third, learn basic computing terminology.  The internet is not broken.  Ever.  That would be like stating that the entire interstate highway system is closed because the Wayne County Road Commission has one on-ramp to I-94 under construction near Canton, MI.  Every technician that I know cringes when they hear a customer start the conversation off like that.  It almost invariably means a marathon phone call, a lot of over-the-twisted-pair training and a missed lunch for our hero or heroine.

Fourth, don't scream at the person on the other end of the phone because you spent all of your time playing Spider Solitaire;  never once running defrag or bothering to update your factory installed anti-virus program.  Have you ever even dove in and taken a look at how much hard drive space you have left?  No?  Wouldn't even begin to know  where to look for that information, huh? *sigh*  Would you like to know why you can't get access to the internet or your precious e*trade account?  Because your operating system is being crushed by the 4 versions of Tetris you have running simultaneously, the 72 gigabytes (GB) of porn clips and pirated music on your 80 GB hard drive and the 59 programs all vying for that less-than-ample amount of memory you have installed when Windows 95 loads up.  What does all that mean?  It means, quite simply, that you're trying to ram a bowling ball through a piece of IV tubing.  Try cleaning that crap up and see what happens, before calling the wrong people to complain, okie dokie?

The above was an hourly occurrence when I worked as a senior technician and call center manager in Comcast's high speed internet department.  In an 8 hour, 70 phone-call-per-shift day, 20% of each tech's calls would be speed issue/can't connect calls.  99% of those calls were due entirely to the computer's owner not doing routine maintenance, not to its internet connection.

For those of you that take care of your computers, I apologize for the previous rant and thank you for your diligence.  For those of you that fall into the category described above:  I do not think you're stupid, I think  you're careless.  Yes, careless...in the same way that you would be careless if you ran your car out of oil, seized up the engine and then tried to play it off :  "I didn't know I needed to put oil in that crazy contraption.  What am I, an auto mechanic?"  I don't expect you to ever become a computer expert (or an auto mechanic), but you took the time to learn the basic functions and needs of your car before you drove it, right?  Well, then show your computer (and the technicians that support it and you) the same respect and learn about its basic functions and needs, as well; not necessarily how to do it, but what needs to be done and when.

I will do my best, throughout the life of this blog, to instruct you about the basics:  Maintenance, security, internet fundamentals and the like.  If you would like to add on to the discussion, have questions or a topic suggestion please speak up.  I learn something new about computing every single day, and I hope to pass that knowledge on to all of you!

~Steve@Dall-Tech

**Special thanks to Dell and Microsoft (in that order) for the stock photos above.