Ransomware is in the news currently, with WannaCry and its various nasty successors taking out speed cameras and chocolate factories and all manner of other targets. It’s a clever technique, if you put aside the sheer evil of it: use advanced mathematics to scramble a victim’s computer files so they can only be unscrambled one […]
I’ve been working for some time with a small firm based in Cradoc, helping them sort out their computers and keep their software ticking along. They’ve been reluctant to upgrade from Windows XP to a more modern version of Windows because of a piece of software they use, called SellSmart 6000. That decision has had […]
When I’m not gallivanting about the countryside fixing computers, I sometimes do work for clients at my own desk. One such client is an old workmate from my Sydney days, Tom. Tom works for a utility company that I won’t name, even pseudonymously, where he seems to have some kind of middle-management position that somehow […]
Every now and then, when I want to drum up business, I’ll try to come up with a gimmick. One time, some years ago, I made an offer to a bunch of my existing customers: refer me to a new customer and I’ll give them a discount and you a freebie. The first to take […]
Sometimes, I’m clever. Other times, I’m lucky. So far I’ve generally been at least one of those. This is a story about a time when I definitely wasn’t clever. I shall not name the community radio station in question, but it just so happened that a particular community radio station had a volunteer who also […]
Half the job of an IT blacksmith involves knowing your tools, but there’s a wrinkle that real blacksmiths rarely encounter: IT blacksmiths’ tools can become obsolete and disappear. I’ve never heard of a hammer being declared incompatible with the new 64-bit horseshoes so you have to find a new one. On the other hand, I […]
Making house calls is such a huge part of my job now that it’s hard to remember a time when I was hoping not to have to. The Huon Valley is a big place, and while my goal was always to be the go-to guy for tech support, I kind of preferred not to be […]
Not all of my blacksmithing adventures are focused on computers. Sometimes the people are the key, and sometimes there’s even a happy ending. Glen was a simple fellow. Recently moved to Mountain River from somewhere on the mainland, he arrived with nothing but a laptop and a ute, and a dream of starting his own […]
Dr Keith wasn’t all about the ransomware and the dangerous headgear. He also taught me an important lesson about horror films, and their applicability to daily life. The first time I dealt with him, he was having trouble with his laptop. It was, he told me over the phone, switching itself off at random. He’d […]
Dr Keith was a pillar of the community: three days a week at the local medical centre, formerly an alderman before everything got amalgamated in the 1980s. He seemed a little sheepish on the phone, and when I popped round to his rather nice house in Dover, I quickly saw why. His computer screen was […]