Cell phone conversation overheard:

So my boss comes to me and says, “You’re now the new IT manager, effective immediately.”

No “would you like the job?” No “what do you think?” Just “you’re it.”

My first thought is, “This is not good.” And then that classic line from Star Wars pops into my head, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Well that only lasts about a minute, because I suddenly remember an email I got that morning about a company that provides IT support for small businesses. I’ve got a business of my own on the side now, non-competitive with my J-O-B, so I quick sign up for their service.

Now when tech problems arise, I pick someone else’s brain, solve the problems and look like a genius, I’m actually learning a lot about networks, and all this troubleshooting is helping my business.

So I go to my boss last week and say, “Here’s my resignation.” He says, “What about the IT thing?” I say, “Put me on retainer as your IT consultant.” He says, “You’ve got a deal.”

Everybody’s happy. You’ve gotta love win-win situations.

I have decided that it is time for me to get a new computer.  Mine has been very good to me for the past five years, but honestly, it is time for an upgrade.  It is running a little too slow for my liking, so I think it is time for it to be retired.

But, it has been a long time since I have looked at desktop computers and I wonder if it is still better to build PC or get a factory assembled one.

Well, whether it is cheaper or not, I am just like a little kid who likes to build their computer.  So that is the route that I will take.  While looking at the components, I noticed that you can build a small computer instead of creating a hulking machine - and I think that I will go that route.

I think I will have to look closely at the tradeoffs between the size of the machine and its’ power before I finally buy all the components I need.  But, I am already getting excited that I will get to build a computer again - it has been too long.

I have been having nothing but trouble from my computer in the last few weeks. I am not technologically inclined, so I had no idea what to do to fix it. It just so happens that the kid who usually fixes our computer when it is not running properly is away for the next two months. Not wanting to take it to someone else, I decided to purchase the RegCure PC Optimizer program and see if that would help it to run better.

I did get some good results from that, but the computer was still not working perfectly. I didn’t want to play around with it too much, as I really didn’t know what I was doing. I asked the boys at the store what the best registry cleaner software was and if it would be alright for me to run these on my machine.

In the end, I decided that it was running well enough for now and that Alex would be back from vacation in a few weeks and could look at it then. I know that he used PC Tools Registry Mechanic on it before and made it all better, so I supposed he could do that again. I have to remember to tell him that he can never go on vacation again.

Once upon a time, my husband and I decided that we needed to get some Internet Privacy Security software. A few years ago, when we were renting a basement suite, the people that we were renting form were the landlords from hell and when we were not home they would come into our suite and help themselves to our computer.

As we had no proof and there was nothing we could do about it until we could find a new place to live, we decided it would be best to put a Web Anonymizer on the computer. At least this way, we could keep our stuff private from them. We didn’t trust them as far as we could throw them and could not wait to leave.

We found some good Privacy Controls form Proctologic and installed them on our machine. We also installed a key logger, so we could get proof that they were using the computer, but we knew there was nothing we could do about it, even with proof. So, we eventually found a new place to live and didn’t have to worry about the landlord from hell ever again. And we all lived happily ever after (except for the poor fools who moved into the suite when we left).

Sometimes I just feel like such an idiot when it comes to computers.  Though I have had one for a number of years now, sometimes I make mistakes.  While some of my mishaps are simple like changing the screen resolution, others like deleting photographs are not good at all.

I think the first time that I deleted some pictures off of my computer, they were my anniversary photos, and my wife was furious.  I promptly used some photo recovery software to save the day and get those treasured memories back.

But when I deleted most of our company’s books, I had to take things a step further.  Our computer technician suggested that I use some computer data recovery software to get back what I had deleted.

At the time, he set me up with Recovery My Files, a data recovery package that was easy to use.  It worked great then and still works good now.  It is definitely my first solution when it comes to fixing my mistakes – and I have the need to use it often.

I have been having problems with my computer’s performance for the past month now, and I thought that if I were to reformat it, that would solve all my problems.

So, I reinstalled Windows and things were going good - or so I thought.  Unfortunately, there was information that I forgot to backup that I needed - in fact it was imperative that I could recover files that I didn’t backup.

Thankfully, I had some software that could recover reformatted drive to the point where I could get the information off.  I was happy that there was a handy wizard that helped me to get the information back without a hitch.

Instead of hiring someone to recover data for me, I felt happy that I was able to do it for myself.  Next time though, I will double check that I have everything backed up before I reformat the computer.  I have learned my lesson.