Postings generally relate to employment related topics which may include, but are not limited to, coding, html, css, jquery, useful web sites and other things I find of use in my career.
I recently started working as a “Word Nerd” for ExtraNerds (http://www.extranerds.com). One of the critical things to learn is how to estimate time for a project. It seems simple enough at first. Clients want a “simple” web site based on WordPress, easy enough to do, and then there’s the selection of a theme and content.. oh my, the content.. and images and styling and the list goes on.
Or so a certain someone seemed to think. The individual in question thought his mother had a virus on her computer. The screen was upside down, they couldn’t use it because, well, the screen was UPSIDE DOWN! So, what was his solution? He wiped the hard drive, reinstalled windows and all other related software. As his brother was telling me this story, I started laughing.
There are some things that just need to be done. Basic maintenance on a computer is one of them. Running a disk check, defragmenting the hard drive, updating software, updating anti-virus software and running scans all fall into this category. The one that everyone seems to forget is dusting (cleaning out) the insides. This isn’t really that difficult, a couple of screws take off the side cover (depending on the design of the case, pull a lever and the side comes off, no screwing around needed).
As an example, this last week I received a call from a client “My computer screen keeps going blank! I turn on the computer and it works fine for about 15 minutes and then the screen goes blank. I can turn the computer off and start it back up, but the screen just keeps going blank after a few minutes.”