I work for a large defense corporation and we are relatively technological despite our populous.  However, we still have fax machines around and they are still the only means for transmitting documents in certain situations.  I.e. when filing for a corporate credit card we have to print out a form, sign it, and then fax it to the proper office.  The thing is, faxes have been completely replaced by this AMAZING NEW technology called “email.”  Click to read more…

I recently upgraded my wife Heather’s notebook computer.  It’s a two-year-old Dell Inspiron E1505 running Vista Home Premium.  When I bought it, it was about the time that the first Core 2 Duos were being released, so I got her the best I could for less than $1K.  For two years, the machine ran pretty well with tolerable lag (and terrible battery life), but then it started to get unreasonable.  As a result, I took it upon myself to upgrade the machine in the most cost effective ways possible.  Click to read more…

I have been teaching extension courses locally at West LA College for around two years now (I  will soon start teaching at El Camino College as well), and I can easily say that it has been a wonderful experience.  Teaching has allowed me to connect one-on-one with the target audience for my book Computer Zen: A Journey to Better Computing and see how well the information comes across to real people.  So far, the response has been very positive and I have branched out into teaching other classes.  Click to read more…