since this is a forum that im still setting up, i thought it would be fun to share a few details about who i am, and some of the reasons i think Microsoft has chosen me to be a “guru.”
taking it from the top, i first used a computer sometime around 1990. i was recovering from a very serious case of acute appendicitis, and while i wasn’t able to get out of the house to cause mischief, so i started playing with my dad’s work laptop. i don’t recall the brand, but being the hardware junkie i am i can tell you that it was a x286 model, and Oregon trail was pretty much the coolest thing i had going on during recovery. i remember poking around some of the lotus work apps that my dad used and being blown away by how many numbers he was keeping track of. he was using the system to help manage some offshore drilling operations for trintomar, in Trinidad and Tobago, off the northeast coast of Venezuela. i actually got the chance to visit for Christmas in 1991. the experience of being so ill, and then seeing how much luckier i was as a child than the children i was seeing in a country that, by international standards, is doing just fine, was truly a life-changing experience.
that year, after making me memorize the multiplication tables up to 10, my dad showed me a little about how to run lotus 1-2-3. after that, math, graphs, spreadsheets, etc, have never really never been a challenge again. i can’t say much happened for me with computers over the next few years. he kept the laptop, i used it to learn to write and type, and played Oregon trail every now and then, but once i got a super Nintendo, metroid and troy aikman footbal pretty much ruled my electronic life.
the next computer i got to use was when i moved to Idaho my sophomore year of high school, in 1997. my grandparents gave me what i believe was the greatest gift i have ever received: a brand new, top-of-the-line, desktop computer. it was a “family” system, and it wasn’t in my bedroom, but rather the office, but i don’t think anyone in the house (ok it was just my mom and stepdad and they used them at work so didn’t want to use it at home) would argue that it was MY computer. i think i must have killed about 3,123,654,313,943 demons and zombies and whatnot in diablo 1&2. greatest game of all time, srsly.
having the chance to use a system when i was about 10, and REALLY play with one when i was about 15 laid the foundation for what i hope is shaping up to be a very successful career. the first system we brought home actually had a faulty motherboard, so the clock was running fast. micron sent out a tech to replace it after i spent about 2 hours “under the hood” tinkering around with the system figuring out what was the matter. i watched the tech like a hawk so i wouldn’t break the thing if i decided/needed to work on it myself, and a system builder was born. after i realized that he was actually replacing the main board that everything in the computer was connecting to, right there in the home office, i realized i could probably build computers, which seemed like about the coolest thing i could do since i had given up on being any good at sports by this point.
over the next few years i helped my mom make flyers for work in publisher, used the computer for endless amounts of internet research for competitive debate in high school and college, and made a decent chunk of change doing various training, repairs, and upgrades for people who needed help with their pc’s. i also got into web design for a while, wound up doing a bunch of excel form creation for sears even though i was supposedly just a sales guy, blah blah blah. i’ve been in the workforce for a decade, and have had success at two of the largest companies in the world, as well as one of the fastest growing family businesses in the US. the skills i tried to learn early on about how numbers are organized, how to run a search when you get stuck looking for something, and about what makes a computer’s clock tick so that i can get it to work again when it stops, were absolutely the critical skills that i needed to teach myself how to get the job done, almost regardless of whether i was running a landscaping business, or working for Microsoft. certainly different skills are relevant to different users, but i’ve had 2 years now to talk to regular, everyday pc buyers, and have noticed an awful lot of “best practices” that anyone who really loves their computer, whose life is enriched and improved rather than made frustrating and frantic by it, all follow. in subsequent posts i intend to go into a lot more detail but those basic principles are
1. make sure you’re using the right tool for the right job- that’s what software evaluations, or trials, are for.
2. make sure you keep your system protected by UPDATED antivirus software, and that your systems automatic updates are also running.
3. make sure you have a backup strategy in place.
4. f1 is your friend. it’s up by the top left of the keyboard. it’s what we call “context-relevant help.” actually it’s just the help button, i made that last bit up. seriously though, it’s a pretty smart little button. it knows whether you’re using the internet, or paint, or calculator, or word, or whatever, and will direct you to the on-screen instructions relevant to the program you’re working with.
i am humbled by working for Microsoft. they have machines that require only 3 buttons be pressed, and hot chocolate fills your cup. they also have one where you essentially stand inside a “worldwide telescope” and can use gestures to fly around through a 3d map of the known universe. imagine being able to see your house from street level, zooming out so you can see the milky way and other galaxies, flying over to the closest one, and then zooming back out, in again to the milky way, and taking a perspective from the moon of what earth looks like. this was a real, 3d, interactive experience i was able to be part of at a demonstration about a year ago, and it’s exactly what you can see at www.worldwidetelescope.org
if you’d like to be able to fly all around the universe but can’t, i’m excited to help show you how 🙂
What an extremely talented individual you are!Vicki McCambridge