Maine Rap

I'm currently sitting in the Landing at UMF. Watching a Wells, Maine rap group call "Spose", set up. They are giving a free concert tonight. It's name is from the front man apparently. Their myspace is pretty cool. Myspace.com/spizzyspose. They sound potentially good, but I definitely have to say rap is for musicians who failed to learn how to play, well, music....

Google, Gmail, etc....

I had been a fan of using Google as my search engine for quite some time. I originally preferred it over Yahoo simply because it was faster and returned more relevant results to my query. After that, I took my stint in college and found friends who were using it, one of which who got me interested in Gmail when it was first introduced. Gmail had huge storage capabilities, and archiving. On top of that it was free, had a clean simple interface, and just fit with Google's homepage. So I jumped on the bandwagon with that and haven't looked back since.

Right now I use iGoogle, which gives me a customizable homepage to put anything on it I want, rss feeds, games, on-line applications, etc... I also have my mail right there. Even this blog is on my homepage. I can even uses documents and spreadsheets which can almost replace MS Office, all using Google related things. I basically have a workstation wherever I go, and it's always the way I want it. How can you beat that?

Tips for calling in for Technical Support

Technical Support for anything is a horrible thankless job. Always remember that the person you call for assistance has been dealing with a bunch of rude people all day long. To make the process go smoother for everyone involved, remain calm and explain your problem to the best of your abilities. If you can't, the support person (if they are good) will ask a good range of questions to get the needed info from you.

To give some insight to how the support person's day starts out, think of being stuck in a room with no sunlight and no chance of escape. On top of that, as soon as they log into their phone, it rings. The morning phone calls are always the most interesting, because they will determine how the rest of the day goes. Some morning calls deal mainly with asking status on previous issues. If you're fortunate, you will get a new call and, chances are, it will be someone who had a big issue last night and let that fester all night long before calling. Once they get a hold of a person that will actually hear the problem, they let loose a fury of incoherent babble on the issue. This sadly leads to about a 2 hour conversation on the conclusion being their report printer died during the night, and all that had to be done was replace the toner cartridge.

More on this later......

Spring ski season

Soon it will be spring, and the conditions are excellent for skiing. Warmer weather is coming (supposedly), and there is a ton of snow. I personally ski at Saddleback Mountain in Rangeley Maine. It's an excellent place for beginners to advanced, very family oriented, and relatively un-heard of, therefore not so crowded. Prices are very competitive.