Seeing as how this is my first post in this blog, I suppose introductions are in order. My name is Lourens. Hi, it’s good to meet you. (Except if I already know you, in which case I’m glad that I met you sometime before.)
Now that we know each other, first a disclaimer. I am not a “computer genius” or a “programming wizard”. So that is NOT the kind of content you can expect to find here. If that’s what you’re looking for, I can recommend a few other blogs… Some of my friends ARE “computer geniuses” and “programming wizards”, so I’m extremely well connected, and they often make me look good!
On the other hand, I have been involved with IT and computers for well over 20 years. It started when I was just a little boy. While my brother was studying in Pretoria, staying there all week and coming home on Fridays, I would spend weekdays after school inserting one floppy disk after another (yes, the old 5 1/4” disks that were actually floppy), looking for games at a DOS command prompt, and trying every single executable, command, or batch file I could find. Often with disastrous results. And then I’d spend the rest of my afternoons trying to find a way to fix, before Friday, whatever I broke this time! That eventually lead to my career in computers and the IT field in general.
So the info I will be giving in this blog will actually be a list of my experiences. I’m a naturally inquisitive kind of guy, always sticking my nose where it may not necessarily belong, trying to find new things and trying them out. So you will at least be able to benefit from this general inquisitiveness (hey, is that even a real word? “Inquisitiveness”…)
So go ahead, follow this blog if you want. I’m going to try to add a post more or less daily, and I’ll appreciate your input and comments. And also, if you want me to discuss anything in particular (preferably computer-related), please let me know and I will try to stick my nose into it!
And to end off this first blog post, I would like to add some unashamed propaganda! Please go and take a look at the web site of Renovo Computers in South Africa. That’s the IT company I’m affiliated with and co-founded. So take a look at the awesome services. Or even just look at the awesome web site (it really is very impressive, and I can boast about it because I didn’t design it! Yeah, I rock at being humble.)
And also, please do me a favour and click on the ads if they interest you. (Don’t go through any trouble to click on them just because I’m asking you to, though, but if something interests you, please do.) Those ads help to support this blog and my babbling, and pay for medical expenses when I get my nose stuck somewhere it didn’t belong.
Hei hei, Lourens has a computing blog now! And he plans on posting daily! Cool! (don't let it get to your head now :-P)
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Lourens, here in your very first post you have captured the very essence of what it takes to be a "computer genius", namely: (inquisitively) mess around with it! May all people shrug their fear of computers and begin to simply /try/ and fix some problems themselves. (don't worry, as your own experience implies, that won't be terrible for your business, newbie computer fixers tend to break things more often than they fix them)
That reminds me of the first time I 'broke a computer'. Me and my younger sister, both still very young at the time, were playing "Yellow Hippo", I think. It was a story-telling educational game in a series for toddlers, other titles included "Blue Tortoise" and "Green Bear".
Being naturally fascinated with magnets, a fairly large magnet stripped from a defunct speaker inevitably found its way found its way to the CRT screen by my hands. "Cool!" we thought, "yellow hippo has gone pink! And now green, and ... awesome look at those green circles around him!".
Until, of course, we realised we couldn't get him back to yellow again. Ah, but I did not panic! (the other important part of fixing computers, for those who don't know) Rather, I used the age-old technique of "Start>Shutdown>Restart". Oops, it didn't help. "What are we going to do when ma comes home?"
I don't remember clearly, but I think still didn't panic. Rather, we just left the computer as is, and went on with more important things in our lives. It later turned out that the repairs cost more than I could propperly grasp at the time. But, I am blessed with parents who understand the importance of letting a kid try things out, allowing him/her the liberty to screw up, so I was not punished.
Today, I don't quite know how the heck the repairs could have turned out to cost so much. I have fixed this kind of decoloration on CRT screens within seconds with my bare hands by letting the monitor perform a simple deguass. Of course, it may be possible that the speaker magnet was so large that it did significant damage, but needless to say, I learned the valuable lesson of "magnet+screen is as good as electricity+water" then, and continued to tinker on and grow in knowledge of computers. Looking back on the whole thing, it's quite hilarious.
And by the way, that's a really cool website you didn't design over at Renovo's.
Now, I look forward to reading your other posts.