Tag: computing in the 21st century

Internet in Greater Boston – fewer options for more money

Greater Boston, and especially our home of Cambridge, is undoubtedly one of the technology capitals of the United States, and certainly of the East Coast.   And yet Kelly and I have struggled for years to find a decent, reliable Internet provider for a reasonable price.  Currently we are using Comcast, because we simply could not get reliable service from Verizon no matter how hard we tried.  It was depressing, but at least we figured it probably wouldn’t get any worse.

And then earlier this week I read that our Internet/phone/cable provider, Comcast, is going through yet another merger.

Sigh.  No good can come from this.

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Suddenly, I wish I could “like” something on Facebook

Anyone who’s a regular reader around here knows that Geoff and I are not on Facebook.  Today I ran across something on the Huffington Post that made me wish that I could actually like or upvote it or whatever it is you do on Facebook.  Get out the tissues, folks, this one is horrible and amazing all at the same time.

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It’s Called Networking

And if you know anyone, anywhere or have any friends or family you can do it too!

Networking is how you can find a job, find an apartment without a pesky broker, or find a home for that cat who needs one.  It is not about trading favors, it’s about knowing people.  If you know people and have an email address, you too can network!

Ahem.

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Dear Internet: You are weird

One of the most fascinating things about having a blog is seeing what it is that brings people here.  The other day a *really* strange search term popped up in our list of “why people come to KellyandGeoff.com.”

It was just too weird.  So, in honor of the truly strange corners of the internet (and The Bloggess who had this idea first), I’ve gone back through the list and picked out some of the strangest, funniest, most terrifying and sometimes offensive search terms that brought you people to this blog.  Granted, since I’m writing about them it’ll probably bring more of you here, but that’s OK.  What is that they say about any publicity being good publicity?  Yeah, that.  I think.

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No, your car cannot be hacked

Not in the way that most people think of “hacking”, where some teenager or twentysomething thousands of miles away taps away on their laptop in an Internet cafe and gains control of your car.  Never going to happen, and do you know why?

Because your car is not a wireless device, like a PDA or a laptop.  It may have computers in it, but they aren’t networked together in the way that we think of a computer network.  That’s why. 

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***42 emails and counting***‏

That was the title of the email I sent to Petflow.com yesterday morning at 7:45am when I realized that my inbox was inundated and it wasn’t showing signs of stopping.

Before I go on I should probably warn you, this is not one of my rants.  This is a story about customer service.  Good customer service.

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This is why I left IT

I tried for over three years to find a decent job in IT after I was laid off.  Looking for work, and generally trying to improve my IT knowledge and skills, became my new job.  I went back to school to improve my IT skills.  I gained several new certifications, picked up many more books and attempted to improve my skills as best I could.  Over three years of job fairs, workshops, endless resume rewrites, countless applications, all sorts of professional and personal networking, honing of cover letters, (you name it, and I did it) but nothing worked.  In three years I got less than five interviews.  I tried everything.  Of course, plenty of people had advice for me on how to find a job. Some was good, a lot was bad, and much of it was contradictory.

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Boston Strong

It’s been a little over a week since downtown blew up and everything went to hell, but since then Boston Strong has become the catchphrase for how we’ve all held up.  The whole tough New Englander attitude, some would say “crusty”, is well known.  We’re tough people and down through generations we’ve been through a lot.

I have no idea who it was who coined the phrase.  I hope it wasn’t some marketing VP somewhere who’s made a mint from it.  It has helped, and it has spawned Watertown Strong and Collier Strong, on their own indications of what we’ve been through separately and together and how we’ll persevere.

Check out some of the images, below the cut, that have come up in the last week plus that I’ve liked the best or that I think are the funniest representation of Boston Strong.

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