What happened here? It used to be that if I had a problem, instead of taking it to the geek squad (which I’ve never done), I’d look up my problem on google. No matter what. If I couldn’t find help on google, then there was no help to be had.  And that worked. There were thousands of genuinely smart and nice people out there willing to post up tips and tricks, tales of their own adventures, and even venture to help out others with problems they’d never seen.  It was great.  We all knew that paying for information that SHOULD have come with the manual for these products wasn’t acceptable, so they made their simple advice free.  They took a moment out of their day (usually spent working as a sysadmin) and helped out a complete stranger who is in the same boat now as they might have been a few days/years ago.

I do the same thing. I’m a somewhat active member at </dream.in.code> and I frequent their computer help and support section quite often. I usually read all the topics there every day, read what others are recommending. If I concur, I’ll throw in my $0.02 on it and why/how it worked for me. If I disagree, I’ll post up a different solution, and explain myself. If I have no idea, I’ll at least try to point them in the right direction.  Sometimes I’m an ass about it, and I’m sure I come off as condescending sometimes. But there has been no time where I charged for my services (except my current job).

But ever since I left McKinney, I’ve had a growing number of queries return sites such as “experts exchange” and the like (not going to list them) that have people with THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM YOU DO, and look here! Here’s the answ…Oh you want to view the solution? Pay up.
Yeah right.  I found a site today (eventid.com) that provided free info, but it also recommends a ton of Microsoft Knowledgebase articles.  But you have to pay to find out which KB article the info is referring to. Ridiculous, seeing as the MSKB is a free service as well.

I can understand times are hard, being a techie isn’t what it used to be. It’s hard to find a job when all you know is random radical solutions to random problems.  In that case I’d recommend a way to donate as a method of thanks, instead of charging me for an answer that I don’t even know is going to help me.  Here I was thinking we were on the same side.

What a fool I am.

There. Now I just need to put those in the footer or something.

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