Electronic vs. Paper Books

I am a fast and voracious reader (I have been known to finish 3-4 books in a single weekend). I also have family on the East Coast, so I take a fair number of cross-country trips. The end result being that I have been known to devote more space to books than clothes when traveling. …

Judging a Blog Post by its Title

My least read post is one of my favorite that I have written thus far.  I take full responsibility for its low readership numbers.  After all, I’m the one who gave it the off-putting title: How I Became a Hacker (and How You Can Become One Too). The term hacker has a lot of technical …

How I Became a Hacker (and How You Can Become One Too)

Until relatively recently (the past few years), I was too uncertain of my skills to do much of anything for myself.   I felt trapped by my own ineptitude. I wouldn’t move a piece of furniture, lest it be a wrong move. I tolerated bad designs, kept all the default setting on my computers and …

Inspiration by Peter Pan

Yesterday morning I rooted a Barnes and Noble Color Nook so I could load Cyanogenmod and turn it into an Android tablet. As per my previous experiences, the actual rooting and installation went very smoothly. But that is not to say that I didn’t hit any snags. In fact, an installation process that should have …

Do you really want a smartphone?

I was bored in the waiting room at my doctor’s office a week or so ago so I decided to have a look around.  In addition to some seriously outdated magazines (there were a couple of People’s from last century) I saw almost everyone fiddling with their smartphones.  It brought to mind an episode from …

Why Does Everything Need to be so Hard?

On Wednesday, I helped a client figure out how to get the scanner from her wireless multi-function printer to send scanned images to her laptop. After trying all of the easy options, I went online to get the user manual. The thing had 3 manuals.  Three! For a multi-function printer.  There was the User’s Manual, …

My New Laptop: Day 4

As I anticipated, I am feeling increasingly comfortable with my new laptop.  My fingers still occasionally hit the wrong keys and I am relying heavily on my trackpad while I learn a whole new set of keyboard commands.  My remaining issues are with application compatibility. re I decided on a Linux laptop, I had done …