NetSwamp » Internet

Swamp Member: MicroSwamp

Rick — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:00:26 +0000

I love the innuendo in the name. In 2005 I grew very frustrated with Microsoft Windows. Basically I was pissed. I was paying $150-$200 per upgrade copy of Windows XP, plus MS Office, plus A/V, plus Anti-Spyware and I still had to fix problems with the OS “under the hood”. Why should I pay for the privilege of using MS Windows, still have to fix their problems and endure being a target of malice towards Microsoft. ENOUGH!

Enter Linux! I’ve been using it as my full-time desktop system at home and work since. Not that there haven’t been growing pains. But, I haven’t contributed a dime to the Microsoft economy since then either.

MicroSwamp is a repository of personal technical notes with a slant towards Desktop Linux advocacy.

Swamp Member: Technology Bites!

Rick — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:00:42 +0000

Opened several months ago, technologybites.com is a site I’d like to see grow into a community, based upon the “pitfalls of technology”. The site currently sports;

Ability for users contribute articles/posts.
User comment articles/posts.
User ranking of articles/posts.
Forum/Bulletin Board.
more …

Everyone can think of at least one incident where technology played a role in causing irritation, anguish or physical pain. Those would be Technology Bites!

Swamp Member: The Data Recovery Resource Center

Rick — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:00:05 +0000

The Data Recovery Resource Center is now located at dataswamp.com. A variation of this site has existed since 2003. It originally opened as howtorecoverdata.com, re-appeared as data-recovery-hub.com and closed in 2007 as iSwamp.com. This is the one I regret closing the most.

Hopefully the site topic is obvious. If not; It’s data recovery!

The popular Service Guide section will be rebuilt from scratch and provided on the site in the not too distant future.

Resurrection of the Swamps

Rick — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:09:31 +0000

Those familar know I was layed-off from C.O.I. in April 2007. Around that time I connected with a friend in the data recovery business. He was interested in opening a second branch and I wasn’t exactly getting employment offers at the time. So, we hooked-up to do some data recovery business. Part of my agreement with him was to close iSwamp.com which was a competitor to his website.

All things considered, jumping into the new venture, I just closed my entire network of sites. Time didn’t really permit me to run them properly anyway and the sites didn’t generate huge numbers of visitors. But, I was getting in the neighborhood of 30,000 unique visitors each month over the entire network. Individually, no big deal. Not a “barn-burner”, bit collectively not too shabby.

Looking back, it was a bad decision (it’s not the first and won’t be the last I make). So for the past month or so, I’ve been rebuilding my little swamp network. You’ll see them listed here under “My Sites”. With any luck someone out there will find the stuff useful.

More on the details of each site in future posts.

Computerworld Website Bites!

Rick — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:00:23 +0000

While reading articles via Google news, as I’m prone to do, I clicked on an article titled: Microsoft targets Linux, IBM with Windows Server for really small biz. My opinion of the article will be noted in my next article. It’s not so much the article itself, but computerworld.com that rubbed me wrong.

One tenant of designing web sites is not to muck around with the user’s computer. In the case of computerworld.com they seem to have forgotten that messing with the user’s desktop pisses them (ok me ) off!

It’s bad enough computerworld.com tries to throw-up a pop-up with each visit, but they change the size of my browser window too. Pop-up’s I tolerate, resizing my window is a no no. Needless to say, it’ll be a while before I return to computerworld.com.