Archive for November, 2008

The kind of mine that makes others rich.

Posted: November 29, 2008 by datechguy in tech
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I’ve often said on the old blog that the Internet never forgets. At the New Scientist site they remind us today that there is money in that information of yours.

Databases know more about you than you realise. A Carnegie Mellon University study recently showed that simply by knowing gender, birth date and postal zip code, 87% of people in the United States could be pinpointed by name.

Websites can collect huge amounts of data from users. Retailers, for example, can track our every click, what we buy, how much we spend, which advertisements we see – even which ones we linger over with our mouse.

Sites can easily access your entire web browser history.

Just remember when you see the Internet the Internet sees you.

Btw can someone explain to me how the word “blog” shows up as a misspelled word in the spell checker?

The story of the big Axe at HiWired

Posted: November 29, 2008 by datechguy in Hiwired
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Well There are likely a few people who are wondering what the h*** actually happened to HiWired, Control Center (Ctrl-Center), Windstream Tech Support, Comcast Tech support etc… and all the other supports that we did over at HiWired.

Being a lowly tech I don’t have all the story but I’ll give you what I can.

In terms of what our main problem is I think it was tactical. I think we tried to grow staff first in anticipation of growth rather than increase staff as needs allowed, I think our own success gave us hubris.

In terms of the end A lot of things seemed to happen while I was gone:

Our first round of layoffs took place while my wife and I were in Bermuda it cost us managers mostly.

The second round of layoffs took play on my day off that cut a fair amount of techs and staff including some really solid ones and some dear friends.

A new CEO was put over the founders and presumably he was attempting to manage us into survivability. We had solid contracts. Office Max’s Ctrl-Center being the largest, but if you had tech support through Windstream, Bj’s, and some parts of Comcast and others you were dealing with us in Boston.

It was our impression that we were good until after Christmas, personally I presumed that since our service was good, (a PC Magazine’s Editor’s choice) that they might choose to take us over directly, however last Friday in the middle of the shift we were abruptly told that the company was over and that we were all discharged, top to bottom.

I actually missed it as I was deep into a customer problem, I got an IM from a co-worker saying it was nice to have worked with me, when I asked her if she found a new job she forwarded the into to me.

To the best of my knowledge the bank owns the name now, I don’t know if they will sell it to some other company or what but since the local Bj’s and Office Max pulled the named products off I’m figuring the name’s values isn’t what it would have been a week ago, and in the end we the techs were the product sold.

Whats up for us now? Who knows? We will see.

Unemployed and blogging under my own blog

Posted: November 29, 2008 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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Well after 3 years blogging at the HiWired blog and nearly 4 years doing tech support at HiWired my circumstances have changed. I along with the entire staff of HiWired (except for Deb who is doing the final tax paperwork) are kaput. I am now blogging here. What does this mean?

It means that you will see more political stuff since I’m into politics.

It means that you will see less tech stuff since that that what I do for a living but not really for fun.

It means baseball posts, gaming posts, doctor who posts, family posts, various rants etc.

It means that since I am writing for myself rather than a company I will be more opinionated than on the company blog.

It means I will be considerably more irreverent than I was on the company blog.

It means I will be totally uncensored, but in fairness In thousands of posts I believe I was censored 3 times. twice over accidentally giving out some inside baseball and once over content, but I don’t write much that would need censoring anyways.

It means that I won’t feel obliged to post daily unless this blog becomes the launchpad for new employment.

It means that I won’t have to fight a losing battle to get other people in the company to post on the blog anymore. To Quote Glenn Close in The Paper: “Get your own!” (or was it buy your own?).

It means that I can point to my new Amazon reviews here (I’m a top 1000 reviewer under the old system) but have to be in the mood to post one.

It also means that comments may or may not be open over here, I remember the comment spam on the company blog and it was a pain in the neck.

Either way this blog will be both to vent and to aid my quest for a new job to replace the one I lost rather abruptly.

But either way I will try to keep the theme of the last blog post I made over at HiWired, (or control center, or ctrl-center or whatever)

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