Joe's Knowledge Base

Welcome to my site. As you may have guessed, my name is Joe. By day I am a mild-mannered network operations manager at a moderately sized internet service provider. I spend the day managing servers, employees and customers, and putting out fires (read: user errors) as needed.

By night, I am a shiftless layabout who really wants nothing more than to lie down and not talk to anybody. After spending the entire day running around an office talking to people (my support personnel, managers, vendors, network engineers, and a legion of customers), the last thing I want to do is go home and talk on the phone. So I spend my time reading, or listening to music, or playing the occasional computer/console video game.

Over the past several weeks I have had an increasing number of customer support incidents where I have genuinely felt terrible for what has befallen a customer. Don't get me wrong, I pretty much always feel sorry for someone who's having a problem that I'm not able to fix for them (noisy phone lines, too much spam, computer problems), but I'm talking hardcore pity here. Good, kind souls who get blasted by some worm or hacker or operating system malfunction for no reason other than their computer was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It's times like these that I sometimes spend an inordinate amount of time working with a customer. I'm not a heartless prick, but common sense dictates that I can't spend 2 hours on the phone with one customer about an issue that is not covered or handled by us, their internet service provider. However much I'd like to help Aunt Nancy get her printer to work, an internet telephone support department is neither equipped nor qualified to provide support on that issue.

It's because of these situations I have decided to try to begin imparting my knowledge to you, Gentle Reader. Customers call in all the time saying they are "computer illiterate", "computer stupid", "a novice." They give these labels a weight that they really don't deserve. There's nothing wrong with being a computer novice. Everybody was a novice at one point, regardless of what the situation is. You're computer stupid? I'm car stupid. I'm nuclear physics stupid. That doesn't make me stupid in general, and it doesn't make you stupid, either. There's no need to feel threatened or intimidated by a computer support professional--just reassure yourself that there are probably a great many things that you could go on for hours about that would sound like complete gobbledygook to me. :)

I was a novice at one point. I'm far from being an expert in anything--there's always more to learn--but there are a lot of things I've seen and been exposed to that other people haven't. That puts me in a position of responsibility sometimes, as I feel that experience could benefit a lot of people. I think of all the times I've encountered a problem and had to figure out the solution on my own. It still happens on an almost daily basis. Sometimes the problem is very simple. When I think of these times, I wonder how great it would have been if I'd had a little more knowledge or understanding about whatever it was I was working on. Unfortunately, sometimes the problem is quite complex, at which times I work on it until about 10pm, then go home and cry myself quietly to sleep.

Whatever the reason behind this potentially gargantuan undertaking, the bottom line is I'm doing it for you. Hopefully something in my 10+ years of dealing with computers and the Internet will be able to benefit you, and maybe make you feel a little more comfortable poking around with this magic little box that has the power to bring both happiness and painful misery at the same time to millions all over the world.

How we're going to do it.

The first thing you probably noticed is that in the upper-left corner of this page is a menu. This menu covers several topics:

• The Computer: This section will deal with the physical hardware of the computer--what the parts are, what they do, and how they all work (and fit!) together.
• Software & Applications: This section will attempt to address the common issues a user will have with software. What it is, what kinds of software there are, and what can go wrong. This will NOT focus on any specific programs, as there are a quizillion programs out there, many of which all do the same thing. But we'll see how that topic develops when we get there.
• The Internet: This will probably be my biggest and comprehensive section, as it's what I've had the most exposure to. For years I've been managing routers, email servers, web servers, database servers, you-name-it servers. I've taken thousands and thousands of calls from customers and helped resolve their problems. This is where the "I've been exposed to a lot of things" statement comes into play: I've personally had very very few problems with my computer or internet. But if it's happened to somebody, I've probably had to talk to someone on the phone about it at one time or another. This section will explain basic Internet concepts like email and web browsing to more advanced things like IP addressing, IP routing and domain hosting. Don't expect any website design tips, however--I'm learning this myself as I make this site. I've only made 2 websites, and they were about 8 years ago. A lot has changed since then.
• Miscellaneous: This will be my catch-all for anything I put on the site that doesn't fall into one of the previous categories.

What are you waiting for?

I didn't do all this work for nothing. Get cracking and see if there's something you'd like to learn about!

Joe Grover