What's in the News?

U.S. News

TSA Flight 800:  Coverup Investigation

Obesity Declared a Disease:  Huge Medical Debate

World News

Taliban Seeks to Increase their credibility:  Explosive International Talks

World human trafficking report singles out China and Russia:  Worldwide anger

Space News

NASA releases billion pixel panorama of Mars:  Aliens Ahoy (Maybe)

Tech News

Microsoft goes back on its DRM policies for the Xbox One:  Definitely not a 360

Google Plus set to out-share the competition in the coming years:  Huge Plus for the platform

FUN

Home improvement materials on the cheap:  Material girls (and guys) ought to check out.

This tech guy hates... (rant)

It's not mine, I'm holding it for a friend.

*WARNING RANT LOCATED*

Apple, That's right, Apple. No, it's not just a hatred of their business practices, their closed attitude, or the fact that everyone who uses an Apple can be grouped into the stereotype of being a: "hipster", or a "graphic artist", or a "smug bastard"; although those reasons are the easiest ones to pull from a hat when someone asks me why.

No, the real reason that I hate Apple is because of the fact that they insist on printing EVERYTHING in a "post script" mode by sheer default. If I asked you to look at your printers right now, right this very moment, you would probably think I am a crazy person (If you didn't already). Your printer drivers for your machines, assuming all of the current readers aren't on a Mac, are most likely of the PCL5 or 6 variety. Why does that matter at all?

Technically the type of printer driver doesn't really matter, except for the fact that nearly everyone in the world uses Printer Control Language (PCL), in fact it is so widely used that most people do not know that there is anything else. I work for Sharp in one of their buildings that sells: copiers, printers, and other such. Since I live and work within the world of printers, I come across printers and MFPs from almost every company imaginable and it is very hard to find a printer driver in a production environment that does not use PCL6. Post script is so rare in this line of work that special add-on software and firmware packages have to be enabled in order to allow the printers to function in that mode for almost every device.

Normally I would not care, except for the fact that when I have to help a customer (being both a network admin and a copier connection specialist) who wants to print on a Mac. A whole 99% of the time the users who purchased a Mac expecting that they will "just work" like the ad in the paper said. Most of them have heard fabled stories of people coming back from the "Great-Apple-Store-in-the-Fashion-Mall" and all of their devices magically work for them. These stories, usually involve someone and their iPhone and their Music collection . . . not the usual office production environment. So it comes to them as a surprise that they must not, not only download a whole new set of printer drivers, but also purchase an add-on (which aren't cheap) to get the Post Script option to work.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Gee, Wes, if this happens so often then it isn't a rarity!" And I would say, "shut your mouth" and you would probably get angry with me. Most of these users are the one-off worker in an environment of Microsoft machines that now needs to be catered to, costing me my sanity as a Copier connection specialist, and causing friction between my new IT contact in the building (who now hates me because I have ensured that he will now cater to the unusual needs of the Mac).

Why do I hate Apple? BECAUSE They're different enough to cause problems. I don't care that they want to be different, I don't care that they insist on being different (look at me), I just wish that they would allow for backwards compatibility, to relieve me of my headaches, and ease the transition of others.

*END OF RANT*

Non-Linear Blog

GREETINGS ALL

YAY!!! I've deleted all of my old posts in favor of starting anew...the only caveat is that I will not try to run my blog / site the way that I tried to in the past: up to the minute blogs, up to the minute opinion posts, etc; Instead I will post relevant information that I want to pass on.

While it is true that I can do that in Facebook and Google+ I feel that this would be a great forum if I anticipate my post on Google+ or Facebook would be just too long to bring up there. There have been several situations where I post a lot of information to Google and Facebook, knowing full well that when I hit post, most people will read the first few sentences and decide not to hit the "more info" link. I wouldn't say that it is because I'm a shitty writer or a crappy typist, but those venues tend to offer more in the way of relevant information as long as it is a short and sweet post.

So Like this post here, which would be entirely too long for Facebook or Google+ under normal situations, I will create it here and link to it.

Consider yourself warned LOL.

ABOUT ME

What is there to know about me? Well, the most important question is, what do people NOT want to know about me?

I'm sure that people don't want to know that I'm a raging Techno-geek, or that I crank up the bandwidth at my home watching Netflix almost all the time. I'm also fairly certain that people don't want to know my horrid back story spanning 27 years of weird-as-hell coincidences involving: prisons, car chases, blatant prostitution, and...well...those were all false, I just tried to make things seem interesting.

All except the 27 years.

I'm a computer network admin / technician for Sharp Electronics Corp. I'm married and I have my own house where I live with my beautiful wife and awesome daughter. Expect a lot of bragging about my daughter, seriously, I mean a lot. Why? She's 15 months and can already consistently verbally and non-verbally communicate and consistently convey her thoughts to me and my wife, enough of that for right now.

I spend my days working on computers and networks and my Wife spends her weekends (not all of them) doing Pure Romance parties, of which I believe she has more fun doing that just about anything else. Check her out if you'd like.

In the end, I'm just like you: lovable and cuddly (at least I'd like to think so).