Every IT department has one. One individual that is the gamer’s gamer. What follows is an interesting conversation I had with the master. Since I am not a gamer, it was pretty revealing.

The first question I asked was “What is your game du jour?” The wizard answered, “Currently I’m into “Spider-Man Miles Morales”, “Demon’s Souls”, as well as “Among Us” and “Fall Guys”. “Among us” is one of the biggest games right now, it’s also the game AOC plays when she streams to connect to the gamers.

I asked, “How long have you been gaming ?” The GameMeister replied “My Grandmother gave me an Atari when I was 5 and a Nintendo Entertainment System when I was 6. At this point I am thinking to myself I was playing with G.I. Joe. So, he says, “about 35 years.”

“My passion for gaming used to be all about the game play itself, but as I’ve grown it’s become more about the stories they tell. Sometimes the stories are better than what can be told on television or in the movies.” This is where I truly revealed what a game noobie I am “Wow! It’s all about the stories…I had no idea. The scales were being removed from my eyes. He remarked “ It’s kind ‘a like a good story can be told in any number of mediums. A great story can transform a mindless, repetitive, button-mashing experience into something you walk away from going… huh, never thought I’d be thinking about this after I put it down.”

Now I am becoming more and more enthralled with the medium. As we chatted, I mentioned my interest in history only to find out that alternate history has become a big story-point in games over the last decade. He tells me “ I finished a game right before the break that is loosely based on Greek Mythology – Immortals: Fenyx Rising.”

I began to feel the itch. I remembered a friend years ago who was in love with Microsoft Flight Simulator. The Wazir sent me a link to the latest Flight Sim site. I am still picking up pieces of my jaw from the floor.

So I haven’t purchased my first game yet, but my game-O-phobia is gone thanks to a kindly gamer who took a minute to talk to me. If you’re a gamer this conversation will confirm what you already know. If you’re not, please start. The world can use a lot more passion. Passion for the arts, for play and for collaboration. Thanks Wizard.

OK, I’m late to the game. I’ve always thought of myself as an early adopter, but I look in the mirror and find that I am not the geek I thought I was. The story goes like this.

By the writing of this post I had officially watched everything on Netflix. By this time I have watched a galaxy of Amazon Prime and have even started to digest the entire library of Peacock. I thought I had seen it all. To my chagrin I find I’m a slacker.

Enter “Chuck”. The premier was in September of 2007 and it took me 14 years to discover it. I can’t tell my colleagues about this, I am too embarrassed. I hope that despite the fact that I missed the seminal series of Geekdom, I may somehow be forgiven.

I watch it in the wee hours when no one is awake. I listen with headphones so no one might discover my shame. But I say to you….rise up! Embrace your birthright. Get your “Chuck” on. It’s not too late.

Amazon Prime. Go there now.

Hi, my name is Don and I’m an addict. In this age of WFH the first thing I do in the morning is boot my system, invoke the VPN, load my remote phone software and click on the little button for the chat application that we are using. And using. And using.

I got bupkis.

The chat application said I was off-line. I clicked “On-line” and the application stared back at me indignantly. Not to be dissuaded, I went about systematically trying to repair the problem. Yes, I did what we all do. I re-booted, I uninstalled, I manually removed any program remnants. I lit incense, chanted incantations. Still, bupkis.

In our everyday work lives, that little chat application is everything. It’s always there, it never goes down. And when it does, you realize how dependent we have become. I have to confess that I panicked.

Fortunately the gurus in my department jumped out of bed at 5am. They did that voodoo that they do and saved the day. The experience clearly indicated to me how vital and dependent we are on the basic tools of communication.

The moral of this sad story is that software is what it always was. If your chat goes down, take a breath. You can always resort to the unthinkable. You can pick up the phone and call direct. I tried it, and it works! Whodathunkit.

Perhaps the largest breach of Government data happened in March of 2020. Referred to as the Solar Winds attack, it was sophisticated, unique and reached well beyond the boundaries of government data systems infecting thousands of corporations as well. This was a well planned and executed attack by a state sponsored agency. In ordinary times, this would have been the lead story in every newsroom in the country for weeks. But these are not ordinary times.

The attack was disguised as a regular application update. It effected computers at all levels of government and the private sector involving 18,000 separate organizations.

According to Steve Ryan who worked for the National Security Agency “This is bigger than anything we’ve ever experienced in the country.”

The extent of the damage is still being determined but it is a stark reminder that despite the best efforts of the brightest minds in security they are just as human as you are. It always boils down to awareness. Or as Wendell Phillips commented: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Know Your Gamer – an untapped resource.

You may not be a gamer, in fact if you are the typical technology user, gaming is probably not your focus. However, understanding a little bit about the gaming community and their frame of reference can positively influence our own interactions with technology. Especially in the age of Covid we have had to learn a slew of new skills that gamers use every day. I recently had an online conversation with a buddy Chris Baldwin in ITS who is into gaming. This is what he had to say:

“Got an issue with your work-at-home technology? Seek out a gamer. Gen Z and the latter half of Millennials approach technology intuitively because of their technical native origins. So many kids are on YouTube, Twitch, Mixr, TikTok that we’re also creating a generation of video editors. I’d bet that many people at home are seeing just how technically savvy some of their kids are.

Having been part of the team that had to facilitate the move to work at home, I’ve experienced how difficult and stressful it can be to get people setup. But I’ve asked a series of gamers how this lock-down has gone for them , they shrug “not much has changed really”. It was as if everyone had to integrate into a lifestyle that we were already living in. Live streamers spent their lives in front of the camera engaging with audiences long before we had to do it in the workplace. Gamers adhere to a strict work-flow.

Gamers know the importance of software updates.

Gamers keep their computers fine tuned so they can be competitive.

Gamers keep their systems lean, clean, mean, and free from any malware or unwanted software.

I am drawn to Resource Management Games. These are games like “SimCity” or “Civilization” where you have a finite number of resources and you make something out of them. One of the games I play is “Factorio” a game which is about creating the most efficient system on an alien planet. Another is “DevTycoon” where you create a startup company in your garage and become a big tech giant. The bottom line is that when a game can procedurally generate an experience for a gamer, we keep coming back.”

There is a Benjamin Franklin quote: Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. Gamers have been at their consoles learning for decades. Solving problems, overcoming obstacles and looking for possibilities. So, the next time you have a tech question, or even a life question, that kid who locks himself in his room for hours playing Fortnite, may surprise you with what they have learned.

To the computer, to the kitchen, to the bathroom. Rinse and repeat.

I love it that my phone gives me a weekly report on my usage. But then, I pretty much use my phone for phone stuff and do the heavy lifting at my desktop. I suppose I could download an app to keep track of my screen-time there…..but I’m scared to.

When you’re hunkered down and there isn’t anything else to do, we spend all day glued to our screen with our spreadsheets and documents. In our off-time we live in the artificial digital world of social media. Yea, I see you checking Facebook over there. Better get up and go to the kitchen or the bathroom.

When the digital world is consuming you like Ahab and the white whale let’s work on our penmanship. For that matter, let’s just generally reacquaint ourselves with the analogue world. Yes, it still exists.

Remember how to write in cursive? Still have a stray postage stamp somewhere in a drawer? Grab a legal pad. Go to the living room (if you remember where it is) and write a letter. Now head to the mailbox. A few days later you will probably get a letter in return. Open it, read it, enjoy it. Rinse and repeat.

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades as the old saying goes. How does this apply to computers? There is no such thing as close. While it may be said about many disciplines that: “It is not an exact science” this doesn’t apply to software.

Every programmer knows that if you spend 20 hours writing code, you might spend another 20 (or more) troubleshooting. And yet we have all experienced software that was rolled out too early and was buggy-er than a hound dog with fleas.

Now you would think, that the big boys like Microsoft and Apple and Adobe and Google would never prematurely release software that isn’t quite baked. In fact the giants are the worse offenders.

It’s one thing when your “recipe” app has a hiccough, it’s another thing entirely when your operating system has indigestion. It is almost as if they are releasing software and waiting for the user base to point out flaws.

Many operating systems are setup by default to accept “automatic updates” You might want to consider changing this setting and waiting for the update to bake just a little before you leap.

Turn off Automatic Updates for Windows 10

Turn off Automatic Updates for Mac

iPhone and iPad

Android

Personally, I wait for a month or more before I accept an operating system update. Keep your eye on the interwebs for information on the update. As soon as the complaints die down, you’re probably safe.

The first rule of social media for IT professionals is “Never ever mention politics.” And I wouldn’t, except for the interesting parallels between the two. So, I mention politics only in reference to your laptop and promise not to editorialize on the body politic.

The first thing you notice when booting the computer of politics is that it is running terribly slow. This can be caused by a number things but most often by malignant malware, spyware, and otherware that can make your PC slow as mud running uphill. Dare I mention that these symptoms on a PC are cause for concern. The slowdown could be caused by any number of things, but many times they are malicious. See any parallels yet? If your PC was running as slow as the political mechanism, we would start from scratch and reformat, erasing any shadow of malicious software. A re-boot would surely be required. Or perhaps an upgrade to a new SSD.

Moore’s Law states that we can expect the speed and capability of our computers to increase every couple of years, and we will pay less for them. We experience this every time we have to update our PC because it just won’t handle the latest software. Off we run to BestBuy. Our analog hasn’t been updated in a couple centuries.

Technology is agile, it’s young and fresh and we vote for the latest and greatest. You can draw your own conclusions but based on comparison, it seems the political PC still uses 5.25 floppies, has a 10 Mb hard drive and is skating by with 8 Mb of memory. But don’t worry you can still run Windows 2000. The political PC has a very fuzzy screen. With 400 lines of resolution it’s really hard to make out details.

The old PPC (political PC) is noisy. The fan sounds like the bearings are running dry, the internal speaker is blaring the startup jingle. You wish for a quieter environment.

My laptop is predictable, it’s dependable, it’s current and up-to-date. I constantly examine it for malicious software. I wish I could say the same about…..well, you know.

I have a bone to pick. I know auto-complete is supposed to be a time saver but on balance I wonder if the efficiency gained is worth the frustration caused. For anyone who has taken the time to disable auto-complete you are the banner carriers. You are the brave few who have stood up and shouted “My Phone is NOT smarter than I am!”

It has gotten to the point where auto-complete has convinced us that it is smarter than we are.

It all began with spell-check lo these many years ago. I used to be a good speller. Maybe not 3rd grade spelling bee champion but I could hold my own. And then one day, I no longer had to. My office suite repaired the mistakes I made in haste and allowed me to increase my speed.

And then, over time I realized that I could no longer apply myself to thinking about spelling. Like many things I simply accepted it as a benefit of modernity. Spellcheck was an omen of things to come. It was inevitable that one day, spellcheck would evolve. Now it completes our thoughts before we do.

Especially if the device you use is operated by two thumbs you have probably become more and more reliant on this time saving, space age feature.

But I can’t help but wonder if the technology has a downside. It has already stolen my ability to spell. Now it is stealing my decisions about what I search for, what I write in a letter or correspondence and perhaps even how I think. If you abdicate your mastery of a language to a machine I can see a time in the not too distant future when all we will need to know is the first word of any sentence and a few random nouns and adjectives.

For my part, I resent this. I have trouble handing the keys over to AI. Therefor in the New Year, my resolution is to really try and avoid spellcheck by stopping to think about the correct spelling of a word. When I do a Google search, I enter all the terms of the search in complete sentences. When typing a document I don’t accept the corrections without thinking. Taking an extra second to actually formulate a cogent sentence reminds me that I am the boss of me and all those years of education really do have an ROI.

Student workers in IT are scary . Oh sure, they look mild-mannered. They ride their skateboards and they shoulder their backpacks. They walk in line to class, to lunch, to events and doing these things makes them look ordinary. They know this.

While on the outside they have learned to makeup and costume and have become almost indistinguishable from their fellows, it is when you have a chance to chat with them in their native tongue that you realize they have been chipped.

At the beginning of the digital revolution we were loud and noisy and show-offy. Like slight of hand conjurers we held crowds in amazement. But now, you can’t distinguish them. There might be one sitting next to you. There might be one in your family, you can never know it.

They will only show you their real face when they trust you. The bright LEDs behind their eyes only shine when they realize you speak their native language. When you speak geek, things begin to change. And they love the stories from the olden days. It connects them to their past, what they are heir to, and their destiny.

I have long asserted that within the last 2 decades there has been a serious gene mutation. A gene has started to emerge I don’t believe is entirely biological. I believe they have been chipped.

Selection has created a super-species that walk among us. They are disguised as college students. They are programmed for only one thing. Save the Planet.

After I am gone, there will be flying cars like the Jetsons. There will be time travel. There will be quantum miniaturization. This is the tip of the iceberg.

These new humans are in fact the ones placing the angels on the head of the pin right now.