National Clean Off Your Desk Day

Subject says it all!  That said, I think I need a National Clean Off Your Desk WEEK!  I considered taking a picture to support my claim, but I'm too ashamed of this train wreck to even take a picture, let alone post it here...  So, how does YOUR desk look?

Family Tech Support

Sooner or later, every IT Support person ends up supporting the technology of their families and friends.  It's inevitable, an occupational hazard, as they say.  Some techs eventually figure out ways to avoid such work entirely, some try to minimize it to basic support while others accept it wholeheartedly as a way to give back to their families and friends.  Mostly it seems to depend on how well said supported family and friends adhere to advice given, with those who carefully listen and heed advice being happily supported and those who can't seem to learn from their own mistakes being shunned.  I fall somewhere between the latter two, being usually very willing to help, but on occasion wishing I didn't have to go out in the cold.


Today's family support call was from my dear sweet mother whom I am happy to support whenever she needs it.  She started getting a scary error on boot: Disk Read Error.  Ruh-roh!  Complicating things was a keyboard error also on boot, but we were able to resolve that via phone, just a loose connection.  I'll make a trip over and pick up the machine to work on on my workbench.  Easy items I'll fix on-site, but this one may get involved.  Fortunately I have a spare drive laying around I can swap in if required.

What about you?  Do you support willingly?  Grudgingly if forced into it?  Not at all?  Let me know in the comments below.

New Toy

Today I received a late present: an external eSATA/USB drive dock.  I've been eyeing one of these for a while now, as a nice way to access data on drives that are otherwise inaccessible.  For instance, if someone I support takes a malware hit, frequently it becomes difficult or impossible to clean due to the activity of the malware loaded at boot time.  Pop the drive into the dock on my station, and I can then use my anti-malware tools to clean it up.  Another use I have planned is for backup.  I can keep one or more backup drives handy and mount them as needed in the dock to make backups.

What other uses would you have for a drive dock?  Let me know in the comments below!