An interview with Gary Rance, of White Lake Computer:
How did you get into computer repair?
I was given a non working computer by some guys at Intel and told to fix it.
I wish I could have been there. What was it like in the days of the internet’s inception?
Wow, you mean back when all commands had to be typed and the net was in black and white?
How do you feel about the modern web and/or operating systems?
Well, the modern web is a heck of a lot more fon than the old black and white type unix was. As to operating systems I personally think they maxed out at windows 98 and have been going downhill since!
How do you feel about social networking? Do you participate?
Hell yes I participate, craigslist for shopping, facebook for friends, the best thing on the net!
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
I camp, fish and try to forget computers exist.
Do you enjoy troubleshooting/repairing computers?
I have had worse jobs, and this one is a heck of a lot more fun than most. Where else do you meet these kind of people?
What’s the funniest, most interesting support call you’ve had?
Could it be the ones you convince that if the magic smoke comes out of the back of the computer it is dead, or the guy that wanted me to crawl through a window and look through his wifes computer? Maybe it’s the lady who forgot that her desktop wallpaper was a reclining nude pic of herself.
What is your most common support/repair job?
Viruses and spyware, the lifeblood of the business.
If you could suggest one computer maintenance advice to your users, what would it be?
Get good anti-virus/spyware programs and use them unless of course you have a lot of disposable income you enjoy giving me. Also, BACK UP YOUR DATA. Once it’s gone it’s gone. You can whine all you want but lost data is lost data.
Gary has been serving Michigan’s White Lake community for over 10 years.
We’re interested in hearing your story! Feel free to drop us a line or comment below.
About the author
Su - is a freelance web developer for StarSunflower Studio, LLC. Her interests include spending time with her son Jasper, geekery, indie crafts, wild edibles and medicinals.
Do you have something to say?
Nice interview.
Here is my story. When I was little I have an eye problem no doctor could fix. These bumps under my eyelids caused by some allergy. So the sun screwed with my eysy bad. This meant a lot of time inside. So, my dad use to dumpster dive at AMC/Chrysler and bring me home Apple II parts (clone) and I would make them work. They also let me use one of the only 2 computers in our elementary school (Commodore PET) to write my first “game”… they even made me make flow charts for it in third grade. It was a “choose your own adventure” text came that saved to cassette tape. SWEET. Its CROWNING achievement was to invoke a pseudo-random number generator function. Even if you made all the right decisions in the game… you could just randomly lose at the end. HAHA anyone who played that master piece. HAH 
Steve
Wow. Thank you for commenting. I so wish that I could have experienced computing back in the day. I started with win98. Dude that’s awesome.
Steve check this out:
http://www.bitrebels.com/geek/apple-time-machine/