Well, it is tough to find a job in this economy and with so many unemployed. Even though I had a degree I had no real “experience” in the industry. I decided to go to work as a volunteer at a local hospital in the IS department to gain experience. I didn’t even know if that was possible but the Director of IS was ecstatic to have me. They were very good to me and I learned a lot from the other Analysts as well as my “boss”. I finally gave up and took another job in plastics, at Plastipak, thinking I was not going to be able to break into the IT industry. I had already been unemployed for over a year. Man, that was a tough year.

I had worked for the hospital 2 days a week for about a year and was familiar with the hospital and the clinics on the premises. We had even added a clinic to the hospital domain, 43 computers, and there was a lot to do to those computers to get them in shape and joined. I had been working at Plastipak for a couple of months. They were a really good company and I enjoyed my job but I still wanted a real job in computers. I got an email from the Director of IS at the hospital about that time. The clinics, 5 of them, had consolidated into one entity and had been acquired by the hospital. They were looking for a systems analyst to take these 5 clinics as his own. They were also going to migrate to electronic medical records from paper records and planned to buy servers and house them at the hospital. The Director was recommending me!!! I got the JOB!!!

I firmly believe this is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was there the week the new NextGen servers were installed and they are my babies now. I have a Medinotes server and an Allscripts server as well as the new NextGen servers. I have all 5 clinics and their computers to play with. I am doing serious training on NextGen as we will expand that software to include all 5 clinics as well as utilizing more and more of the features of the software in all clinics. I am already amazingly independent although I have the Analysts at the hospital to fall back on if I need help. I am happy beyond words. I think I have finally arrived! Thanks for Listening.

Gary R Turner

To their credit HP gave me the phone number of an engineer who refunded my money for the call and the card. At that point I was just out the time and trouble and still had a laptop with no wireless capability. The engineer also told me I would have to replace the motherboard at a cost over $500.00 which was almost half the cost of the laptop. I opted to buy a wireless dongle at a fraction of that cost and went on my merry way thinking I had solved my problem but still a little unhappy with the resolution.

Several months later I started having problems with power on the new laptop. If I ever turned off the computer it took an act of congress to get it going again. I would have to sit in front of the computer toggling the power switch on and off repeatedly until the computer finally powered on. Little did I know that this new symptom was related to the original problem. My wife and I were about to go on a trip to Ukraine and I had no time to do anything to fix the problem before the trip. I had a horrible time with that laptop during the trip and when I returned I took my laptop to Fry’s Electronics. I paid them $69.00 to diagnose the problem and guess what??? They told me that I was going to need a new motherboard at a cost of over $500.00.

If you think I was unhappy, you would be correct.  I found, by doing a little research, that this was a common problem. It is caused by the GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit, overheating and separating from the motherboard. The final result is no video. All the lights come on but the video never does in my case. This little GPU also happens to be  the Northbridge Chipset. It’s kinda important and this is also the reason for the earlier loss of the wireless card. I got on eBay and found a company in Florida that would repair my motherboard for $80 and $12 shipping. I jumped at the chance. I got online and found a service manual for my computer and proceeded to take it apart. I sent the motherboard off and a short time later received my motherboard back all repaired… Or so I thought.

When I powered up the computer it started right up. I was ecstatic. Then I plugged it in the wall. The fan sped up to full speed and a short time later the computer powered down. I finally discovered that if I changed the power profile in windows to conserve the battery and sacrifice performance, the computer would run. It seemed like a heat problem. I took the computer apart again and pulled off the heat sink. I found a mess. Aparently the original thermal paste was still on the CPU and there was a thermal pad on the GPU because there was a wider gap than the one between the heat sink and the CPU. I cleaned off all the thermal paste and the pad. I put new Arctic Silver thermal paste on the CPU and I ordered a special copper shim on eBay that was made for this computer which I placed on the GPU also with thermal paste. The computer runs cooler and quieter than it EVER has and everything works including the wireless card. I was happy beyond words.

With a few skills, which are not really difficult to acquire, it is not that difficult to learn to fix a computer and a laptop is no exception. I have worked on computers for years but only recently have I discovered that there is no real mystery to fixing a laptop. The biggest problem is getting into the computer. If a service manual is available it is a piece of cake. The manual will usually give you a look at which screws are necessary to remove and step by step procedures to remove and replace any component in the laptop. Thanks for listening.

Gary R Turner

I ordered the part and managed to download a service manual. I got a link from a moderator somewhere. These service manuals are invaluable. They tell you exactly what to do. I replaced the dialer with no problem. Being an electronics technician was certainly a help but there is nothing really difficult about replacing the dialer. Mainly just knowing what to take apart first and what screws need to come out. It was a piece of cake.

A few years later I lost my LCD panel. Well I don’t have to tell you, that was going to be expensive. This time even the part was pretty high. I found a shop down in Austin that sold replacement parts for Dell laptops and got a panel for a much better price and went to work. I must say that the panel was a little more challenging but doable and I am still using that computer to this day.

I have another computer as my main computer but the faithfull old Dell is now hooked up to my TV. I have a bluetooth keyboard paired with it and I can surf the web in brilliant 42″ color any time I wish from my easy chair. We surf the web together as a family and add Netflix movies to our instant queue and then watch them on our Playstation 3. Ain’t technology wonderful!!! Thanks for listening.

Gary R Turner

I remember I bought a cassette player that I plugged into the computer via a cable and bought programs on cassette that could be loaded into memory and executed. Data could be loaded or saved from or to the cassette player. I remember buying a little program that told a story and I would read to my daughter from the computer. We could make decisions at various points that would then affect the story. We had an absolute ball with that computer and it was so primitive and only displayed black and white.

I also started college shortly after buying that computer. I had a word processor and wrote many a paper on that old thing and printed them out on a dot matrix printer I bought for that purpose. I remember writing one paper and after spending most of the night I went to save the paper. Silly me typed in the load command instead of the save command and the computer would not budge until I loaded something. The instructions said I could hit escape and get out of the problem but that would not work. I ended up losing that paper and had to rewrite it. But all in all I loved that old computer. It saved me from having to fight the crowds at the computer lab for computer time.

I also had a course in basic and was able to use the computer for that class as well. That was what caused me to change my major. I was originally an Engineering major but after that class in basic I was hooked and changed my major to Computer Science. Over the years computers have amazed me and as I have watched them evolve I have never been sorry about my involvement with them. I found an old picture online where you can see what this old beast looked like. Of course the one pictured here had disk drives that mine never had. They were the bigger truly floppy disk drives but that is another story. The picture is partway down the page. It has text beside it that links to views of the back, bottom, inside, and the motherboard. The back view shows the round din plug where the cassette plugs in. It is quite interesting. Thanks for listening.

Gary R Turner

Thanks for listening,
Gary R Turner

I remember a time before I had credit cards. That was a time before digital photography as well. I used to develop my own film and had an old contact printer my Great Uncle had built. ( I still have that old contact printer). I didn’t, however, have an enlarger and I wanted one desperately. One day I had an idea. I took a Quaker Oatmeal box and cut a hole in the bottom. I put this round box over the white bulb. There are two bulbs in a contact printer and one of them is a “safe light” while the other one is a white light used to expose the film. I taped the negative I wanted to enlarge into the back of my 35 mm camera and with the back open I placed the camera on top of the oatmeal box. I placed washrags around the back of the camera to keep stray light out. I had the lid to the contact printer open and I added a support to the other side opposite the lid. I put a piece of wax paper between the support and the lid to the contact printer. I taped a piece of photographic paper up to the wax paper and I exposed that paper to the light through the negative. I had made a homemade enlarger. It was by no means a high quality printer but I had done something that cost me nearly nothing. I still have the image in my mind of that first print… It was a picture of my late brother sleeping.

Why do we have to spend so much money on things that bring us little or no pleasure? If we can just get back to the basics and do without for a short period of time we could command a salary that would support us without paying thousands of dollars in interest that could be used for our own benefit. I have a lot of ideas that could be used to keep us out of trouble but we have to be involved in our own destiny and we have to want to improve our lives. There is no magic bullet. Lets do what is necessary to free ourselves from this debt slavery. Thanks for listening.

Gary R Turner

I challenge you to take any credit card offer you find in your mailbox and read the fine print. Find out what the company is really contracting with you to do and then think about the offer. I will be willing to bet you that they have an open ended contract that allows them to hold all the cards and change the offer at will to virtually anything. We have to combat this threat to our livihood… Look for more information from me about this subject. Thanks for listening.

Gary R Turner

This is the same idea that can mess with you when you are being pushed down by the clouds of doubt when it comes to the finance industry. I have done battle with the credit industry before and have come out in charge. These people are deadly. The credit industry is ruthless and is able to raise interest rates legally. They can and do place you in the line of fire when you have done nothing. They may raise your interest rate simply because they want to. This can cause you to pay thousands more in interest than you might have to pay otherwise. You have to stay the course and make sure you are watching the instruments. You have the right to call them and ask that they lower your rates. I know because I have done this and they eventually complied. I am planning to write an ebook that will help all of you with my experience on this subject. Look for this ebook in the near future. Thanks for listening.

Gary R Turner

I had no idea what to expect from the various vendors that we have been using but was pleasantly surprised. We had bought her name early on in this process so that was already taken care of. D9, our Hosting company was the next stop and I was fully expecting to pay for hosting another domain. By the way I highly recommend them. They informed me that I could simply add my wife’s domain to my current account for no additional charge aside from the cost of the domain itself. At the same time I was also able to point two additional domain names at my current site, also for no additional charge. They emailed me the relevant video links to show me how to do this. I have previously asked for support from these people and they have responded promptly both times and solved my problems. WOW!

Next were the graphics for her website. We had decided to use the same graphics but to change the name to hers in the header. I went to planet-divinity where I bought the initial graphics and submitted a request for another set of graphics with my wife’s name instead of mine. I was again pleasantly surprised when I received the graphics along with a refund and an explanation that I could have simply asked for a change of text. WOW again!

Finally I went to Aweber and by this time I knew the drill. I simply went back into my account and discovered that I could simply add my wife’s domain to my account and set up a list for her website. This time I was using John Thornhill’s video to guide me through the process. I also used his video’s for a variety of other tasks on her page. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to find people like these. I have been used to being fleeced for every single thing and getting no support at all. This alone is worth the price of admission!

While I had to figure out how to upload files to her website since this was not exactly covered it wasn’t too difficult to figure out. There was a folder buried inside my domain with her site and inside that folder was where I had to place everything. So for essentially nothing extra I have built her site and she is up and running here at Marianna Turner and learning right along with me. Since I had ordered her graphics and done some of the simple things earlier this week I was able to build this site in one day. Before I signed up for John Thornhill’s Master Class I would not have believed this possible and I have actually had classes in HTML… Until next time.

Gary R Turner

Gary R Turner