Read.IT & Reread.IT – Typographic errors or use English proofreader

This morning I was entering computer parts serial numbers into my spreadsheet.  I picked the Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W power supply box.  It comes with 5 years warranty – definitely a keeper – so as I was entering the serial number, my eye is drawn to an interesting typographical error.

Since I have been talking about capacitors lately, I would dearly love to get some of these fantastic Japanese capacitors.

My suggestion for companies that manufacture products for the English market, is to “read.it” & “reread.it” and preferably get marketing and product information proofread by English proofreaders.  Don’t just rely on spell-checks and the like.  A lot of documentation coming out of Asia does have these seemingly obvious typos, have you seen an interesting typo lately?

Read.IT – The Future of IT: A Strategic Guide

This is interesting.

http://www.zdnet.com/topic/the-future-of-it-a-strategic-guide/

This is one of reasons that I am broadening my horizons, don’t want to be left high and dry on the beach when the waves go out.  Ok – that’s not too bad, being on the beach I mean, but doing that as a living is going to be difficult – unless you have millions stashed away, not me.

I have been working in IT since about 1988 actually.  I studied Electrical Engineering at UNSW which was in line with my interest in radio and electronics.  I got my amateur radio license in 1974 but seem to have moved away from that for a number of years.  Too many problems with interference – i.e. a lot of equipment now is very susceptible to interference, due to quite shoddy design and packaging.  An amateur radio operator in the past had to deal with lots of neighbour complaints about – the TV is going funny everytime you get on the microphone… so we used to do things like add interference filters to antenna cables at our own cost a lot of the time.

Back to IT, I spent a number of years in the retail industry – supporting computer and network sales, with some time in distribution supporting resellers and dealers.  I had a knack of seeing problems quite clearly – i.e. the window I look through is crystal clear, the other peoples windows are dusty, haven’t been cleaned for a long time.  For some time I travelled around Asia Pacific as an IT consultant and much of what I was doing was troubleshooting.  Fighting fires before they explode, sometimes just smothering them before they flame up.  During that time came the GFC – business class became economy class, economy class became video conferencing and conference calls – things took longer to get fixed…

Then about five years ago, I ruptured my Achilles tendon during a badminton competition, had to have an operation to fix it and a couple of months later, got called in to the office for a meeting and after hobbling in on crutches, I was told that my job had gone – i.e. WFR – workforce reduction.  That was coincidentally just about this time five years ago – a week earlier I think.

Anyway, my neighbour has called in, and I showed them the virtual machine that is currently running, however they cannot send email – the Optus network is not allowing relaying through a Telstra network most likely.  Better look at that.