A friend of mine runs an online hardware shop, and I am always looking for stiff competitive prices when I do what I do.
He helps me search for the best solution when I have to help one of our friends.
(It works. Why? It doesn't. Why? We talk like that, and we learn.. We share and discuss what we researched. I.T. works is not the same as it works.)
8 months ago at a microsoft partner meet a man asked me a direct question while I was yakking to a group including Mr. Alvez. He probably at first wanted Arlindo's ear but he had overheard what we talked about.
He heard me say I am a mecanic, but he kept at distance for the time I needed with MSFT people none the less. (and when we got to talk, he challenged me, then got kinda interested again, and then got the same people with us.. and much later tells me he wants to apologise to me?)
He was, I figure.. wondering why he heard me say..
I am, JT, doom, PC, and the PC stands for Private Circuit or Consult.
(untranslatable.. aka help a friend).
Over the years I did some geeky tweaks.
I helped get a "open project" open up. (hmm, it took me a while to have them partially disclose how it got done by them. I got myself in the getting to know beyond user level, and got in the team by prooving I was good enough.
There were anonymous MVP and MSFT around and I had to stay away or stay clear of outright piracy or workarounds breaking copyright, and so on.
So, some years later, I had done what I did for free, and the project is more open than ever, this man overheard what we talked about.
I will not discuss what we then talked about, but I will tell you guys this.
Do not take for granted that a theorem cannot be proved.
Do not think that because you see no solution, there is none.
Try to understand how to ask the question.
Do not think we think like you think.
You should understand there are more than one means to search/research.
You should understand the better teacher is actually learning because pupils ask energising questions.
You should know MSFT listens, top down, bottom up, to peers, kids, us, me, and you.
You should not ever believe hardware vendors conspire against software vendors so as to have their penny saving masked chip uncompliant to operating system hardware Quality Standards harm stock or perception.
(please note I did not say WHQL nor WDM.)
You should perhaps think about why I saw a PSU FuuweetBang itself on a DELL mobo so many ys ago, killing the mobo in the process. (that was a loophole in the standard?)
You may question how it is possible the 196.82 NV driver version could disastrously overheat some expensive kit. (kit that ran fine before the update, huh?)
Ya can ask us many things.
YOU can help you help us.
I remember a good many things I learned at CTH and some of those are in this topic.
Bent pins on CPU.
No burn mark? Well.. Then at least try it. I got some "tossed" ones alive..
Dead motherboard? Use your test fixture.
(which is, basically, a fixing rig with a PSU.)
You can have a DVDCD-RW and an old sata and old IDE HDD. I have had a lotta fun with "al-you-can-pack" driver collections. Some of the prepped drives booted up fine in a wildly different motherboard/CPU combination. Well.. Even had it bluescreened, I at least knew the thing got past POST.
I am afraid there will always be more questions than clearcut answers.
I am quite sure there are fewer clearcut questions than there are questions.
Oh yeah, I learned from this topic. More than many would think.