Do you know Paul Smith? Not the stripy designer fella, the other one who lives just off Askew Road?
I ask because if you don't he's worth getting to know. Paul runs a business called "my friendly neighbourhood geek". I hope he won't mind me saying it's a bit disingenuous as a name only because he's far from geeky.
Paul fixes computer issues quickly, efficiently, brilliantly - I know because he got us out of hole last week.
Our landlord went bust at the last office which forced us to move at too short notice to a temporary office (although very nice it is - in Britannia House, next to the Triangle and opposite the Dartmouth Castle).
Anyhooo- that's not important (although it is nice being next to the Dartmouth). The thing is our new office doesn't have broadband unless you're staying for months and we only have a few weeks before we move in to our nice new offices (more another time).
You can probably imagine that running thebestof H&F and K&C involves quite a lot of internet access and computer capacity and so being offline is a very very bad thing for us.
I was having one of those days - I'd learned more about Dongles, Hotspots and Openzone that I ever really wanted o know and all of the things I'd done hadn't worked. I'd by now spent quite a bit of money on dongles but the computers we have just wouldn't talk to them. Three people were sat in the office wondering when it was all going to get sorted
And then I bumped into Paul as I walked disconsolately across Lyric Square. There he was - friendly and keen as ever and with by pure happenstance and hour to spare. I bought him a coffee (always good, geek or not - I learned that one when I ran an ISP years ago) and carried him to our office.
He worked on our machines one by one - a Mac and three PC's. Visiting pages I’d never seen, digging deep into operating systems I didn't know we had, at one point he looked baffled - so out came Paul's iPad which after quick surf provided an answer. Then another road block and this time he reached for his Airbook. But then - and I swear by now he has a slight halo around his head like a computer-ready version of a Ready Brek kid. Then it all started to work. The office came back to life, we could do things again.
As the sales people struggled back from their enforced extended lunch, Paul left - 35 minutes after he walked in. He modestly declined all praise, adulation and offers of various favours, said something about "all being in a day’s work" and was gone.
He knows what he's doing and provides a fantastic service - might be worth a Ghostbusters style call to Paul and MyFNG next time you have an issue!
Woody
