Recently I did a post about where I go to find answers online.  One of the sources I cited was my “techie” friends.  Today I want to start a series of interviews around these wonderful people with an interview of a friend of mine from school, Mark Bouchard.  For the interview I asked Mark to give us a quick bio to catch us up with what he’s up to, and then I asked him a series of questions.  I hope you enjoy!

Bio:

My name is Mark David Bouchard, Jr. I currently live in Waterford, NY (which is about 10 miles north of Albany, NY).

Since June 2006, I have been working with a small company in Saratoga Springs, NY called CORESense. At CORESense, I work on the implementation team and I work with a web programming language called PHP and database software called MySQL. CORESense provides retail Software as a Service (SAAS) which helps our clients maintain orders, customers, products, inventory, reporting, etc.

I went to college at Pensacola Christian College in 2001-2005 where I earned my BS degree in Computer Science.

Do you mind being called a “techie” friend?

No, I actually don’t mind. Sometimes I refer to myself as a “techie”. I will also accept “geek” but I DO NOT accept “nerd” because it implies poor hygiene.

How long have you been interested in technology or computers?

My initial interest in computers started back in 1997 when my Grand Mother bought a computer for me to work on. I destroyed the thing several times by rerunning the restore disks every time I killed Windows :-) . I eventually got tired of that (and my Grand Mother didn’t appreciate losing work) and I started figuring out how to fix problems in Windows without using the restore disk. My first experience with programming was in 8th grade when I learned QBASIC. After experiencing that, I was determined to study programming at Pensacola Christian College where I took on a Computer Science degree.

Do people in your life (friends or relatives) seem to turn to you for computer related problems?

Yes, all the time. My Mom, Dad, sisters, and a few friends have turned to me for help.

If so, does this bother you?

Sometimes. Generally I don’t mind helping people fix their computers. I get really annoyed if the problem could have been prevented with something like decent virus protection software. Despite that though, I do enjoy the “detective” work of analyzing the situation and figuring out where the virus is hiding.

If someone would contact you for assistence, what kind of steps should they take before asking for help?

Generally it’s a good idea to provide reproduction steps so I can reproduce the problem you are experiencing. Sometimes people will ask me for help and say something like “The computer gave me this strange error message that said something about some disk problem.” As you can see, this question is very vague. This could be something as simple as a corrupt file to symptoms of hard disk failure. My suggestion is to write down these kinds of messages and any steps to reproduce the problem, then your “techie” friend can help you out more effectively. Also, it is a good idea to write down things you tried to do on your own to rectify the problem.

Where do you see the internet and computers in 10 years?

Being in web development and working with websites like Facebook, Google and their products, Youtube, etc. it is obvious that the web is becoming multimedia centric. This is commonly referred to as Web 2.0 and we are starting to see a lot of these new features. There is another cool technology idea called “cloud computing”. It’s the idea where people do there work over the web. A good example of this would be Google’s Docs web applications. You can compose basic documents which work with Microsoft Office using only the Internet and your web browser. I read a headline recently on slashdot.org (a geek’s technology news site) which mentioned “cloud computing” graphics processors. That is, having a centralized network on the Internet which does graphics processing outside of your computer. “Cloud computing” and Web 2.0 seem to be the wave of the future.

Your opinion on:

Best OS?

The best PC OS, in my opinion, is Ubuntu Linux. The best OS for Mac has to be whatever the latest MacOS X :-) .

Best Web browser?

Definitely Firefox! It’s based on Mozilla and some components of Gecko (the rendering engine) which are both Open Source software that have been around for years. It also standardized tabbed browsing (though Opera has this too) and it has awesome plugins. What more can you askfor?

Best free/paid antivirus program (can include other areas such as anit-spyware and cleaning programs if you like)?

My favorite free (for home use only) anti-virus software is Avast (www.avast.com). They require you to register, but the download is free and after registration you get 14 months of free virus database upgrades. The software works quite well and I’ve seen it remove several viruses successfully recently.

I absolutely hate any Norton products. I used to like Norton, but, just like Windows Vista, modern versions of Norton are “pretty” looking bloated tools. Besides, they rip you off by charging you $50+ for the toolset.

Best search engine?

Google… period. Why? Google’s search page loads instantly and I almost find exactly what I’m looking for within the first 3 search results pages. Most often the first page has the site I’m looking for. Additionally, Google’s advertising is specifically related to what I’m looking for and it IS NOT ANNOYING!

What are the top 3-5 websites you visit regularly?

In no particular order:
- www.google.com (and gmail)
- www.facebook.com
- www.ubuntu.com
- www.slashdot.org
- www.kernelnewbies.org
- www.php.net (reference tool for work :-) )
- www.mysql.com

Thank you, Mark, for taking the time out to thoughtfully answer these questions!