“Techie” Interview Series 4 – Abelardo Gonzalez

Continuing the “Techie” series, an old friend of mine from college agreed to the infamous interview.  I met Abelardo Gonzalez during my days attending Pensacola Christian College and he has turned out to be one of those “techie friends” in my own life.  Abbie has some strong opinions on tech and life so I think you’ll enjoy his answers!

Bio:

I am an A+ Certified Computer technician. I also do web design and programming on the side, and can frequently be found trying to push some envelope somewhere. I own 4 computers, a mac, a small notebook, a pc built out of spare parts and built into an LCD, and an iPhone (it runs UNIX, it is a computer). You can sometimes find me walking around holding my laptop sideways, reading books, or taking pictures/video of events in town.

I also recently started participating in the liberty movement in New Hampshire, where we are trying to decrease government regulation and interference with daily life. Since I was working as a truck driver in Pensacola before the move, this also means I am actively looking for a new job in NH.

I am a christian of the “non-modern” variety. My political and religious views tend to not fit any labels I know of.

Do you mind being called a “techie” friend?

Whatever floats your boat, although I’d prefer “friend” with no adjectives .

How long have you been interested in technology or computers?

My dad bought a TRS-80 and I was awed by his ablities to control what was on the TV with it (Like a picture of a house blowing smoke). That was in Kindergarten. Watching Star Trek every week did not help diminish my interest in technology. When my dad bought our first computer with QBasic in third grade, I tried to write a GUI, and continued studying user interfaces since then. When I got my first computer, a Performa, I learned Hypercard and wrote the word processor I used to type all my homework in high school with it.

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

Yes. Sometimes too much, and sometimes too little. I hate seeing them take their computer to BestBuy to fix, and will attempt to intervene at that point .

If so, does this bother you?

Sometimes they ask for help, and then start telling me how to fix the problem. I stop fixing at that point. Unless they threaten to take it to BestBuy to fix, in which case I’ll probably just charge them.

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

Reboot. Google. Or at least write down the error message and tell me if your hard drive sounds like a chainsaw before I start making recommendations over email or phone.

Where do you see the internet in 10 years?

Unfortunately, with government regulations creeping up, I don’t see the internet as we now know it in 10 years. I do see something similar to Cable TV as the internet: high entry cost, regulation, lack of anything other than studio produced content. It may be faster, but I probably won’t be able to have a website after that. Internet may be freely available to all much like TV is, and may even be divided between local content and subscription based outside content.

Personal pages will be reduced to subdomains of corporate websites, and all content will be under scrutiny, even your emails, for supposed security reasons. All actions on the internet will be monitored, and I doubt there will be any dissent expressed on it.
Content will be, in general, more polished. Controls will be in place allowing you to filter all content for your family. All advertisements will be custom tailors to your specific profile.

I could see most moving willingly to this new internet, especially if a “crisis” was played up enough to convince everyone the move is necessary. Such a move will also likely be mandated by governments.

Now, this is only if government interference continues… hopefully it will stop, and none of this will happen.

Related to the last question, where do you see computers in 10 years?

Depends greatly on what happens over the next 2 years. What should happen is that computers should become smaller, more pervasive, and cheaper.

As far as US based computer manufacturing and design goes, if the country continues its economic collapse, the most cutting edge equipment will continue to be designed and sold outside the US. The US will probably fall backward technologically, and whichever country is more economically free will be the new technology leader, releasing smaller, more powerful and cheaper computers and equipment. Such technology will probably remain more expensive in the US because of import costs, etc. We are currently seeing this on a small scale.

Your opinion on:

Best OS?

BeOS/Haiku OS

Best Web browser?

Opera (for readability reasons, it used to be Safari, but then I found gdi++.

Best free/paid antivirus program?

AVG (but don’t use their spyware program)

Best search engine?

I want to use something other than Google so bad, but everything else stinks!

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

• Freekeene.com – a blog and forum chronicling the movement for more freedome in Keene, NH, which is where I know live (ok, very close to it).
• Mint.com – when a service this good is offered, sometimes it offsets the cost of a slight loss in privacy, as long as mint continues to keep my information secret anyway.
• Apathyonline.net – my blog, with my thoughts on society, christianity and government. It is also my web-sandbox where I practice webprogramming and design.
• Google.com – Best search engine.
• And, well, I visit your website regularly.

Nice to hear from you Abbie!

-Anyone else, feel free to add to or comment on anything discussed above!

Related posts:

1. “Techie” Interview Series 3 – Paul Eckstrom
2. “Techie” Interview Series 1 – Mark Bouchard
3. “Techie” Interview Series 2 – Matt Rodela