Terry Barker – Teebark

Officer, why are you in my room with a flashlight?

November 11, 2019March 22, 2012 by Terry Barker

I was talking with my landlady last night, and she asked me if I was upset about the cops coming into my room. Say what? This is another episode of my crazy dealings with renting living quarters in Maryland. Some of you may remember a previous … Read more

Linux update

November 11, 2019January 5, 2011 by Terry Barker

A while back, I posted a story about my adventures with Linux on an older PC. I was stymied at the time, but I have made significant progress since then. The memory boards I had ordered (and didn’t work), were replaced–good job, memorystock.com, and they fit just fine this time.

It actually turns out that I probably didn’t need the extra memory–once I installed Xubuntu to the hard drive, it got significantly faster. But, extra memory never hurts. The version of FoxPro that comes with Xubuntu is fully functional with Hootsuite, FaceBook, etc., so I consider that installation a success.

The score is 2-0

Linux will revive an old PC? Not so fast.

November 11, 2019September 7, 2010 by Terry Barker

I bought several old notebook PC’s a while back, specifically for the purpose of giving them to my grandkids. I wanted to see if I could retrofit them as replacements for newer PC’s, sans Windows. Because, let’s face it, Microsoft has effectively tied their newest OS to any new machine that you buy.

A new direction on the job hunt

November 11, 2019February 6, 2010 by Terry Barker

Okay, I’ve moved through the first two iterations of my job hunt–ramping up my profiles on Google and LinkedIn, and refining my resume so I have multiple versions. That looked promising for a while.

My 6 month adventure with (shudder) unemployment

November 11, 2019November 6, 2009 by Terry Barker

Remember those days when people kept saying “Cobol is dead?” We just laughed, and kept on coding. Well, laugh no more. Cobol is not dead–there are still thousands of programmers out there. It’s just finding a new mainframe position after losing a job that’s dead. I’ve been a contractor for over 30 years, and I’ve never lost any sleep over getting the next contract. Until I finished my contract with Geico, 6 months ago.

GTD, My way–an update

November 12, 2019September 28, 2009 by Terry Barker

This is an update from something I wrote when I was using a (don’t laugh) PDA (Personal Data Assistant). PDA’s were the big rage before smartphones. Since then, of course, software and smartphones have made them obsolete. But, because planning and prioritization of tasks hasn’t changed … Read more

Job hunting in 2009–it’s a whole new world

November 11, 2019August 3, 2009 by Terry Barker

Ah, the good old days. When you could find a job in a day or two. Sometimes within hours. 2009, on the other hand, sucks big time.

Great hotkey program–Autohotkey

November 11, 2019August 3, 2009 by Terry Barker

I found this through PC Mag about a year ago, and have been using it ever since. Autohotkey is free, and does several great things, which I illustrate here:

The ultimate blog software–WordPress

November 11, 2019April 30, 2009 by Terry Barker

I have struggled for years to put up a decent looking web site. What I usually ended up with, although functional, was a patchwork of different pages, all with different functions. Then, I started reading about WordPress.