About Tim

Your Friendly Web Biz Mechanic

If you have a website, or need to set one up, we can help. You may run into issues with installing scripts like WordPress or a Help Desk system. You may need regular backups made, or to have an account moved from one hosting company to another. Perhaps you need some one-on-one training for webinars, autoresponders or web mail. Maybe like me you want to convert all your mail to use Google’s excellent free service called Google Apps.

Whether you need some work done, or you’d like some coaching or personalized training, we’ve got you covered. Use our Contact Form to get help.

Today’s People-Enabled Geek – an Internet Tech Helper

With over 15 years of experience, I have a better-than-average ability to understand computer things, especially on Linux or UNIX platforms. And I have always enjoyed taking complex things and making them easier for other people to understand and work with.

If you have a website “hosted”, it is a good chance that it runs on a flavor of Linux. I can help get things installed. If a program doesn’t work quite as you would like it to, I can help to modify it. And I have always worked to automate things. If you have hosting with CPanel, it probably includes a utility called “cron”. This is a powerful scheduling tool, and I can help you with that.

But you don’t even need your own website to get a helping hand from me. Have you used an autoresponder? Need any help understanding the gad-blasted thing? How about setting up a membership site? WordPress blogs? Online training via webinars or producing some video for use on the Internet?

I’m a techie. But one that is now people-enabled, and working to improve the marketing of my clients. Truth be told, though, my tech skills and training skills are still my strongest assets.

Valedictorian, Geek, Spanish Speaker – Web Biz Mechanic

I’m what people would call a geek. I don’t necessarily look or act like an obvious geek anymore. But believe me – you could spot me and label me “Geek!” from 100 yards away just some short 10 years back. Ask me about some grammar issues and watch out! One of my majors was Spanish, and I do have opinions about English grammar!

So in the past, I’ve been a System Administrator – of UNIX machines. Now, many people only know about PCs and maybe linux. Linux is like the consumer-friendly version of UNIX, and UNIX is more industrial and corporate. Basically, my job for a few years was to keep the servers (locked in the system cabinets) running, so the officers at their desks in the mortgage loan offices could connect to the server and process loan applications.

Everybody knows about Windows and MacOS these days. UNIX is like the grand-daddy of the current MacOS – which is based on Linux. Confused? Sorry…let’s just move on, shall we?

After that phase of my career, I moved into application support. I was very successful at that, and did work in 6 countries with a large international software company. I do have to say, my success at that time was probably 75% from technical skills, although I did have to communicate with the customers when they called or wrote to me in support. I then communicated with our development team to get problems sorted out.

I Started Life As A Geeky High School Valedictorian

Years back I was high school valedictorian. I was a rather intellectual kid. I played the clarinet, and did a pretty good job of learning the trumpet in short order. I did door-to-door sales in college, and studied in Spain for a year. By my shyness and discomfort in social situations continued for years. At one point, as a technical support person, I visited Brazil and was able to instruct corporate students how to use a complex computer user account management package – in Portuguese and Portañol (Portuguese infused with a dose of Spanish). I love languages.

So then I moved to Asia. My technical skills started to be less important, and I really had to understand people speaking other versions of English – Australian English, and the pigeon English languages in Singapore and Malaysia, commonly referred to as Singlish and Manglish. I’m still struggling with the pseudo-English in Malaysia. My take on this is – in the US, we are concerned with grammar and pronunciation, and “proper American (English)”. Same goes in England, South African and Australia / New Zealand. Here in Asia, things seem much more focused on communicating, and “proper” anything is often out the window.

So now, again a handful of years later, I’m intrigued with marketing. Getting across an idea of what a software package, a book or a blog website can do for a person just piques my interest. Now, I can’t claim any great success at marketing as yet. But over the past years I’ve been having a lot of fun working (playing) with the tools that marketers use. Blogs. Autoresponders. Membership scripts. Forums. PHP scripts for various things – social bookmarking, membership sites, forums, etc. Sales systems for managing a flock of affiliates so you motivate some affiliates, and they do the selling for you.

And since I have loved playing with scripts, I have been having fun modifying that certain scripts behave. Most scripts I have looked at are based in a computer language called PHP. When I get an idea in my head, or a client brings me their needs, 99% of the time I get the script to do what I want it to do.