You’ve arrived at the home of Computernik, a small computer support business focused on supporting other small businesses and individual customers.

Well, it was a small business. It’s now something else entirely. (a blog, it’s a blog).

“computernik“

Noun. A computer enthusiast or expert. Merriam Webster

Computernik started as an idea in February 2020, and this was easily the worst time for anyone to start a small business. One month later everything is locked down, the world has no idea what’s in store for them with the first global pandemic in 100 years, and I had no way of earning an income except from remote support.

The business started as a small dream of mine – to work for myself and to support my customer’s I.T. needs in the way that they needed according to industry best practices. My experience spans more than a decade of modern computing, and I’m familiar with all operating systems and almost all of the competing online Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms.

But what people don’t tell you is that it is difficult to run your own company. It is back-breaking work trying to get that first customer to first trust you and use you on a regular basis. And then you have to do that again and again, starting the process all over again until you have enough regular customers to keep things afloat.

And they have to pay you on time.

I shut down the support business in November 2021, having been successful enough to pay bills and keep things afloat for almost two years. While the challenge wasn’t insurmountable, I remembered why I got out of the support business in the beginning – fixing computers and problems is fun. The people are not. I grew disillusioned with the industry even though I’m an enthusiast at heart and love making things work. It’s just not for me.

I work for a different company now. And this website takes a different direction.

This is a blog for my dumb thoughts about computers, climate change, science, space, and anything that interests me. Finding things to write and talk about comes easily to me but actually doing that is a habit that needs to be reformed.