Nobody asked. I checked anyway.
For about twenty years, keeping other people’s devices working and secure was my actual job. Tech support and device management — phones, laptops, managed fleets, the endless middle ground between “it’s broken” and “you broke it.” Before that, the Navy.
Somewhere in there I became the person everyone calls. You know the type, because you probably are the type. You’re the one who set up the office wifi. You’re the one who gets the text at 9pm because a laptop won’t boot. Nobody hired you to do it and nobody’s paying you for it. The ticket just kept going up the chain until it hit you, and there was nobody above you to send it to.
Hence the name.
What this site is
Practical, tested help for the person who ended up responsible for the technology — at home, at a small business, or both at once, which is the usual case.
Every fix here runs on real hardware before it gets published. When I say a setting is in a particular menu, it’s because I opened that menu. When I say something takes twelve minutes, I timed it. When something didn’t work the way the vendor’s documentation claimed, I say so.
What this site isn’t
It isn’t a managed services pitch. I’m not going to spend eight paragraphs describing your problem so I can sell you a monthly contract at the end.
It isn’t security theater. A great deal of what passes for security advice is ceremony — steps that feel protective and accomplish nothing. Some of it actively makes you less safe. I’ll tell you which is which, and I’ll tell you when the honest answer is “that one doesn’t matter, skip it.”
It isn’t fear-based. Nothing here needs you panicked to be worth reading.
About the recommendations
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I make something, at no additional cost to you.
Here’s my rule: I don’t link to anything I haven’t used, and I don’t recommend a paid tool when a free one does the job. When the free option is the right answer, that’s what you’ll get, even though it pays me nothing. If that ever stops being true, this paragraph is the thing you should hold me to.
Get in touch
Something broken and you can’t find the answer? Something on this site wrong? Both are worth an email.