PC gaming is a double edged sword. While you're able to enjoy better cutting-edge graphics and more customizable gameplay than your console counterparts, you have to deal with odd incompatibilities that come with the hundreds of different configurations out there. You might have to sacrifice features for performance on a newer title, or jump through hoops to get an older one to even run. I've been playing games on my computer ever since I've been old enough to use one, back in the early days of DOS prompts and manual memory management. With this sort of background, I'm used to getting deep into the technical details to troubleshoot when things go awry. And boy, have I seen a few crazy ones. I'd like to share some of these experiences from recent years for your amusement today.

ATI? Never heard of em - Metal Gear Solid 2

I was pumped, I tell ya. PUMPED to finally play the sequel to the hit stealth-action game when it released for PC. Keep in mind that it was still fairly new and I hadn't heard about what happens after the tanker chapter (you bastards). Ridiculous storyline aside, the developer, Konami, tends to give their PC releases a little bit of extra care, including higher fidelety graphics for those of us with higher end video cards. And at the time, mine was pretty powerful - the ATI All-In-Wonder. This multipurpose video card was essentially a Radeon, but also included an input for video capture, which I used to watch TV right on my machine. It was great. The downside? The programmers never accounted for the card's existence, and the game didn't recognize it as a Radeon. The game ran, but there were no textures so everything was a smooth bluish color.

I tried installing many different versions of video drivers, including some by third parties, but none of them fixed the issue. So, I took to Googling and found the fix: Download a hex editor, and alter the actual code of the game to manually insert the unsupported card's Hardware ID. With this little change made, it like a dream.

5 Frames per second is good, right? - F.E.A.R. / Condemned

Monolith's F.E.A.R. gave us an excellent mix of first person shooting and creepy psychological  horror with an antagonist straight out of The Ring. The brilliant engine that powered this game (and also Condemned) was capable of some great visuals at the time. I got my hands on this game a while after its original release, so when I ran the performance benchmark I was pretty happy to have a very smooth output. Once in the game however, it would start to chug within five or ten minutes of starting up. It didn't seem to matter what was on screen, or how much I dialed down the effects. Just a few minutes of great gameplay and then... s  l  i  d  e s  h  o  w.

This one was actually reported by bloggers at CNet (Read that article here). Turns out the culprit was the existence of a Logitech gaming keyboard. Some weird arcane conflict with the driver for multimedia keys and lcd screens on these devices chewed up the game's performance. To get things working, gamers had to enter the Device Manager and manually disable a handful of items related to the keyboard.

Scariest rave party ever - Silent Hill 2

Another Konami gem, this game didn't make the transition to newer operating systems very well at all. Programmed originally for XP, it used plenty of tricks in DirectSound3D to build up an excllent ambience. With DirectSound3D dropped in Vista and later systems though, gamers had to install additional software in order to get proper stereo effects and surround sound out of older games.  People with Creative cards had "ALchemy". For Realtek, you could get "3D Soundback" along with your drivers. But for this particular title, just emulating the DirectSound3D interface wasn't enough. The sound samples that consisted the beautifully creepy soundtrack caught themselves in tight loops, turning the lonely tension of Silent Hill into an industrial dance floor.

I had actually played through the entire game without realizing it was a bug - I just figured the soundtrack sucked and was terribly overhyped. But after hearing some of the music online, I realized that my gameplay experience was being robbed. So for my next playthrough I tinkered and toyed with the game trying to fix it but again no combination of drivers, compatibility settings or alternative software could get it working properly. Luckily, I still had my Windows XP disc, so I made a partition and installed an entire operating system just to play one game.

To be fair, it was a pretty good game.

That's sand in your eye - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Hope you brought your XBox - "Games for Windows"

This one plagues modern games, as recent as Batman, Borderlands, Dead Island, and many other high profile releases. It's less of a bug, and more of just an annoyance. See, many modern games abide by a set of features in order to get a green light from Microsoft and preferred branding as "Games for Windows". One such feature is support for playing the game with an XBox 360 controller. Most of these games also completely ditch support for any other controller, such as my much preferred Logitech gamepads.

Why do developers assume that a PC gamer also happens to have an XBox 360 console, or at least a controller from one? No idea. But gamers like myself who happen to already own perfectly good controllers are left out, and have to resort to using software (Like VibMod) to trick the games into accepting our hardware.

So that's just a few of the more memorable headaches I've dealt with while trying to get my game on. Do you have any such "fond" memories? Drop em in the comments!

Been a while since I posted one of our vids of Gala. She's still a pain in the ass. Here she is invading our dinner space.

With Easter under our belts, and a little bit of extra energy from leftover candy, it's time to turn attention towards that yearly ritual of cleaning out some junk and trying to make life easier in the long run. While we're at it, the average PC could use a little maintenance as well. It's no secret that an operating system slows down over time, usually due to an accumulation of software and junk files over the years. So with that in mind, I've got a handful of tips and tools to help you get at those digital nooks and crannies and regain a little bit of performance.

Keep in mind that I'm aiming at Windows PCs here. Not because Macs don't slow down or need maintenance, but because their owners are more likely to buy a new one every couple years anyway, cause the new model has some must-have feature like an all-glass keyboard that dresses you in a maid outfit and spanks you on command or something.

Ahem. Moving on.

Here are a few things you can do to clean up, and speed up your computer.

Clear out the usual suspects:

Cache files, temp folders, the recycle bin, junk registry entries. This is the kinda stuff that comes up in one breath, usually because people can clear them all with a single tool. Crowd favorite CCleaner has been around for years and is pretty much synonymous with system cleanup. It's fairly easy to use and self-explanatory, so the most basic user should be able to work with it.

Find out where your space is going:

While we're reclaiming disk space, there's a  good chance that some of it is eaten up by files you've downloaded and long forgot about. Windows itself doesn't do much to pinpoint gigantic folders, so I use a tool called DiskSpace Fan which visualizes your hard drive in an easy to read chart. Just dig into the larger chunks of the diagram, and you'll find those seasons of All in the Family that you forgot you torrented legally aqcuired through digital distribution.

Organize your desktop:

There's two types of desktops that I see out there. Either a person has about zero-to-five icons for very common things, or they have like a billion icons for everything, ever. If you've ever spent more time hunting down an icon on your desktop than it would take to just search your start menu, or type in a website address, then it's probably time for an intervention. Stardock's Fences is an awesome free tool that will let you group the icons up into categories for quick and easy organization. It's hard to explain in text, so luckily they have a video on their site that shows it in action.

Streamline your boot process:

I've pointed out the excellent Soluto before, which started life as a tool for managing the programs that start along with your system, and help you decide which ones to keep and which are safe to remove. Since then, they've changed their focus to being a tool for remotely managing other systems. The good news is you can still install and use it on your own computer just like always, and if you have multiple PCs that you're working with, their web-based interface lets you manage it all from one place.

Defrag!

You've heard it before, defragmenting moves all the data on your hard drive into contiguous chunks, making it easier to find. That means less spinning and churning sounds coming from your PC. Now, Windows has a tool built in for this. You can access it by going into My Computer, right clicking a drive and selecting Properties, then going to the Tools tab. There are also a handful of programs out there that manage the defrag for you, and even schedule it. One that I've used for years is called Perfectdisk.

Uninstall crap software:

If you purchased your PC from a retailer, chances are it came with a few things preinstalled. Things like "HP Quickassist" or "Acer Floaty Shortcut Bar" and probably some trial version of antivirus software that's been expired for years. Don't feel guilty about removing these from your computer - they're basically just advertising. They got enough screen time and they're not necessary. Just uninstall them.

Actually clean your computer:

There's a physical component to your computer, too. It accumulates dust, and smoke, and cat hair just like everything else in your house. Chances are if it's more than a year old, the inside of that thing looks like the backside of your fridge. It's totally safe to open the side panel of your computer for some quick cleaning. Use a can of compressed air to blow out the dust bunnies, but refrain from actually wiping, vaccuuming or feather-dusting the circuitry - static electricity caused by that sort of friction is a bad thing for computers.

And there we have it, a handful of ways to make your computing life just a little easier. Happy spring cleaning!

For a long time leading up to this I was afraid I'd miss a lot of quality time with my new family, due to work. Over six years and three jobs I've always worked full time, forty hours a week with a monster commute, and just barely making ends meet while rarely having time at home to enjoy NOT working.

Sure I enjoy my work. Tech support is a fun challenge and I've got a knack for it. But have you ever played Pac-man or Tetris for hours and then whenever you close your eyes, that's what you see? That's what it was like for me. I'd think about work all the time. I'd dream about it. Customers and co-workers that irked me stuck with me and I took my stress home. All I wanted to do was shut down at the end of the day.

My newest job was a bit of a gamble. Part time? "Not guaranteed" hours? Certainly sounds scary, and I had to do some math with the wages to make sure I could still support my family. But you know, it turns out things are doing pretty good, and for the first time in my adult life, I'm at home for more hours in the day than I'm at work.

I cut my commute in half. I no longer have to wait for a day off in order to do things like go shopping. It's no longer a this-or-that question between enjoying some time to myself, time with Bri, or having company over. Now I have time for it all.

Bri's doing great too. She's a night hawk, and I'm a morning bird. For the first few weeks when I was up at six and out the door by seven every day, things were pretty tough. Now she gets the sleep she needs while I enjoy the morning. I don't have to watch a clock while going about my morning routine most days, and our natural schedules means that baby gets taken care of while neither of us get terribly sleep deprived. Everybody wins.

So yeah. Life is pretty good. I took a chance and I'm glad I did.

Our little guy's just past a month old and we're throwing pictures and videos all over the place, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and discovering there's no easy way to go back and see a timeline of just him. Posts get pushed back over time, and you have to dig through a lot of junk to get to those special memories. On Twitter especially, you simply can't go back more than a few days on a particular hashtag,

SO! I created a baby book on Tumblr. - actionbaby.tumblr.com

I was originally going to create a Dailybooth, which would be a neat way to see him growing - but the site seems to be broken. I moved from there to Posterous, my usual blogging standby, but then discovered that Tumblr has this awesome ability to snap pictures ad-hoc straight from a webcam. Add in the very slick presentation with the theme I selected, and I'm freaking sold.

This site will serve a couple purposes. On top of uploading photos and regular baby updates, I've configured If This Than That to automatically grab any #action_baby tweets from my feed and bring them in. I used Snapbird to manually grab some Tweets from previous weeks as well.

Finally, for the Facebook folk who would complain about the Baby deluge, they can easily hide all the #action_baby updates from their feed with two clicks. Everybody wins!

So! I had a fun time in the last week or so, taking care of a family PC that had been dropped at my doorstep with a plea to clean it of various ailments. I figured it had been a while since I dove into hands-on troubleshooting, so why not? This could be fun! I dubbed it the Project PC, and live tweeted the process. Now that it's complete, here's the rundown of what happened, and how we fixed it.

Engage nerd voice.

On our first boot, we were met with a rogue anti-spyware application called System Tool. This is one of the most common types of infections out there. Basically, it'll pop up all these warnings and run fake scans and offer to clean your PC for a small fee. It's dirty pool, but people end up with them all too easily.

How?

Well, as you surf around the internet, you've probably noticed advertisements on web pages. Some of them are designed to look like warnings and dialog boxes that are part of Windows, prompting you to click and correct a fake problem on your computer. That downloads the installer, and presto. You've just infected yourself.

Getting rid of this particular nuisance meant using some tools built into Windows, like Task Manager to locate unfamiliar processes, and MSConfig to manage the applications and services that start up with your computer. Once I stopped the program from running, it was a breeze to locate the executable and delete it.

That was the easy part.

After this cleanup, I noticed that the ping.exe process was running hard in the background, chewing up almost 160 MB of memory at a time. That's not normal. There weren't any more odd programs running that I could spot, so I decided it was time to bring in a real Anti-Virus program.

Since we're dealing with a pretty low-powered machine, I decided to go with Microsoft Security Essentials, which has a nice, small footprint on the system performance. I Googled the phrase, and clicked on the correct result... and was redirected to a download page for another fake antivirus app.

So, what now? Well, now we send in the big guns.

The runaway Ping and redirection are caused by a Rootkit known as TDSS. This is the real source of our problems. If we continue redirecting legitimate search results to malware download sites, it's only a matter of time until we get seriously messed up again. Not only that, but TDSS has a few hooks into the computer that allows all sorts of bad things to happen. The ping, for example, was this PC participating in a remotely coordinated Denial of Service attack - where a series of compromised systems would continually slam at a server online until it's no longer able to manage incoming traffic. The bad guy was still in control here, so we had to find and remove the rootkit.

TDSS is a nasty customer. It inserts itself as the driver tdx.sys - a file protected by Windows so that it cannot be removed. You would normally have to boot into a second Operating System in order to delete the file. Luckily, there's a tool by Kapersky designed to beat this exact rootkit, aptly named TDSSKiller. I grabbed it, and sucessfully killed TDSS.

We rebooted, and good news! There was no sign of infection. Bad news, the computer was now no longer able to get online. It refused to obtain an IP address from my router, which would be necessary for doing internet-type things.

I checked in the system log and found that the service DHCP, which is responsible for obtaining an IP address, was being held up due to a dependancy on the previously removed tdx.sys. Ah, whoops. I should have figured that a root kit that hijacks your browsing experience would have inserted itself into the computer's networking setup.

I couldn't find documentation online that proved the file was necessary at all, so instead of restoring it, as I didn't have system disks, I just popped into the registry and removed the dependancy (this was in HKLM/system/currentcontrolset/services/dhcp in case you need to know). On the next boot, we got online with no problem, and no redirects. We were essentially clean. But there was a bit to do yet.

I ran further scans with Malwarebytes and cleared out some junk files with CCleaner. I also went about fixing the attributes on the user's personal files - which TDSS had set as invisible and read only. Finally, I went about uninstalling various toolbars and crap applications - online casinos, Limewire, and the virus addled pirated versions of silly Popcap games that were downloaded using it. There were also some "Free" screensavers, icons and such from the peddler Freeze dot com. This all paints a pretty likely picture of how the rootkit landed on this computer in the first place. Left to their own devices, we're guaranteed to end up right back at square one soon enough.

Remember, if you try to get something for free that usually costs money - and don't know what you're doing - you're setting yourself up for a butthurt PC.

So now that we were clean, I needed to stage an intervention. Stop junk from getting here in the first place. Here are the preventative measures I set up:

• It all starts with Google Chrome. If you haven't used it yet, this browser is fast, lightweight, and generally doesn't support the attack vectors that end up loading junk via Internet Explorer.
• I added in the AdBlock extension to prevent those happy flashing ads from loading and enticing our user into bad downloads.
• I set the default search as DuckDuckGo, letting us bypass the link farms and crap sites that litter Google's search results.
• I set the PC up for OpenDNS, which should actively block malware sites from being able to load.

Next, I needed to set up some alternatives to correct bad surfing behaviour. I added Facebook and Grooveshark to the desktop as an application shortcuts using Chrome. This should let our user network and listen to music without having to do searches and risk landing on bad sites. I put a shortcut to the Chrome app store there as well, labelling it "Apps and Games". There are plenty of free games available here that should scratch that itch without needing to download junk.

For ongoing care, the first thing I'll do when I hand the PC back is email the user an invite to my Soluto network. This will let me remotely monitor and correct issues before they become major headaches.

Now, this was all a lot of work. The preferred (and quick) solution to an infection like this is of course to just wipe everything and reinstall. But without any system disks on hand, I needed to defeat it the old school way. I'm pretty proud of my work, and hope it's a while before I need to deal with this particular machine again.

Some years are bigger than others as far as personal growth and change go. I'd like to think I had more happen in 2011 than any other year of my adult life. To review:

In March, I was laid off along with 500 co-workers from the Cable-co. I immediately went to work on aggressively marketing myself, going so far as to open the website "hire.actionjay.com" and leaning on my online contacts to help me find something new in the tech support space. Within a few weeks, I was hired, and ready to start my new job in May.

During my job search, we found out that we were pregnant, and went on a trip to the states to visit Bri's (@action_wife) family and deliver the news. It was a great visit, and a little emotional for the in-laws who would be getting their first ever Grandchild.

After coming home, we realized that we needed a new place with more room for Baby, and jumped on a beautiful apartment in the same building where I once lived several years ago. The management here still recognizes me from back then, which is nice.

Ironically, my new job was two blocks from our original place, and the move re-introduced my hour long daily commute. On the bright side, I was employed. Also, half my transit costs are being reimbursed so it's fair to say that I'm okay with that. Plenty of time to catch up on RSS feeds and podcasts while on the road.

In June, I was lucky enough to make my way into the Mobile / Social Media Conference. I got to see a lot of smart folks talk, and made several local contacts. For all the time I spend interacting with folks over Twitter, it was fun finally meeting some of them face to face, and having my own presence at such an event.

We skipped a couple of the summer festivities this year, like Taste of Sask and The Prairieland Exhibition, in lieu of seeing the musical Wicked, which was amazing. I'm a big fan of making memories together, and this definitely fit the bill.

All throughout the year I've been trying to get back into making music, with small bursts of limited output. I put together a new site to host it all, at music.actionjay.com, and had been working to drive traffic to it by highlighting individual tracks with the hashtag #earmassage on Twitter. It's not something I would remember to do on a daily basis, though, and falls to the wayside a little too easily. I may reinvigorate this with some automation later on.

We finally got the documentation together for Bri's citizenship application, gathering all the time-sensitive materials within a window where they were all valid, and sent it in. They confirmed that they've received it, but we won't hear anything about the next stage for 10-12 months. In the meantime, everyone we know opens every conversation asking how we're doing with this paperwork, and I die a little on the inside.

In August I was named one of the top 25 influencers in Customer Service by Mindtouch, putting me alongside authors and speakers on the topic. For a front-line phone monkey, that's actually pretty cool. I still don't know how much actual clout (or Klout) I have, but it's nice being able to connect with people and talk about something I'm passionate about in a somewhat professional manner.

In September, we visited my family in Swift Current to celebrate my grandfather's 80th birthday. I don't get to see that side of the family very often, and they all adore Bri which makes it very relaxing and a lot of fun.

Around the same time, I discovered that my old employer was ramping up a call center in India. Still a little sore from the layoff, I blogged about it - got on Reddit - and probably brought in more traffic to my site than I'll ever see again. There was some lively conversation around it, though I'm still on good terms with my buddies on the inside. I'm generally not a mean person, and don't burn bridges if I can help it.

In November I participated in National Novel Writing Month in an attempt to rekindle my creativity. I fell short at about half the 50k word goal. But thanks to the help of 750words I achieved a seconary goal of writing at least something every day for the month.

I also made my way to the Saskatoon Barcamp which was an all-day "unconference" style event where anyone who wanted to present could grab a slot. I met many more people this time, and was much more comfortable introducing myself and chatting. I was even recognized a couple times, which is great for my ego.

In anticipation of our baby being born mid-December, we held a quiet early Christmas at home. It was nice having the holiday out of the way while others were still stressing about shopping and wrapping. Our due date came and went afterwards, and we started to get antsy.

Having gone six months without so much as a sick day, I took some time off work as we hit a week overdue with the baby. After a few false starts, we headed in to get induced. A long night of labor followed, which I live-tweeted with the hashtag #action_baby, and our beauful boy Jacob finally came into the world on the morning of the 24th.

He's a week old now, sleeping soundly right beside me while I reminisce with a little Dire Straits playing. I feel good about how the year went, and hope 2012 will be full of positive growth and fun challenges. I'm going to be trying to figure out my work/life balance considering the new addition to the family. I may slow down in some of my hobbies while I dedicate more time to Jacob, and my stream online is likely to take on a whole new slant with lots of first-time parenting fun and games.

"Scope of Support" is a phrase that every tech support phone rep should be familiar with. It's the guideline that determines what you're allowed to help a caller with. It helps avoid the liabilities of messing with third party products, and makes sure you don't set unrealistic expectations for the next agent. It also causes headaches for customers and support agents alike who know the simplicity of what they're asking for, but simply aren't allowed to get satisfaction.

After years of being told "We don't do x" or "We can't support y" a handful of brave companies are shrugging off these limiting shackles and providing help for their confused callers. The genius move? They're also charging a premium for this service, allowing you to recruit them as your own personal 'tech people' for any issue that you might need to look into. It's like roadside assistance for your technology.

Today I'm sharing a Q&A with Daniel Herscovici, who is managing @Comcast's Xfinity Signature Support service. This big name cable provider and ISP was one of the first on the scene with this idea, offering monthly plans starting at $4.95 to help with your computer woes. The plan scales up from there to cover additional devices and wireless networks, and membership can net you discounts on other services. (XFinity Signature Support)

"Scope of Support" is a phrase that every tech support phone rep should be familiar with. It's the guideline that determines what you're allowed to help a caller with. It helps avoid the liabilities of messing with third party products, and makes sure you don't set unrealistic expectations for the next agent. It also causes headaches for customers and support agents alike who know the simplicity of what they're asking for, but simply aren't allowed to get satisfaction.

After years of being told "We don't do x" or "We can't support y" a handful of brave companies are shrugging off these limiting shackles and providing help for their confused callers. The genius move? They're also charging a premium for this service, allowing you to recruit them as your own personal 'tech people' for any issue that you might need to look into. It's like roadside assistance for your technology.

Today I'm sharing a Q&A with Kayli Barth at @Sasktel. This DSL, TV and Phone provider has been around in Saskatchewan for as long as I can remember, and is just beginning to roll out a new subscription service called LiveExpert, where a small monthly fee of $5.95 gets you unlimited access to their tech support. A premium version at $14.95 also includes proactive monitoring and management through their provided software. (Sasktel LiveExpert)

1. Where did the idea for this expanded scope of support come from? How did it grow from an idea to its own product?

The idea for offering a service like SaskTel LiveExpert was derived from a multitude of SaskTel resources, industry trends and the support/customer experience environment. SaskTel receives a substantial number of calls per month that are considered to be out-of-scope, or in other words; questions/support issues pertaining to products and services that are not provided by SaskTel. The SaskTel HelpDesk would do their best to refer customers to online resources and/or manufacturer websites, but ultimately, their responsibility is to provide support for various SaskTel branded products and services.Customers then needed to seek out information, support or remediation for their non-SaskTel related issues, be it online or from a friend or from a PC repair shop. 

With the launch of SaskTel LiveExpert we can improve the customer support experience by offering customers an affordable, 24/7 unlimited, technical support service for their PC and PC-related technologies that are considered to be out-of-scope.

2. Do you have dedicated staff for this? Any special training or extra procedures to consider when putting agents in an expanded support queue? 

There are dedicated professional resources to provide support for SaskTel LiveExpert customers, powered by Global Mentoring Solutions Inc.

3. What happens if/when you get stumped? Do you have any special resources for your agents to fall back on?

There is a standard escalation process that is implemented should this happen. In the rare instance where the SaskTel LiveExpert technician is unable to resolve the issue initially, they have additional technicians, support-coordinators and seemingly endless knowledge-base tools at their disposal to resolve the issue.

4. Any interesting feedback or customer stories that you can share? 

We actually only launched on November 9th, so customer feedback/stories will be forthcoming.

5. With the blurring lines between online services and the products that use them, what do you see in the future of tech support? 

There will likely be a continued push for always on, always available customer support as more and more products continue to become I.P. based. The shift towards online chat functionality will continue to push towards the norm, as more and more people (particularly younger generations) have accepted and continue to accept online chat support as the norm. There will likely be an increase in product/service specific tech support, but also more all-encompassing, at your finger-tip type support from various providers. 

"Scope of Support" is a phrase that every tech support phone rep should be familiar with. It's the guideline that determines what you're allowed to help a caller with. It helps avoid the liabilities of messing with third party products, and makes sure you don't set unrealistic expectations for the next agent. It also causes headaches for customers and support agents alike who know the simplicity of what they're asking for, but simply aren't allowed to get satisfaction.

After years of being told "We don't do x" or "We can't support y" a handful of brave companies are shrugging off these limiting shackles and providing help for their confused callers. The genius move? They're also charging a premium for this service, allowing you to recruit them as your own personal 'tech people' for any issue that you might need to look into. It's like roadside assistance for your technology.

Today I'm sharing a Q&A with Ross Rader, the general manager at @Hover, a domain registrar built from the ground up with a slant on usability and customer service. Their new Ask Hover support lets you get help at a rate of $15 for a 30 minute session. From there, they'll help you configure your domain with competitors, and field any other questions you might have about the internet. (Ask Hover)

I really deeply believe that the future of customer service is the future of ecommerce. There is only so much that a web site can facilitate. At some point, the human-machine interface breaks down and people have to talk to people to solve some sticky problem or another. I think smart companies intuitively understand this and are actively working on strengthening their human-human interfaces and supporting them with great ecommerce technology on their website. It will become increasingly difficult to offer something for sale via a website without having a solid customer service strategy to back it up. Take Google for example - they used to pride themselves on having a wholly automated business. Now they employ thousands of people in customer service roles and are actually providing some pretty decent customer service nowadays. People, customers expect a lot from their commercial relationships nowadays - I know I do - and organizations need to realize that the centralized customer service model that evolved during the eighties and into the nineties no longer works. With the rise of the Internet, customers have almost perfect information at their fingertips, are often highly organized and networked and in many regards, are more sophisticated than the companies that purport to want to sell them something. Many companies have yet to figure out that they need to develop a healthy respect for the modern customer and organize as tightly around each individual customer as they can. Thousands of companies are punished by their own ignorance every day and I'm alway surprised at how long it is taking some of them to absorb this message.

Okay, so we're already almost two weeks into National Novel Writing Month, that great (stressful) time of year where aspiring authors band together and support each other in finally writing that book they've been meaning to. What I've got here is a super quick roundup of some online tools that might help if you've been falling behind.

First of course is the official website, nanowrimo.org, an online community with local message boards, chat rooms, and plenty of inspiration and challenges to help you get going. They keep plenty of stats on your writing to help you see if you're on track, and how you stack up against other authors. Just be sure to update your word count regularly, and you'll see your progress bar inch steadily towards that 50k.

As for actual writing, I find that the toughest thing is getting started when you sit down. That's where 750words comes in. This is a site built around the credo of "The Writer's Way" challenging you to pump out about three pages worth of stream-of-consciousness as you start your day. The practice, known as Morning Pages, is meant to help you center yourself. It's not a blog, or a journal, but it does help keep you motivated by handing out badges as you go, and giving you cool feeback.

Once I've popped the cork for the day, I move over to Yarny, a distraction free online writing app which allows you to organize your work into drag-and-drop snippets. It also keeps track of your overall word count, and saves automatically in the cloud. If you don't trust the cloud, you can always download your work-so-far in a basic text file.

By the way - if you've ever lost your work, you know how important backing up is. If haven't yet had this happen, don't take it for granted and get a backup solution anyway! I store my stuff in a Dropbox folder, which automatically syncs online and between multiple computers, so I've always got the freshest copy on my Desktop, Laptop, and iPod.

Speaking of iPod, I spend a lot of time in transit, and love to brainstorm on the go. All my outlines and notes are drawn up in the Evernote app, which also syncs online. It's great for research too, because you can grab snippets of websites or anything else and quickly add it to your notebook.

So those are the tools. Next, probably the most important part of your writing workspace, is music.

I find that I write best to instrumental music, as lyrics tend to distract me. So most of my work is done to game soundtracks like from the Overlocked Remix community. Many others might have movie or television soundtracks that work for them as well.

As a super quick shameless self-promotion, I happen to be sort of a musician, and created plenty of instrumental music over the years. It's all online in a handful of formats, and you can find it at music.actionjay.com.

If you find yourself spending more time picking out your music and building playlists than actually writing, consider pulling up Grooveshark instead. Here you can throw in a couple tunes, turn on the radio function, and it'll automatically keep feeding you similar music.

And that's it for today's roundup. Now, just like you, it's time for me to get right back to writing!

Sorting through papers and such this morning, I came across a print of our latest ultrasound. It's pretty stunning to see and know that there's a real life person in there. Unlike previous visits where I was like "Wow is that a face?" and they were like "No that's a liver".

Baby is very active as of late, keeping Bri (@action_wife) up most nights with plenty of squirming and rolling. The odd cravings do still pop up - a few days ago we suited up and made an evening run to the grocery store specifically for cinnamon buns.

We still haven't picked up much in the way of clothes or bedding, cause we've been waiting to determine the sex. Not one of the ultrasounds could tell us; there was always a foot or a liver or something in the way. Our obstetrician tells us it's a boy, though. I'm inclined to believe her, because she reminds me of that old dude from Gremlins and he was totally wise.

We're still on track for mid-December. A messenger donkey somewhere in Canada is on the way with the next phase of Bri's immigration paperwork, which will allow us a cost-free birth. We'll be alright if the timing doesn't line up, of course, but it'd be a nice bonus.

But yeah. I'm excited, nervous, and giddy. Pretty much the standard stuff every guy goes through leading up to their first kid. 

Consider this a thinking-out-loud post. I'm trying to consolidate things that I find interesting online, and have a pretty big batch of services floating around to help with the task. I thought it'd be neat to highlight this stuff as you might find at least a couple of them useful in your own day-to-day web surfing life.

This is part recommendations, part comedy as you'll see just how many different apps are in use here.

How do I find Stuff?

There's a handful of websites that regularly post awesome content. Anything I like, I save the RSS feed into Google Reader. This is pretty much the center of my internet experience, and I tap into it from a few different places.

• Feedly, a beautiful, slick web based reader for my browser
• Snackr, an Adobe Air based app that scrolls on my desktop
• Reeder, a great iOS app that caches content for on-the-go reading

All of these sync with Google Reader, and have the ability to tag items to read later (and send it to instapaper for easy reading), or share to social networks.

Stuff also comes to me through my social circles. When you're following a buttload of people though, it's hard to keep up. That's where Summify comes in. This automatically curates and shows me the top content being shared around. Think of it as a private version of Paper.li, without the obnoxious auto-posting.

What do I do with Stuff?

What usually happens is that I'll tweet items I like, either from my reader, from the article's social sharing buttons, or from the wicked simple Chrome plugin, Cortex. Sometimes if I really like something I'll post it to Facebook as well. My Google Plus feed gets no love, and that's part of what I'm trying to resolve.

Enter If This Then That. This is a roll your own intergration platform. It doesn't yet support Google Plus, but will probably be one of the first places to do so now that the API is out and about. What I plan on doing here is enabling a recipie to automatically cross-post things straight from Google Reader just by clicking the (currently useless) Share button.

Welcome to Codecademy! I heard about this on a recent episode of The Social Hour and was immediately interested. Basically, it's a code parser with built in interactive lessons. They start simple, with hello world type exersices, and build up from there. The framework allows for much more complex lessons, and different programming languages as well.

Add in the social elements, and gamification with points and badges, and you got yourself a real winner.

I blew through the first course this evening, a nice refresher for Javascript considering I haven't done serious coding in years. Really looking forward to what sort of new content lands here.

Haven't had much studio time lately to produce anything new, but I did upload everything - including my incredibly old stuff - to Grooveshark for anytime streaming. You can search me out there anytime as Action Jay - or just click here.