When you’re not familiar with a particular technology or software interface and you run into trouble, it’s hard to know whether it’s gone wrong, or you’re doing something wrong. It’s a bit like when your car engine starts making a strange noise. The only reason you know it’s strange is because you’ve been driving it…
When I started university, I chose computer science because it was practical and I was pretty good with computers. Still, everything else interested me at least as much. I filled up my schedule with English literature, physics, German language, and anthropology in addition to my required computer science and math courses. I was getting some…
By now, you’ve probably used ChatGPT or Claude to figure out some kind of tech issue in your life. Maybe you asked it for an explanation about a weird error message you got when you tried to check your email, or it helped you narrow down what part of your website was causing a critical…
I’ve uploaded a new meditation to Insight Timer, for those moments where something on your phone or laptop just isn’t working and you’re stuck in a swirl of anxiety, anger, or angst that’s making it hard for you to think clearly. It’ll help get your mind calm and centered again so that you’re better able…
How we’re different Troubleshooting a computer seems like it should be very different than troubleshooting a human body – and it is. The human body has so much going on that we haven’t the faintest clue about, despite centuries of scientific effort. Sometimes we can pin down the cause of a particular ailment; eg. if…
Are you an Owl, an Octopus, or a Meerkat? When something goes wrong on your WordPress site, how do you respond? Take this quick quiz to discover your troubleshooting approach, and get personalized tips to help you handle bugs and errors with grace.
Incomplete and out-of-date documentation is a leading cause of angst and suffering for everyday troubleshooters just trying to make things work. Why is this so frequently a problem? (And how does this relate to a catastrophic attempt to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?)
Humans want to see other humans everywhere. There’s a phenomenon called pareidolia, where people perceive familiar patterns — especially faces — in unrelated or random stimuli. It’s why you might imagine you see a face in the knots of a tree, in some stormy clouds, or in the burn marks on a piece of toast….
I am super proud to announce that WordPress Troubleshooting Demystified is online and alive and ready for you to explore. This course distills my 30 years of website experience and 15 years of WordPress to help you solve WordPress errors and bugs without the confusion and stress. The aim of this course is to give…
It doesn’t matter whether you’re Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, a Boomer, or one of the Silent Generation: I’ve heard complaints from all ages about how using a computer just doesn’t come naturally to them. For many people, there’s a sense of shame to this (specifically, tech shame), like it’s a personal failing. Shall we…
As long as we’re working with technology in any form, there’s no getting around the occasional technical glitch or failure, like your email refusing to load or an app that keeps crashing when you try to load it. Even the most robust software or hardware is going to have some hiccups from time to time….
When I was working at a web design agency in the late 90’s in New York in the middle of the dot-com boom, we would occasionally get resumés from older people with no experience building websites, with backgrounds in FORTRAN or COBOL. We were young and thought we were very cool and had a fun…