Do you sell your expertise or is this blog it?

Of course, I need to feed my geek offspring! In all seriousness, I do have my own business, IT Liberty LLC. I started that back in 1999 providing hosting, domain names, dialup, email etc. The bulk of the business was dialup back then, but now has been concentrating primarily on code writing and consulting as I have made the decision not to get into the highly competitive DSL market.

I have used sites like guru.com to bid out side jobs, but again that is very competitive as many business owners are rooked into the low hourly bid and get robbed in the end. I have had so many clients tell me that in the end it was cheaper to get it done right with me than to wait forever as someone overseas muddled through it. One client in particular actually gave the same job to myself and an overseas company. My hourly rate was 3 times higher, however I provided a ceiling price (as I always do) whereas their's was open-ended.

To make a long story short, the overseas company extended the project twice. I wrapped up in the agreed timeframe and ended up considerably cheaper. The client later stated that it was about a 1 hr (me) to 4 hrs (them) ratio. So I was actually cheaper - not to mention I provided fully commented code (at his request) for ease of integration as his ultimate goal was to hire a fulltime coder.

All of this to say that yes, I do sell code, services, etc. What you will find at http://www.askthecomputergeek.com/code.php are chunks of code anyone can easily integrate into their site. I am currently building this portion of the site, but the most popular piece I am always getting requests for is there - cheap! It is authentication code and not some thrown together code, but rather a MD5 hashed, session based authentication system to create easily a "members" type of area within your own site.

There will be more to come so check it out or feel free to get in touch with me from the contact page at the same site - http://www.askthecomputergeek.com/contact_us.php.

What is a geek?

From the wiki: The word "geek" has recently come to be used to refer to a person who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination, usually electronic or virtual in nature.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word geek as "1: a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat or snake 2: a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked 3: an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity".

I like the wiki definition better as I have yet to bite the head off of a chicken, bat or snake alive or dead. I don't think I would say that I am disliked, well not by that many people - well, not by people that don't know me anyway - well, I guess somewhat disliked, but not by stereotype only because I want them to.

I am okay with the ethusiast or expert part, but that would have to be used loosely because in this industry I have learned that there are few general experts. Mostly, you can have expertise in a certain component of the vast industry, but rarely a wide-spectrum expert of computers and the Internet.

So I like the wiki, fascinated by knowledge and imagination of this generation of the Net. I have a hard time resting if a solution has yet to be found to an issue. Writing code becomes my Sudoku of choice in trying to figure out the puzzle and in many cases there are numerous ways to accomplish any single thing. That is what makes it so fascinating!