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Got computer problems? Call a geek

By Jon Davis Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Sunday, December 12, 2004

Do they sit around a decrepit, defunct firehouse adorned with posters of Louis, Gilbert, Booger and the rest of the "Revenge of the Nerds" gang, eating Chinese food with the last of the petty cash and waiting for the phone to ring?

Not hardly.

These are 21st century geeks: computer gurus on call to help businesses and regular folks install wireless networks and firewalls, disinfect hard drives tainted by viruses and spyware, and translate the techno-babble that comes hand-in-byte with our modern age.

Mike Smith of Naperville, for example, arrives at his first house call of the day looking more like a Man in Black than a pocket-protector-equipped nerd. He steps out of a black Chrysler PT Cruiser bearing the "Geeks on Call" logo and phone number. He's wearing a black leather coat and wrap-around sunglasses, and carrying a gray soft-cover tool case.

Others, like David Howard of Algonquin, say using the word "geek" is just a corporate marketing ploy. He and business partner John Kasinger are businessmen, Howard said, just trying to keep the customers satisfied with their six-month-old computer service company, Coherent Computer Solutions.

Some, like Smith, are former information technology employees laid off after the dot com bubble burst at the turn of the century. Others, like Howard, found IT jobs are paying much less than in the 1990s.

Regardless of their reasons, many are opting to make a business out of what they'd already been doing - helping friends and family with computer problems.

"Computers really are appliances now, like a microwave oven. People know how to press start, but if something's wrong, they say, 'What do I do?'" Howard said.

That's the question that brought Smith to the door of Linda Bowman's house in Roselle on a sunny Friday morning.

She needed a wireless network installed so she and her three teenage children can share a pair of computers. Her son began the job but couldn't finish, so she called Geeks on Call after hearing a radio ad.

Mission accomplished

A gray Sony Vaio computer sits on the dining room table as Bowman listens to Smith explain the services he'll provide and the estimated time and cost.

Her assent given, Smith is off and running: downstairs to check on a connection, then back upstairs to the dining room.

After checking to make sure the dining room computer's motherboard (its main circuit board) has a slot available for a wireless network Ethernet card - a smaller circuit board that allows computers to talk to each other in networks - he installs the card and plugs a small antenna into a port on the card's metallic plate.

The Ethernet card establishes both networking and physical systems allowing various parts of the computer to electronically speak to each other. As for how it works, "it's a mystery," Smith joked.

"It's all voodoo and magic," he said. "I keep the chicken bones in the car."

Smith disappears into the basement again, to create an encryption code that should protect the Bowmans' new wireless network from being attacked by drive-by hackers - people who drive around with wireless-equipped laptops looking for networks to access.

At the very least, hackers are looking for free high-speed Internet access, Smith said. At worst, they could use their access to steal private and financial information from a stranger's computer.

Smith and the Bowmans also discuss the importance of anti-virus programs. Smith is happy to see one up and running, and advises Bowman to keep her program's subscription current and regularly updated. She doesn't have to be told twice.

"The one downstairs, we couldn't even turn it on," she said, recalling a previous infection. "It was that bad."

Smith said he's not surprised. On most of his service calls, he disinfects computers.

Encryption done, Smith goes onto the Internet to see if the wireless network is working. It is, and that's pretty much that for a job that took just over an hour and cost $210.

Smith signed up with Virginia-based Geeks on Call in September, about one month after he was laid off from his job as a software project manager.

While the pay is less than his previous job, he gets to use the company car, which he estimates saves him several thousands of dollars on gas and tolls.

Plus, he says, he actually has a life partly because he's not traveling out of town. In the three years he worked at his last job, "I was home for maybe a year and three or four months of that time," Smith said.

Entrepreneurial spirit

The proliferation of "geek" services is just the good, old American entrepreneurial spirit at work, said Bernard Beck, a sociology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston.

Beck said he started hearing people talk just a few months ago, expressing desire for local, on-call computer services so they didn't have to call tech-help phone numbers "which, if they could get through, they couldn't understand."

And now such services are becoming commonplace, he said.

"I think this is business as usual," Beck said. "It's just people out there hustling. A real tradition."

Beck said he hasn't used geek services yet. Though "I've used the 'friendship network' on occasion," he said.