Newsletter Archives

• Who are you?

  Posted on February 27, 2023 at 02:42 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  EDITORIAL

  

  By Will Fastie

  Here are a few things we learned from this year’s reader survey.

  First, many thanks to the large number of readers who took the time to complete our 2023 reader survey. Your response is very gratifying and greatly appreciated.

  Although we can’t share every detail of our results, and we haven’t published them in the previous two years, we now feel we have enough information to present the basics.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.09.0, 2023-02-27).

  Editorial Newsletters, Readership survey

• Lunch with Brian

  Posted on February 6, 2023 at 02:42 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  EDITORIAL

  

  By Will Fastie

  Brian Livingston was on the East Coast a few weeks ago and took the opportunity to make a side trip to Baltimore.

  Brian called in advance to set up the meeting, saying he preferred to meet the people he was working with face to face. He graciously paid his own way, and we had a nice afternoon.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.06.0, 2023-02-06).

  Editorial Brian Livingston, History, Max Oppenheimer, Newsletters

• How our little business is run

  Posted on November 28, 2022 at 02:44 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  FROM THE EDITOR

  

  By Will Fastie

  The operation of a small business isn’t usually the subject of a paper in the Harvard Business Review.

  Neither is AskWoody Tech LLC.

  In one of our regular and routine conversations, Susan and I talked about our respective operational roles, the things we regularly do, and — more to the point — the technology we use every day. The surprise was that despite common links, we do dramatically different things.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.48.0, 2022-11-28).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Editorial Editorial, Newsletters

• A lifetime of achievement

  Posted on May 2, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.18 • 2022-05-02

  EDITORIAL

  

  By Will Fastie

  We are pleased — and excited — to announce the creation of the TameYourTech Crystal award.

  We are even more pleased to present the inaugural award to Fred Langa for his lifetime of achievement in the field of personal computing journalism.

  As a further celebration of Fred’s career, we are happy to bring all our newsletter readers four of Fred’s LangaList columns, previously available only to Plus members.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.18.0, 2022-05-02).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Editorial AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Crystal Award, TameYourTech Awards

• Reflecting on 2021

  Posted on December 27, 2021 at 02:43 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  EDITORIAL

  

  By Will Fastie

  We’re still alive.

  Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m not talking about the pandemic or my age. I’m talking about this venerable newsletter. Lest there be any doubt, I knew we’d make it this far. In fact, we have a future.

  I’d like to share some of my thoughts about this first year of AskWoody under its new management. As I mention these things, I’d like you to reflect on this year and let us know how you think we’re doing.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.50.0 (2021-12-27).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Editorial AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Editorial

• Not getting the Free Newsletter?

  Posted on December 7, 2021 at 07:49 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  We’re in the process of scrubbing our mailing list for the free edition of the AskWoody Newsletter. We took some initial steps this past weekend and we will be making some other changes in the coming weeks. Most of what we are doing is removing invalid email addresses (usually the result of misspellings such as “gmal” instead of “gmail”) and removing addresses that, for whatever reasons, are not being delivered.

  A few people expecting to get this week’s newsletter wrote to tell us it did not arrive. We regret any inconvenience. However, it’s a simple matter to sign up for the free newsletter again, after which delivery will resume. The link to sign up is in the top banner of the site, on every page. If you missed an issue, all the issues are here on the site and available to you at any time.

  This is important work for us because we pay for emails sent, whether delivered or not. We appreciate your patience while we perform this business chore.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, Editorial AskWoody FREE Newsletter, Email

• 20 years ago

  Posted on September 11, 2021 at 20:39 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  (USA centric post)

  

  My first airplane flight to San Francisco – back when you dressed up for airline travel

  I’ve always been a fan of travelling. Cars, Trains, Planes. The anticipation is part of the fun. And with planes I’ve always been amazed at how this metal heavy thing can start down this pavement and magically lift off and …well…. fly. When an impressive plane flew over my house as a child, I’d stop.  I’d look up and marvel at the technology that the Wright Brothers had started us down the road to have. Being on the West coast of the Country my only complaint about flying is that I wish we would invent time travelling as I have to get up extremely early to take flights heading east.  Over time I got lulled into taking the sights and sounds of an Airplane taking off as normal and wouldn’t bother to stop and look up.

  What I remember from the days after 20 years ago was the quiet in the days after. I live in an area of my city where the planes typically take off over my head regularly. When the wind shifts and rain is forecasted the planes come in for landing over my house. I work next to the Airport so the sounds of planes taking off and landing is a normal sound that normally I take for granted and tend to tune out. So when all of the planes flying that day were grounded it went strangely quiet. Very very quiet. For the next few minutes and hours the only planes I heard were ones from our local Air National Guard that initially were scrambling to track and follow planes that were not following the diversion orders. Instead of their lazy oval where they would swing towards the Sierra Nevada mountain range and back to the Airport like they would normally do, they went due West to the Coast.

  For the next several days and nights the only jet sounds I heard was the air national guard and the after burner boost they’d kick in when climbing to patrol the California coastline. Needless to say it was eerie to just hear those jets and no other Airplane in the sky. No Cessnas, no Commercial Jets, no Propellers.

  I knew of several folks that were at an industry conference that had to scramble to find ways home (including trains and cars) because planes were grounded for several days. When the airline traffic got back to “normal” several days later, that 6 a.m United flight that took off over my house made me pause once again and look up. It was honestly reassuring to hear that flight take off.

  So as we come up to the 20th anniversary, I’m looking at the technological aspects of the anniversary. Some of the iconic historical coverage is now lost due to the loss of Flash in our browsers. We now have much more technology than we did back then to be able to communicate with each other (some might argue that social media is not such a good thing).

  The loss of life is incalculable. But I also grieve at the loss we have now of how the Internet is dividing us more than it should.  On this anniversary take the time to stop. Look up the next time you see an Airplane. Marvel at the technology it now uses to be where it’s at. But at the same time, enjoy life. Because you never know.

  (Note: I’m skipping the tasks for the weekend in honor of the anniversary – I’m doing step by step posts on setting up EaseUS and Macrium to make sure you do a backup before the upcoming patching week.)

   

   

  Editorial Patch Lady Posts

• AskWoody Improvements

  Posted on April 5, 2021 at 01:08 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  EDITORIAL

  

  By Will Fastie, Editor

  We continue to make changes to AskWoody, to make it easier and faster for you to use.

  Susan Bradley and I have been subscribers to AskWoody and its predecessors from the get-go. And we’ve both been contributors, Susan for a very long time and I for about a year. We’ve been on the outside looking in, but that’s been reversed: we’re now the ones behind the curtain.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.12.0 (2021-04-05).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 18.12.F (2021-04-05).

  AskWoody, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Editorial AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Editorial