The minute I was exposed to my first personal computer in high school, I became a computer geek. Gone were the dreams of archeology, oceanography and mad scientist/freehand artist. I’ve been a computer geek for the majority of my life… and I’m damned good at it.

Whenever someone who knows of me has a computer question, they ask me. In a weeks time I can get calls from acquaintances, friends, family members, family’s family members and complete strangers. Relatives I haven’t seen in YEARS line their computers up (and their kids’ computers, their friends’ computers etc) when I come around. Recently, when I visited family in NYC I don’t think there was a place I went that I didn’t wind up working on someone’s computer.

Reason: because I’m damned good at it.

It’s my profession, my calling and my hobby.

Whatever company I work for, it doesn’t matter what networking setup they’re running, what computers they have or software they run… I quickly master it. Before too long there’s a line at my desk, as if I was the only support person there, despite being surrounded by colleagues. My multi-tasking abilities are strong, I routinely help people standing in front of me while talking on the phone and remotely helping multiple others as easily and as focused as if I was just helping a single person.

It’s not arrogance, ego or hubris that I state what others have come to know wherever I go. I am a computer geek and I’m damned good at it.

Hardware software or network problems, they’re all the same to me. I can tear apart a computer and rebuild/ repair / upgrade it in my sleep; as well as track down, troubleshoot and fix any and all software or operating system problems your home or work setup can throw at me.

It’s not just my experience and knowledge that keeps people asking for my help; it’s also that I lack the ego and false sense of superiority that’s all too common in my IT colleagues. My sole purpose is to help as many people as fast and as best as I can. That’s my job and my life. I’ve never lost sight of that and never will.

And I’m damned good at it.

(That and I still have my soul.)

About a week ago my childhood re-asserted itself and compelled me to purchase a few boxes of HONEYCOMBS cereal (which, come to think of it is the least embarrassing thing my childhood has done to me.)

I was anticipating the joy of chomping into the large, fake honeycomb-shaped cereal with the big big bite, as I poured my first bowl in years. As I watched each bit dance, cavort and sashay out of the box; leaping joyously into my bowl, I was overcome with sugary, sweet, child-like anticipation… until I looked down into the freaking bowl.

WTF?! (look it up and figure it out)

My jaw dropped, my child inside died and my heart skipped 37 beats (to be exact). Are my eyes deceiving me, I thought as I looked stunned into my bowl of ex-childhood delight.

THEY SHRUNK MY %&*^#@!ING HONEYCOMBS?!

Seriously, the big big taste with the big big bite seemed a LOT smaller than I remembered. One of the greatest tragedy in breakfast cereal that I can recall, besides the Let’s Make Corn Pops Look Like Sickle Cell Anemia debacle of this century.

Perhaps it was my imagination, maybe they didn’t change the size of these now dwarf-looking micro honeycombed imposter’s lying deceptively in my bowl. So I did some research as I poured the milk, spooned some of the traitors into my disappointed, gaping maw and discovered that they suck. Seems that they changed the %^$#@!ing ingredients too!

Wikipedia’s entry on Honeycombs Cereal states: “recently, Bran Blend (whole grain corn flour and corn bran) has been added to the ingredient list. This has tripled the fiber content. Aficionados of Honeycomb cereal were able to immediately taste the difference. Post registered many calls of complaints from Honeycomb fans after the change. While many Honeycomb fans have been assuaged with the following change, some insist the original flavor is superior.”

Of this I have to things to say:

1. Hell, yes we noticed it sucks
2. Good vs suck. GOOD ALWAYS IS SUPERIOR TO SUCK YOU MORONS! (all obvious and non-obvious sex jokes avoided)

After I calmed down, I decided to write Kraft, the maker of the now ruined, smaller and tastes like suck Honeycombs to voice my displeasure. Actually, after reading all the background of the taste change (away from and now to suck) and realizing there was nothing even I could do about it, I really wanted to know the answer to my first question: did they make Honeycombs smaller.

So I wrote Kraft foods the following email:

To: Kraft Foods
Date: 8/26/2007
Subject: Did you make Honeycombs smaller?

I recently purchased a large box of Honeycombs cereal and was surprised that the cereal pieces are much smaller than I remember. Are they smaller than they used to be?

And this was their reply the next day:

To: Vincent Navarino
Date: 08/27/2007
Subject: Re: Did you make Honeycombs smaller?
Thank you for visiting http://www.kraftfoods.com/.

I’m sorry to hear about your experience with POST, HONEYCOMB, Crunchy Sweetened Corn and Oat Cereal. Since we fell short of your expectations, I’m sending you reimbursement via first class mail which you should receive within 7-10 business days.

We value the quality of our products and give careful attention to each step of preparation and packaging in our manufacturing process. Samples from each production run are evaluated before shipment in an effort to prevent any unsatisfactory products from entering distribution.

I hope this information is helpful, and again, I apologize for this experience. Thank you for your loyalty and we hope that your next experience is a good one.

-K M
Associate Director, Consumer Relations
—————————————

A few days later a coupon arrived from Kraft that said it was good for one free box of their products up to $4.49.

Now while my brain started screaming that the person responded did not answer my question (a thing that really ticks me off), my fingers started typing the following email:

To: Ferrari, Porsche, Lambourghini, Rolls-Royce Automobile Manufacturers
From: Vincent Navarino
Subject: Did You Make Your Top of the Line Car smaller?
…

I’ll let you know how they respond

While we were back in NYC, my Favorite Uncle in the Whole Wide World showed my dad his now new, favorite game on my cousin’s spanking, brand-new, expensive high-performance computer; a game that I knew my dad would want to play on his computer. Thankfully the computer I bought my parents 2 Christmases ago was powerful enough to run my father’s latest addiction… Spider Solitaire.

*sigh*

You really don’t know torturous it was to watch my uncle and dad play Spider freaking Solitaire on my cousin’s new $2,000 power-rig, watching their eyes dance with joy as the cards were dealt on the 24″ LCD wide-screen monitor. Games this simplistic, that come with an operating system shouldn’t be allowed on a power-rig, let alone be ran by people who would never tax the computing power of a toaster, let alone a state-of-the-art rig like this. It’s wasteful, it’s humiliating (for the computer) and even worse these two probably think that Spider Solitaire is the coolest game to ever come out on a computer… it’s a crime - or at least it should be.

So anywhoo… as soon as we got home I showed Dad that Spider Solitaire came with his computer too and like always made a shortcut on his desktop so he could run it easily without any trouble. Or calling me. He didn’t even notice that this wasn’t the same version of Spider Solitaire that he was blasphemously running on my cousins powerful Vista-rig, since he has XP… but of course I did.

So naturally while he was endlessly playing Spider Solitaire I started looking into if it was possible to get the Spider Solitaire from Vista to work with XP. Since both OS’s, at least on many levels are the same (save for XP is faster and more stable right now) I figured there had to be a way to do it.

And there is!

So dad is now even more happy than before as he is playing Spider Solitaire from Windows Vista on his XP computer! Hey, it has better graphics, not that he’d notice, but it is cool.

Not only can you get Vista’s Spider Solitaire to work on XP but thanks to this guy you can also run the Windows Vista versions of Minesweeper, Freecell, Hearts, Inkball, Shanghi, Solitaire and Purble Place too.

If my dad likes it, so will you. Run Vista games on XP now!