The Tortoise and the Hare. A few of our auditors have asked where we've been lately. In the webshop, dear reader, in the WebShop. We've completed several major projects, including our new Real Estate Forum and layouts for two new websites, one for our long-time client Brian Dwyer. We've also created a new issue of our newsletter, the PC News, which used to be distributed by "snail mail" and is now published by email and on the web. You can request an email copy from our autoresponder or read it online. Hope you find it interesting; we'd be glad to have your comments!
We finally got out of the "shop" for a few hours yesterday and visited Doc Audio-Video, our associated repair shop in Queens, and several clients, including one whose many referrals helped the Installations Plus+ division of SERVENET.COM get off the ground. We were reminded several times during the day of the Aesop fable about the tortoise and the hare. In the fable, which inspired the new Van Cortlandt Park sculpture in the photograph at right, the slow-moving tortoise accepts the speedy hare's challenge to race and wins by plodding past the boastful hare, who thought he could nap mid-course and still be victorious. (There's an interesting set of Aesop's fables that resulted from a class project for the Introduction to Computing in the Fine Arts course at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.)
When we got to Doc Audio, Rob one of the two principals was working on a VCR, much like the one we photographed there earlier when testing the close-up capability of a new camera. (What you see in the photo at left is the heads, lower left-hand corner, and a portion of the transport mechanism.) Doc Audio-Video is one of the few repair shops left in the New York area that continues to be ethical and successful. With the cost of new equipment dropping almost daily, this is a difficult feat because replacement is rapidly becoming more economical than repair for almost all electronic equipment.
What makes Doc Audio-Video work is the partnership of a hare, that's Rick seen in the foreground at right, and a tortoise, that's Rob in the background (no offense to either of you guys). Rick Whitley, whom I've known and worked with since my Newmark & Lewis days, is one of the smartest and quickest "techs" ever. A no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase guy, he can repair more products in an hour than most techs do in a day -- and, this is the best part, they almost never come back for a "rework"! Fast, almost perfect repairs and good business sense make Rick a hare that proves Aesop wrong: he's a winner! But Rob, the "tortoise" on the Doc Audio team, is no loser. Rob, who is also a very competent tech, but not quite as speedy as Rick, wins by exercising people-power. Rob's patience, understanding, and empathy make everyone in the neighborhood feel like "the doctor is always in" at Doc Audio. You have to see Rob deal with an impecunious elder citizen whose heating pad (circa 1929?) needs a new line cord. Really special! Now you know why we go out of our way to be "associated" with a shop located in Queens when there are no fewer than five within jogging distance of our Manhattan offices.
The other "stop" yesterday that reminded us of Aesop's fable was at the end of the day, when we looked in on one of our first Installations Plus+ clients. There we enjoyed the company of our client's eight year old son, who shows every sign of becoming a first-rate computer programmer! This young man, whom we'll call "Bill" to preserve his anonymity, is quick, bright, engaging, and thinks computers are just "too sweet". Bill took an active role in trying to search the Internet for a new driver to make his sound card work with the voice-activation program he had purchased (with his own money) and installed. When that failed, he moved on quickly to learning how to download software from FTP sites and how to unzip and install anti-punter software (used in chat rooms to foil wise guys that zap participants offline). Don't understand what Bill was doing? Not to worry. Bill's a winning hare that will be teaching all of us in a few years! He's already helping our client, the tortoise in this tale, to become more "computer literate".
On the next page we'll meet a hare that cares -- Dr. Drew Pinsky! 
