About Joe
I’m Joe Rhodes. I’m a self-employed computer consultant for businesses in Madison, WI. I work on all types of computers, with an emphasis on making Macintosh computers work well. I’ve been working on Macs since 1995.
I am a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a degree in Communication Science. At first blush, that may seem somewhat disconnected from what I do for a living. But if you give it some thought, computers are essentially tools of communication. And it seems that so many ‘experts’ don’t know how to communicate about these tools with anyone besides an ‘expert’.
I have a general philosophy that computers should ‘just work’, and you shouldn’t have to go through strange acrobatics to get what you want done. I often find that the biggest obstacle for users trying to learn any new topic (of which computers are just one) is a starting belief that “it’s just too hard–I’ll never get it.” I try to approach things with a positive and helpful attitude so folks will feel more encouraged to explore and learn on their own.
Besides Macs, I have a strong affinity for Linux, and I’ve been working with it since 1998 with MkLinux. (If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry.) I use it regularly to set up servers for my clients, doing every thing from sharing files, to serving up e-mail, to filtering web pages for viruses and other yuckiness. (Yup! Technical term.) I also work plenty with Windows based PC’s, making them behave nicely in a network setting.
Most of all, I suppose you could say that I love learning and I love teaching. And with computers, there’s always plenty of both to be done.
