Welcome Kris Raikes, our new IT warrior, to Compass Rose Media. A few interesting things about Kris with a K:
Welcome, Kris with a K! Let’s start with the obvious – from where do you hail?
All over. I’ve lived in 8 states, 4 major cities. Most recently, Washington state.
Portland?
Portland, LA, Salt Lake City, Chicago…
Nickname?
Frosty. Because I used to wear frosted jeans.
Wow, frosted jeans?
Yeah… but no one can choose their nickname. They’re chosen for you. Frosty is better than my previous one, Flip.
Flip? Do we wanna know?
Probably not.
So, what’s the oddest or grossest thing you’ve ever eaten?
Grossest, billy goat and tripe. Oddest – in DC I ate a grasshopper taco. It was crunchy.
Wow, was it stick-to-your-teeth-like-popcorn-hulls crunchy?
Yeeeeaahh…it was kinda like that. Good sauce though.
How did you get into IT?
Well, I wanted to be the super graphics guy but somehow I got turned loose on a system at Washington State, to troubleshoot/fix stuff and it just happened. I came into it as a hobbyist, learning along the way, and getting to be somewhat of a detective.
So you enjoy the detective bits?
I do. I read this old book from the 70s, a fictionalized account of how this guy tracked and caught German spies, working up a system to track keystrokes on a dot-matrix printer, among other tactics. Old school techniques. It’s interesting to be at a level where I can understand what he set up and how he did it.
So you’ve been into computers for quite some time, then?
I’ve been drawn to the “computing” lifestyle, for lack of a better word, since reading William Gibson’s Cyberpunk novels. Nothing’s that interesting in real life, of course, but we’re almost there. I’d like to ride on a Rastafarian spaceship.
I’ll bet you’ve heard some funny stuff, working IT.
Well, I’m reminded of a favorite show if mine, The IT Crowd. The redundancy, the same problems over and over…there’s a character on the show who has a machine answering his work phone with stock answers – “Did you turn it off and on?” “Is it plugged in?” I can relate – it’s usually the same problem over and over and the answer is usually simple.
Favorite podcast?
TEKzilla Revision 3.
Know how to swear in binary?
No, but that would be really cool, though.