Dave gave himself the title Dr. Dave, half seriously. He told his brother how much he enjoyed helping people and easing their anxiety, and the work often felt more like being a doctor or a counselor than a consultant. For years he made house calls on people's sick computers.
He came to the work already wary of the industry. As a young man selling computers, he watched customers who had been delighted on the day of purchase return with problems their vendors would not or could not solve. He shared their frustration, and he spent the rest of his career trying to cut through the hype and marketing that set people up for that disappointment. He called himself the Anti-Geek.
When he set down what his consulting business was for, he started with people:
To research, learn and teach principles and techniques that allow people to use computers more creatively, productively and profitably.
Beneath it came four objectives. The first was “to advance the understanding of the importance of people in the human/technology equation.” Another was to develop support resources “that promote the self-sufficiency of computer users.” He wanted his clients to need him less as time went on, and he put that in writing.
His method grew out of that. “There is no set formula,” he wrote, for selecting, installing and supporting computers successfully. Before recommending anything, he wanted to understand the business in front of him: its goals and plans, its people and finances, how the work actually flowed, and what both management and the people at the desks needed and expected. He took a close look at existing systems, in his words “not just computer systems.” Most of his clients were small businesses of a hundred employees or fewer, though over the years they ranged from one person operations to large companies, along with plenty of households.
He looked for the human side of a problem first. Writing about a well known email account that had been broken into by someone who simply guessed answers from public information, he passed along a saying from the trade: “No matter what they say, it's always a people problem.” He liked to point out that a computer can only do what it was programmed to do, so when one went wrong, a person somewhere was usually behind it. He never held that against whoever was sitting in front of him.
No problem was too small for him. If the fix was as simple as turning the computer off and on again, he gave that person the same respect as the hardest job of his week, and he explained what had happened so they would understand it next time. He had a gift for taking a tangled technical problem and putting it in words anyone could follow. When he listed what good communication required, he named “facts, solutions, value, credibility and respect.” In his eyes, not knowing something was never the problem. Pretending was:
It's no sin to be inexperienced or ignorant. Not everyone can be an expert at everything. It is a problem to pretend you are an expert just because you think you know how things “ought” to work.
He was generous about the limits of expertise, his own included. He once passed along a technology writer's frustrated account of battling a phone, adding that it “makes you feel a little less stupid when an expert has such struggles.” Describing a do it yourself technique that still called for some care, he quipped, “Still some care and understanding required, but hey, that's what I'm for!”
When he didn't know something, he went and learned it. Data recovery became part of his work because his clients needed it, and he taught himself the craft the way he taught himself everything else. He wouldn't quit until a problem was solved, and he described himself that way on a day his website was down and there was nothing he could do about it: “I'm a fixer. I like to get into the mess and figure it out and solve the problem.” Once it came back up, he admitted he couldn't think of anything on his end to keep it from happening again, and asked his readers, “Any ideas?”
Persistence had its costs, and he knew it. In a 2009 post about knowing when to stop, he reflected:
It is not a skill that comes natural for me. Whatever success I've enjoyed generally came by beating things to death. Just shear determination and stick-to-it-iveness. That's an important trait too, but knowing when to move on is a real advantage.
He was just as candid about what he hadn't yet proved. He would recommend a tool and note in the same breath, “I haven't fully tested it.” He tried to break new software on purpose before praising it, and even when it held up, he cautioned that a couple of weeks on one machine “isn't a very comprehensive test.” When something he had recommended failed him badly, he returned to his own post and put a warning at the top.
The same caution guided his data recovery work. On the pages for that service he stated plainly, “There is no ‘magic’ capable of recovering the data from all kinds of drives.” He worked from a copy of a failing drive so the rescue attempt itself wouldn't destroy what the client hoped to save. He told stories on himself, too, like the time as a beginner when he ran an unfamiliar utility on a brand new drive, wiped it, and spent a week recovering his data. His advice afterward was brief: “If in doubt, don't!”
Repair came naturally to someone who wanted to understand what had gone wrong. He approached computers carefully and analytically, tracking down the actual fault before reaching for a replacement part, and he kept twenty year old machines running for people who still depended on them. He had a soft spot for old equipment in general and liked to say things were built better back then.
He believed the price of something should match the value it delivered. That is why he loved good free software and had little use for buying something just because it was new. “It's new, it's neat, you need to buy it. NOT!” he wrote. He had watched an industry train customers to buy out of fear of seeming behind. “We couldn't explain why we needed it,” he observed, “but we needed it.” Of one heavily promoted trend, he told his readers, “We live in a world of hype. Don't be a volunteer.”
He was realistic about people as well as products, and he knew a plan was only as good as someone's willingness to keep it up. After recommending several layers of backup, he added, “keep it as simple as possible or you won't do it consistently.” He favored approaches to time and task management that were disciplined but flexible, used in a way “that benefits but doesn't enslave.”
Over the years his view of technology itself shifted. Computers were tools to him, interesting and fun, and he didn't think they should run anyone's life. In 2013 he looked back on two decades of promoting the productive use of technology and wrote:
Now I find myself evangelizing for the judicious use of technology, and the importance of limiting that use so that we can live as humans must live to be fulfilled.
Social networking, he argued, was no replacement for real relationships, and he counted the spiritual side of a person among the things no device could supply. His own working life ran on relationships. An eighty year old widow living on Social Security got the same man as a millionaire with a house in the foothills, and in practice he treated nearly everyone like his best friend. Dozens of clients became longtime friends, and some became his closest. People called him for help with a DVR remote, a Bluetooth speaker or a voicemail setup, with no computer involved, and he helped them. He was never comfortable charging large sums and often billed less than the work was worth, so much so that friends, family and some customers spent years persuading him that he was worth as much as anyone else doing the same job. He loved working for his clients, and he used to say it was like they paid him to hang out with them.