If you don’t know the username Molson02536, you haven’t been paying attention to FixYa’s homepage. Molson02536 hit the scene in a big way, posting 1242 solutions since debuting in April. He quickly rose to be featured on the Top Expert module on the front page, and has stayed there ever since. Molson02536 has obviously been storing up knowledge and experience for years, but where did it all come from?

Molson02536 hails from Ontario, Canada. He learned his specialty by being around cars all his life, and working in both speed shops and machine shops. The Chevy, Dodge, Ford, GMC, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Toyota Brand Badges he’s earned are testaments to his skill and versatility when it comes to the care and maintenance of all things automotive.

Molson02536’s enthusiasm for cars doesn’t just drive him to help fix cars online, he has also made it his real-life occupation, driving a tour bus around the Canadian countryside. While many professional drivers covet a muscle car or an old classic, Molson02536 thinks his favorite car might come as a surprise to some people. His 1996 GMC Jimmy has earned a special place in his heart after pushing over 425,000 miles with nothing more than a little maintenance to replace worn out parts.

When he’s not on the road, Molson02536 likes to get out to the speed shop to work on his cars and maintain the bus. But it was actually his inability to get to the speed shop one rainy day that first led to his finding FixYa and signing up as an Expert. Molson02536 loves to answer automotive questions on the site, and as he says “I’m glad to know that I can help many good people here save money that can be used for something else needed in this time of hardship.”

Meet mneilsen2084, i.e. Melissa, one of FixYa’s newest Experts. Melissa has only just finished her first month on FixYa, yet she has already chalked up an impressive 271 solutions and has even earned her Apple Brand Badge. But it comes as no surprise that Melissa is a true Guru regarding all things Apple, since she was actually trained by the company when she worked for them. In fact, it is her experience working for Apple that got her interested in computer-based technology and started on the path to becoming the stellar Expert she is today.

Melissa’s time at Apple didn’t just get her interested in computing, it moved her to make some major life decisions- like majoring in Computer Networking at college in Boise, Idaho. As she puts it “I realized within the first two months [of working at Apple] that I needed to make a career out of being tech savvy.” She’s obviously making a hobby out of being tech savvy too, helping hundreds of people on FixYa and earning an amazing 89.4% average rating.

FixYa was lucky enough to catch Melissa’s eye when she was surfing the web one night. She realized that there were people that she could help with their iPod and iTunes issues and she was excited “to be a part of the solutions made available to people through the site.” Melissa’s favorite things to troubleshoot are software issues on Apple products, but she is also fully able to walk someone through repairing hardware issues with their iPods as well. Her solutions are just fantastic, and it’s very obvious that she has a real insider’s knowledge of Apple products. When we see a solution like this, we can’t help but thing that maybe we should open up an Apple Guru Bar.

Because he’s not a “Lounge Lizard” and rarely answers Premium Questions, Joed911 can be easy to overlook. That is, he’s easy to overlook for those who don’t need help with their printers (or computers, computer accessories, PDAs, routers, and wireless adapters). For those who have come to FixYa because they do need assistance with one of those products, Joed911 is their knight in shining armor, a beacon of hope, and an unmistakable presence on the site.

Joed911 has been on FixYa for just about eight months now. In that time he has assisted an amazing 1764 users and has earned Brand Badges from HP, Acer, Apple, Belkin, Canon, Compaq, Dell, Kodak, Lexmark, Linksys, Toshiba, and Brother. It’s no surprise that Joed911 is a professional technician. What is surprising is that this business owner gives away the vast majority of his advice for free.

Joed911 is a Puerto Rican who was raised in New Jersey and now makes his home in Nashville, Tennessee. He served 11 years in the US Navy and did a tour in Vietnam. He received most of his electronic training while in the Navy and recalls working on computer mainframes “back when they were programmed from the front panel by setting a row of 64 switches.”

Following his military career, Joed911 worked with a well know computer manufacturer as a Field Service Tech. He gained experience servicing anything and everything associated with computers and peripherals. He wonders if anyone else remembers “the days of DOS [and] SCO Xenix, before Windows came along.”

After 18 years in that field Joed911 and his wife, an expert software consultant, started their own company- Core Technologies LLC. They do computer repair, web design, and host websites, databases, email and file servers. According to Joed911, “technology is not only my business but it is also one of my hobbies. Since 1976 it has been a part of my life and I must say, it has been good to me.”

Joed911’s other hobbies include racquetball and volleyball (he especially enjoys besting 20 and 30 year olds) as well as travelling. Speaking of far off places, one of Joed911’s favorite FixYa moments was when a grateful user from Serbia thanked him for his assistance. He says that he thought to himself, “WOW! All the way from Serbia!”

According to Joed911, “it is great to be living in this ever-changing technological world, where every day one is faced with a challenge, whether it is to fix a mechanical or electronic problem or try to figure out why the software went rouge. I have been blessed with this knowledge and I am glad to be able to help out the FixYa community.”

Thanks Joed911, for all your hard work and for embodying the FixYa spirit!

SolutionGuy signed up as an Expert in July of 2007. He was active through the end of 2007, but visited FixYa infrequently in 2008. In 2009 he’s come back in a big way, and we couldn’t be happier. SolutionGuy’s work is, in a word, dazzling. As a long-time technician and master of many trades, he knows exactly what his assistance is worth. Yet he gives it away every day, free of charge. As he puts it, “I realized that I was actually helping people. People like me (when I was almost destitute) barely paying the bills and living on peanut butter and bread. I wanted to help.”

SolutionGuy is able to give assistance in a variety of fields thanks to the wide range of vocations in his past. He has worked as a Journeyman Electrician, hydraulic system tech (in the Air Force), pipefitter, millwright, and an EPA-licensed air conditioner repairman. These fields may seem unrelated, but for SolutionGuy, they all flowed into one another quite naturally.

While training as a Journeyman Electrician, SolutionGuy had a revelation that electricity and gasses flowed like fluid. That led to the decision to work in pneumatic/hydraulic repair and maintenance when he later joined the Air Force. When he needed a change of scenery, the mechanical experience that he got working on F-16 Falcons (among other things) led to his choice to become a pipefitter working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. SolutionGuy was well prepared for the mechanical requirements of his new profession, but blindsided by the math involved. He ultimately had to give himself a crash course in Algebra and Trigonometry, all while working 14-hour shifts. In 1995, he got a job as a millwright at an iron foundry. This required him to call upon all of the skills he had learned in his previous vocations- electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, pipefitting, and blueprint and ISO reading. Being a millwright meant spending many nights out in the cold maintaining equipment crucial to the foundry’s operation. SolutionGuy was getting tired of the heavy, physically demanding work. He decided that this time around, he’d attempt to work a little smarter.

So SolutionGuy went back to school to get his EPA license to repair air conditioners. It was a grueling two days of classes (and he arrived late on the first one) before he earned his “Universal” license from the EPA. I don’t know if that’s a tribute to my tenacity, or a mark against the EPA on their stupidity,” he muses. Then came another realization- SolutionGuy wasn’t 25 anymore. His back had been injured in a 1997 car accident, leaving him unable to keep climbing up into attics to repair air ducts. After a lot of thought he chose to repair appliances, because that work combined all of his previous experience into a physically low-impact service that he could perform with minimal difficulty.

All this hard work and pressure formed a diamond. SolutionGuy now answers free questions exclusively, but he doesn’t compromise service just because there is no money in it for him. He has been known to spend over a month going back and forth with a user, troubleshooting an especially tricky problem. SolutionGuy combines detailed and well-written advice, annotated diagrams created specifically for the user’s problem, and an encouraging and supportive manner. He even employs humor in his solutions, letting funny images of Yoda or the Bride of Frankenstein lift the user’s spirits. However, no funny images were necessary to lift our spirits- SolutionGuy did that just by being the fabulous Expert that he is.

Congratulations to Ginko, FixYa’s first-ever Expert to post 10,000 solutions! Ginko has helped an average of 23 people a day, every day, for the past 14 months. And his are no run-of-the-mill solutions- Ginko isn’t just one of FixYa’s most prolific Experts, he has also consistently been one of the very best. He’s been a blessing, both for the people he has helped as well as for FixYa’s staff, who know that they can depend on him to always provide top-notch assistance to our customers and users.

Ginko brought a wide range of skills to FixYa and has also learned some new ones while working on the site, comparing his time here to a year of college courses. He now specializes in a wide assortment of products, from computers to cars to coffeemakers. He takes pride in all of his many successful resolutions and finds it hard to pick a favorite solution or customer.

In his time here, Ginko has become one of FixYa’s most prominent personalities. He has been a voice of reason and a champion of those who might have otherwise been overlooked or mistreated. He hasn’t been afraid to speak out against the crowd or stick out his neck for the sake of someone else, something that is both admired and appreciated.

As our most experienced Expert, Ginko’s advice to other Experts should carry great weight. He points out the importance of sticking to areas where you can really help. But as someone who has expanded his own Areas of Expertise while on FixYa, he understands that Experts can also use this forum as an opportunity to branch out to new fields. He advises any Expert working in a new field to carefully verify any advice they give. He also cautions against blindly trusting information found online, unless it is from the manufacturer’s site or reported by several reliable sources.

Ginko says that he has reduced the amount of time he spends on his many other activities, and admits to probably spending too much time on FixYa. FixYa begs to differ. With great power comes great responsibility, and while Ginko’s friends and family surely miss him, there’s a world full of people who desperately need his help!

On behalf of FixYa, its staff, users, and community- Thank you, Ginko.