Featured Experts

FixYa has always been about helping people to reclaim, refurbish, and repair their products rather than purchase new ones. Jsrock516’s story is a quintessential example of that aim. A couple of years ago, he started working in the appliance repair business. He enjoyed working for himself, but he was forced to leave the business because he could no longer deal with having to charge people high labor charges for repairs that he felt they could do themselves if they just had a little guidance. FixYa has provided a forum for this sort of selfless support, and jsrock516 has enjoyed being able to do things like helping a single mother on a fixed income repair her clothes dryer. Jsrock516 is a true altruist, and answers free questions exclusively.

His name might be Emissionwiz, but this Expert is all Guru. With 4463 solutions to his credit, and a whopping 88% average, Emissionwiz has long been one of FixYa’s top Experts. His Areas of Expertise aren’t hard to figure out- cars, pure and simple. Emissionwiz is a graduate of an Air Force electro-mechanical tech school, and his main training was in large diesel-powered electric power plants and aircraft runway arresting gear. After all that, he’s come to hate diesel repair. Thankfully, Emissionwiz also has extensive training in automotive electronics and control systems, and is very skilled at auto and truck repair. He worked for 30 years as a tech for a new car dealer, which he still does part-time. When he’s not working, he likes to build fast cars. He must like to drive them too, because he owns a Corvette. Not surprisingly, he also likes motorsports.

One of the things that make FixYa unique among other crowd-sourcing sites is the fact that our Experts can earn money for their solutions. Yet some Experts are not motivated by monetary rewards. They choose to share their knowledge and expertise without seeking financial gain, answering the unpaid questions and helping people free of charge. Bob from LI is one such Expert, focusing almost exclusively on the free questions. He’s been around for just over a year and has helped 822 people repair their appliances, large and small. As he puts it, “I tear into anything that breaks, just for the fun of it.”

Bob is from Long Island, and learned the appliance trade from his father. His dad was extremely knowledgeable when it came to appliance repairs, teaching it in New York City schools and writing statewide examination questions on the subject. His father taught him how to repair refrigerators and other large appliances, and Bob made money repairing small appliances throughout college.

Like many of FixYa’s Experts, Shuttle83 got his start as a child, destroying his family’s appliances. But unlike most young Experts-to-be, Shuttle83 was actually able to repair what he broke. As he reminisces, “when I was about 9 or 10, I took my father’s TV apart. When he found out what I had done he told me I had one day to put it back together, or I was in for the spanking of my life. So I put the TV back together and it worked. He came into the room and started laughing. He then told me that the set had not worked in two years and he was just using it as book stand.”

Shuttle83 pursued his innate talent, reading books on electronics and taking radio and TV repair courses in high school. After college, he got his CET Certifications in Consumer and Communication Electronics, and his FCC Licenses in Radiotelephony and Ship RADAR. He worked for a number of companies and eventually ended up at Verizon where he worked his way up to the position of Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. As if that job weren’t enough, he’s also the CEO and Chief Technologist of Electron-Age Technologies LLC. Having accumulated so much experience, he’s come to think of himself as a “technical Swiss Army knife.”

At times, FixYa can seem like a boys’ club. However, there are a number of ladies on our site proving that women can do it every bit as well as the men. One such Expert is Techjuli. Techjuli has only been on our site since November, but she’s already impressed staff and Experts alike with her intelligence, knowledge, and well-written solutions.

Techjuli is a self-proclaimed nerd and proud of it. She lives and attends school in Florida, where she is heavily involved with the Center for Security & Assurance in Information Technology. Prior to that, she was a graphic and web designer for about five years. Techjuli is strangely fascinated with RFIDs (devices that can be tracked using radio waves) and has a box of motherboards, hard-drives, and sticks of RAM side-by-side with Betsey Johnson bags in her closet. When she manages to get out from behind the glow of her monitor, she goes to kickboxing classes, reads a lot, and has recently taken up kayaking.