Man, oh man, I've been looking for you! You're absolutely right, I'm far from omniscient (which would, as they said in Monty Python, take all the mystery out of life anyway) and many of the questions that come in are just so far out of my baliwick that I can only put them in the queue for a rainy day of research.

Instead, if you, dear reader, would be interested in helping find the answer to some of the more unusual questions that flow into Ask Dave Taylor (and there are probably 20-30/week) then I would love to hear from you!

Here's what I propose: if you're interested, send me an email message (use my Ask Dave form) indicating your interest and what kind of background you have with troubleshooting and tech support. I'll add you to my "Friends of ADT" mailing list and list you on my not-yet-built Friends Web page too.

Then, whenever I receive a question I can't field, I'll forward it to the list. If it catches your fancy or matches your area of particular expertise, simply write up or find and reference the solution and email me the question and answer.

If I use your material, I'll thank you in the posting and give you a direct link from the answer page for that entry to your own Web site, weblog, hobby site, whatever (which will give you a nice Google PageRank boost in addition to some helpful visibility).

How's that sound? I'd love to pay money for answers, but since Ask Dave Taylor is a free service, my budget would look even more awry if I paid out without any money coming in for the service provided.

Again, I invite everyone with particular tech expertise to join the list. Even if you only field one question every few weeks, you can still be a valuable part of the team and gain a nice side-benefit out of your work too. A win:win, as we MBA types say. Further, I would think that just seeing the kinds of questions that I receive would be darn interesting too, especially for you folk at Microsoft (hint, hint).