Ashmar Advantage

Transfer Large Files

2009-09-03T11:19:00.001-07:00

I needed to transfer a 300+ MB file from one computer to another over the Internet. Typically there a a few options available to me for this purpose but in the particular case none of those worked.

So I begin a search for Transferring Large files and I found an article that reviewed some tools for doing this. I tried to leave it up in a browser so I could post a link to it but last night my computer loaded some updates and reboot and now I can’t find it again. If I do I will post it.

One of the options I came across and have used before was yousendit.com . The problem was this has a limit of something like 100 MB and most of the solutions have such a limit unless you pay for a subscription. I don’t need a subscription to do this like 2 times a year.

A couple of the options caught my eye because they allowed for pretty large files and you didn’t even have to register or give them your name.

One that I tried was transferbigfiles.com this was pretty cool. I believe it would transfer 1GB files for free. You tell it the file name and give them an email to send it to. They upload the file to their storage using Amazon S3 technology (which is basically Amazon selling huge amounts of internet storage for little money). The only problem I had was not knowing it it was uploading. This size file would take over an hour to upload and the status meter just froze. Of course as the site says this is in Beta so it may or may not have been working but I wasn’t patient.

The winner, and the one I ended up using was pipebytes.com. It worked great. You tell it which file to send and it gives you a web address for the recipient to go to to begin the transfer. You don’t give them any other info and the file doesn’t go onto their servers. It is transferred directly from one computer to another. And the best news is it gave me a progress meter that worked (but it is also still in Beta). It’s free too. However for free you only get a transfer rate of 512 Kbps. I suppose that could be adequate but I went ahead and bought what they called a speedpass. I was under the gun and it was getting late so didn’t want to take a chance that it would be super slow. With a speedpass it will transfer as fast as 3 Mbps (depending on the sending and receiving network setup). I purchased a 24 hour speedpass for $.99. Less than a dollar and my 300+ MB file transferred in about 1 hour. It worked like a charm and I thought I would share it.

Sometimes life just meshes

2009-07-01T12:06:00.001-07:00

So We’ve been working on a test. This test went well. We started about 7 months ago or so but I don’t remember the exact date. Here was the issue…

We are a small business with a few computers in the office, Laptops are key because we take them with us wherever we go. But like a lot of people we don’t have great backups. We don’t have a server currently (although we have in the past). We also don’t have a good tape backup system in case everything crashes, even though I recommend them for some customers our resources don’t require it. In the past we kept files on the laptops backed up to the server. We bought an external drive to keep some files backed up but only had one drive to share between computers which doesn’t really work that well. Also it doesn’t work great to have an external drive for each computer because it becomes difficult to know where a file is or should be. We are small but do need to share files sometimes which without a server didn’t work well. Then a hard drive crashed on one laptop and although many files are on the External drive there were still some key things lost.

So we had tried a few different ways of working around these issues and then I came across an notification of a new product by Microsoft called Mesh (www.mesh.com) They say Sync, Share, Access.

I thought this could help. So first step was install the mesh app on our laptops (need a Live ID for this such as a hotmail account etc.) So by doing that and setting up some mesh folders for my important docs I now have an Internet backup of my files for free up to 5 Gigabytes. This is very cool -- one big problem down. Now if my hard drive crashes I still have my files in “the cloud”. I previously played with Microsoft’s Skydrive and this is a cool tool but you have to upload the files you want to backup and download them if you want to use them. Skydrive can work well for archiving files that I don’t access regularly or for placing files I need when at a customers office such as drivers or some work files. However with Mesh I just use the files on my computer (in the mesh folders) and if I change them they are automatically synched for me. I hope they expand the size to 25 GB like Skydrive did.

Now the next step in the test. Sync was taken care of now for Share. We created a folder which we can share. So we have files in this folder which all of us can work on. If I open the file and make a change I then save it, once it is synched the others can open it and see the changes I made. Very cool and we don’t even have to be in the same building on the same network. Of course these days everybody is all on the same network and that is the point isn’t it. So Share worked out great for us. We work on the same files without having to worry about version copies or duplicates getting confused.

The next step is Access but I haven’t played with that because I always have my laptop around and I don’t need to access it remotely. Maybe someday I’ll test that feature as well but just with the Sync and Share I’m a happy person. A lot of problems are solved and Microsoft has a winner. This is the future of the Internet, there are other takes on the subject and we will see more done in this world of mass-collaboration. This one is simple and worked wonders for me. Solves some of my problems and if you think ahead actually provides many new opportunities for me to collaborate with others. Maybe someday you and I will have a shared folder. Then our lives will Mesh!

Make sure your business is listed in an Internet search!

2009-06-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I found out about another great tool for businesses. And it’s FREE! Ever go searching online for a local veterinarian or plumber? Remember how cool it was when you typed the city, state, and business category … and …voila – a list of businesses appeared for you to research? I probably use that type of search every day for one reason or another. In the back of my mind I’ve wondered if I could list my business there as well. Turns out I can, and so can you.

Google and Microsoft (Bing) both offer the opportunity to plug businesses into their search engines for local business searches. Google’s option is in their Local Business Center (http://www.google.com/local/add) and Microsoft Bing is in their Local Listing Center (https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx). The two services are virtually identical and allow you to create a business listing for your business complete with address, phone, website, email, and a brief description of your product or services. They even show where you are on a map! I think that’s pretty cool. I don’t know why, but all this technology stuff still excites me! You can also input additional details about your business including your business category (type of business), operating hours, and the payment options that you allow. Upload a video (next on my list!) or pictures; input other information such as parking availability and the brands that you carry. They even leave some blank fields for you to add information relevant to your business specifically. Your information is validated with a phone call (Google - be sure to be right by the phone because they call immediately) or by mailing you a post card (Google or Bing). Simple as that. Oh, did I mention, IT’S FREE!

If you have a business and don’t want to pay a fortune (I mean a fortune!) to advertise in the yellow pages, this is the way to go. I mean how many of you actually go to one of those old paper phone books that they still to this day deliver to your doorstep when looking for a business? Not me, when I’m looking for someone to repair my leaky faucet, the first place I go is to the internet. And the search engines I use are Google and Bing. Now when your prospective customers are looking for your product or service, maybe they’ll see your Local Business Listing and give you a call. That big phone book is good for other things though, like giving your little ones a boost at the table or killing flies! Save a tree, list your business in the online search engines. Being internet savvy is being “green”!

[Chester Adds] On the Google Local Business Center you can also enter coupons! That’s right you can offer a special deal on your super-duper whatever for the month of August and hopefully generate a little extra business from the people who find you in a search. Google AdWords will cost you, but these Local Business Center Coupons are also… FREE. Ok, maybe you already knew all of this and if you did, how come you didn’t tell us? We want to make sure all of you who have small (or even big) businesses know about this feature. Even if you run a side business out of your house you can list your business, direct people to your website or blog, and offer coupons to first time customers without doing anything more than spending a little of your time to set it up. And I would like to see Kristin kill a fly with a phone book… a person could hurt themselves doing that.

Costco refills InkJet Printer Cartridges

2009-05-01T12:23:00.001-07:00

Ok maybe you already knew this. I’ve seen places that refill Ink Cartridges but my thinking was I wonder if you really get a good deal and if the quality is any good.

Then I’m walking in Costco and saw a sign that says we refill print cartridges now. I didn’t go WOW or anything but it somehow stuck. My wife says to me, “we need to purchase some new ink cartridges for the printer” and POP there came back the memory. Extra bonus was that my wife had been saving cartridges because she was going to donate them or recycle them or something. So I take the cartridges over to Costco and they refilled them in about 20 minutes. One of the color cartridges wouldn’t refill properly.

So the whole thing cost about a third of what it would have cost to buy new. I trust Costco more than some other place. Apparently not all Costcos provide this service. Also from calling around a little I found that some of the Costcos send it out to a store that does do it and it can take 3 days to turn them around. Usually this service is done in the One Hour Photo section of the store.

I thought this was pretty cool.

What can you do with twitter? Shop til you drop.

2009-04-29T16:59:00.001-07:00

I have seen people ask questions about twitter.com and the quick answer is twitter is a micro-blogging tool giving you 140 characters to write whatever you want. But then you just kind of look around and say, so! None-the-less twitter has become popular so you have to figure that there must be more. In technology all great companies are not just building something cool but providing a platform on which very cool stuff can be added. So twitter is apparently providing such a platform.

Just found out about this new service which is based on twitter and can help you find answers while shopping. You can send a question and get answers within minutes, Techcrunch calls it a shopping 411 service. If you can twitter mobile then you can get your info while out at the store. If you are shopping on your computer you get it there.

I don’t know about you but when I am shopping I have a bunch of questions, this could very well be helpful.

http://www.imshopping.com/ (You can go to this site to see what they say about themselves and see some of the questions people are asking. When I looked somebody asked “Where can I get Oaxaca Mole paste in the bay area?” It had been asked 9 minutes before and was already answered with two locations to try.)

http://twitter.com/imshopping (on twitter you can see what’s happening and follow them)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/29/imshopping-is-a-human-powered-product-search-engine-for-twitter/ (Techcruch’s posting about this new service.

Have fun shopping, and now you are not alone.

Technorati Tags: IMShopping,shopping,twitter

Does saving money mean cutting back quality?

2009-03-12T12:50:00.001-07:00

In a word NO, at least I don’t think so. It can mean that-- but today, or really at any point in history it doesn’t really mean that the quality of your product/service has to become worse. In fact I believe that often when we go through tough economic times we find out what is necessary and cut out fat – or unproductive efforts. Often once we find out what is really important and focus on that, we actually improve the quality of our service. For some reason when times are good we bloat as companies (and often as people).

Challenge: If your business is currently hurting due to tough economics then take some of the free time you probably now have to reconsider your operation. Look at what is important. Try to think of better ways to take care of your customers. When you do this consider using cheaper technology to help (as a technology person for 25 years I believe today we have some of the coolest and cheapest technology available right now for operating, marketing and accounting for your business).

I did this back a while ago. I considered my business of supporting customers corporate networks: People wanted to use their networks but often when they just jump in without rules or a plan they mess up their computers and the costs to support their systems were climbing. I wanted to help but I couldn’t see providing my service for free or lowering my hourly rate.

So, I reconsidered the whole thing. I came up with an idea I called proAktivR. In this plan I felt that I could monitor some key functions on a corporate network for a flat amount each month and that this would lower my customers support costs. Added to this would be some rules that the computer users should follow (and then of course monitor if they are indeed following those rules). This isn’t about restricting they way people use their computers to perform their jobs, it is about keeping computers running to perform the job and doing so at less cost. Every company has slightly different rules because people need to be able to do different things. Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement I probably could have come up with other examples but this one is close to me, so it’s more personal.

This is what I’m talking about. Cut costs but not the quality. This may be a bad example because people won’t want to hear it but it’s like a DIET. You often don’t need to eat less just eat different. If you are eating High Sugar, High Carb foods that process through your system quickly and don’t provide the proper nutrition you need you won’t be operating at peek performance and you may be more bloated than if you ate better proteins, better carbs and more vegetables. Both eating plans will keep your tummy full but they are very different.

Maybe it’s time for business to change it’s eating plan. It’s definitely time to become more creative.

Inspiration from the Depression

2009-02-03T16:07:00.001-08:00

A little bit ago I read a book about the Great Depression and posted about it, I gave some reasons that I found it depressing. Those are probably still valid but today I am finding a really cool benefit about studying that time period in our history.

You know how if you go look at a car in the showroom all the sudden you seem to start seeing those kind of cars everywhere. Well that's happening in this subject. I seem to come across stories about business from the era of the Great Depression. I have to admit that my reason for reading the book and studying the subject was that I figured some people came out of the Depression ok. Not everybody had to suffer. Well the stories that keep coming up are of people hurt financially during the Depression who struck out and started a new business and succeeded. I was reading about a guy who actually started a Stock Brokerage in 1930 (1929 was the big crash). He actually made a living doing it.

This has been exciting to me and as I look around now I don't see as much despair I see opportunities. In fact there are likely opportunities in the very areas that are hurting the most, if history has any bearing on this situation. It's very difficult for me to explain how excited I actually am as I look around and think... what if! I'm not noticing the problems -- I'm seeing opportunities and that is very liberating. Something else I wrote about before is that our thoughts become our realities and boy that means good times are ahead not bad one. Keep your head up, notice the opportunity and get excited.

Sometimes computer support is humorous

2009-01-08T18:34:00.001-08:00

Like the other day I was taking calls from different customers. One customer had a situation in which email attachments had become blocked and they couldn't be opened. I tried to say that wasn't all bad because of the rash of virus' problems we are having with attachments. They wanted the situation remedied anyway so they could open attachments. Then later I get a call from another customer who just had their computer wiped out by a virus from an email attachment. Ok maybe it's not funny but it's interesting how things like that work out.

Click your way to destruction

2008-12-11T13:31:00.001-08:00

I have written before and warned my customers as well as friends to be careful where you click. I would like to believe I've been pretty helpful but I also feel I should let everyone know about more.

Many of us are getting on social networks, a big one that many of my friends are on is facebook (one friend of mine joked that he was trying to find everyone on assbook before he realized where we were, we looked it up and it's a real site). Facebook (FB) is a great place to connect with friends. It is a safe contained environment in which you interact primarily with friends you have in the real world, maybe a few extras. So your friends wouldn't do anything to harm you would they?

Well back in the days of cool viruses such as *Melissa* and *I Love You* your friends would send you an email with the virus attached. They didn't mean to but that's how viruses are. Now we have junk folders and Microsoft is basically blocking all attachments by default. If you get in and make the changes to allow attachments then the message is clear, "it's your fault if you get hosed".

Well, a few days ago I had my facebook page open and it has this cool Chat feature. One of my friends sent me a chat, curiously as soon as she did the little circle by her name was red indicating she was offline. The chat claimed she had gone to a website, filled out info and received a free iPhone--- I could also the link was right there. I didn't click because I'm always suspicious, I also wasn't curious to find out what it was. A few months back another friend was posting things on people's wall saying something about somebody having a crush on them, I think it was that it's been a while.

The point here is that people have figured out a way to use your facebook account to do things as you. According to what I read on the facebook security page it appears this most likely happens as a result of phishing. Phishing is a method of tricking you into giving up information about yourself such as your account name and password. They do this to get into your bank account but also to do damage to your computer. To become a victim of phishing you probably have to also click on something so always, always... ALWAYS be careful where you click. Be careful of opening email attachments, and be careful of hyperlinks. Make sure they go where they say they go (you can usually rest the mouse on the link and the real link will display). Sometimes I don't even believe that so I have to check a lot of things first. Often I still won't click on the link, there are a lot of things that aren't critical and those I just ignore. If I think it is something I may need to see I may go to the site on my own not by clicking on the link.

So it's bad when you can't even trust your FB friends, but that's all part of being safe. I have provided a link to some info about facebook security items and information. Click it if you dare!

http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=420

The Great Depression is Depressing

2008-12-04T10:10:00.001-08:00

Just been reading a book called "The Great Depression: Opposing Viewpoints". I started reading it because of the problems our economy is in and talk has sometimes come around to the Depression. Joe Bidden mentioned the Stock Market crash of 1929 during the Presidential election. He made some errors about the facts but the issue is on some minds. I wanted to see if there were similarities between then and now. I have often heard that we learned a lot from those times and we now have safeguards in place so we keep it from happening again.

My reason for reading the book was to see if I could determine what people did who avoided much of the problems of the Depression, after all not everybody was hungry and destitute. The best answer I can come up with is that it is better to be the person who has money and is lending it out rather than the person who is borrowing money. I believe you are probably better off to have a few thousand dollars but don't owe anything on your car or house than to be a person with millions in debt flying around in a leased Jet. Many of us would rather be the second guy but that may change.

So now I finished the book and I'm worried. The book makes use of speeches and newspaper articles, etc written at the time of the Depression and written on both sides of a topic. Both sides sometimes did not mean Liberal or Conservative but sometimes meant Liberal and Radically Liberal. As I read these viewpoints I hear a lot of familiar statements. In many ways it sounds much like today's news.

There are two really big questions I still have about the Great Depression, Why did it start? What happened to bring it to an end?

I don't believe anybody has the "real" answer to those two questions. There are many theories and most of those come from whether you believe Government should regulate businesses as well as the people or not. Both sides made really good points. I personally tend to think that the Government should stay out of our business for the most part and that if it did problems would correct themselves. Of course I have no way of knowing if that would really work because it's not been tried under pressure. On the other hand a person who believes in Government regulations may also say their methods haven't been tried either as many believed FDR did not go far enough with his resolutions and that is why it took about 10 years to come out of the problems.

Maybe the answer as in much of life is *balance*. Most of the time the Government should stay out of the way but in times of crisis the Governments (Federal, State, Local) are in unique positions to devote money and resources to correct. As with the Depression many programs were begun but are no longer with us. Only a few survived once the economy recovered.

Any way causes or solutions I don't have an answer-- but unfortunately I am of the belief that we have not yet learned enough to avoid the problem again. I hope I'm wrong. We have difficult financial times which much of the current news blames on lack of management by the outgoing Republican Administration. We now have an incoming Democrat Administration determined to "fix" the problems by Government regulation. Maybe they can fix the problem in 10 years or maybe their regulation will drag us through difficulty for 10 years. I personally hope neither is true, mainly because I don't want to go through 10 years of difficulty no matter what the reason. But I do think it's beginning to sound a lot like 1932.

Live Online Chat

2008-09-23T16:42:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I was trying to use technology and rather than call the number on the website I clicked on their little button that says "Chat Online". I've used these before and the communication can be tricky but this one was funny I thought. For my purposes absolutely useless but funny. I was trying to find out some details about their online Exchange Hosting. A separate window came up and here is what I got:

Kelly Says: My name is Kelly and I am a chat representative with Web.com here to answer any questions you may have.

Kelly Says: Just type 'HI' or 'Hello' in the space below to let me know you are there.

You: HI

Kelly Says: Hi, thanks for chatting with me today - I am here to answer any questions you have.

Kelly Says: What are your questions on Web.com’s services?

You: I'm looking at the Hosted Exchange service.

Kelly Says:CLICK HERE for a FREE web consultation on what our experts can do for you.

You: I don't understand how that relates.

Kelly Says: Web.com offers a virtual one-stop-shop of simple, feature-rich web tools and services including do-it-yourself and professional website design, website hosting, eCommerce, web marketing and e-mail.

You: is this a real person and are you reading my comments?

Kelly Says: My name is Kelly and I'm a live virtual agent.

You: Ok, like I said I'm looking at the Exchange Hosting.

Kelly Says: At Web.com, we know how important it is to have personal service at your fingertips – that’s why we have a team of professional designers, customer support and technical assistance dedicated to helping your web presence succeed!

You: your not live.

Kelly Says: A website is only as good as the services and support behind it. Web.com has combined professional web design, on-demand website modifications and cutting-edge online marketing services to help businesses succeed online.

After this I just stopped typing, what was the use. Not sure what I learned from this but maybe someday if I have an online chat feature for customers I probably shouldn't use a program to respond, or be up front that we will be mostly putting out our marketing message not responding to your actual questions, on my side I guess I never did get around to asking the question I wanted to find out, mostly because I had doubts that it would be understood.

I though this was a bit of humor to my otherwise stressful day.

Change

2008-09-10T16:17:00.001-07:00

It's political season with the election of a new U.S. President. And of course one thing we keep hearing is "change". The candidates promise that they will change things. It's hard to believe them and yet they keep using that line.

There are many phrases that we hear so often they don't seem to have any meaning any longer... and yet they are still important. Ok so I'm not going to go on and on about politics it's just that I am campaigning myself to change my company. For me it's pretty easy its a one and a half person company basically (my wife helps part time). I don't really see that part changing any time soon but I do want to expand beyond what I can do myself. I have written before about these plans and you know what. No matter how much I want to do something it is still difficult to change a small company like mine. (It doesn't give me much hope that a politician will change the whole country.)

So I'm out campaigning for change again and trying desperately to make it happen. The key this time is that I'm forcing myself to think and work differently. I won't get into too many specifics but basically I've chained myself to the desk (or computer) and I'm forcing myself to find other ways to get things done. I'm thinking more like all businesses. Take a doctor for example. Used to be they made house calls. If you got sick they would come over and take a look. They don't do that any more, and why??? Well because it's not very cost effective. You have to come to their office now. And if it's a real emergency they send over an ambulance to pick you up. They outsourced that service and do it better really. The ambulance can drive at top speeds to get to you with lights flashing. They have tons of equipment and they can bring you in if they need to. They even have a bed in the back for you. By everyone focusing on their strengths the response available in an emergency today is amazing. The little country doctor could hardly conceive of a service the way it is. So now you could tell me there are all kinds of problems in the field of health care but can you really imagine us going back to the doctor who makes office visits. I'm sure they still exist and are extremely well paid. at that.

Things change and so must I. That's what I'm looking at and it still isn't easy but like I say it's necessary. It seems like nobody wants me to change and I even fight it but it must happen no matter what. That's exciting. Hopefully somebody will still vote for me.

Be careful what you think,because your thoughts run your life.

2008-07-15T13:19:00.001-07:00

The title of this blog is from an ancient proverb. I'm writing about this because I keep coming across the concept in business books and after years it's beginning to sink in.

What you think becomes what you do and who you are!

The thoughts in your head are real... or at least they become real. The bad news is it's not only good thought but also bad thoughts.

As I say, this isn't a new thing. Business books have talked about it for a long time. The grandfather of all inspirational business books is by an author called Napoleon Hill and it's called "Think and Grow Rich". I have to admit I haven't read the book yet and now after reading so many of the follow-up books I realize I need to read it.

Of course the concept existed long before that. The ancient proverb titling this post was written about 3000 years ago.

I have become convinced that it is true that you can sit around and imagine things will go wrong in your plans and eventually they will. You can also control your mind to think that you will be successful in your plan even if adversity arises. When a problem comes up you control what the outcome is. You can decide that this set-back is only temporary. You can come up with a solution or a work-around. This is how successful people of all kinds do their work and have done for years. This is of course a much bigger picture than money and finances, it applies to everything. You set your goals and then you decide what to do as you work on those goals as "real life" comes along.

The real life we live and work in is truly a battlefield in our head first. Control your thinking and you will control your life. What you think is reality much more so than what circumstances are happening around you.

Technorati Tags: thoughts become reality,think,becareful what you think

Is there such a thing as a good meeting?

2008-06-17T15:45:00.001-07:00

I fortunately don't have to go to many meetings. I'm glad about that.

I think my problem with meetings is that I don't understand how to have a good one. I guess if you consider a meeting a social event in which friendships are built then I have had some good ones. Most of the time however they seem to me a waste of time.

With current online tools it seems to me that there are more efficient ways to get things accomplished than meetings. Online meetings for example are better than running around and certainly than flying in for the meeting.

Seems to me the best meeting is one in which a lot of preparation is done. If preparation is done then there are often more efficient ways to present that information that wasting an hour just to be in each others presence. That said getting to know people personally and professionally is a good thing but it just seems there are more fun ways to accomplish that than a meeting.

I'm going to try to work on this topic. If anybody has any advice I look forward to hearing from you. I'm looking for better ways to accomplish work than in a meeting. Emails are good but they can lead to much mis-communication. Like I say working on a way to improve the process.

Tell the Truth

2008-02-01T08:58:00.001-08:00

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, actually emailing is more accurate... about business. He is in Germany and he said he has discovered that he is too nice to be fully effective in business. He tries to "soften the blow" so to speak when it comes to sensitive matters. Sometimes customers disagree and he doesn't want to offend so he is careful how he phrases what he tells them. Well the problem is the customer ends up with a low opinion about his skills. How does my friend know this? He watches others with less skill than him succeed with the customer by telling them they are idiots.

So my friend figures he needs to tell the customer they are idiots!

I thought must be tough to work in Germany, then I thought well, "it's probably like that in New York from what I hear". And then I realized it's really like that everywhere. Well sort of.

Both my friend and I realize we aren't made that way, we can't tell the customer they are an idiot if they do something. BUT... we can tell the truth.

When it comes to computers, I have been there. I have been in front a customer with a computer/network problem. I have come up with a reason that the problem was coming up and the customer wasn't receptive, because they would have to change their ways. I have at that point noticed they weren't really receiving the message and tried to "soften the blow" rather than stick to what I think. The result is they love me for a few moments more but eventually they become frustrated and blame me for their problems. But, but, I tried to tell them!

So now I try to be brutally honest and everything goes well. Oops, I'm supposed to be telling the truth. No it doesn't always go well. I have lost customers telling them the way I see it and sticking to the facts as I see them. That really hurts. The sad part is I knew I was right and eventually they find out I was right but it still hurts and I still don't have that business ($$$).

But I would rather loose business for telling the truth than for letting them feel good about being an idiot.

Time Travel

2007-10-24T17:05:00.001-07:00

I often wish I could go back in time and make a few adjustments. of course when I think about it I really like the way things have turned out so I would only want to change the past if I could still learn the valuable lessons.

So since that is all impossible I have another idea about time. Maybe it's Time Management but really it's about having more free time.

When you have your own business it seems that you can work as much as you would like to. Some entrepreneurs are work-a-holics and they go into business so they can work night and day and have it count for them. I'm not really after that myself. When I talk about Time Management I don't want to try to cram more stuff into my day. I want to have lots of free time and make every minute count double for the effort I put in.

As a technology buff (nice way of saying geek) I fall into the trap of plugging into my computer at the beginning of the day. I have my Cell Phone, my Vonage VoIP phone and Skype all at my disposal. In addition I also have Windows Live Messenger loaded up so people can chat with me in real time and I can see my attached Hotmail messages... and of course Outlook is always open which receives (and sends) email from about 5 email accounts (and aliases) I have for business and personal uses. So I am plugged in and am excited about the possibilities of even being more connected.

I am realizing what that means... Lot's of Interruptions. I may as well carry my laptop into a mall or some other busy location just to see if I can become any less productive.

So I am working on trying to control these interruptions by setting "meeting" times during which I handle my communications. The difficulty I face is that I can't unplug or my customers may consider me un-reachable. I have always tried to respond back to them as quickly as I can. This is yet another opportunity to use Other People's Time (OPT).

I don't have all the answers figured out yet but as always it's fun to get out some of the ideas. Maybe someday I'll get some replies to these posts and I'll learn some better ways.

Motivation from Mixed Nuts

2007-09-26T09:43:00.001-07:00

Many times I get fired up by reading a new book. When I read I find my mind begins to get creative and think of new possibilities. Last night motivation came from watching a Movie. The movie was titled "Mixed Nuts"(1994) and the plot is described as "The events focus around a crisis hotline business on one crazy night during the Christmas holidays."

Why did it motivate me? I'm not exactly sure. In the movie Steve Martin's character is having a number of business challenges. By the end of the movie all the events come together to make some really good things happen.

So first of all I'm glad that in my business challenges I have never had the kinds of difficulties his Crisis Hotline experiences. I haven't had the absolute level of craziness. That's good but I haven't also had the events all wrap up so neatly either... that's too bad.

Also there is a message that sometimes when an event happens and I think it is going to turn out absolutely horrible it doesn't. Sometimes... Often good things can come out of negative circumstances. Some times you have to look harder than others.

This movie has been out for a while and I had watched it before. I didn't recall it much and previously it didn't provide the motivation. But now years later I was in the right frame of mind and open to the particular craziness that went on in the movie. Also it was a Free Movie on my Comcast - OnDemand programming that will expire soon.

This was a fun movie, reminded me to focus on the good things that come out of a situation and I recommend it. More or less good for the Christmas Spirit attitude as well.

Listening...

2007-09-13T12:43:00.001-07:00

Today I have been thinking about this business skill. When I started my morning by weight lifting for some reason I was thinking about Listening. There was some reason but it was at 5am so it was too early to remember the why only that I was thinking about that.

Then later in the day about 8 am I was talking to a friend of mine in Hamburg Germany, Marc Martinez of Strategic Media (www.strategic-media.de). Marc provides consulting for Radio Stations among other creative ventures (I am a techy-accounting type with a bunch of creative friends, something to be figured out later). Marc moved to Germany after the Berlin Wall came down and Radio Stations were moving into private hands. He had by that time worked for many years in Radio in a number of big city markets. He has worked in many aspects of Radio and communications Media including various forms of advertising (which by the way is generally how Radio Stations make their money, it's not by playing music). Marc and I were talking about various business issues as well as personal issues since we have been friends for a long, long time (plus a few more years). We didn't specifically talk about listening but because it was kind of my theme for the day I was thinking about it while we were talking.

Marc and I talked about sales some. I would venture that like me he at least considers himself somewhat a salesman. We don't make our living purely as salesmen but we do have to sell our services to customers. Can you imagine selling anything without listening?

Ok so full disclosure -- whenever I write about something it is usually something I'm struggling with and trying to work out. I don't always listen. I LOVE to talk. I want people to listen to ME and think I am a brilliant guy. BUT, I am trying to learn how to become a better listener. I write this blog to be a better communicator but in my quest for communication excellence I realize the most important skill is listening.

I have ideas and I often thick they are brilliant ideas that would really enhance others lives. I truly believe that if they listened to me they may learn something or avoid the mistakes I have made... and that is precisely why I must be a better listener. I don't want to keep making such stupid mistakes. There have been times that I wish I had listened better. I have had some excellent advice while sitting at the beach with my wife's uncles. Many of them have much success in business. They got there the hard way, by working for it. They have learned a thing or two and yet when I was younger I didn't listen as much as I should have. I did listen to some of the ideas but not everything.

Ok, as I write I have many thoughts come to mind and could keep on giving all kinds of examples but if you are reading this I'm sure you get my point. I am going to try to remember the good advice I have received but...

Now I think I will shut up and listen for a while.

Technorati tags: Radio Consulting, Listening, Radio Advertising, Media Consulting

I make mistakes!!!!!

2007-08-29T15:19:00.001-07:00

This is not an apology. I am saying this proudly.

Today I was thinking how important this is to business-- the art of making mistakes. No seriously.

If you are afraid of making a mistake you will probably not last very long as a business owner or starter (Entrepreneur). Many people are in this boat. They don't want to come across as stupid so they take one of two steps.

They don't even try.
They plan it down to every detail and take so long that by the time they start it doesn't really have much punch.

Do you look at a successful person and think they never made a mistake? I do! It's probably not true. There are some people that seem to make every correct decision from the beginning and everything went their way. Those people make the business journals and it is impressive. I find myself hoping they can hold on because I am pretty sure that at some point they will make a mistake and then what do they do? Their mistake is much more public than mine. How embarrassing.

To be successful in business for a long term say 30 years I am pretty sure that you will come across a mistake and will have to recover from that mistake. This is the next group of people and they also seem to do one of two things:

They give up!
They become frustrated and try to learn everything they can from that expensive mistake. And if it isn't an expensive mistake it wasn't good enough.

You have to recover from mistakes to be successful. Today I was remembering some of my big mistakes and thinking about all the truly important lessons I learned from them. It is crucial to keep picking yourself up and try, try again. No it isn't easy. It's embarrassing. It will mess with your feelings of self-worth. If you do it right even your friends and family will wonder if you will ever make anything of yourself. YOU will wonder if you will ever make anything of yourself. It makes you feel stupid to make a big mistake.

One of the best things you learn from making a huge mistake is how to recognize a mistake earlier and take action. You also learn what not to do next time (hopefully).

Making mistakes is extremely important in business. If you are really smart you will notice your mistakes early and recover from them quickly. I hope you do, but it appears that the normal way this goes is that people make big mistakes and that's how they learn to pay more attention to small mistakes.

I Promise that I will keep making mistakes and I also promise that I will try to learn as much as I can from those mistakes. I apologize if my mistake causes you any problems. Know that I didn't mean to make the mistake. I didn't set out to do it but it did happen.

Team Works

2007-08-13T18:43:00.001-07:00

I've been writing about this same basic subject for a while now, but this is another way at getting to the same conclusion. In business Teams get more done than individuals. I'm reading a book called "Wikinomics" right now and it is inspiring me once again to do what I have always needed to do, Get Help!

This is a topic I write about and think about often probably because as a business person I tend to think more about what I can do than about how I could lead a team. I figure I'll start it, get it running work out the bugs and then get the help I need. But maybe that is all wrong. Maybe it's even backwards.

I haven't written much in the last few months and every time I do I'm writing about this subject. It's because this is a topic I am trying to get through my "thick skull" as the saying goes. I do need to Get Help and I need to do it fast.

If I could get talented people to help me it would make my life so much easier. Heck, even if I could get mildly talented people it would make a huge difference.

Here is an example of what I'm thinking of but from my family not work...

Often on the weekend my family operates as a bunch of individuals. I get up mow the lawn while my wife works on the inside. The kids, they do their own thing. This last weekend we did it different. My wife got the kids doing tasks to help in the house. Earlier in the week my wife got the kids helping to pressure wash the back patio and deck as well as sanded it for painting. Next we all got out to wash the cars together. We did the whole thing wash, armour-all and windows. My daughter painted her room furniture. So instead of taking all day long we got a lot of stuff accomplished by 2:30 pm and we still had time to do something, so we cleaned up and left the house for a hike.

That's the biggest reason to make teams work in business, why? So you can have fun doing it and mostly so you can have fun after you have done it. PLAY. I love to get out with my family and Play. Finding people to help me get even more accomplished in a much shorter time allows me to get everything done that I want to do with my day.

Even though I had a great weekend and I'm fired up about teams I still have a lot of work to do. You see sometimes it is a little uncomfortable. Sometime it doesn't feel like you are getting much accomplished because you have to teach while you are getting the job done. Then you think boy I could do this easier if I just took care of it myself. Dumb, dumb, dumb and I'm talking to me! It's going to take me a while to get this all worked out.

I have gotten some help and I put out the call for programmers. I wrote about a project I did using Other People's Time and it was a great experience. I also have the need to get help with my programming projects. I keep trying to do it all myself and I want to find a better way.

I have grown my business by doing it all myself before and I don't want to do it again. Even though it is not easier to get help I am still committed to doing it that way. I have found that often one man operations are that way because we want to be the smartest person in the room. I feel the need. I go to talk to a customer about computers and networks and I feel the need to be the smartest person in the room. I want to impress my customer with my knowledge and experience. Hopefully my experience will always be something that helps my customers navigate a difficult challenge, but I'm tired of trying to be the smartest in the room. I am ready to be the guy with the best team to get the job done, not be the guy with the biggest brain to get the job done.

Know any Programmers?

2007-06-14T18:10:00.001-07:00

Well after the almost too wonderful success of using sub-contractors for a network install I am ready to branch out. I also do some Access programming. I am trying to find programmers who can work with Microsoft Access and VBA (visual basic for applications).

So far I'm coming up with no leads but I am continuing to put the word out and see if I can come up with some good programmers.

Eventually I would like to branch out to other projects using custom programming. I have hopes to manage projects designed to run from web browsers. There are many possibilities here but so far I haven't been able to explore any of those because I keep busy with my head down on the computer.

I am believing this new approach will open up many more opportunities and new exciting projects that will allow me to explore new programs and new technologies.

At the heart of things I love to play with new technology so best to get paid for it.

Benefits of OPT

2007-05-23T16:36:00.001-07:00

Just in case you didn't know that's Other People's Time. So like I said almost a month ago... I had the idea to do a project but not DO the project. It is the reason I haven't had time to write for a while. I have been busy making it happen.

The project: Customer has Small Business Server 2000 on an old computer with no available drive space. They want to get a new server (from DELL) with Small Business Server 2003 on it. I made some other upgrade suggestions as well such as anti-virus software and new backup software. The customer wanted all this to happen with no down time during business hours.

So this was the perfect project to test out my new plan (new for me old news for all real businesses). I began by emailing and calling multiple network specialists. I got to the point where we discussed details of the project and the various approaches people take. This alone was an interesting exercise. There were many ways to go about the solution and a variety of prices that came as a result. I had to do much research but finally found the company to do the project.

I hired a company to do the core work on this project while I took care of issues on the periphery.

There were a few things that came up during the process that I missed in my planning but for the most part the plan worked. This was a great way to go about the process. I spent my time planning and finding the right people. I also got to spend my time making sure all went well for the customer. The whole thing was excellent. I have done the sole IT guy bit before but this was much, much better. I was able to pay attention to what was really going on during the process and make sure things were smooth. I was also able to take care of the items that come up and divert attention away from the main project while MY GUY kept working on the main task.

This was the best experience. I realize that in the future they may not all go this well but I have to say that this is definitely worth doing again. I would actually like to do this again very often. Which doing it this way I could do a couple of these a week... something not possible when I act alone.

OPT is an excellent way to grow.

Working for Yourself

2007-04-30T18:10:00.001-07:00

In a small business you get pretty busy. In the past I have become so busy that there were things I couldn't get done. I could work full-time on my customers computers. I could work evenings and weekends whenever I wished to. I was so busy I didn't have time to do any marketing (there wasn't any more time to sell anyway). I didn't have time to research and learn about the latest and greatest.

The truth of the matter as I now realize it is that I wasn't working for myself. I really was working for my customers. Ok... so that's a good thing. However it is pretty short sighted. You see when you are busy at your customers office and spending all your time working on the task-at-hand you really don't have any way to see what's coming.

What was coming in my case was a major slow down. There are many reasons for this and some have to do with the overall economy and some have to do with terrorist attacks but in reality I wasn't paying attention. I wasn't working for myself. I was stuck. All the sudden I had time for research and I had time for marketing, I was now working full-time for myself. That's not such a good thing because I don't pay that well.

See it wasn't all the economy. Before the slow down I had a great customer with lots of money to spend. I had worked with them for many years and we had a great relationship. They were a major source of my income and --They were growing. I couldn't keep up. I didn't have any way to expand my operation. At least I didn't think I had any way to expand. I considered hiring but there were a lot of difficulties with that.

To cut to the point... things are rebuilding. That's good but I don't want to rebuild the way I did the first time. I would like to think I've learned something. I am about to install a network using other people without hiring. I'll probably write more on this soon-- the specific project as well as the shift in thinking. I'm trying to be creative, make lots of money but still keep my eye on the future. I'm hoping that this time I will actually get to work for myself.

Linux Project - WiFi Success(sort of)

2007-04-06T16:57:00.001-07:00

Well I was reading up on the netcard drivers to try to see if an upgrade would help. I read that WPA Security was there but not really supported. I use WPA so I thought maybe I should do something else. I grabbed a Linksys Wireless Router I had sitting around and turned it on. It was set back to all the defaults and I got a connection from my Laptop. The laptop seemed to stay connected and with a good connection for a while. I changed the SSID and the password to something other than the defaults and everything still worked well. So then I don't really like all my neighbors to be able to connect to my connection (like I could to theirs if I wanted) so I like to turn off broadcasting of the SSID.

Once I turned off broadcasting the thing fell apart. I would get disconnected and had problems. So I'm going to try to broadcast but use encryption. WPA encryption that is. I tried WEP without much success. Did try the WPA and as long as I broadcast my SSID I get connected for decent lengths of time.

While I had a good connection and in just playing around for a couple of hours on the machine I had my Firefox windows lock up a couple of times. I was able to close them out and get back to a good state without rebooting but there were a few lockups or times when I did have to reboot. The times I had to do that was when I was playing with the network connections and broadcasting and if I got disconnected my machine would keep trying to connect to my neighbors' wireless systems and I would have to reboot to get it back on track.

I did find and download new drivers for my wireless card but the Install instructions said that they don't provide specific install instructions because of the variety of ways it may need to occur--consult your system documentation (?????) Ok sound user friendly?

I did get good downloads of Firefox but still don't know how to download that. I have to say I was impressed with Skype. They had 8 different options for LInux but the one that matched my computer had an install feature and it was pretty easy. I am looking forward to testing the Skype on that machine to see how well it works. I did test it and it works great.

People have always told me that, LInux could run on lessor machines and run faster than what was required for Windows. They told me it was easier than Windows and they told me it was more stable than Windows. So far, although I can agree that it may be as good a program as Windows I don't think I would say it is better. Still enjoying this project though. I haven't done much with this computer for a week now but maybe I'll get some time to test more soon.

Linux Project - after the third install

2007-03-24T12:41:00.001-07:00

Hello again Linux lovers. I got the installation down now an I have a clean install of my OS and decided this time to do everything on one partition instead of 3. I also decided I don't like playing with this in my office I want to "play" when I'm watching TV so I have to get this wireless thing going.

I setup my wireless info and I can get a connection -- sometimes. It's real spotty. It also seems to knock off whenever it feals like it. For that reason I looked for a possible update to the driver for my Wireless Network card. So far nothing, but maybe I'll figure out how it goes some day. I can get a wireless connection and get to a website but then after I've been on a few minutes I don't appear to get any speed in browsing. I have to reboot often to try to get a better connection again, so I do that periodically.

So I figure I'll go back and try to download Firefox again. It just won't come over the wireless connection so that's the way it goes. Next I figure I'll see if I can load Skype. I use that quite a bit on my PC and I know they have a Linux version so I figure that will be fun to test. I go to the Skype website (www.skype.com) and get to the Linux download area...there are like 8 different versions. Luckily they seem to have one for my version and I try to download. I'm anxious to see if they have an easier install or at least better instructions. Unfortunately I don't ever get the program downloaded as it keeps gettting stuck at some percentage. Oh well!

At this point I'm blaming all my troubles on this quirky wireless connection. I go looking for all the settings to see if maybe there is something clear that I can change. I find the Network Utilities and ping a few things. I find that I can ping www.skype.com and www.firefox.com really well. I can also pull up the admin of my wireless router and move around in that pretty well until my network connection stops. I look around to see if I have bad Proxy settings (I don't use a proxy server) or some other firewall or obstruction that may be doing this to me. So far I haven't found much.

That's where I am right now on this project. My initial responses are that this is not super easy and stable as I've been lead to believe. It can't just run on old hardware, it probably needs to be run on hardware that is tested and approved for Linux. (where do you find that in the store?) I've worked with computers for over 20 years and if this isn't easy for me it's not the easy operating system for every user out there that doesn't have a highly qualified technician around to make sure things work (maybe I should switch to this OS in my business I might get a lot more devoted customers who are really needy.)

That said...I like the look, I like the options. I like that a ton of software OpenOffice.org stuff came on my disk (but I haven't played with it much yet) I am not going to give up on this...at least not yet and not easily. But I am going to set this comptuer aside for a little while. Things have been pretty busy for me lately and I don't have time right now to figure out how to resolve these issues. Looks like I will have to get much more serious to do that. Don't worry you Linux fans I will return and try again. Back to my Windows PC for now...thankfully.

Linux Project - the first steps

2007-03-24T00:52:00.001-07:00

So now I have Linux on my computer and my initial response was positive. I like the way it looks and there is certainly at least some familiarity. So what to do first?

I've heard so many people talk about Firefox and how much better it is than Internet Explorer. I decide to look at that and to see if there is an upgrade. There is an upgrade so I try to download. I first choose to not save to disk but to just open and that doesn't work. I try again and save to disk. Now I have a folder on my desktop. I look all over the place for an installation program but don't find any. I search on the Internet for Installation instructions. Mostly they have instructions for installing to Windows. I do find some instructions that say save to \usr\local or something. I find that and try to cut and paste but I'm told I can't do that...bummer. I try to get root access with my root password but that doesn't work. I can load the Firefox program out of this folder, oh by the way I did an unzip or whatever you call it in Linux and got the folder extracted out of the download so that's were I was able to find the program and start it up (with one error message on start up but it works).

In some of the instructions I saw a warning that installing this program would overwrite my older version but actually I still have that version so I don't know what's up. I figure - what I'll do is --uninstall the original version of firefox. I do that and then I get errors on startup and my network cards don't work any more, or I guess they work but I can't get to the configuration info for them so I can't resolve my wireless card not working issue or even try to connect to my wireless network.

Looks like I really messed it up this time so I figure I'm not too far into this thing I'll just wipe out and reload the Linux software again from DVD. So I did exactly that and I must say that the third time to reload the operating system went pretty smooth. I'm an old pro at it by now. So that's enough for now, I'll tell you more later.

Linux Project - the beginning

2007-03-20T15:45:00.001-07:00

For over twenty years I have been a Microsoft fan. I first used MS-DOS (actually PC-DOS then later MS). I played with early release of Windows and was happy to install version 3.1 then 3.11, 2000 and now XP. I haven't done much with Vista yet and we won't talk about ME(ok that wasn't a shining moment). In the technology world there are plenty of people that don't like Microsoft. They always told me that Mac was better and easy. I have also hear a lot of hype about Linux. Linux is supposed to be the best thing out there and it's free or cheap.

A couple of years ago I thought I would load Linux on an old laptop I had. I had always heard that it ran great even on older equipment and that was one of the beautiful things about it. You didn't have to buy the latest expensive computer. So I figured why not. So I went looking at the specs for a graphical version of Linux and you know what...it wouldn't run on my computer. This was a computer that I was able to run Windows 2000 on so I was a little shocked that it wouldn't work.

So finally this last December I got a new computer and I had an old computer that had sufficient specs to run a version of Linux. I went looking around for the right version. I considered many but finally found OpenSUSE by Novell. Novell was the first network I installed so I figured that this was a good name to have behind the version I installed. It was a big company that would probably keep their product up to date. Bonus, I could download it for free.

So I got it downloaded and a little over a week ago I finally decided to install.

Installation, I didn't easily see the option to wipe out my drive and install a clean copy. It tried to shrink my existing Windows XP partition and install on the remaining space. I went ahead and said yes. The attempt to shrink failed and then I saw the option to wipe out the drive and do a fresh install. I did and the Linux was now installed on my drive. I couldn't get my wireless card to make a good connection so I decided to plug in to the network directly. That seemed to work.

So I'm off to a decent start but I wouldn't call the installation at all easy. I have installed numerous copies of Windows operating systems and even a few times installed Mac OS X. So I had enough experience to survive the ordeal. But now it's on my computer. On to bigger and better things... (to be continued)

Identity Theft - Phishing Scam

2007-03-15T11:20:00.001-07:00

I just got one and I thought this would be a good time to explain what I do when I get these. Mine was from PayPal and it claimed my account had been flagged. OH NOOOO! That's pretty serious isn't it? I don't want to be in trouble.

First thing I do is of course make sure I do have an account, so if I get a notice from Bank of America I know I don't have any accounts at Bank of America so I can quickly delete that message. I don't have to worry about click on any links.

Second, don't click on any links ever. You can if you wish rest your mouse over the link and the place that you will really be taken will display. Often it isn't to the site you suspect. For example my PayPal "Secure Link" didn't even go to PayPal.com. So sure you can do that but really the best solution is to not click on anything in an email. Period.

Third, I log into my account and see if I have any notices trying to get me to do anything. I did this by opening my browser and typing in paypal.com then login and looking around. NOTHING. So yes it was a Scam, my account is fine and there isn't anything I need to do. It's always good to check anyway.

So there you go just follow good practices and you will be fine. Basically don't click on any links in email unless it is something you were expecting from a friend or business acquaintance. That will help you tremendously.

The people who do this stuff are really good at it though. I once got an email from my Bank and they said I could answer a survey and get $20 deposited in my account. Cool, I fell for it because I was new to this bank and click on the link. Stupid I know, but like I said they tricked me. Luckily my Phishing Filter from my Web Browser stopped me and it was all over. Phewww! Good thing I had backup and you should too.

Be careful.

A Family that loves business

2007-03-01T15:44:00.001-08:00

I have a wonderful family. We have a variety of backgrounds. Not too many are entrepreneurs like me but I have a sister-in-law that has that same passion. She and a business partner just started a new online business (http://caregifting.com/).

I wanted to write about it and let people know.

You can read more about the business for yourself online but here is what I believe I know about it. All too often we have somebody in our lives whether family, friend or business acquaintance and they have some sort of medical issue. Maybe it's cancer treatment or a surgery. So we want to try to do something for them. Maybe we show up with flowers and then when we get to the room we see that there are 20 other bouquets in the room. Maybe it's diabetes and a box of chocolates isn't really the right answer now is it?

Don't worry this new business is going to try to make that problem easier to deal with. You can get gifts tailored to the concern people have. If somebody got 3 of these they would be happy because it would be all natural products they could use far beyond their treatments. The flowers will die and I suppose we could say, boy I sure hope you don't... but these gifts will let people know you want them to have a long healthy life to share more good times with you.

Ok so there you go check it out and just know I don't get anything for myself if this venture takes off. Maybe my kids will get bigger Christmas Presents from their Aunt but that's about it.

Cingular 8125 firmware upgrade

2007-02-26T14:22:00.001-08:00

I purchased a Cingular 8125 back a while ago, months and months ago. This is a phone running Windows Mobile 5 which along with other things is supposed to receive email from an Exchange Server. Basically you can view your Exchange Server info from your phone. This includes your Calendar and Contacts as well. So even though I don't yet have an Exchange Server for my email I thought I would give it a try because I have customers with it so I can test on my account at their server. I configured the whole thing on the phone and when I tried to Sync (using ActiveSync on the phone) I got error messages about certificates and other such things. I tried every configuration change possible and never did get connected. I gave up and figured I would revisit at some point. I thought eventually somebody will write the correct tech note about the issue and I will find out what I need.

So just recently I had a customer purchase the 8525 the latest and greatest phone from Cingular. They want to be able to do this and they looked it up on Cingular's website and forwarded me a website with information. Unfortunately the website didn't have anything to do with the 8525 but it did say something about my 8125. It appears that there was a new Firmware Upgrade that fixes the problem.

On Saturday I downloaded the new Firmware and installed it on my phone. It changed a few things and I also had a temporary problem with my SIM Card. It would say it wasn't working. I reboot and tried a few things but it still had the same problem. So I removed the SIM Card and put it back in and I haven't had any more problem. The best part is I was also able to connect to an Exchange Server. Very cool. This phone also has WiFi capability but I was never able to connect to my WiFi at home. Actually that's not completely true it would appear to connect but I couldn't browse with the connection. I could however connect at Panera Bread Company (they have free WiFi). So I always figured it was something I had to change on my system. Well now the WiFi works perfectly as well as the Exchange Server.

Another thing that happened to the good was that Messenger would work before but would disconnect after a while. With the new firmware upgrade I stayed connected for over 24 hours.

So there you go my phone now works as I always hoped it would and all I needed was an upgrade. I don't know if I'm just imagining things but it also seems like my Internet connection is running faster on the phone than it did before. An upgrade and I'm off and running.

Sell Your Ideas with PowerPoint Presentations

2007-02-21T12:00:00.001-08:00

I just read this blog about Powerpoint presentations. I have tried to use them before but have to admit I probably didn't capture anybody's attention with them. I am going to put in a little more effort next time and apply some of what is said in this link. I enjoyed it and I know I'm just passing on somebody else's words but I hope you enjoy them.

Link to Seth's Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint

Just the Fax

2007-02-14T16:22:00.001-08:00

The office is changing even still. I remember when pretty much all the typewriters in offices went away. I don't know where they went but they were just gone. Usually however you would still find one typewriter in the closet or on a desk where nobody sits. The justification was that you sometimes needed to fill out a form or address an envelope and that was the easiest way to do it. I have to admit I don't sit in peoples offices that much any more but I don't remember when was the last time I noticed a typewriter. Maybe they are still there but I just don't notice. But this post is about Fax...or the title wouldn't make much sense.

I have been doing some research for a customer on a fax solution for their company. Fax is to me a lot like the typewriter I mention above. It is a technology for which there is limited use any more. That said there are still a couple of things for which fax works well. My customer is one of those who still needs the capability of fax to do a little more than just send a fax every other week or so. They regularly receive faxes from customers that request information. This customer currently uses a computer with WinFax installed on it. In my research I couldn't even find if WinFax was still being produced. Doing a search on the Symantec website came up only with information about 4 years old (not a good sign).

I have for quite a while now used an eFax number for my own company needs. Basically in case somebody needs to send me a fax they can send it to the number I have on my website and the fax will come into my Outlook Inbox. I don't pay for the service so I can't send a Fax using this service. My customer however needs a lot more capability. They need to send and receive. They also wish for a log of all faxes. Well there are personal eFax solutions which are great and could possibly work however there is a eFax Corporate solution which I think will do much better. You don't have to install any hardware and you don't even have to install any software. I like that because that means nothing to create incompatibility with the workstations. It's all web based. The Fax can come into your email and you can set up more than one person apparently. It only costs a little each month but remember you don't even have to have a phone line installed which for a business line can add up. The only downside I have found so far is that apparently they won't be able to use the Fax Number they currently have. It will require a new number, I'm not sure if that will cause a problem. This solution would keep the data of all their faxes for 2 years online and the other nice thing is eFax has been around for years. I've probably had my number for at least 5 years and maybe more, I don't remember.

Here is a link to the eFax Corporate website.

Link to eFax Corporate - Secure Fax Solutions, Business Fax Numbers

eFax has other alternatives as well and actually for this customer I believe I would suggest eFax Pro (Link to eFax Pro) it will give all the capability they need. We will have to install some software to use it well but that is probably a small price to pay to get away from the solution they currently have which is becoming ancient and maybe going the way of the typewriter.

Windows XP Registry Failure during load of mup.sys

2007-02-09T15:23:00.001-08:00

So a few days ago I had a problem with my own personal laptop. This laptop is only a couple of months old. I had an email with a large attachment (3Mb) that would not go out. I tried a few things an figured I probably should reboot. I did my reboot and as Windows XP (Service Pack 2) began to come up I noticed it seemed to take a long time then all the sudden I got the "blue screen of death". It was terrible. So I tried a few things, such as restore last known good configuration. I tried to boot in safe mode which is where I noticed that the last file showing was mup.sys. I read a number of tech docs that said mup.sys probably has nothing to do with it, if you disabled it then the next file would lock. GREAT. So I booted up the CMOS which is the basic configuration telling your computer what features it has and they had a hard drive scan available. I ran the scan and it failed. I said, "oh boy that can't be good". The blue screen message kept going buy pretty quickly and I couldn't seem to pause on the screen so I could read it in detail but basically it told me I had a registry failure it couldn't load the HIVE and something about the System root/system32/config/software being the problem. So I thought well maybe the drive had a failure on the sector that this file of the registry was in. BIG BUMMER! But I stayed patient and kept looking for tech notes. I found an article on Microsoft's site Article ID: 307545 (formerly Q307545). I read it and it sounded like it was definitely worth trying. I'll spare you the details because if you really want to read it you can go find it on their site. You use the repair capability copy new registry files and copy some more and then again...and the good news is it FIXED the problem. I followed all the instructions except that of course the SOFTWARE file of the registry was damaged so I couldn't rename it to a .bak file as they suggested. I skipped that one file but luckily it would delete and I was able to follow all the other instructions just fine. It is so cool to have my computer back and not have to rebuild the whole thing. Sometimes if you can afford it, it pays to be patient.

Why in the world am I writing this?

2007-01-25T16:59:00.001-08:00

You will see what I mean in a bit.

It received a subscription to Popular Science for my birthday and I got my first issue recently. It was pretty interesting. This was the February 2007 issue and I came to page 74 with a section called Ask a Geek, the article was called "How can I guard against spyware?" The article is written by Ben Edelman which they say is a doctoral student at Harvard University, where he researches spyware, Internet advertising and online fraud. I thought "This should be interesting".

It was a very interesting article but not in the way I expected. I expected a few product tips or computer setting tips, and there was a little bit but what is said was so simple and I thought intelligent. Why did I find it so insightful? Because it is exactly what I have been saying for a long time.

First of all he says that according to a recent study (not sure from where) that 89 percent of consumer PC's are infected. Wow can you believe that? I don't think I do but still it is a big big problem.

So next he lays the wisdom on us and says, "Normally, you can clean your computer with programs like Microsoft Windows Defender (free; microsoft.com/spyware), but it easier to avoid getting infected at all."

Next he says (paraphrased but not much) before you install free programs find out how they make money. And don't trust a site that has a logo that says "we are safe". I also add to this advice that if you do want to load a program make sure that you test it on a computer that isn't important to your daily function (non-production). If you load any program from any source on your daily used computer you risk loosing a couple of days of productivity.

If people would follow this simple advice of doing a little research first and then test in non-production environment they would lower their support bills.

Did you hear what I said? Why did I just say that. What you should know is that I make money by supporting computers so why in heck would I give you any advice that would lower my income?

Here is why as much as I would LOVE to make all kinds of money fixing computers people screw up by loading stupid programs I have experienced the opposite. If I am in charge of a network, even if I have given people this advice they still seem to blame me when it goes wrong. So even though my last post was on a very similar topic about prevention rather than cure, I thought I would say it again just to make sure it gets through all those layers of brain matter.

Fact is I will probably have to say it 100 more times within this next year but because I don't like the results after the fact I am going to keep saying it...in this blog and to my customers directly.

This is one step in something I feel is very important in Network Administration and that is Policies. This would be one policy and there should be many more. I will probably write about more of them at some point to give you more details. After all another very important part of Network Admin is Education of users (all people).

Hope you enjoyed the education and now it's not just coming from me but also from a Doctoral student at Harvard.

Ounce of Prevention or a Pound of Cure

2007-01-22T17:19:00.001-08:00

You know the old saying right? An Ounce of Preventions is worth a pound of cure. So since it's an old saying you would think that people would agree with it and live by it.

I have been trying to apply this old saying to new services that I wish to provide in the area of Computer Network Administration. Today I have become a little discouraged about that possibility. I had a few struggles with some prevention tactics I have implemented.

Because of this I did a little deeper searching and tried to apply the same concept to other fields beyond computers. What I came up with isn't that encouraging. I thought about the medical field and the automotive fields in particular. In both cases people usually wait for the breakdown before they do anything. Many it seems would rather get a triple-bypass heart surgery than control their diet and exercise. That's one that got me for a long time but then I decided to do something about it. But I am guilty of the car issue. I often wait until something starts making a sound (or stops making a sound) until I get that car into the shop.

So for some reason even though we know the costs most of us choose to pay for the pound of cure rather than opt for the cheaper ounce.

Why?

Create PDF anywhere

2007-01-17T14:21:00.001-08:00

I have been doing some research lately and this blog will benefit from it. Here is the first item that I am kind of excited about.

Create PDF Online (by Adobe the creators of PDF)

I have a customer that needs to be able to create PDF's they have an old version of Adobe Acrobat which is the program used to create PDF, but only have one copy. They need more but it's kind of expensive and as I say the copy they currently have is old because they don't always have the money to keep upgrading that. So I went searching for solutions.

I found printer drivers and they are pretty reasonable but still you pay per install. Also I didn't recognize any of the companies that do this so that worried me.

I then looked for being able to do it online, thinking hopefully I don't have to install anything and possibly multiple people can use it in the office. There are a few people that offer that and Adobe is one of them. For $99 a year that's pretty good, I thought. I haven't yet played with it but hopefully soon and when I do I'll try to review it here.

Side Note: If you are using Office 2007 or will use it there is a free add-in for Office 2007 that will allow you to create PDF files. Cool huh?

Busy Bee - Big Dreamer!

2007-01-16T17:44:00.001-08:00

Following up on thoughts about Time. Is your goal to stay busy? As I look around I believe that this is the goal of many people. Put in their time and stay busy. I think this is business Quick Sand. It's a popular trap and if you make some decent money you can even justify that this is what should happen. Maybe it's because I'm not as young as I once was??? I don't know. I have observed that often when a person reaches my age they are either actively engaged in a career or they have failed at attempts toward greatness and settled for what they can get buy with.

I don't feel that way at all. I have new dreams, new desires and see many possibilities in life and in business. But as I say I'm not as young as I used to be and I think to myself do I really want to work day and night to make these things happen. Well, yes I do but not the inefficient way I have done in the past. It's time to put some of those younger people to work helping me do this thing. Mostly because that is what I should have done all along. See any really good dream or business idea probably is too big for one person to handle. If one person can handle it the dream probably isn't big enough. Also if you kill yourself or destroy your relationships trying to make it happen then you aren't very smart and looking at the end game.

My point is look at the end game. What do you want to achieve? The whole thing not just part. Do you want to have a successful business but loose your marriage and alienate your kids? I doubt many people start out thinking that way. They just begin the process and start working in the wrong way and then that's what they get. Well, either they get the successful business or the successful family but not both. Usually I bet that happens because it is hard to let go. So if you look at the end game also think some about how you want it to happen not just what you want to happen.

So now do that out-of-the-box thinking we hear so much about. Case in point and I will say more about this in the future but I wanted to change my business. I wanted to make more money, spend less time doing it and not spend so much time putting out fires as they say. Sounds good right? But that's not all I want to provide a better service to my customers, for less money and help them to achieve less down time on their networks. IMPOSSIBLE! Yeah but I don't think so. I'm testing my plan and will be announcing it here when it is ready. Life is so full of possibilities...keep the dream alive!

Time is Money...or is it?

2007-01-08T16:13:00.001-08:00

I have been thinking about this concept a little bit in the recent weeks. Not exactly this catch phrase but eventually this phrase came out of the argument I was having with myself. It's popular in business to say this. I don't believe I agree with the phrase any more. After much thought process I have come up with "Time is time...Money is money". The confusion is that in our culture time can be spent on a variety of things and so can money so they can become confused. In addition we can spend time and money both on an activity so it becomes very confusing.

So is time the same as money? I hope not! When it comes to my personal life I really hope not but this blog is about my business life an in that I also hope it is not true. One reason I hope it is not true is because I have little money to show for my time right now. I have risked and lost and risen to risk another day which we call an investment and an education.

If time = money then there is no excuse for wasting time. I should only spend my time on business matters and for that matter only on business matters that produce revenue, and furthermore only on those business matters that can produce the highest revenue...right?

Well, in a word yes! That is exactly what I should spend my time budget for business matters on. However I believe that I need a time budget for other things than money. What else could be important? Well, let's be real selfish here and admit that I would like to live to be at least 100 years old. Actually that is a kind of boring number I would actually like to hit closer to the 120 mark.

In order to do that I am going to have to spend more of my time budget on things other than money. Let's talk health. I need to spend some of my time on exercise and some on nutrition education and on actually taking time to prepare healthy meals. Yes, if time were money and I still operated like that I would eat many of my meals at fast food restaurants (and I have in the past). But if I want to live to 120 I better give up the fast food and maybe even be a lot more careful about all restaurant eating. To eat healthy so I can live to 120 it is going to take a little more time. (Here is a link to the nutritionist my family meets with)

If I want to be alone in my older years then I could spend the rest of my time on making money but I don't, SO - I better spend some time on my relationships. My Wife and Kids are one of the most important relationships I have and you guessed it...they take time.

So there are some other things I want to budget time for like the fact that I want to develop myself as a moral person and as a creative person and as an intelligent person. Throw in some rest or sleep and I have spent a lot of my time, and I can't go out and buy more time.

Time <> Money (a programmers way of saying time does not equal money) but in order to have some money I will have to spend some of my time on making money. I wish to spend some of that time in financial education so what I have left better be pretty darn productive. Without a financial education I will (and have) waste a lot of my time allotted for making money.

I don't suppose there are any answers here, only questions but this blog is hopefully a way for my customers and potential customers to get to know me as well as for fellow business people to hear what somebody else is going through. I often wish I could read someone's reflections on such matters, but I figure I can start by sharing my reflections. I personally read thoughts from other people and enjoy those of many, one that I have enjoyed is Bob Parsons of GoDaddy. He writes a business blog about issues he has gone through.

This whole time thing could be overwhelming but remember I have the same exact amount of time in my day as a Billionaire. So obviously all I have to do is figure out how to better spend my time to reach my financial goals (as well as my other goals). My wife and I have been thinking a lot about this and are trying to develop new services and ways of doing business that maximize our efforts, while increasing service for our customers at a lower cost. Sounds impossible. To understand where we are going it helps to begin with an understanding of my realizations of this subject...Time. I know it sound impossible but because I have run out of time for blogging I will share more about that at a later time.

Sales Tip 1

2006-12-28T16:17:00.001-08:00

What do you do when the prospect is a freakin' idiot?

Before you shut me down on this one consider what I am going to say. First of all the reason I am calling this a sales tip is because I believe that if you are going to start a business or succeed in business it will be very helpful to be able to sell.

The other day my family and I were going to the Pacific Science Center to see real fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls...so was everybody else. My wife and son went early and got tickets and my daughter and I rode with my mother and father-in-law. We were trying to find a place to park. In our quest we were driving down an alley of sorts. From out of nowhere a fellow who was sipping on a Latte and listening to music through his headphones almost runs into our car at about the passenger door. Once he realizes that a car is coming down the alley and he almost ran into it he yells out a few choice words and runs to catch up to us at the point the alley will enter back to a real street. He yells something else, pounds the side of the car with his fist and as he is passing by yells a few more obscenities.

At this point as I was sitting in the rear on the drivers side I thought I should point out the error in this guys thinking so I rolled down the window and began to explain. This fellow apparently had just come from the Post Office at that time I didn't understand what that had to do with anything and let the fellow know. Mind you I was not using the same type of vocabulary as this fellow. So rather than see and understand the error of his ways this guy began to make motions indicating he wanted to share his Latte with the passengers of our car. I saw this coming and got the window rolled back up most of the way. My father-in-law who was driving didn't get his window back up but also the Latte wasn't aimed exactly at his window. Splash!

Doesn't sound much like a sales situation you say? Well here is the deal...when you are in business and dealing with anybody you will come across times that your Point of View doesn't seem to match up to the other persons point of view. In many sales books that I have read they put a lot of effort into techniques for how to counter objections. I suppose this works for them but for me it feels a lot like an argument and seems to be a lot like my experience with the Urbanite Latte Guy. My advice in sales and my own personal motto has always been, "Sell to people who want to buy!"

If somebody is objecting to what I am telling them I have a few choices. I could sit and argue with them until I ware them down, or I could move on to work with somebody that wants what I have to sell. That simple. Now of course in "follow-up" sales situations sometimes you have to find out a way to make things work. In that case you are best to give up on the technique you are using and adopt a new Point of View. I have found that the best way to get there is to ask a lot of questions.

In my Seattle experience above if we weren't in a hurry to get into the Science Center for our appointed entry time I could have gotten out of the car and offered to buy this poor deluded guy a new Latte and ask him if there was some way I could make his life more safe. Instead I just moved on. That is not a bad tactic in sales as well. Just move on and find somebody that you get along with and that you enjoy working with. Your life will be better, I guarantee your business will be better and you will have surrounded yourself with people that have a different view about sharing a cup of coffee.

BuzzNet tags: Sales Tip

No Power and Business Continuity

2006-12-21T14:54:00.001-08:00

Link to Business Continuity

Recent events have once again brought up an age old issue for me. In Washington State we recently had a pretty major storm. On Thursday December 14 through the evening we had winds exceeding 60 MPH. This following a month of record breaking rain fall in November. We were recently knocked out by a snow storm but this wind storm gave us the one-two punch.

I myself had the lights come back on December 19 but that didn't mean I could get on the Internet or use my phones. That came back to a limited degree on December 20 (meaning it would come on then go off...then back on and so forth). Today we seem to be doing pretty well.

In my case my cell phone was also only working in certain areas for days. Gas stations that were able to open were over crowded and having much trouble. Many businesses had to go to cash only and banks were only letting a few customers at a time into the building and allowing them some cash.

Today there are still people without power and other services and they may have to wait a few more days still. I wrote an article on my website back a while ago about coming through just such disasters. I thought I would put a link to it and maybe it will help. There are many businesses for which this advice will come too late but hopefully there are many that it can still help. I also put together a talk on the subject complete with PowerPoint slide show to go over some of the things people need to think about. If you are reading this and you wish to have me come talk with your company or other group about the issue (and if you are close to Redmond, Washington) I would be happy to see if we can work out a time to talk.

This is of course a pretty big issue for people and usually we only think about it when something bad has already happened. I hope you think about it before then and are ready for whatever occurs. Today there are many new options of what people can do to be prepared, things I could only dream about when the mentioned article was written.

Technorati tags: disaster, no power, no computers, no network, preparred for disaster, survive disaster

Being Cheap doesn't save money

2006-12-11T19:47:00.001-08:00

You can save money by spending less to buy a quality item or service but being cheap costs!

I have worked with computers for over 20 years. From the very beginning I enjoyed the network more than the actual hardware of a computer. I have had a computer open and have swapped parts and upgraded memory or hard drives. I have replaced power supply's and motherboards. I don't like messing with hardware. It's not because it isn't fun. I believe it is a waste of time.

I have always gravitated to the Administration of the Network resources. The Network resources include hardware and software but they also include support people and end users. The most important factor of Network Management is TIME!

Time is what is all about. Time is worth something. It is the only resource that I have as much of as Bill Gates. We are exactly equal in that respect. That's right I have as much time as the richest guy in the world. I don't want to waste my time and I'm sure he doesn't. I also don't want to waste other people's time. That time, which belong to others is valuable to me as well. In fact other people's time well used is the best way to get rich. So if I truly value everybody's time then I need to come up with a plan that will use that time efficiently.

So if this is what I want to maximize in my management of a computer network then I have to put plans into place to make that happen. I wrote an article back a while ago about my philosophy of network management. I still believe everything I wrote back then. (Link to article)

So the point here is that if I make the decision to be cheap and don't get the software that will do the job the fastest possible way then it is going to cost me. If I am cheap and waste my time fixing a computer that I could replace for a few hundred dollars I am wasting a more valuable resource than silicon or money. If I am cheap and hire people that can't do the job right then I am losing the battle against my competitors.

Being smart and wise with my money is a great thing and extremely important. Rich people usually are very cautious about spending the money they have. Maybe even more so than the average person. The only people that think rich people spend wildly are poor people, or soon to be poor people. The rich make sure they only spend the money that is required to do the job. But most rich people spend their money on the right things that make a difference. They aren't cheap when it comes to critical functions. They pay for good quality and good advice. When they are cheap they may still be rich but it probably had a cost they wish they wouldn't have to pay. That's how they learned what to spend on.

It doesn't pay to be cheap.

Time Traps (Book Review)

2006-12-09T21:10:00.001-08:00

Recently read this book and very much enjoyed it. This book is written with some very practical advice aimed directly at sales people. Maybe you aren't a sales person but there are tips in here that can help you as well. The book talks about some of the mistakes people make in just trying to manage all their tasks. The biggest mistake is trying to manage all your tasks.

Yep, you heard me correct. As he points out many of the tasks we take on whether in sales or not are tasks that are going to waste our time no matter if they take us 1 hour or 1 minute. Even if they only take 1 minute they can still be a waste of time, because you shouldn't even be doing it in the first place. There are a lot of things like that throughout the day. If you took all the unimportant tasks and just threw them away how much more time would you have? I bet you would also start looking for more to through away, or pass on to somebody else.

One of the hard lessons in the book for me was hiring somebody to do important tasks that waste your time. That is something that is difficult for me, as well as it was for him. It is hard to let go, but the people who are most efficient are those that do.

One of the traps mentioned by Todd Duncan is the technology trap. I have written a post about technology and asking "who is in control?" I talked about the fact that we can manage our technology to our advantage or we can let it control us. Todd makes a different statement which being a technology guy I have to disagree with a little. He says that if it takes you a couple of hours to play with a gadget such as a PDA then it is wasting your time. I would agree with him if every time you try to use the device you struggle for an hour just to make it function. However if you have to spend a day to configure and learn about a new tool and that tool can end up saving you a hour a day then in my opinion it is worth the time. Of course I have to learn how to use technology for my work but even besides that I often have to learn new things in business that will benefit me later and I am willing to make the investment to make that happen. The key is whether the benefit is there or not. So the author has a good point to a limit.

Even with my one complaint about the technology thing I think this was an excellent book. And if you say that a book subtitled "proven strategies for swamped salespeople" doesn't effect you because you are not a sales person then you will be missing out and for another thing maybe you should think of yourself as a sales person. I do. I perform many functions in business but rather than regret sales I actually look forward to the fact that I sell.

Read this book it could help. I will be reading it again.

Obstacles (remove them, set them aside or climb over them)

2006-11-22T16:43:00.001-08:00

When you are in business for a little while you are bound to come across obstacles. The truth of the matter is that there are tons of them. Some I have found are self-imposed. If I manage my time poorly I have a problem. Many of course have to do with money, and rarely that there is too much of it (although I have heard that too much money can be a problem as well and I would like to test that theory). Some come from outside.

I have an outside obstacle right now. I am the only employee of my nice little computer consulting business. I have great customers that are easy to work with. Right now I am the sole wage earner in my family. And about two weeks ago I got a Jury Summons.

I believe in the right and responsibility for citizens to participate on juries. However I have attempted to get out of that responsibility because it would create a hardship for my business and therefore my family if I were to loose valuable days of business while sitting on a jury. Unfortunately I can't really pick when a computer crashes or when my customers will have some other emergency. There isn't anybody I can pass the work off to in my absence. As well I don't have an employer who will continue to pay my salary while I sit on a jury. I read the notice I got and it says if it would create a hardship for you that you can request to be excused. I did.

I got back a letter a few days later saying my request had been denied. I sent another email trying to explain the hardship in a little more detail and it fell on deaf ears. The person in charge of this matter for the King County Superior Court seems to feel I am probably just making it all up and need to do my time. I'm sure he has heard it all before and is therefore very callused to the arguments. I'm not sure what his interpretation of hardship would be? Maybe if you needed a triple-bypass surgery. He says I should show up for 2 days and if I am called to a jury I can make my case to the judge. I'm wondering why the courts would want to waste time (mine and theirs) by bringing reluctant jurors in and then excusing them because of the financial hardship it would cause?

At this point all I can do is request a delay of one year. Hopefully by that time I can make some arrangements that will allow me to serve without difficulty to my business. If I don't get that delay granted then I feel sorry for the poor guys who's trial I sit in on because I will be ready to hang somebody.

Sometimes you can remove an obstacle, sometimes you can just step over it but sometimes like this time hopefully I can set it aside for a while. Of course sometimes you have to just plow through it. Maybe I'll write more on obstacles soon. They come in many shapes and sizes and never at a good time.

It helps to verbalize the pain.

Same ole, same ole

2006-11-17T17:46:00.001-08:00

Busy day today many thoughts on my mind. Many of them are way too complex so this one is pretty simple and straight forward.

In business or in life there are habits that we develop. They become part of our programming. My family watched the movie "Click" this week and sometime life feels like we are on automatic, like in the movie. We learn from our mistakes and then create patterns that we re-use in a similar situation.

This is a good thing for the most part however there is one question that has come to mind for me today...

If we do the same thing as before is it the reason for our success or is it that which holds us back from greater accomplishments?

The problem is we will never find out if we continue to do the same ole thing. If you want to find out if there are greater things ahead you must RISK! Risk can be terrifying. You may fall flat on your ###, you know. But I can also say there has never been a great accomplishment where somebody did not take a risk. Mankind has been doing it for a long, long time and somehow we didn't blow ourselves up (well some have).

Try it, the one thing guaranteed is you will get a different result.

The use of the word guarantee does not imply a contractual arrangement of any sort or any actual guarantee of different results.

Zune - will it sell? Society is the Key

2006-11-15T14:54:00.001-08:00

The Zune was released yesterday Nov. 14 Wow. I have read a number of things about the excitement around this device. Of course a number of people don't seem to give it much chance of overtaking iPod. Probably true! At least not for a while. So is Microsoft stupid to get into this market? It's a huge market and with their power they can easily become number 2 in the field and that will mean a lot of money.

Past that is there anything cool about this device? The biggest one I can think of is the one they seem to be playing up themselves but others don't just seem to yawn at the thought. The ability to share. Big Deal? Well, Microsoft introduces the concept with one simple word on the Zune site "Social". That's it, that's why My Space and YouTube are such big hits. The ability to socialize is powerful especially among teens. And let's face it that the real market here isn't it? If teens can walk into a room and identify the other devices, potentially see what others are listening to and share songs and pictures with each other you can't tell me that won't be powerful. Love letters can be passed as a video clip from one person to another. A prank can be pulled by sending an audio file to everyone in the room. A guy can ask his girl to the prom by creating his own music video and beaming it over. Like I say you can't tell me that won't be huge.

And let's talk about marketing. So you are a band trying to get started. You walk into a concert beam your music video to every Zune in the room and then enjoy the concert. Same deal if you are selling Pepsi Cola. Wow. So teens could flip for it and Marketing companies could exploit it and...

Is there more? You bet it has WiFi 802.11(b/g) which means the sky is the limit for what you want to do with them in the future.

I predict iPod's are a little worried even though they are in a pretty cool lead. Go ahead buy one today and catch the wave. I'll be considering it. Tell me I'm wrong.

Costs Again (but different)

2006-11-15T09:36:00.001-08:00

So I was just doing some consulting for my church (website). The church is Washington Cathedral in Redmond. Here is the question that came up...somebody has a cool Laser printer that they will donate if we want it. So do we want it?

Now as a non-profit this church has a much better position to analyze the numbers than most businesses. In most business to purchase a Laser Printer you have to add the costs of buying the printer. In our case here we don't ...the printer is free! Cool huh? So why not go for it.

The main question to me in either case is do you need a Laser Printer? You see all the analyzing that follows either supports or doesn't support that decision. Could you use an Ink Jet printer? If you want a Laser can you justify the cost. An example I used was Coca-cola spends millions in advertising but no problem because it leads to billions in sales. Millions sound like a lot until to realize what it buys you.

The costs on consumables (Ink, Paper) and the costs of repairs differ. The Ink Jet printer has ink cartridges for $50-$70 (both black and color) The printer itself can be as cheap as $100 at Costco or Amazon which comes with one set of cartridges. $100 - $70 = $30 for the printer. This is one of the reasons as a Network Admin I don't like to spend much time trying to figure out or fix Ink Jet Printers. Why do it, the solution to the users problem is $30 not my high hourly fee. Now the Laser printer has toner costs far above the price of Ink Cartridges and to get a good deal you buy a few of them at a time so you have a pretty big investment. Laser printers are coming down in price and almost disposable but the fancier ones are a lot, maybe in the thousands. In either case if you have $800-$1200 of toner sitting around you will probably want to fix your Laser printer when it goes down. That can be expensive.

In my opinion at the church the best course of action is to decline the offer of the laser printer because the costs to operate in the first year would allow us to operate an Ink Jet printer for years and probably still buy a new one after a few years. The costs are less total and the church could use color printing but doesn't really need Laser quality (the Laser printer is black only). But that doesn't mean this is the best decision. For example I had a Real Estate Agent customer who bought a very expensive Color Laser Printer years ago that would still be state-of-the-art today. It made since for him because he printed very nice looking brochures for the properties he sells. Not just these cheap flyers you see on the post in front of the house. He sells multi-million dollar properties and does print quality brochures for them. In fact he used to have these printed on 4-color presses. That's expensive so he actually saved money and provided a quality job for his customer. It made sense.

Don't think about technology with your emotions, have a reason the technology is needed and analyze the costs like an accountant. Then the best part you get to decide whether to do it or not...Good Luck.

Carry a VoIP phone in your pocket

2006-11-09T12:27:00.000-08:00

This phone is something. I haven't used it yet mostly because I can't yet find a good justification to get one. This is pretty cool though. I have used Vonage for well over a year now. I have 2 phone lines from them and I use a number of virtual phone numbers which allow me local numbers in Oregon and New Mexico as well as Washington where I live. I have loved the service. It sounds good and the additional features are really cool. We get voicemail in our email I can make changes online to the service and the phone rings simultaneously on my cellphone. What could be better? Well if I could carry it in my pocket and plug in to any computer connected to high-speed Internet, that's what. This little baby has all the features of my Vonage phone and I can also store other files on the flas drive portion of this device. This thing is cool. So let's see what can I do to justify it? I'll come up with something.

Added Later: I had provided a link to Amazon with information about the V-Phone by Vonage but the graphic changed and I looked and can't find it on their site any more. Maybe they sold out or discontinued. Any way I'm leaving it here to see if it comes back at some point??? Of course you can also click on this link and search for it yourself. Sorry about that.

Technorati tags: VoIP Phone, Vonage, Cool Technology

Efficiency - lacking everywhere?

2006-11-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

I read this post and the phrase "strange inability to find efficient solutions" kind of popped out at me.

Link to Ernie The Attorney: The lawyerly tendency to overbill

In Network Consulting this issue has come up for me as well. I have even been guilty of it I suppose. One problem in my field is it's always a moving target. Another problem is if you are busy with work there really isn't much motivation to change or to come up with more efficient ways to do work. Until of course you have been burned a couple of times. If you have been in business for a while you realize that you must always come up with more efficient ways to do things, it is a (or should be) a constant process. Of course this is one of those lessons often learned in hard ways.

I suppose in the olde days of crafts and tradesmen (I even spelled old in and olde way) you could learn how to best do something from the master and that pretty much never changed. Then along comes technology and changes everything. Technology has been around long before computers but computer technology changes rapidly. I have been trying to keep up on changes on the Internet for a bit now and it seems that new capabilities come out every week. Within a couple of months a corporate procedure could change. All companies must be pretty adaptable.

In technology we have for a long time been in the position that we have been able to change everyone else's environment but in truth not much changed in the way we could do things. We still had to go to the office and sit at a keyboard and poke around for a while to figure out the problem. That was inefficient but it was the only way to do it. Updates didn't happen rapidly and you could subscribe to a new CD every few months or even once a year with changes and updates.

Today I do most of my work from home, I have mentioned that before. My customer says that I could even work in my underwear. I wondered how he knew? (Before you get creeped out don't worry I am actually in shorts and house shoes as well as a shirt.) I can work on pretty sophisticated stuff from my laptop. The really cool thing, efficiency wise, is I can often work on 2 different systems at the same time. While I am browsing the Internet for a solution and maybe even listening to music digitally, viewing a video or talking to somebody on my phone, actually maybe through Skype. It's all very cool.

This for me has opened a whole new door. Because I don't have to travel to my customers where I used to be able to see 2 or 3 customers a day I can know be on 10 systems a day easily. Have a nice lunch with my wife, weight lift (which I'm getting ready to do when I finish this). Life is good, but how does that change what I do? For me I am trying to develop services where I am in constant contact with my customers and their systems. I can actually keep their systems tuned up and avoid many of the problems that used to plague people. Patches and updates come out weekly and often a few times a week. This is a lot to keep up with. You could just setup your computer to automatically update using Microsoft Update, the problem is the number of updates. It is best to not do them constantly but at off hours and then there is the problem of being an administrator of your computer. In a network environment I don't like to grant users administrator privileges (which is probably a separate post some day). So they users often can't update. There are network administrator solutions and I can oversee those from home for a reasonable price. There are many things a person can do proactively to try to keep problems from happening and that is what I enjoy spending my time on.

Hopefully I will always remember that there may be a more efficient way and will keep looking for them.

Wish you were here

2006-11-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

When I recently met with Rick of J. Scott he said that he was jealous of the fact that I can do most of my work from home now. I can login to servers and workstations of my customers as well as the websites I maintain. I can download patches without having to put a CD in the drive and clean up most issues on a computer. I can also write code and zip and email the result to my customers after they let me know over the phone what they need (I used Microsoft Access). I pretty much don't have to go to the office of my customer at all. In fact I have never been to one of my customers offices. It is CJ Plumbing and is partially owned by Rick as a side hobby because he just doesn't have enough to do apparently. He ordered a server and I picked it up from J. Scott and set it all up then delivered it back. Rick then took the server into the offices of CJ's Plumbing and plugged it in and turned it on. He also plugged the workstations in and got me some IP address info. I then logged into the server from home and helped with workstations as needed.

It has all happened quite naturally over the last couple of years and sometimes I don't even think about how huge this is, or didn't until Rick said something. I don't drive as much, hardly every have a work commute. In the past I used to drive to one or two customers a day which could easily account for 2 hours of driving not to mention eating out at fast food restaurant and spending that money as well as spending my valuable health. I have all that time back and now eat much healthier lunches and dinners at home. If I need to work a little late not a huge problem I can still stay home with the kids if my wife needs to run an errand.

This is quite simply the future of the Internet. You could say that it will keep people inside and they will never get any exercise. I suppose that could happen but in my case the regular hours and being close to my weight equipment and healthy snacks has mean I get more exercise and my health has improved (so there). This is not all that there is to the new wave. Microsoft just released Internet Explorer 7 and it incorporates a Feed Reader. I don't even have to browse much any more to get the information I desire. It comes to me. I also set up Google Alerts as well as Windows Live Alerts and those arrive from time to time in my Email. So there again better time management.

More and more we will see information coming to us. And not that useless information we call spam, but good stuff the stuff we need to see. It's all going to be right there.

The funny thing was that I have thought over the course of the last few months how much I would like to be in Rick's place building houses, developing land and that sort of stuff... he does some pretty cool things. After my visit though I realize that it would be fine so long as I can build the houses from my living room. Not yet but some day.

Good Customer Visit

2006-11-03T20:18:00.000-08:00

I sure got to have fun today. It's always a pleasure to work with the customer I visited today. Rick Neumann of J. Scott Construction. (Website) The time usually goes pretty well while I am there and we have a good time. Rick is one of my favorite customers because even though he is SUPER busy running the construction company in which they build houses and commercial properties he takes the time to not only talk to me and find out what I think about things but he takes the time to try to learn about technology.

He has a real passion for computers and the networking. You can also tell he has a passion for a lot of things and maybe even life itself. Rick really seems to appreciate what I do for J. Scott and I have always believed that is because he knows more than the average customer about the technology. He understands more specifically what it takes to fix a problem and therefore appreciates the solution. Of course also because he invests some time to learn about the technology he also save me time by directing me specifically to the problem. By understanding and defining the problem not only does he save me time but he saves himself money. Now of course maybe somebody like him shouldn't be spending time on tech stuff because he has a construction company to run, but you can't do much about your passions can you?

I became acquainted with J. Scott Construction and Rick because of Lona Hyatt. Lona worked previously for another customer and then moved to become the CFO at J. Scott. They developed a need for a network guy and as Lona and I had a great working relation previously she recommended me. Lona was another great person to work with on the computers but of course at J. Scott she has Rick to do things and I often work with him.

It was a great day at a great customer and that is ALL because of great people. Isn't every great experience in life? It's not the place, or the stuff, or the money...it's the people.

Windows Live Writer Beta

2006-10-31T15:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, enough with the Beta software. As I have started blogging now I became interested in this product. I can't yet recommend it for the production environment as I haven't finished testing it. Actually I just started testing it and this is my second entry using the tool. But so far it is pretty cool and I haven't even played with adding the rich text stuff. Looking forward to more playing and in a couple of weeks maybe it is something to look at. For now just make yourself aware of it.

Things I like so far are: being able to set up multiple blogs as I am trying to maintain more than one, and not having to login to them in order to write a post. I also like being able to view the result as if I was looking at my blog without yet posting. The spell check works more like my Word program (duh) which is nice since I previously lost a post trying to make my spell check work in Blogger. I probably did something wrong but still frustrating. I'll see how other things go, looking forward to easily inserting Tags such as technorati tags with the easy tool. I played with doing that by hand and it's not the most fun I've ever had. I'll see if this is better.

I also added the Blog this add-in for it and used that to create this particular entry...Coool!

Link to Windows Live Writer Beta

Incompetence

2006-10-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

A brief observation:

If you are completely and fully competent you will be destined to always do the job you at which you are skilled.

If you are completely incompetent you won’t have a job at all.

If you are semi-incompetent (or carefully plan your incompetence) you will be supported by more competent people and you can manage them.

(I would pick the last one)

Who is in control?

2006-10-16T19:53:00.000-07:00

This is something that bugs me about technology…take that back it bugs me about people. Maybe at the core of it I’m bothered because it bugs me about me. Technology should be around to serve us. We created it for our own use and it should do exactly that. It should not determine how our lives or days go. This isn’t just hi-tech but some pretty simple stuff also. Some examples.

A computer should not decide that you must look at and read email whenever they arrive at your Inbox.
A computer should not determine when you go to a meeting or what you should do at that meeting, or for that matter what you should do any time of the day.
A phone should not decide that it is time to answer a call.
A TV should not decide when you can watch a show or movie or anything else you wish to watch on the device.

Question: Wouldn’t it be stupid if a car decided where you were to go?

This seems easy enough and yet many people seem to let the technology force them into situations.

Opinion: This isn’t a technology problem. People…I, let situations throughout the day guide what I do rather than sticking to the plan. The problem is sometimes there isn’t a plan so of course I don’t have an idea of what I should acomplish. But often I do have a plan and it is up to ME to make sure I stick to it. Truth is because I work with technology so much I don’t let it guide my day that much I use it to help me get the plan for the day accomplished. I see however many people who aren’t as comfortable with technology letting the technology guide the day. An old school example of this is the parents (not mine) who have to watch a show on TV when it is broadcast because they don’t know how to operate the VCR. I believe that in the future the concept of “broadcast” will go away. We will be able to pick what we want to watch when we want to watch it. That is so long as whoever comes up with content has created it yet. So I will watch episodes of my favorite show whenever I wish (without having to record it) with some limitations. For example I can watch episode 10 & 11 but 12 I have to wait for because it hasn’t yet been created…bummer.

My goal by the way is to help people take control of technology so that it will help them accomplish their goals and plans for the day. So I have technology mostly mastered but it’s other things that distract my day. Still it’s not their fault it’s my fault. Heavy!

Confession: Junk Mail and Phone solicitations don’t bother me (that much). The reason is because I can throw it away or refuse to answer the call (thanks to caller ID I know when I am getting a call I want to answer).

And further more I also don’t like when computers decide to crash, I mentioned this in my first post and will probably mention it again. I believe that I can take control of the technology and very much so limit when problems arrise if not eliminate them all together. However if I refuse to upgrade my software and my hardware I will most likely fall victim to the technology. That’s experience talking. I have experienced a greatly improved lifestyle by taking control of technology and other things. I have watched enough sci-fi movies and television shows to know that if we let technology take control it will rule us or maybe try to eliminate us. So the goal of getting control of technology and of other distractions really relates to getting control of time. And THAT is a powerful thing.

Breaking My Own Rules

2006-10-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

Like a civilized society a civilized corporate network is based on the laws that exist and the enforcement of them. Very legalistic view I know but boy if your goal is actually uptime and not always being the hero by swooping in and recovering after the major crash then this philosophy sure seems to work. If only I had a police force or better yet my own military to enforce my rules…ok back to reality.

This week I found a reason to break my rule. First the reason is Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) The rule is that I don’t like to put Beta software onto production workstations. They leak memory usually and other things have problems. You see IE7 is not yet a released piece of software. It is so far along in the Beta process that it is called Release Candidate 1 (RC1). I have had it installed on a non-critical computer for a while now. It has done fine but I hadn’t thought of actually using the software yet.

The real problem: back a while ago I added MSN toolbar to my IE and loved the tab browsing and other features such as Phishing Filter, Pop-Up blocker and recently I have been playing with RSS feeds and Windows Live (live.com). So back a while ago I updated the toolbar and I started getting IE sessions lock up on me. It would happen mostly when I closed the session. It wouldn’t close and I got a blank page saying it was “about”. I couldn’t figure about what? So then I happened upon the LIVE toolbar. (figured it’s better than the dead toolbar apparently I was using and upgraded.) Now my sessions started locking if I clicked on a link that opened a new IE session it would sometimes lock up. Results varied. But basically I was having to go into Task Manager and nuke iexplore.exe a number of times a day. Sometimes every half hour. I contacted Microsoft they acknowledged the problem, said they were working on a permenant solution and gave me some tips that “had helped some users”. They didn’t help but I think eventually they did. I had to do a disk clean up of temp files and run a program to remove fragments left over from Windows Installation programs. So that clean up I think eventually helped but not immediately. I tested and still had the problem.

Now remember back to my test computer with IE7. I started thinking you know I have been running that computer for a while now and haven’t had any problem. So I began a more rigorous testing of that machine and felt good. I also found out that IE7 is likely to release this month. I decided not to wait. I cleaned up again and instead of re-installing the Live toolbar I installed IE7 RC1. I’ve been a few days now and the results are great. The odd thing is my computer has actually speed up in the process. Must be using memory more efficiently. I have all the features that I cared about from the previous toolbar, better improved tabbed browsing, and some enhanced search capabilites (I can pick and choose search engines on the fly there are many of them out there such as eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc (I tried to find one for Encarta but haven’t yet, sad). So there you go Beta software actually performed better than released software. You know thinking about it I broke the rule before also I installed Miscrosoft Expressions – Graphic Designer and had upgraded a few times in their process. So far I have come to depend on that program.

I’ve broken the rules, and now it’s a good thing I don’t have a military because they would shoot me on the spot as a traitor.

Update: I had a customer install IE7 and after doing so lost connection to the Internet. On the other hand I thought I should try a couple more machines. I successfully installed on another of my computers and at a test computer at a customer setup similar to the one where it didn't work. So far all my tests have been successful so I'm not yet sure why the other one didn't work.

Get 'er Done

2006-10-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

On days like today if you really want to have customers years or maybe even weeks from now you set everything else aside and focus on a project. Today I set aside the whole day so that I could make sure I got a couple important projects done for a customer. I made sure that everything was lined up so that I could make these things happen. I had a couple of things to get done on an database created in Microsoft Access. I didn't think they would be difficult, but I was determined to meet the deadline.

Sometimes the planets all line up and everything goes just right. The report changes were done within 2 hours. So now I had the rest of the day to figure out what to do. Well there is always something pressing to do but I took a few minutes to run an errand and get tea with one of my favorite projects...my wife. Life is good.

What does it cost?

2006-10-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

What does what cost? Exactly! Often people want to know what something is going to cost. I am learning how to deal with this question. Back in the early days I could deal with it by saying it costs what it costs. There was a lot of trust. Those were kind of the good old days. Now you don't get away with that as much. The whole computer things isn't so new any more. Used to be nobody knew how really to measure these projects that well. I read a number of documents in business magazines such as Forbes and Harvard Business Review. It seemed clear to me that there was not an easy way to measure not only the cost but the return on the cost (ROI for those of you Accountant types).

Now it's different. I still don't know if many people know how to measure the return on the expense but that doesn't matter. People have to control their costs no matter what, so they want to know, "what is it going to cost?" So you have to pick a number and hope that you can live with it later. Sometimes you can and sometimes you can't . The average is what you want to deal with. Of course the longer you are in the business you have a better idea what it will take to make a project happen. You pick a number and you can't add too much to it for difficulties that may arrise because the other people you may be bidding against may have a lower number. Which there is another cost...what does it cost to sit idle? Boy you don't want to start thinking about those costs.

The funny thing is that now it's not enough to know what it costs but you have to justify the expense. Of course to justify the expense and write up the appropriate backup and documentation to go along with an invoice takes a lot of extra time, and that is going to cost somebody. Hopefully not me because if I spend all my time writting backup documents I can't make much money doing actual work, or I have to do like the big guys and start raising my rates to allow for a little idle time. Of course if you do good work then you are too busy to spend all of your time doing that, or you have to hire somebody to do one or the other. Boy now there is another person around and that raises the costs. Now I will be like the big guys, I'll have employees and they will need more time for oversite. So now I have to spend time meeting with the customer, writting backup and managing employees. Oh yeah I'll probably have to spend time finding a good Health Insurance plan and figure out other benefits for my employees.

May sound like a complaint...no it's an adventure. It's business and that collection of businesses make the economy and it is sure fun to be a part of it. It's also nice to get away from it to go to a hotel somewhere walk up to the desk and say how much is a room?

Deciding for my customer

2006-10-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

Why would I do that? Ok sure there are times that it is tempting. This is a follow-up to managing my own services for the customer. As I said in that post there is definatly the need to take control of the account or there will be no control whatever. This is a slightly different situation, this one is about assumptions. There have been times (and one recently or I wouldn't be writing this) where the tone changes with a customer. The relationship becomes strained. I tend to assume I know the reason, and then I act on that assumption. In the past things began to go downhill from that point.

For me it seems to happen soon after I send a big invoice. By big I mean that it represents 1 or 2 months if my time. It means I completed a time consuming project and because I devoted so much time to it I don't have much money coming from any other source so now I need the cash (I don't necessarily but the people I owe want to be paid).

So now for some reason my customer takes a long time to pay. This makes everything stressful. This has happened a few times and usually ends the relationship. Here is what I'm doing different this time...nothing. I don't mean I am doing the same thing I have always done, I mean I'm doing nothing.

I have decided not to put words into my customers mouth. I am not going to decide for them. I am going to wait to hear it from them. I will let them do the talking. So I had to wait a while. Waiting...waiting, then I heard. It wasn't as bad as I had decided it was. In fact it isn't bad at all. There may be a future here. I still don't have any money yet but hopefully there will be for years to come. I don't know, that's my customer's decision.

Management

2006-10-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

Being in my own business for about 16 years now has been great. There have been many wonderful times. I’m sure that if I went on about them you would tune me out right away. So instead I’ll talk about one of my mistakes. Ok, so it’s difficult to zero in on just one but this is one that I have been coming up against recently. My business is a corporation. That’s nice but before that I was what we call a Sole Proprietor, a one-man shop-except of course that my wife works with me some. I do a few different things for customers including network administration and also I have written some custom software using MS Access. Here is the thing, in both of those areas I have believed that if I just did the best job I possibly could the customer would be happy and they would continue to want to use my services.

My Thinking - I should continue to do a good job and to research in my fields of interest and stay on top of the systems and result-the customer will be happy. In other words I need to mind my shop. The customer on the other hand is the best person to look after their own interests. They will make sure that they utilize me as a resource for their business. They know what their Business Plan is and their Mission Statement. They will make sure that I fit in with those and that the work I do is for the betterment of the company as a whole. They will also manage the amount of time and therefore money they use of my service to be in line with the financial interests of their business.

Reality Check! Ok so that isn’t how it turns out.

Why? Well I can’t say that I really know the answer to that question but the best I can think is that they are busy. The Executives of the company that are aware of those things such as the Business Plan and Cash Flow are busy. They don’t have time to manage me as a resource so they pass it down a level or two in their company and hope that those people can get it done. Well those people usually aren’t ready to write software specifications or deal with the implications to the company of one choice over another. They just want all their friends to be happy. So do I, but then somewhere down the line the Executives come in to review what has gone on. Amazing to me that this doesn’t happen on a monthly schedule, sometimes not even on a quarterly or oddly sometimes not even on a yearly schedule. But when they do they wonder why these certain things were done and why the heck did it all cost so much. They wonder why it isn’t making a bigger difference. Now there is a problem. My unrealistic goal is to hand invoices to customers that they are happy to pay. They are happy because it was small change compared to the wonderful effect it had on the business. Good one huh!!

So what is the answer? Right now I am under the assumption that I can’t do it all. It’s time to grow up and act like a real business. Ok this isn’t a new realization but a difficult one. It is not easy to grow from a one-person operation to a multi-person operation. But I have to. Some how- some day I have to. Because it is impossible to run around and administrate computer networks, write software and do the management of those things that the customers need so desperately. They don’t just need the work done they need somebody to manage the work being done. They aren’t going to do it they are just going to go from one consultant to the next until they find somebody that will do ALL the work for them. This isn’t a bad thing.

There are still a few problems that I haven’t quite figured out yet but I’m working on them. First The Cost, it’s going to cost more, that’s just the way it is. That is where my sales experience is going to come into play. Next how am I going to do the management for them and yet help them achieve their business goals according to their business plan? Don’t know. Another is how am I going to get some of the time of the Executives on a periodic basis so that I can make sure they are happy and that objectives are met. The answer for all this I fear is something I didn’t think I was ever going to have to do but appears to be essential. I believe the answer to all my problems actually is GOLF!

The Network Administrator

2006-10-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

I hope to begin to put down some of my thoughts about network/software administration and running a business in this blog (maybe even unrelated stuff that comes up). I tried to put down ideas on my company website before I became aware of the concept of blogs. I had heard about them for a while but being busy keeping networks running I didn't realize they were exactly what I was looking for...a way to write down some of my thoughts if for no other reason than that some day I can go back and read over them to remember how brilliant I was before I became so stupid. That's maybe a subject for a future post or maybe I should find a good therapist of some sort to help. I hope to come up with something to say often (even if it does turn out to just be for me) but there will no doubt be a shake-down period of this whole process. Maybe I'll get better as I go or maybe just become more stupid. Here goes...

I have a vision of how networks should run. In the process of running my own business there have been times when I scanned throught the job listings in newspapers and now of course throught the Internet (some days it's like that). Many of them describe network administration jobs as On-Call available 24-7. Popular phrase. I can't help but look at that and wonder what is wrong at that place? When I was younger (oh so long ago) I remember the excitement of having a computer/server crash, rolling up my sleeves and saying, "well it's going to be a late night". There were times I was on the phone with tech support people until 2AM. Finally the job was complete except that come 7AM people were going to return to the office and want to work. I hopped that the system would cooperate but just to make sure I went home got 4 hours sleep, got up, took a shower and was back in the office to make sure it was ok. I suppose some times that has to be done. And I have to admit it was a little exciting.

Even in college I was not into cramming for tests. I did not do well staying up late at night to study for a test the next day. I tried it a few times and it didn't work well for me. So I adopted a method of scheduling out my studies and I did them when they were scheduled. When pre-test night came I ate a good dinner (school cafeteria style) relaxed and got to bed early. That is only partially true. Sometimes I would go find a group of students cramming for the same test and see if I could have any fun with them, then I went to bed. Usually it worked out pretty well.

Why can't network administration work like that? I like to create a regular maintenance schedule and set policies, as well as develop hardware and software standards. In addition to that I like to spend my time developing training programs for the employees to teach or "empower" them to use the programs they have on their desk to do the job they need to get done. There are more things than that of course such as trying to tie the IT goals to the Corporate Business plan so that the IT department is not just a Zen type area for Computer Geeks but actually a place that supports the Mission of the company. Whoa!!! So for me Network Administration is less about computers and circuits and more about people. Double-Whoa!!!

Is that too much to ask? Seems so. I have yet to find many customers where that works. It works for a while and I have had good success, but then something changes. People want to do whatever they wish, don't have time for training and when it all comes crashing down just want you to "fix it" no matter how late you have to stay up. If you can't stay up (because you are no longer young) then somebody who can is brought in. It's how I see it. I believe there is a better way. Maybe some day I'll hire a bunch of young guys to stay up late instead of me (guys who liked cramming for tests in all-nighters) and every once in a while I'll go find them and see if I can have some fun with them.