Next Thrilling Installment

We went into Nassau today and did a little shopping. Or, rather, I watched shopping occur, and supplied a credit card from time to time.

And now, boooo and booo again, it is raining on and off. The fireworks tonight will be spectacular, but it looks like we'll have to get damp to see them.

Oh well. Beats shoveling snow.

Tuesday is Haiku Day!

sunny all the time
I lose the stress floating on
a puddle of rum

A bit further south

We are currently in Nassau, where the temp is a humid 81. I think we're heading off for where the drinks are cooler and the pools are filled with girls who should know better.

We arrived yesterday, on NWA. Whomever said getting there is half the fun, had no intention of applying the sentiment to modern air travel.

More later...

Don Likem One Bit

Mondays. Freezing bloody cold Mondays. I can deal without them.

Why: Well, simultaneously, we have the garage door at home stopped working, the furnace at the store stopped working, and a piece of important equipment at work just up and broke. The story of Job is not lost on me, but c'mon now. Throw me a frikkin bone here.

So the door required some better lubrication as the cold had stripped it clean (there's a pun in there, for the discovery of which I offer no rewards). The furnace had a bad blower motor, which is what I told the repair dispatch lady; and it cost about 4 to have it replaced. I was lucky to get a guy out here during daylight hours.

Ah, well. Its the week of Christmas, and Chanukah just started. And we have heat, and family and its all good.

It is all good... right?

Amazing Plow Stories

I love the snow. Apparently, my tractor doesn't.

It seems the battery was dead; so I went out this morning, in all that snow and replaced it. I had to go visit a local company anyway, so it was convenient to stop at Tractor Supply. They comped the battery, since it was only about a year old.

I replaced the battery and the beast fired right up. I started plowing and got stuck right away, since, as I mentioned earlier, I hadn't put the bloody chains on. So I installed those in the snow.

Good Times!

Then the tensioner pulley came loose, so I crawled around under the tractor and got that put back on.

Then, now having tension upon it, the thrower drive belt snapped. Can you imagine my joy?

I said... well, you know what I said, got changed, and drove in to the store, where I'm sure we'll make... well, nothing. Who is crazy enough to drive out in this for ink?

The good news, and yes there is good news, is that I may have secured a support contract with the business I visited this morning. Sweet!

Update! Whaddayaknow? There were people who really, really needed printing supplies on a day like this. So, all in all, it was worthwhile to go in.

I have to mention that I'm not real impressed with the complete lack of attention to the streets. And it will only get worse - did you read how services will suffer as municipal revenues decrease due to reduced real estate valuations?

Well, at least the power is on.

Community Activities

Wednesday, I went and joined the Saline Environmental Commission; I think I am relegated to being a member of a 'sub-committee' as I am a resident of the hinterlands of outer York Township. The steaming tundra, as it were. The commission is in the process of setting goals for 2009, having spent 2008 focused on issues of water quality. I am very concerned with environmental issues, and plan to add my input to developing sound, intelligent policies for the greater Saline area.

One of the issues the commission is going to focus on is that of visibility in the community, including cooperative effort with neighboring municipalities. Cooperation and visibility is one of the issues I've stressed often to both the chamber of commerce and to Tri County. No town (or township, or organization) is an island, we all have to work together.

I'm interested to see how this plays out, and I'd be happy to be a part of it. After all, that is one of the reasons I joined Leadership Saline in the first place.

Inverse ratio: cooks to progress

I was at a local business today, trying to sort out their network. Apparently, I'm not the first to have a go at it. That fact is made all the more tragic when one sees that, of the eight machines I attended to, two had no security at all, two had expired McAfee (which is still no security at all) and the others had a hodge podge of semi-worthless security. Further, although on a domain, they all log in using one of three accounts. There is no back up protocol... I could go on, but I won't. Its mostly better now, but it will still need more work.

And I'm finishing up a PC that had Pro AntiSpyware 2009 and Registry Defender on it. Free Clue: These are malware, and tough to remove. Protect thyself against them.

Looks like I get to use the tractor tomorrow. I kinda dig throwing snow with the Cub. *remembers* Crap. I didn't get the chains on. D'Oh.

And in other news

I would have rather and more immensely enjoyed myself and found my time useful had I begged off of SLI the other day, and gone to AA NetWorks. That is all I will say on that.

On Shuffle: Matthew Sweet, I've Been Waiting. Bubblegum? Yes, yes it is. Still like it tho.

I've got a big ol PC on the test bed, it suffering from the usual malaise of the older PC: application bloat. There's just too much stuff to let a P4 with 512MB work smoothly. Among the gunk was a full set of Norton System and Internet Works. Bloody Hell. Look, seriously, if you must use Norton, don't kid yourself about minimum requirements. Have at least one GB, two would be better.

Shuffle: Pixies, Allison. Jeez, remember the Pixies?

I added 2x256 PC3200 SIMMs that I had laying around, cleared out all the rubble, and it is a bit faster now. Another thing he's running is SQL server and a DB preloader that both take up a fair amount of resources. It should be noted that this PC is not really a server, its a converted desktop running XP Pro SP3.

It belongs to a local small business. I'll be there all morning Monday setting up a new network. Not a proper domain, mind you, but basically a home network used for business, so its a few desktops, peered around a router.

Shuffle: Kristy McColl, Treachery. Cool latin rhythms there, boss.

Our networking group had their Holiday Festivus last Friday. Whereas what happens in Trindy's basement stays; there was rather a lot more groping than I would have thought appropriate.

Appropriately enough, shuffle goes to Ziggy Stardust.

This week, the run up to the Giftivus Holiday, features a few meetings and such, but not much. I will attend a meeting on Wednesday, concurrent to the youth air rifle session at TCSL, with the Saline Environmental Commission. [If you're wondering, the shuffle went to Blues Traveler, The Mountains Win Again. You're Welcome.] Anyway, the SEAC (I think the acronym is) is something I am keen to be involved with. It does affect us all, and what with my participation in environmental affairs in other venues, it could be a very natural fit. I suppose there will be some discussion as to whether I should be allowed to be on such a board, because although I have a Saline address, I live in the hinterlands of York Township. As an aside, I am thinking it might be a good idea to get on the York Twp Environmental Committee (YTEC) or perhaps the planning commission, as well.

We end this narrative as we began, with Matthew Sweet, Nothing Lasts. Hopefully that selection is not appropriate at all.

Comin back around

SO this evening I went to the year-ender party with the Home Builder's Assn.

It was a lovely affair, in their basement, with free beer and all the cool kids. Kinda like being back in high school, but it was OK this time.

I spent a portion of the evening chatting with a fellow with whom I've become acquainted through several chambers of commerce as well as the HBA. He is, as they say, everywhere. He represents a local bank, an he is a friendly, approachable fellow. But, he confided in me, he isn't selling very well. His job is to get customers for the bank, and he isn't, and that worries him. After he spoke for a little while, I told him that just from what he said, it seemed that his heart may not be completely in to it. He has little verve for the bank; he couldn't give me one reason why I should consider switching. Thats not good.

So, trying to be a good guy, trying to give good advice, I advised him to speak to a person we both know in common: Kendra Kerr. This isn't going to turn into a commercial for KK, but she helped me and Laura get where we are now, and she could help him sort out whether he should just chuck it in and go into business for himself. He had mentioned that he had been considering such a thing, so it was appropriate to suggest.

Kendra is co-host of AA Chamber NetWorks tomorrow, and I will miss it, as I will attend Saline Leadership. SL was kicked back one week for... some reason. Its not like the 18th would have really impacted Christmas. Anyway, maybe he'll talk to her, maybe he won't. It can be very intimidating to go into business for oneself; but its worse to be unemployed.

So who else did I speak to tonight? I told you - all the cool kids. Where were you?

Phear This

Our in-store event yesterday (Saturday) went very well. Laura did all the on-air talking; at least twenty minutes worth. We received several calls and some new customers stopped by. All in all, we're impressed enough with WAAM's coverage, and its employees, that we'll very likely continue our advertising.

This coming week has a lot fewer networking events; the holidays are upon us and the business world is slowing down. Ypsi chamber has a coffee on Wednesday at Bombadill's. Later Wednesday is the HBA year-ender party. Thursday is WRN, then Saline Leadership. I've really enjoyed SLI, and I've gotten a lot from it.

I'm looking forward to the days just after Christmas; we're going back to Nassau for a week. It will be so nice to get away for a while...

Timing is everything

Had breakfast with the Ypsi chamber yesterday. As is their custom, they had the high school chorus sing seasonal selections. Very nice way to start the day.

So we're looking forward to Saturday's in-store event. A little nervous, as I've never been involved in anything like it before. Also, the store is kinda small, at least up in the front public area, so the added people and equipment will make for a few hours of tight living.

Things continue apace. Bidness as usual.

Other things, in no particular order:
* The Friends of NRA fundraiser banquet has been moved to April, the 22nd. I'm co-chair this year, so lets see how that goes.
* Air rifle is tonight. We get 12-15 kids per session, which for this activity is extreme success.
* AA Chamber Year Ender party is Thursday. All the cool kids will be there.... just don't stand in front of the shrimp. I've seen terrible things happen in the shrimp line.
* Tri County board meeting is Thursday night, right after the year ender.
* I'll try to get to A2B3 on Thursday. Its been a few weeks since I made that group.
* So what else? In laws come up on Friday and stay a few days; if the weather permits, I suppose.

Yup, My life is exciting. Actually it is kinda.

Beware the Pierogi

Today is Holiday Pierog-a-rama, and the better half has friends of Polish extraction coming over. In a bygone era, it would have been babushka-ville in the house today, but the modern woman wouldn't dare.

Next Saturday, Dec 6, Joe Gagnon from WAAM will be at the store from 11:15 - 1:15. He spoke on-air about the event for about five minutes a little while ago. How cool is that? We hope the event adds a lot of visibility to the store... we could use a little Holiday Shopping bump.

Article on CW here. I think a lot of the stigma about using recycled cartridges is wearing off. People are finding that recycled cartridges aren't junk. Well, they aren't junk, and everyone to whom we've shown the process has been impressed at how detailed it is. There is a lot of there, there.

HTTP-wise, I have a fun project. The son of a local wine merchant built hisself a PC. Problem is, it developed a condition in which it won't stay on. He tried to reinstall the OS, but that didn't help. I took it back to the test rack, and what I found was a loose screw under the motherboard. The screw was causing a short to the case, and the power supply's thermal breaker would trip. Now, I just need to reconnect everything, and retest. I also noticed that he's using XP Home, and has 4GB PC-6400 RAM installed. Also has a dual core CPU. I will counsel the young lad to rethink his OS strategy, as XP won't use multicore efficiently, and its a 32-bit OS, so it won't use all of the 4GB either. I would go with Vista Home Ultimate.

As with the recycled cartridges, there is a lot of misconception about Vista. People are slow to accept new paradigms; I'm just as guilty.

Grumpy, Grumpy

Geez, but that last post was cheerful.

The day at the Ice Cube was largely a bust. One other exhibitor was there, Krishna Mallya from Batteries Plus, and we looked a bit, shall we say, random. We were just standing there, with our displays, next to the WAAM people, who did a spot every twenty or thirty minutes, and that was that. No signs, no tie-in, no obvious reason why we were there. Good Times.

And then we did go to Manchester, where it was cold, and there was some A, but no T to speak of.

I've got one PC to upgrade, when the parts show up, and a software install, which will probably happen next week. If at all.... another story altogether.

Apropos of nothing at all, go look here, if you like. I have a great interest in the effects of modern secular culture, if culture is what it is, and its effects on art are a good way to define it.

Ice and Blisters

Busy today:
* I have a booth at kid's day at the Ice Cube. Come over and see me in all my cartridgey splendor from 1-3.
* Then off to a small gathering in the wilds of Manchester. It is entirely too bloody nippy for a full-on ATF weekend, so we'll have to settle for mostly A.... maybe some T. We'll see where the A leads.
* No broken PCs to be seen, but I have two service contracts out for approval. That would be rather sweet.

For the first time in many years, maybe ever, we're not going anywhere for Dia del Turkey, and no one is coming over here. Booo. I'm glad I was able to scratch out one win in the turkey shoots over at the club, or we'd be eating cold cheese sammiches.

The hell with it - I'd honestly rather sleep all day.

Not Necessarily Better

Went to Saline Leadership today - mind mapping. Pretty cool, its the graphical representation of ideas as you drill into a concept, or take notes, or literally, whatever. If you can describe it, you can map it.

Oh, yeah, on shuffle: Zappa, I'm the slime.

Also today, went to WRN, and attended a WWBA open house at Esquire Interiors. Nice group, I'm thinking that I may join them. That would serve them right.

Yesterday, I attended an HBA meeting at G&K Flooring. They have a really nice operation, but the location is a bit challenging.

On shuffle now: Ministry, Work for love. srsly!

Question: Should I twitter? Would anyone follow, would anyone care? Is there any reason to twitter (or is it twit? A case could be made either way)?

Hey - I bought a new IT tool. Yes, I know you're too thrilled to make sense. Its Disk Internals NTFS Recovery. Very, very cool. I recovered over one million files from a client's PC. I'm not kidding - a freaking million files. Everything he ever deleted.

Think about that next time you think you've deleted something.

Shuffle: Slipknot, Opium of the people. Smashy, smashy.

Friday, I'm wide, wide open. Lunch anyone?

Like I said

Not too much new... I'll try to be interesting.

I installed a new PC over the weekend.
Returned a pair of laptops; all better now.

Our after-hours was interesting. Those who were there will agree; but I think no one is likely to openly discuss it. Like, ever.

Got a few large(r) clients for CW... every lil bit, ya know.

Like I said, I'll try to come up with something better soon...

Another what in the where, now?

We held a small get-together for some of the WRN members over at the store this evening.
A good time was had by all, but we're sworn to secrecy.

Had lunch today with the AA chamber at NetWorks at the Polo Fields. Very nice, made a few good contacts.

Tomorrow, its breakfast in Milan with the Milan chamber. They're considering putting together a Leadership course like Saline, AA, and Ypsi have. Its an interesting idea, I don't see why not.

MMmmm. Not much else. Same ol run arounds.

Nothin but chickens

So what is HTTP doing, you ask?
Get a life, I answer!
OK, here:
* Got a PC that doesn't boot. Nope. No booting here. Ya know, it is about a decade old, has WinME installed... I recommend letting it go to that great hunting ground in the sky. Just let it go.
* A laptop the runs really slow. Well, yeah, with that much RAM, I guess it will.
* A Client stopped in with his laptop. He said it will not, I mean Won't, get online to a wireless access point. So, I connected it to the completely open wireless from the restaurant next door, and he was amazed. Dude, seriously, where do I begin...

Other stuff: Tonight was the homeowner's association annual meeting and elections. I'm not running for office this year (been there, done that); maybe next year. We had it at Tri County; I was surprised to see Four neighbors (who were not on the ballot, out of 106 homes), and we had more than enough ballots to proceed with an election. Even that, 42 ballots out of 106 homes... I
mean, come on. Where's all the apathy coming from?

Thursday - WRN, NetWorks (at which I shall try a haiku!), and a WRN after hours at my place.
Come one, come all. Beer! Pizza!

Oh, and BTW, Start listening for my ads on WAAM, AM 1600.

The Shuffle

Just queued up Alice Cooper's 'Hello, Hooray'. Lovely.

So what of this week? I'll just recap today, as the shock of seeing the week in its entirety would likely burn you to a cinder. We were visited by a radio person, and we may have radio spots and beneficial mentions before long. Like really soon.

Thats pretty cool. And we may well do a live, in store event, with Joe Gagnon (oh, look it up. Yes, he really is mildly famous). I think its big stuff.

Also, in news of the planet shaking variety, I've bought a card scanner. HFS. How ever did I live without it? Coolest toy in quite awhile.

[Shuffle now: St Germain, Rose Rouge. I recommend the 'Tourist' album.]

I attended a meeting this evening to plan a fundraising event for next year. I was on last year's event committee, and this year, I am co-chairman. Oooh, err. Got the big shoes on now, don't I?

[Shuffle: Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Numbered Days]

HTTP work plods on (computers will wander off the reservation every now and then and need correction) and we're selling a fair bit of cartridges. You know you need one...

Update:
Oooh, shuffle just puked out Sex Pistols, Filthy Lucre. Don't you wish you were here?

Wrapping Up

I like Sundays, but they go too fast.

Updates on the dangling issues:
* The custom machine finds a PS/2 keyboard, and will find USB devices, but doesn't find the USB keyboard on boot. I think it needs drivers.
* The machine that runs fine for me, but not for the client, was hanging on his USB hub. He had connected the desktop, a laptop, and a laser printer into a USB hub, so the two PCs could share the printer. Um, fail. That's not how to share a printer.
* The laptop that had the wireless issue was more of a pilot error issue.

Now I have an additional laptop to upgrade, and the threat from some folks to drop off their PCs to me during the week. Could be as many as four. This week will be rather busy anyway, with several networking events on tap.

New Circuses

The busy, busy week, in review:
* A custom built machine stopped booting when it couldn't find a keyboard. I think the owner's habit of shutting it down by yanking the power cord has something to do with it. Its all better now.
* A clients machine that only works here. It runs fine here, but won't boot up at his home. I'm going there Saturday (Pinkney!) to figure it out.
* A client's laptop that won't connect to any wireless networks outside his home. Well, it connected to mine just fine, and when I've shown him how to do it, I think the mystery will disappear.
* A client lost his Comcast business connection, so he called them to fix it. Fix it they did, by sending, among other things, a reset signal to his gateway. All his network settings went away, and he called me in a panic.
* Got a new local business client, also from Comcast. They had a few network issues and a new laser printer to install. Laser - Hey, I know where they can get toner! How convenient.
* A client who would like to access some files from either of his two laptops, have them backed up, prevent out-of-date revisions, and not have to buy any hardware. His docs reside out on GoogleDocs now and he is happy.

So its been pretty busy, and cartridge sales keep inching up. I'm ready for the pace to increase.

Sudden Sickness Madlibs

I'm absolutely [pretentious adjective that means full, but is more Dennis Miller exotic] of [noun that more or less refers to mucus, but is much less attractive] and feel very [another adjective, this time meaning 'like crap', but pithier. You get the idea.]. If only I could [verb - keep it clean] with my [body part - you've been warned] I could have appreciated the Bears [descriptive intransitive adverb, keep it simple] of the Lions. At least I don't feel like Marinelli; I'll get better tomorrow.

That was fun.

Now, I'll need a good lie down. My strength needs conservation.

Moving right along

I've added a link to this blog from Linked In; that is, the latest blog posts (given that I update it sometime) should show up in the home page of anyone linked to me, and who uses the BlogLink applet.

We'll see.

Anyway, I have been WTF-ally busy these last few days, and so there's been scarce time for blogginess. Tomorrow, for those keeping score at home, I'll go to WRN, then to a service call, then catch lunch with A2B3, and follow it up with a WRN after-hours at Sandler Training. Yeah, social butterfly, me. In the quiet moments, I still have a half-dozen toner quotes to get finished, a few follow-up calls, and that wireless-allergic laptop.

I think the laptop will take a number and wait its turn. The client is in no hurry, and neither am I.

A nasty bit of work

A client claimed an infection of AntiVirus2009, so I took the PC back to the lair to remove the malware. Turns out it was worse than that. They had TDSSserv.sys, a very nasty little rootkit that prohibits booting into safe mode and contacting a selection of legitimate security sites.

What to do? Have all your tools on portable media - no Internet necessary. I loaded gmer and SDfix on the machine and they cut out the tumors. All better now. Of course, to get to that point took four hours of trying other remedies first. I do this so you don't have to.

I also have a laptop from another client. This little beast apparently won't hook up with wireless networks outside the home. When we booted it at their house, the keyboard and touch pad buttons were unresponsive. I think that wireless may be the least of the machines problems.

Weekly Scribe

Or, weakly; take your pick.

So what did I do this week? Allow me to indulge myself:
* I attended a Cub Scouts meeting - we're setting them up with cartridge recycling as a fund raiser.
* It was youth air rifle class day Wednesday at Tri County.
* Thursday was really busy. WRN in the morning, followed by the A2B3 lunch at Eastern Accents, followed by a reception at Washtenaw Woodwrights, then to Stonebridge for the Saline Business Enterprise Awards. A2B3 is a group I learned of through LinkedIn. They gather every Thursday and just have lunch. Its an eclectic group that just chats about whatever is on their minds. Kind of cool. The reception went very well; meaning that I enjoyed seeing their business and learning about it. And the awards are always a good time.
* Friday, we had our irrigation system winterized, I met an associate for lunch, and then we saw a friend over at the 4 Points for her birthday beer-a-rama. The conversation, as it will do, turned to politics, as drunks are wont to do. My two cents: We all have opinions but, as it is with religion, we don't have enough details. We hear and see what others tell us, and we cannot see all ends. Its best not to get too worked up over it. What will happen, will happen, with or without my getting all frothy over it.

Of course, in the meantime, we sold ink and toner, and I exhaled the warm breath of life into the PCs of others. We hired another part-time employee at the store; now we have two. Our empire expands slowly but surely.

There are five networking events this coming week, and some computer work. It all plods along, a heaping helping of same ol, same ol. Which isn't a complaint.

How Many is Enough?

I've got accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Plaxo. How many is too many?

Further, what are the relative strength/weakness of each? LinkedIn is better for business, Facebook is more social, and Plaxo is, well, I'm not sure. I'm seeing the twitters on Plaxo, so I think its more social. That begs a question: Can I link (RSS, or whatever) this blog to Plaxo? Or any other platform?

I mentioned that LinkedIn is more business-oriented, and I think it is. You keep occupational data on it, and make connections to others in your field or company, but what then? I haven't found anyone yet who can answer that, and I've asked a few. I'm linked, in one way or another, to over two million people. What do I do with them? Would they send me a quarter each?

It takes a lot of time to keep it all up to date, and I'm not sure they offer sufficient return to keep investing. It would be nice to know what others think.... since no one comments here (besides Keith) I suppose I'll have to ask on another channel. Maybe I need a MySpace page....

More tales of the stupid

Latest hack involves an email that pretends to be from Microsoft, and contains an executable that the recipient is directed to run as an update.

I can't believe that in this day of automated updates of just about everything, people fall for this. The executable contains Backdoor: Win32/Haxdoor. It will open ports on the infected machine that allow remote code execution. The effect is that the damaged PC becomes a Zombie, running whatever code is sent to it, and eventually becoming useless.

Be skeptical of everything on the internets, children. Even The Brothers Grimm couldn't see all the nasties that abound there.

Like the cool kids do

So, ya know, I'm like, hanging, over at Panera, drinking a smoothie, and posting to my blog.
ZOMG!

Spent the morning at Morning Edition, hosted at Weber's by the Ann Arbor Chamber. A fine time again. Then off to visit customers in the Jackson Road/Scio area, and try to drum up some cartridge business. C'mon people - get with the program.

This midday is the HBA's associates meeting, during which I will try to get business owners to notice that I'm trying to save them some money here. Lastly, I need to pick up a laptop (another victim of Antivirus2008) and get that on the road to recovery.

Thursday is a mess - I'm out of pocket all day: Washtenaw referral network, Saline Leadership, a Saline Chamber after-hours at Flatout Bread, then a membership meeting at Tri County. Swamped, I tell you.

But at least now, right this minute, I have a moment of relative quiet and a smoothie. Mmm, good smoothie...

Another Rogue

My old pal Antivirus2009 was out and about today, and he brought a pal: Say hello to 'SafePCTools'. Seriously. 'Safe PC Tools'?? C'mon, what happened to 'ReallyNotAVirusInDisguise2007'? Lovely names that the ne'er-do-wells come up with.

But the naive continue to fall prey to them. Remember, Windows will never, ever, spontaneously pop up a window that warns of an infection, and then Not Suggest a Microsoft Product.

So, a little inkiness, a little wireless networking, the same ol. But a busy sort of same ol, so no complaints here.

Keeping on keepin on

Tuesday saw us having a new desktop to work on, and so on. Just a performance issue (with the PC, not me). I guess thats what happens when one's teenage daughter has never seen a freebie not worth downloading. Just sayin.

I had a Toshiba laptop to trouble shoot the other day. There was no power - meaning, that even plugged in, it wasn't booting up. I changed the DC jack (was corroded, it was), and still no joy. Tried a new battery [Plug] over at Batteries Plus on Packard [/Plug] and still no joy. The disassembly went well, and all the components looked ok, and the power was correct down to the mobo. I guess, when they die, you just have to let them go.

This evening was the big NRA banquet over at Tri County. Always a good time: [Gimli] Prime rib, fresh cool ale[/Gimli]. It benefits a good cause, and we've benefited from it a lot over the past few years.

My Turn

Looks like the ol blog has moved to bi-weekly.

So be it. I've been busy as hell trying to keep all this running. So, what has been happening, you ask?

Well, I've had some HTTP work - usual stuff... viruses, optimization, and we're busy with CW. But. I could be doing the world a lot of good by spreading the CW word around a lot more. So thats what I'll do. I'm going to be a man on a mission. I want to proselytize the world on the CW (and HTTP) models and make the masses come a-calling. Let us be inundated with orders, like an onrush of inky tidal wave.

The night is hot and black as ink; oh g-d I need a drink....

We Get Letters

Yeah! I got an email from 'IRS' that states that the government owes me $650.50. I just need to click on the embedded link that redirects to a server on yahoo.jp. I'm sure the IRS has a very good reason for using a free email account in Japan.

Early to rise

Well, its not that early, but still. With the weather being so crisp of a morning, who wants to get out of bed at all?

This week, more of the same. I have a laptop now to fix, it has a broken DC power jack. A fairly common complaint since it is a fragile piece, and we abuse our laptops, don't we? We take them for granted, and them we are all bummed out when they are broken. Which is OK, just bring them to me to fix.

I had an appointment Monday to deliver a full system I had put together. PC, monitor, color deskjet; running XP home. It was reasonably priced, and included data migration and set up. And then the client backed out. He uses his computer just for email and word processing. The fact that it is a 12 yr old Pentium 2 fossil running Win98 on 128MB RAM, with a dial up internet connection mind you, didn't seem terribly inconvenient after all, when faced with a new-fangled XP system. The old one already has Office 2000 installed (from a relative, not even a legit copy) and has his dialup client (and he can't find the install disks), so using a new one would require.... loading applications. Apparently too much trouble for a retired guy to manage. The fact that I would have done so for free didn't budge him.

The real deal breaker for me was when he asked if he could put the memory card from his camera into the new PC to send photos to people on email. Nevermind that sending a 1.5GB photo over dialup from that old POS would take 37 hours, I said, no, an additional external card reader would be needed. Well, that disappointed him no end. It was unacceptable, you see. I asked him how he does it now, and he answered that he doesn't.

Its like one of those old corny jokes. Except that I'm not laughing.

He said he would call when he got his data connection upgraded (already has cable TV, and a cell phone, so was using sole POTS line for the dial up. Go figure.) If I can sell the system in the meantime, I'll be gladly rid of it.

On the CW biz, we just closed September, and I'm pretty proud. The sales were more than double that of July, nearly double that of August, and within the price of a steak to the best month in the store's history. I intend to shatter that this month.
How cool is that?

Won't ... Die ...

This weekend, I've been tussling with a series of unfortunate events.
I helped a client with a HP Vista PC on Friday; it was blue-screen dead nearly every time he tried to start it (required multiple tries to actually boot successfully). I looked at it, and it held many minidumps (little state files written in a crash), each pointing to one of a few crash codes. Fairly common were PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (0x50) and MEMORY_MANAGEMENT (0x1A). So, I'm thinking, "Uh-oh, new RAM time."

The PC became more and more unstable as I worked on it, to the point where pretty much any process would puke right up and die. I ran SpinRite for a few hours, and MemTest86 overnight. All the hardware looked fine.

Having already saved all the important user data to a network drive, I nuked the PC. I selected HP Restore (reformat and reinstall from recovery partition) and killed the beast.

I'm re-installing security apps and such right now. I don't have the client's copy of Office 2007, so we'll do that tomorrow. Hopefully, that will solve that.

In summary, the PCs I work on skew toward XP (75%), Vista (20%), and Win98 (5%... why won't they upgrade....?) Of the Vista machines, this is the first time I've seen an OS install go so horribly wrong. Of course, it is possible that the client did something of epic bone headedness to cause the errors (in my experience, most fatal errors are self-inflicted), but its a little late now. After I'm done with it, he shouldn't have to muck around at all.

Leave it to the pros

Have I mentioned how much I am disappointed by Symantec Antivirus products. Your mileage may vary, but I find them simultaneously -

• Too large (threads, working space, &c)


• Too large (too deeply ingrained in OS)


• Not easy for the avg consumer to remove (the sure-fire way is to go to Symantec's Norton Removal Tool page, but most folks would rather just remove via Add/Remove. You know, like any other program.)


• Worse than nothing when out of date (it seems to become a beacon for all malware once its definition file gets out of date)


• Frighteningly ubiquitous - its everywhere, and it is FAIL

Rant over. I've removed Norton three times this week, and I am glad to do it each time.

Continuing Misadventures

I had an interesting call this week, in which the PC complaint was that the PC was overheating and would shut itself down. Well, I did all the usual (visual inspection, then ran under load, with cover on, with motherboard monitor utility installed, reviewed the system event logs, &c). And I ran that unit for 16 hours without so much as an odd noise. Funny, that. I mean, it was rock solid. Anyway, I told the client, call me if it breaks, and I need to see it in its operating environment.

Selling more and more printing supplies - looks like this might have been a good idea after all.

Swooshed Right By

What happened to the week?

Well, we've been selling a lot of printing supplies over at CW Land.

The fall lineup of networking has started. I was at the HBA Associates meeting Wednesday midday. Thursday it was WRN/Saline Leadership/Saline chamber reception at a local business/member meeting at Tri County. Man, I'm glad that member meetings are also burger night - I was starved. Leadership, I should take a moment to say, was fun. A good speaker gave some good tips on marketing (personal and professional).

The leadership institutes are a good deal; if you get a chance, you should go.

Friday evening was the Roast event given in honor of Bill Mangold. Bill's had a heck of an adventurous life, and its obvious he's collected quite a few friends in the bargain.

As for HTTP, well, I had a slow week...
* Bought the PC and monitor to build a system for one client (nearly finished)
* Answered an emergency call at Rentschler Farm (ineffective Verizon security suite)
* Answered an emergency call from a neighbor (another notorious AntiVirus2008 infection)

My online AT&T ad should be live soon. We'll see what that stirs up.

I'm sure a lot more happened... but my mind wanders, ya know...

Coolest Monday Ever

Ok, not really. But it wasn't bad. It could be a lot worse - we lost power Sunday for only about 3 hours. At least I'm not in Houston. How many millions without power? And so far no discussion of blame, no looting, no atrocities.

Hmmm, interesting.

Saturday, we visited friends in Manchester. People who know what I'm talking about will know who we visited. It was an ATF party (alcohol, tobacco, and firearms). Good times, and we got home horribly late.

So the new week: a little HTTP action, a whole lot of ink, the occasional networking event. More of the same, basically, but it sure beats the alternative.

I've found that the HTTP jobs have been skewing more towards residential work, and to hardware (new PCs, new components, network issues). We'll see if that becomes trend.

Networkin Fooooo

Started the day with the Washtenaw Referral folks. I'm glad I joined the group - they're very active, very responsive, very involved.

Then got an emergency call from a client whose laptop was not behaving. Its Gateway Vista unit, and it had stopped booting correctly. He left the diag screen up for me to see (Exactly right behavior- Gold Star!) It showed that it stopped the Norton processes and aborted the boot. It had no error messages in the system logs, no core dumps in C:\windows\minidump, no further indication of error state. And, worse yet, it booted right up for me. I don't doubt my client's sanity, and I think I'll take seriously the only clue given me, so I removed Norton. First, I should mention, first I ran SpinRite for about 12 hours. Recommended by the way - its The HDD diag utility.

Then I went to the An Arbor Chamber's NetWorks luncheon. The featured speakers presented a nice overview of the differences between marketing to Gen X and Gen Y audiences. It was interesting and not as dry as some attempts to do the same thing.

So then I went to the store. I'm not kidding to say that we've increased sales by about 25% in the past four weeks alone. I went to a local business and dropped off a toner cartridge. People can't believe that I'll deliver - Look, why wouldn't I deliver to build a relationship with them? I want them to know me, to know us, and to be comfortable that we'll take care of them.

Then I went down to Milan and participated in the networking of their monthly meeting. I went to the Campfire restaurant, had a few beers, met a lot of people. It was an event well worth attending; Milan is a good group of folks.

So what else? I'm writing this at 2200 hrs, i still have a laptop to finish and about 30 minutes of paperwork/catching up. What makes it all worth it, is that its mine. Its all mine, and I do it on my own. I haven't worked for someone else in nearly two years. That right there, is a hell of a feeling.

Better Title Than Last Post

Busy day. Started with the clothes dryer deciding to have a minor failure. The door switch lever arm snapped off, so I had to go get one.

Part - $5, gas - $10, not shelling out $125 for a repairman - priceless.

Had a busy day at the store. Seems people know about this place after all.

And tomorrow is very busy: Washtenaw Referral Network meeting, back to store, Ann Arbor Chamber NetWorks luncheon, back to store again, run deliveries, and finish day at Milan Chamber Evening Social. There's always a lot to do around here.

Nearly Dia de Hump

No, I'm not proud of that title.

Anyway, the Ypsi chamber event featured the president of WCC. He spent a half hour outlining all the things that are available at WCC, ostensibly to stump for the upcoming extension to fund the college. Seems they receive > 50% of their budget from property taxes. That, in and of itself, is enough to make me oppose their funding.

BUT. I had no idea how many diverse and useful programs they offer. I mean, really spanning the spectrum from the aesthetic, like dance, to useful, like vocational programs. Hey, I started my career in a vocational program, and I'm not about to stop others from learning a skill and getting on with their lives.

I was convinced to support it. The millage is an extension of existing funding, not new money, so I'll never know the difference anyway. But, someone else will know the difference if it gets defeated, so thats the incentive to just let it continue.

Today, the store was fairly busy, and I did a bit of delivery. Wednesday, I have a HTTP appt, and more inkiness. More of the same, and lots of it.

Fin de Semana

Day of rest. First in a while, and its kinda weird. Feels like I should be out, doing something....

Catching up on work (like bookkeeping, bills, invoices, email, &c, &c).

I saw a utility on the InterTubes for Vista defraggery called Auslogics Disk Defrag. I think I'll give it a try (its free - right in my budget) and maybe report back. I haven't had the opportunity to use any cool utilities recently, and I'd like to keep up. I have been using a LAN utility called LookAtLan. Pretty simple, but kind of cool.

Community Fair was the usual. If you haven't been to it, its a County Fair, on a smaller scale, with all the attendant animals, local talent acts, fair food, and such. There's no booze served, which is a blessing as far as I'm concerned. Years ago, we used to frequent the Wisconsin state fair, and plenty of beer was on hand. It was always a madhouse. On the up side, it is a target-rich environment for people watching of all sorts. And I mean all bleeding sorts.

So - what else? Upcoming week features 3 or 4 HTTP gigs, an ever-increasing volume of ink and toner sales, and several Chamber of Commerce events. Ypsilanti CC holds their First Tuesday breakfast meeting this week, followed by Ann Arbor CC NetWorks Thursday midday, Milan CC Social on Thursday evening, and Friday I think I'm supposed to be at a Small Business event at WCC. I'll have to research that... I really don't recall one way or the other.

I'm using Google Calendar to keep all this straight. I'd be a bit lost without it.

Oh yeah, he went there

And had a right good time at the recent Former Coworker Bash.
With those whose curfews permitted them to be out after dark, anyway.

So it has been a quick and busy week in the HTTP/CW world. A lot of ink & toner sold, a lot of new business customers, and a few HTTP visits as well. Next week promises more of the same, including a smidgen more cowbell.

Today and tomorrow, I'm at the Saline Community Fair, in the Saline Chamber of Commerce booth. One show daily kids, thats all they'll let me do. See me Saturday, 8-10 PM with the unnervingly entertaining Magic Joe.

Mention this blog and receive a coupon good for money off on ink. Don't mention the blog and get two coupons.

And So We Continue

Our merry narrative.

Did I mention that the Italian place right smack-dab next to the Little Shop of Inky Horrors is downright righteous? I'm not even getting free food to day so. Bella Italia - get over there and get... oh, pretty much anything on the menu. Try the eggplant parm. Yeah, that will do nicely.

SO we're getting more business customers every day. Things are picking up at a reasonably sustainable clip. Built slowly, we can keep the momentum going.

Went to the Home Builder's Assn Chili cook-off. Oh, my, but there were some fine colon-singers in attendance. A fine cap to the day, especially since the HBA always has beer, bless their little heads.

Slow on the HTTP front. Thats OK, I'm keeping pretty busy with CWAA, and the computer work tends to ebb and flow anyway.

To answer a question that cropped up the other day: Yes, When I blog of it, it is the LAW.

Keeps slippin... slippin

No, I'm not working today either, but that doesn't mean I didn't work.

Set up network printing at the club, and had a peek at the Camry's rear strut that's vexing me so. Seems it is broke afterall. I'm not real happy about that - its always something with cars. I swear (often and with vigor) that I would ride a bike to and fro, if by the time I got to fro I didn't resemble a rat drowned in its own sweat.

The reality is even worse than the mental image you are now stuck with.

So, what else?
* My parents arrived last Thursday, for a weeks RnR in the wilds of Saline.
* The store shapes up nicely. We've bought a lot of stock, and can now conduct commerce.
* We've got several new business customers, and there's more iceberg where that came from. And we're going to need every last one of them to make this work.
* I've got a few HTTP appointments this week
* The HBA has a meeting Wednesday featuring Chili and Beer (bless their little heads)
* Thursday, I have an evening meeting (ok, its at a bar, and the other attendees are former coworkers, but its sort of a meeting)
* I'll end the week taking a couple hours at the Saline CC booth at the community fair Friday.

Busy, busy. Ain't it grand?

Erm... A Week... Are you sure...?

Uh, sorry. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

So, in the last week, I've worked 11.4 million hours at the store, fixed a half dozen computers, told several thousand people about the great deal that is Cartridge World, and got about fifteen minutes sleep. Cuz I'm a slacker.

Yeah, we livin large here, boss.

Interviewed a lad today for the store, and we interview a lass tomorrow morning. We needs us some hep in there afore we combust. I've lined up a few business customers, and sales volume is increasing. But so is the tension to get more inventory, and make sure we are capturing useful sales figures.

So while I do all that, I also try to fix and upgrade the PCs of the world, and sell them ink. Yeah, I'm crabbing. Where else will I complain? Get yer own blog, Gary!

Le Hump

I delivered that PC I built way-back-when. New owner is all giddy n stuff.

Slow day in CW. I sent quotes to some business contacts. Took some time to take stock of the situation, in more ways than one. Might be hiring real soon now.

I'll be out of pocket all day Thursday.
* Saline Leadership does the ropes course tomorrow, make of that what you will.
* I'll get to be in the store for about an hour during which I'll send more quotes.
* AA Chamber is having a reception
* Its the eldest's birthday. Big 1-8. I asked him if he has his stuff packed. He didn't see the humor. We'll go to Seoul Garden for dinner.
* I'll have a client's PC to optimize, so that will round out my evening.

See Ya Friday!

Go Phish?

First thing in this morning's email is a nasty-gram from Comcast. It says:

Dear Comcast Subscriber:

ACTION REQUIRED: Comcast has determined that your computer(s) have been used to send unsolicited email ("spam"), which is generally an indicator of a virus. For your own protection and that of other Comcast customers, we have taken steps to prevent further transmission of spam from your computer(s).

And then goes on to give URLs that I can click on to remedy the problem.

Its really authentic looking, and Comcast is my cable/VOIP/ISP provider, so it is possible, right? Except that I haven't used that account to send any email whatsoever. Its basically a receiving account for things like newsletters. Therefore, I'm calling BS on the phishy email. My PC(s) are without any spambot infestations, and I'm not interested in downloading any right now.

I haven't called Comcast and I probably won't. Try to get through their phone maze of gatekeepers... I dare you. Truthfully, if they blocked my account from outbound mail, I'd never notice anyway.

Today's lesson: Be very careful about clicking on any links in an email if the email seems at all, in the tiniest bit, suspicious.

The Next Day

Was much like the first.

I subcontracted a repair; a slow laptop. No real malfunction, just slow.

Then back to the store and busy with cartridgey stuff.

Picked up another old PC to recycle...

Hmmm. Pretty boring stuff. I'll try to be more interesting tomorrow.

First, A Monday

Busy, busy.

First full day at CW, and it was busy. I called a few people to inquire about their toner needs, we sold a fair amount of product (well, fair for it being the first day), and I went on a few calls.

I helped a nice older lady get back on line - her second phone line was very noisy and dropped the dial-up connection frequently. I suggested DSL after solving the problem. I also had occasion to speak to one of EarthLink's customer disservice people in Indiana (give or take a few letters). She was absolutely no help at all - all I wanted to do was verify that the old dear's account was still valid, and this bint treated me like I might not be right in the head and needed a good hand-holding.

Then, I went to a company for whom I take overflow. And did they have overflow. Two machines, the first of which has the dreaded XPAntiVirus2008 rogue program. Take Note: Nothing called Windows Anti Virus or XP Anti Virus is valid.

So, with that demon in there, all the rest of hell had taken up residence.

Tomorrow, I will finish up the exorcism, and attend to the second PC. This one suffers in that it doesn't boot up since having XP SP3 installed. Apparently, that happened a few times to people with AMD processors. The fix was said to be to boot into safe mode, and selectively disable drivers until the PC booted. I'll also check the system logs and for minidumps. If all else fails, I'll try to do a restorative install, and then to remove SP3.

Then its back to the store. Still a bit surrealistic, to have my own storefront...

Has it been that long?

Lordy, Lordy. So, how ya been? Me? Well...

I've been toughing it out in San Francisco, on a two-week training course. Yeah, poor me. We've been eating a lot of sushi, a lot of dim-sum, kind of a lot of Indian... yeah, life's tough out here.

And we've learned a lot about the CW way of doing things. I feel pretty good about our choice to go through with this.

We return Saturday evening and normal programming will resume shortly thereafter.

In the interim, please enjoy the following: Maybe you knew about it, maybe you didn't, but you can get streaming music through your very own PC. Its free, its safe and its got something for every taste (except Gary... that boy just scares me). Go to shoutcast.com and begin. It requires Media Player, but you have that already.

No Longer Fantasy

We signed the papers this afternoon and are the official Cartridge World Ann Arbor owners. All your ink are belong to us!

And, as an added bonus, I can as of today accept all major credit cards for my HTTP computer work.

How cool is that?

Deep in another midweek

The aforementioned elder PC was a viral hell hole. There's no sugar-coating it. It was a good candidate for a large nuke and rebuild.

I persevered tho, and found all the nasties what had collected within. I think I got 'em all, anyway. There were trojans, worms, and redirects (oh, my!). I really don't think they were there when I finished it last because:
* They're typically not subtle. The horror begins right away, they don't hide and wait.
* The updates and scans stopped on July 11, several weeks after I returned it.
* I'm just not that incompetent.

So, I got windows update back on track, and the spyware and virus checking. I had to uninstall AVG (too broken to work and a reinstall didn't help) and install Avast. Aside from the pirate connotations, I think it is a sound product and a good go-to. I also installed a new app of which the interwebs spoke highly: SuperAntiSpyware. Is that not the stupidest name ever? Works like a bottle of acid poured right on the drive, though. Recommended... so far.

Right now, the healed beastie is sitting here, continuing the post SP3 updates, and I'll return it later. And it jolly well better behave itself this time or its the nuke.

Here's another topic: When I arrive to an office appointment and the client has gotten all tangled up in a project that has to be finished right away, I am understanding, cuz it happens to us all. But. Is it too damn much to ask that he CALL ME and reschedule? He's got three other people in the office who could have rung me up to warn me. So am I wrong to institute a new item on the bill of fare, for just such an occasion? From now on, anyone who doesn't give me a shout when something comes up gets billed a cancellation fee of one-half of one hour labor.

I want to hear Gary's take on this -

A new week's blogginess

You can smell the freshness. At least, I think that's freshness.

So today, we went to the Ann Arbor Cartridge World to see at there is to see.

Well.

We have our work cut out for us, that's for sure. We take possession Thursday afternoon, and we'll start instituting a few changes shortly thereafter.

Tuesday, I'll be out early, picking up a PC. This is a rather, um, old school, unit to which I had given the once-over a few weeks back. The complaint is that it has a viral infection. OhhErr! I shall have to see what all that is about.

When I fixes 'em, they stays fixed. The owner alluded to, 'What did we do wrong?' and I mean to figure it out, and gently educate them to the correct way things are done.

No other real news here. The month may well end quietly, which won't be such a bad thing.

Friday

Thursday, usual WRN of the morning, at which I was given a laptop to work over - usual performance issues. Thats ok, usual is good. I can work with usual. Later on Thursday, I went to Milan Dragway - it was a joint chamber outing by the Milan, Monroe, Ann Arbor, and Ypsi chambers.

Having never been there, I must say it was a hella good time. I haven't seen funny cars like that since I was a kid.

Anyway, so for Friday, I returned the laptop, then helped another client with setup of a Vista laptop, and went to a new client's house. They wanted to set up a KVM switch; typically a simple thing, but the Logitech wireless optical mouse just would not play well with it. When I'd switch over to another laptop, the mouse would go away, and usually take the wireless keyboard with it. When I connected a USB mouse to the switch, that problem went away. There was still a USB issue with the laptop (the USB bandwidth was exceeded... WTF?) so I uninstalled and reinstalled all the USB devices.

So, what else? We close on Cartridge World next Thursday. I have to admit that the excitement is tempered by a bit of terror.

New Toy!

The spectrum analyzer came today. Very sweet.
I'm tinkering with it to get the hang of what all the readouts mean.

I've been doing a bit more selling of devices that I thought I might, so I applied for the State Sales Tax registration. Oh, well.

I've also started the process to accept credit cards. I find more and more clients who'd like to use plastic, and who am I to turn them down?

Back to analyzing the, um, spectrums.

Teeeyuuuusday

Today, we break our fast with the Saline Chamber of Commerce at the lovely Brecon Village. Then, off to answer a client's QuickBook related questions. Then off to meet the client with whom I have contracted annual service.
And... wait for it... he's not there, again, even though I made an appointment.
That pattern is getting a tad old, there, boss.

We're getting a quote for the window/water feature. I bet that will sting a little.

And, I've put in a bid for network expansion at the chamber of commerce, as they rearrange their offices.

Gotta get as much as possible before I'm out for two weeks.

Monday

Today was something of a change.

We (the wife and I) spent the better part of the day at the Milford Cartridge World. Now, why on Earth would any sane man do that, you muse, much less with his own wife in tow?

Well, you see it behooves us to learn as much as we can about the CW process and way of doing things, given that we close next week on the purchase of the Ann Arbor CW store. Immediately thereafter, we fly off to Emeryville, CA, to attend two solid weeks of training, and then, on August 18th, we open the store that is entirely ours.

Getcher cartridges right here. Inks and toners as far as the eye can see.

This time next month, we'll be at the store full time, gradually transitioning to part time as we get staff who can run it without close supervision.

So, anyway, we drove back from Milford through a torrential, blinding downpour, and then I went to Dexter through the very same weather event. Whilst in the fine city of Dexter, I visited a business that had asked me to swing by and examine their wireless setup. Since I don't yet have my spectrum analyzer (Wi-Spy 2.4 - Very Very Cool Toy!) I had to eyeball it. Not too hard really, as I think most of the shortcomings were fairly obvious. If they like, and I hope they do, I can come back next week and do a proper site survey.

Go have a look at the analyzer and tell me it isn't the coolest thing you've seen today.

Tomorrow should be rather busy as well...

All Weekend Long

So it seems the aforementioned spider monkey was wrong, wrong, wrong all along, as well as awfully annoying. The router I set up while he was babbling on and on was set up wrong, so it didn't hold the IP assignments over night. Fixed that Saturday.

Also Saturday, I took care of a laptop that had an unfortunate habit of loading the HP drivers every single time it was booted up. Disable the Cue Discovery Service, my son.

Sunday, went to a new client's home and found their ancient, underpowered machine. It was a bit slow, they said. 512MB RAM is barely enough for WinXP, it surely isn't enough for WinXP and every pig utility from Symantec. And I mean every one of them. It was painfully slow. I did my best and strongly suggested a RAM upgrade, and removing Mr Norton.

The original complaint was that the Palm Desktop software had somehow truncated the contacts list such that there were no records past S. I found that there were records, but they were largely blank. Ghostly Backups were no help; they were the same. There's no telling how long this had been going on. Lesson Here: Archive the important stuff to a separate file and Verify Your Backups.

Oh, and the machine was suffering a BSD error about every week or so. This error (0x0000007F, 0x00000008) is Symantec puking up when it loads the Firewall app; they provide a registry fix on their web site. I noticed that the Norton Firewall didn't load after the fix; now the client uses Windows Firewall.

Then, off to the club to put back the office PCs that I've had for about two months. The renovated office is nice, and the PCs are fast(er). It's a great step up from what it was.

Nope, no tanks

Not the subject after all. We will do modeling later, today was systems development. Ya know - developing the understanding of what drives complex systems to better define the problem set and plan a strategy. It had something to do with fish...

No other jobs today, the day-long off-site took all the oomph from the day. The house painting continues (in this heat, too, oy!) and I've scheduled a visit to take care of the failed window. Long story - its nay so much a window as a funnel from the master bedroom to the front room bay window. Could be an indoor water feature.

Friday, I'll go for regularly scheduled maintenance at a business down Jackson Road, then we go to the bank to settle some financing, then we have a conference call with a legal representative. Suffice to say, something very large is in the works. Also, we're going with the bank that had the Can-Do attitude, and was willing to work with us in any way possible to get our business (2 accounts in this case): Midwest Financial Credit Union. Recommended.

I think I may have a couple of calls over the weekend... we'll see.

Humid Blather

That line is stolen - extra points to him that tells us from where.

Wednesday, we (I) went to drop off the viral mess that I tidied up on Tuesday. Then off to the Ypsi Chamber Coffee Clatch at Bombadill's. I like Pete, the owner. He rides his bike to work everyday, the lucky stiff. I would do that in a heartbeat, but for the looking like swamp-thing when I arrive.

The house is being painted by the skilled crew from Certa... now if the rain holds off, it may get finished before the snows.

Went over to a client and installed their network. Its a wired setup of 2PCs and a Mac, sharing a DSL line. The PCs have never seen an update, so it will be a long slog through updateland for them. I made sure they had security apps installed before going online... so sense putting them in harm's way.

Today, Thursday, is this month's get together in the Saline Leadership program. We investigate mental models today; I'm hoping for Spitfire, or maybe a tank.

After that day-long event, I'll drop back in on the new network and see that all the updates are coming along. Given my time this week, it will likely not be completed until Friday.

This same office also has a strange problem with their QuickBooks 2005: The company file is hosted on PC A, and must be opened on PC B before PC A, or when PC B tries to open it, the file appears locked by PC A. Whats up with that?

A thin slice of pain

Today I had three things to do, only one of which brought actual discomfort.

I started off by optimizing a home/business PC. It was really pretty much there, but needed a little tweaking, and some random crapware removed.

Then, off to finish up the home network that I started yesterday. Installing the external drive is trivial - plug it in and it works. Connecting the router was a little trickier, since the DSL modem decided it would rather not play nice and seized up. I had to call Bangalore, or some such place, to have a jackal read me a script. No trouble shooting, no explanation of my observation of the problem; but a lot of condescension from him. Just a script. He may as well be automated. So after he noticed that everything I said the first time was true, and just power cycling the bloody thing didn't work, he did what I asked him to do in the first place and got the modem back on line. Then he started trying to explain to a mentally challenged dolt like me how to get an IP address assigned, and I lost it.

He seemed perplexed when I mentioned that the reason the IP address wasn't getting assigned was that the NIC naturally assumes a subnet 192.168.1.* and he had me change it to 192.168.2.*, so I repaired the connection and it was all better. He asked me to look at the google page page. I told him I was already looking at a web page. He repeated his request... and I hung up on the little spider monkey.

Enough was enough.

So - last anecdote of the day comes by way of Lesson Time. Write this down: the application, Antivirus XP2008, is very, very bad mojo. Do NOT download it.

Its the sort of malicious plague that first you pay to download, then it turns your wallpaper into a warning sign, tries to open a million browsers, removes task manager, and generally renders the PC useless. I have an Optiplex GX260 that I'm cleaning up for another customer. He'll get it back tomorrow, all shiny and fresh. And let that be a lesson to him.

A Note On Firewalls

The other day, Zone Alarm released a new rev that works with the MS update that killed it (KB 951748).

I re-installed ZoneAlarm on a Desktop running XP Pro SP3. Runs fine.
I failed to re-install it on a desktop running XP Home SP3. The install fails after complaining that the file is not a Zone Alarm install file. [WTF?] So I decided to experiment with other third-party firewalls. I installed Comodo on the XPH box.

Fired right up, has no issues, easy to use; and free. I think I may recommend it.

I still have two XPH boxes running SP2 and Windows FireWall. So far so good.
And the Vista laptop runs Windows FW as well. DId I mention I broke down and bought a laptop? HP Pav9700, 4GB RAM, 1GB Video RAM, 500GB HDD, 17.1" screen. Lovely.

So where was I?

O Yes, crabbing about rain. How nice to have a little while without any. My house needs paint, and now it looks like I may get it done. I've hired the fine folks at Cert A Pro Painters. You can contact Ernie Starr via the WRN link to the left.

Now, back to me. I spent the Saturday, drenched in the rain, helping the parade get going at Saline Celtic Fest. Absolutely fabulous, yannow, aside from the torrential downpour. Sunday was... a blur. Cannot recall a single detail.

Monday, I had a 9:00 with a client in Milan, sorted out their performance issues, and was able to help them with the decision to go ahead with a home network. They have 2 PCs - one connected directly to the DSL modem, the other on dial-up. Take the plunge, I say. Go ahead and wire them both to DSL. I bought them a router and external HD, and we'll finish tomorrow.

Then I drove to the west side and had lunch with a cohort from WRN (Ivan Clemens of Print Tech). We had a good discussion about things both business and not-business related.

I stopped by a client I hadn't seen in awhile after lunch. They need periodic maintenance, so I was able to negotiate a very favorable annual contract with them. They also would like a bid on a custom PC build, and a reasonably priced server. How cool is that?

This is going to be a very busy week.

The day in review

Have your heart medication handy - its thrills-aplenty.

First, the weekly meeting of the Washtenaw Referral Network. You can get to their web site via the link to your left. Its always a good meeting, and I think I've really gelled with the group. Well, I think so anyway; I've no idea what anyone else thinks.

Then off to beautiful Stonebridge for the NetWorks! luncheon hosted by the Ann Arbor Chamber. Saw a lot of people I knew and met a few I hadn't. The featured speaker focused on the topic of LinkedIn. I'm a pretty vocal proponent of networking, and LI is another way to get to know people. Obviously, you get out of it what you put in to it, and everyone's mileage will vary. But - I felt the speaker did a pretty lame job of actually developing a sense of a business reason to join LI. First, and foremost, shouldn't you develop a sense in your audience of the importance of the subject of your talk? Shouldn't you tell them why they should care?

Well, I spoke to a few other attendees afterward, and they were not real impressed either. Its a shame, too. I think that social networking has a lot of potential, but if you can't explain the potential to people who are not invested in the technology, you'll never convince them.

More Good Reasons

To want to smack someone around.
If you are using Zone Alarm, the wizards of Redmond have slipped you a new wrinkle. Update KB951748 affects the range of ports used by DNS, which means it will use ports outside the range that ZA expects to see, so it stops the connection. Pretty slick. Your choices are: disable ZA until this blows over and use Windows Firewall, or uninstall the update.

Its a PITA either way.

So Today

I optimized a laptop, and I stayed out of the rain.
Can we have some more rain, please?
I haven't turned on the sprinklers yet; why would I?
I'm sure someone will try to tell me how its the fault of global warming that we're getting rain now. Its all GW: it rains, it doesn't, its warm, its cold.

So I'm about done building the desktop for a client. I swear, I'm never buying another off-the-shelf PC as long as I live. I'd forgotten how much fun it was to build it yourself. It will be a shame to let it go.

I need a laptop, like right now. I've been looking at them online. Isn't it possible to get one with a HDD @ 7200RPM? Whats up with all the 5400RPM drives? If I could build one, I would.

Up and At Em

I had two voice mails when I woke this morning. No, it wasn't that late.

One, the township had their router problem solved. I had diagnosed that their Nortel Passport 2430 T1 router was dead and had ordered them a Nortel 1001. The 1001 directly supersedes the 2430, and is about half the price of a Cisco 1841. That was, until the county IT guy dropped in and replaced the unit. Seems the county owned it all along. Who knew?

Second, I got a call of another storm-related problem. Last week's storm fragged a client's server. They replaced the power supply, but did not get any joy. On arrival, I noted that the PC would begin to POST, but shut down after about 2-3 seconds without any BIOS beeps. Kinda like a thermal breaker defending against a short. So I took it back to the shop, where it did start the POST, and gave a lot of BIOS beeps. Like, all of them. The pattern was fast and hard to pin down (it was like this ST:NG episode wherein Picard tries to convince an alien race that he is sentient by knocking a sequence of prime numbers. Sorry - geek interlude). So I started card swapping and found that the IDE RAID card was the one that died. Even tried a different slot, and no difference. They were happy to get it back, and back to work.

Except... they were already online without the server. I walked in with it on my shoulder, and I see they're already working. They have a network in name only - its all done through the router. The 'server' is basically a storage shed. An old, decrepit storage shed. They asked me what it would take to upgrade the whole system. I said only about 6 grand.

Yeah - the current set up works right now, lets not fix it so fast.

So tomorrow, I'll pick up one of their personal laptops to optimize and secure.

Thats fine, they really don't have the resources right now to start replacing their whole infrastructure. They even have a Win98 desktop in the system. What are ya gonna do? The mindset I want to project to my clients is one of cooperation - You tell me what you want to do and what you can spend. We'll work with what we have. Few companies right now can afford to just upgrade everything.

A long days journey into weekend

So how will you spend your glorious three-day weekend? I don't chafe, per se, when people ask that, given that I haven't any income if I don't work, so a prolonged period of slacking off does me little good. I always hope that while others are off doing their bit to stimulate the economy, I can do mine by answering the needs of their customers.

And so I shall. This fine weekend, while you gorge your pie hole on brats and, well, pie, I will be:

• Building a PC from scratch. I ordered a barebones kit for a client; its a quad-core, 4GB, half-terabyte behemoth in a very cool case. High-end video and sound... its pretty sweet, and fun to build.


• Setting up a laptop. A client accidentally destroyed his laptop, so he bought another and handed it right off to the professionals.


• Helping out the township. It appears that their router/firewall appliance bit the dust in that last storm. Their usual nerd being out of town for the 4^th, they called me. There is signal as far as the router, but no connectivity through it. Before they drop about $1200 on a new one, I'm going over Saturday to do a little more digging.


• Sunday, I'll drop off the new laptop to the happy client, an might pick up a couple of PCs that the owners would like cleaned, or if that is too expensive, scrapped. No problemo; I'll burn a DVD of their data and commit the rest to the briny deep.

I'm actually amassing quite a pile of scrap. I should take it in soon to recycle the metals. I enjoy being able to provide a proper burial for the PCs that finally go their resting place.

The other day, I met with some former co-workers. Of the four I keep in touch with, two haven't developed the intestinal fortitude to move on (Gary! Darren!) and two have gone on to better opportunities (Ronda! Keith!). There are enough positions out there that one needn't tolerate sketchy financials and dodgy management. No one stays on at a company for 30 years anymore; you seldom see people in white collar jobs standing still for more than three or four.

Change is a scary thing, but its better on your terms than theirs.

Updates

As in, application updates.

Are you up to date on everything?

Its kinda difficult to be on top of it all. There are helper apps out there you could install to get a handle on it, but a) I don't know for a fact that they aren't spying on you; and b) who needs another resident background process?

I just read an article on TechRepublic regarding the number of Google users who are surfing with out-of-date browsers. (Yes, mac kiddies, that includes Safari.) Its a rather significant number, and it raises a question: Who has time for all this?

Updates apply to productivity programs (think MS- or Open Office), OS, browsers, and plug ins (Flash, etc). That can be a large number of programs, although many of them include their own update modules that go online and query update servers (Adobe, Apple, HP, Microsoft, etc). Of course, that means that you have little applications running around on their own schedules, more or less out of your control, updating themselves on their own initiative.

I like the way Ubuntu handles this. The OS is in charge of keeping all the installed applications up to date, and it will notify when new updates are available, so they can be installed when I'm ready. That, for me, is graceful and respectful of my time.

Short Week, Shorter Post

So its a Tuesday, and I'm enjoying the ennui of another holiday-abbreviated week. Is that the right word, ennui, for 'everyone's on bloody vacation and don't want to think about their bloody PCs'? I think it is.

Anyway, Monday I went to the Grand Opening of the new Wings, Pizza n Things, over in the new strip mall at Michigan/State. Nice owners, good decor, a very admirable beer selection.

So, all in all, nothing is moving here. I'm awaiting the parts I ordered to begin assembling a PC for a client, I have several clients who need to get well/back from holiday/their act together, to get their PCs optimized/cleaned/set up.

CMon people now, smile on your service provider.

Thursday

Started the day with WRN, then visited some current clients who had some issues they wanted to discuss. Nothing too big there, everyone is right on track. Took me right up to the mid afternoon, at which time I met with a rep from Yellowpages.

Its right about time I did some real advertising, eh wot?

Then, off to a reception sponsored by the Ann Arbor chamber at the Rush Street Martini bar. Made some very good connections there... its amazing what an inviting atmosphere and a few well-made drinks will do to get people talking.

Still having a little issue with one client who logs in to a domain, but it takes forever to complete. The login stalls for several minutes in the 'Applying Computer Settings' part, and I can't figure out why. I've already reset the DNS settings; I've checked the profile size (they don't use roaming profiles, so it doesn't matter); I've checked the group membership of the user and computer. What else is there? Some one help a brother out here.

The Mid Week Infusion

Resolved a problem with Vista - an HP printer keeps trying to re-install itself because it is using the XP drivers. Vista sees the drivers as incorrect and begins the installation process. I tried to install the HP software in compatibility mode, but the install doesn't allow that. *Super*

Hopefully, the drivers downloaded from the HP mothership will do it. Otherwise, I'm thinking I'll wipe clean the installation of all the HP SW and use the native, basic drivers. If that doesn't work, I'll run it over with the truck.

I rather hate the sheer bloat of the HP install anyway. I don't want (and most people don't need) all the crapware they tie in to the drivers package. Do we need another photo organizer, updater, etc? I think not.

Another issue from HP-land is that the HP CUE Discovery service is retarded. It looks out across the network to find installed printers and adds them to the list of available printers. Ever see a printer listed as 'Auto Auto HP 600'? Thats why - the service keeps finding it and adding it.

They spend so much time trying to defeat ink refillers, maybe they could spend a minute adding a unit identifier value to the firmware so that the individual printer could be identified *once*? Could someone get to work on that, please? kthxbai

Also found time to optimize/secure a Vista laptop; have I mentioned how much I hate Norton? I'm also not real fond of Trend Micro's firewall that comes with their Internet Security Pro (I think thats the name). Note to TM: any firewall that makes you have to drill down in the menu structure to add exception rules that cover communications across your own network is too user-unfriendly to live. Get to work on that too.

In a business note, progress continues on definitions of processes. Oh yes, thats sexy stuff! Following the examples described in the book, 'The e-Myth Revisited', I'm defining all the activities so that I can present a consistent client experience.
Also, having clearly defined processes allows another person to pick it up and run with it. The goal is, of course, to transition away from working in the business to working on the business. And since my time is only going to get less free in the near future (12-18 months), I will probably be seriously considering hiring sooner rather than later.

And we're back

We resume normal broadcasting.

Today we went to revisit one of our clients from ten days ago. Seems the printserver doesn't like to reconnect to the network - it falls off and won't renew its IP address, even though its static. Power cycling does the trick. I googled the problem and it seems that the manufacturers all agree - power cycling does the trick. Great.

They also have an issue of not being able to print to a printer other than the default from Outlook 2003. Microsoft is aware of the bug, but I'm sure we won't see any fixes. Its a minor issue, after all, and how long can we expect them to support a product that's all of five years old?

In unrelated news, I got a call from a colleague. He, under a heavy time constraint, had downloaded a spyware removal tool that turned out to be worse than the spyware itself. Be advised to avoid a piece of crap called SpyWatchE. It is malware and will make you hate life itself. The recommended cure is a little gem called Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware. You can get it from malwarebytes.org. Go get it now.

Last Call

Well, for the week, anyway.

Got a panic call from a client - a print server was refusing to play along. I kinda hate print server appliances. They all say they're easy for users to set up, but they really aren't. They really can be huge PITAs. But I got theirs to work, along with sorting out their other printer.

In other news, we've packed all our stuff up, and head over to Metro tomorrow to be whisked away to Myrtle Beach for a week. See Ya!

Welcome to Thursday

Busy day.

Went to WRN. Went home. Got a call from a client I saw earlier in the week; his laptop was no longer recharging the battery. I went to pick up the laptop and cord, but didn't bring a voltmeter to test the power supply. Ok, go home and test it and, yes, its dead. No output beyond a little trace voltage.

I returned the laptop and continued on to the Polo Fields. The Ann Arbor Chamber hosted this month's edition of NetWorks there today. A nice spread, but the networking was a bit extreme: Speed Dating. Everyone sits at two long tables (one-fourth of the participants on each of the two sides of the two tables). You and your cross-table partner have three minutes to get to know each other's businesses. Its a very quick three minutes. Then one side of the table shifts over one seat. Rinse and Repeat. I made some good connections - we'll see how that pans out over time.

I then hurried over to another client's office to return the P3 I had restored yesterday. O, just to be interesting, I noticed this morning that the CPU fan was never coming on. I plugged a new one into the mobo, and it spun right up, so I had exactly two seconds to replace before I had to go on all those errands I just described.

The rest of the day, I sent emails and caught up on house stuff. And thats that.

Over the humpitude

We this day returned to owner the Blue Screen'd PC that was begun yesterday. Faster, stronger, better, with double the RAM (512!) and an additional 40GB HDD on which to store all the pix an whatnot.

Then, we received from a new client another PC, this one very slow. Really, really slow. Like, glacial. It is a Dell Dimension 4100 using a Pentium 3 running with 128MB RAM. I really didn't think you could install XP on such a thing.

Anyway, it has since had the RAM bumped to 512 and all the extraneous rubbish extracted - such as unnecessary startups, old files, temp files... and spyware. Some really nasty malware such as KillAndClean and SmitFraud. SmitFraud pops up a warning that you have some kind of infection, and to click on the warning to download a fix. But you don't download a fix, you download this freeloading oaf, KillAndClean. KillAndClean is the kind that pretends to be your friend, telling you how nice you are and how its helping you by preventing the other spyware from infecting you. But its not your friend. Its just using you. A pair of villains, these two, and the PC runs a lot faster without them.

It shows up as 'VirusHeat' in Spybot, which will eliminate the infection(s). Keep your powder dry and your definitions up to date, y'all.

Just a Tuesday

I went to a client I hadn't seen since last year - several small problems, one hour to make a few fixes. She's very conscientious and doesn't download a lot of garbage. I could use more clients like her.

Visited a new client - with an interesting problem: Blue Screen of Death. I love those. This time, it was a Turtle Beach sound driver. TB is crap - avoid it. I've never heard anything good about it. It was a good platform in the 90s.

In addition, their PC is slow as hell. It has 256MB RAM, so no surprise there, plus the notorious Norton IS, Protection Center, and Password Manager. With only 256 RAM, its like cutting through a glacier with a crab fork. I have another 256 SIMM (not much help) - maybe they'll want to get a little faster. The PC is simply not going to be usable until Norton is removed like in the Exorcist.

Of course, they also have a 40GB HDD. I have another 40 I could sell them (*cheap!*) but they need something for additional storage.

Update:
To view an AV comparison, go to: here

Oh no, its definitely the heat

But its not so bad. I mean c'mon, if you're going to hate the cold, you can't hate the heat, too.

I feel better now.
So today, a fine Monday, HTTP assisted two new clients. The first, a business, had an issue with a slow laptop (optimized it) and a network printer that kept getting lost. You see, when you use DHCP to set the IP address of a network resource, it can get lost when the IP address is renewed, if it is different than it was when initially set up. Plus, the virtual port, in this case, referred to the printer by it's (old) IP, rather than by the Network Host Name. This situation, plus the ubiquitous Norton SystemWorks (which stop it from -), had the client unable to print. All better now.

Then I grabbed a fast lunch and went on a residential service. A slow desktop, which is much more sprightly now, and setup the wireless network, including a Mac. Easy stuff.

I like these busier days. I'll take busy over not.

Well, Hot Enough Fer Yeh?

I really don't want to hear that phrase again.

No appointments today, but did set up several appointments for next week.

Went to the Grand Opening party at the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce. Lots of good folks over there - a very nurturing climate to grow a business. Makes sense as we all sink or swim together.

A new line of marketability: When I was speaking to some folks today, they'd mention that their office already has an IT department. Good, I'd say, but who helps you when your home system needs attention? People at companies with their own IT depts are spoiled - when they need help at home, sometimes they can call on the in-house guys. Usually not, though; these guys already have jobs. And the same goes for people recently separated from jobs - to whom will they turn?

Letting the days go by

A Thursday finds me over at the referral network meeting. Three leads(!)
One fulfilled this morning - a laptop optimization and eval. Kinda run of the mill stuff, but bread n butter nonetheless.
Another referral was to build a PC, set up OS and apps, migrate data, and then set up wireless streaming music receiver in the house. That will be fun to do, if the quote doesn't cause any pain.
Lastly, a misbehaving office network set up. I'll likely attend to this Friday.

This afternoon, I'll go to SPARK for the Mix n Mingle. Sometimes you meet the most interesting people. After that, its Board Meeting time over at TCSL.

I'm thinking of using the EVA700 as the digital music receiver. Anyone have any experience with it?

Last Minute Cry for Help

A new client today: Lovely. I love to help.

Seems an office assistant bunged up their FileMaker Pro set up, such that they couldn't make heads or tails of the client records. The clever dear edited the form rather than the client record (basically overwrote the existing form). I undid the trouble, and showed the office manager how to make local copies of their client records.

They need a whole lot of help over there. No backups, no data archival policy, wires and crap all over. I will speaking with them in the near future about getting it all sorted out.

Some after notes

The housecall Tuesday was uneventful, except for one little bit of annoyance. The client has two XP desktops, an ancient HP Pentium 3 and a newer Dell run by an Athlon 64. Also in attendance is a Vista Home laptop. We installed a new wireless router to untether the laptop to let it run free. Of course, a XP/V network requires that the XP machines have, say it with me now, the Link Layer Topology Driver installed. Thats Microsoft update KB922120. Simple enough.

Except if one of the XP desktops has already been updated to SP3. SP3 shows a later date than the LLTD update, therefore it will not load. It must be loaded by hand. This process is not, in and of itself, too daunting. What made it ever so much more fun was the fact that all three of the PCs were sharing (barely) a single desk, each desktop had a separate keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and the Dell, the one that needed the manual install, was using a track ball set for left handed use.

It was like a Rube Goldberg office. I introduced my gentle client to the concept of a KVM switch. I use one at home to switch between PCs running Server 2008 and XP Pro. When I try to get moving along on SharePoint or Server stuff, I double tap the Scroll Lock key, and there we are.

On a small tangent - the real mind killer, the barrier to connectivity, the wall that didn't need to be there in this whole set up was: Norton 360 Firewall. Yes, I know it can be configured - it can also be turned the hell off and Window FW or ZoneAlarm ploppped in there instead. Hate It - Hate it - Hate it.

Anyway, manual installation of a Windows Update:
1. Copy update to a directory.
2. Open a command prompt, navigate to location of update
3. Run update, use -x:c:\[TargetLocationOfFiles] switch in command line where, obviously the bracketed text is replaced by a directory to XCopy to
4. Put the driver (*.sys) in Win\System32\Drivers
5. Put the installation file (*.exe) in Win\System32
6. Put the (*.inf) file in Win\inf
7. Run the install file from the command line with the -i switch

Put those directions in a safe place as I guarantee this won't be the last time we encounter the situation.

So today, Wednesday, I really have not much going on. I have a lunch meeting, then to the club for the inaugural day of Youth Summer Activities. If it isn't raining cats; its archery tonight, so weather will dictate what happens. I'll set up indoor air rifle and see if any Milan HS kids come by. I need to leave there early to attend a meeting in Ypsi. A store there, Wireless Toyz, is hosting a little get together at which they will disclose some cooperative marketing plans for the area. I have no idea what all that will entail, but I'm curious, so my shadow and I will head over there and drink of their pop and eat of their snacks and listen to their scheme.

Slogging the week away

My Monday was like any other Monday. Dropped off laptops (one fixed, one for data retrieval), made some calls, had a couple meetings. And stayed up entirely too late watching the Red Wings go to Game 6.

*cough*Kronwall self goal*cough*

So Tuesday, I'll eat breakfast at the Morris Lawrence building with the Ypsi chamber, go to a meeting in Brighton, and go to Tri County for a big meeting later. I also seem to be the club's representative in prioritizing all the FNRA grants for the state of Michigan.

Oh, I'll have at least one house call today, as well. Home networking and security.
Thats really about it. There are some big deals afoot, but it would be inappropriate to discuss them yet.

And its Friday

So today, I received a couple of service calls.

One, a current client got a laptop back from a former employee, and it was a bit worse for the wear, virus-wise. SmitFraud, Trojans, Backdoor Loaders, and several thousand instances of spyware. Yes, had it been my call, there would have been privs preventing the ex-employee from disabling all the security.

Segundo, I received a first-ever call from an online service. They dispatch area technical help to subscribing clients. A firm called Med-Dispense calls Computer Assistant, and CA calls me. I went to St Joe's and sorted out a PC in the pharmacy.
No, there were no free samples. They were darned glad to see me, and really happy to get back to work.

Not a bad day then.

Not a lot planned for the w/e. I want to swing by the PUPS walk Saturday, which this time around terminates at the Library for its grand opening. Everyone who is anyone will be there.

Further Adventures

Wednesday, I was at a research firm in AA. They need PC assistance, I'm ready to help. They'll be getting a 'server' soon (not a proper server, mind you, but better than the nothing they're using now). I'll set up the active directory, document archiving and backup, and security there. Interestingly enough, they are running 2xXP MC, 2xXP Pro, Vista Home Premium, and Gutsy Gibbon. And of course, the security, when it was installed, was all over the map.

BTW, I strongly recommended to them to resist the temptation to upgrade to XP SP 3. Err, I just don't know what all will happen wrt the specific packages they're using. Better safe than sorry. I don't notice any differences in the PCs on which I'm using SP3, so we'll hold off recommending for now.

They do some cool work, and I'd be speaking way out of school if I told you about it.

I really need to get on the ball and follow up with people who have said, "Hey I need you to come on over!" and then never let me schedule a date. Not pushy, just get folks back on track to PC health and safety.

Its like a public service, yannow?

Windows XP SP3

I've been using the new service pack on one home and one pro install for a few weeks. No issues here (fingers crossed), but I've read that there are quite a few unhappy campers out in the Interweb:

• Article on Sliperybrick.com


• Article on PC World site


• And another on PC World

Any stories of upgrades gone well - or not so well?

Also - I just remembered my promise to occasionally recommend software. Here ya go: Over the weekend, I did a small web project that involved grabbing graphics from psd (PhotoShop) files. Well, I don't have PS, and I don't do enough web work to justify buying it. So I used Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) to split the layers and capture the graphics, and Paint .Net to resize and clean up the images. Lovely - recommended for all you economy-minded web heads.

Start a new week

A short week, so I hope for the best.

Monday, I just lolled about, mostly.

Worked on a mission statement. Laugh all you may, I know I thought it was bollocks, but it turns out that planning things and having a grand, overall vision are actually useful. Who knew? Well, everyone, but I was a bit slow on the uptake. So I have a vision statement now, and maybe I'll post a link to it when its finished.

I also joined Facebook. As unsure as I am as to how to really use LinkedIn, I'm twice as unsure as how I'll use Facebook. We'll see. So far, I've been to lunch talks and round tables, and I've had candid conversations with people, and I'm still not sold on the whole social networking idea. I mean, to make it work, you have to be really involved in it, right? You have to update, and post, and ask/answer questions, etc. Not sure I have the time....

So anyway, this week I have client appointments Tues and Wed, networking on Tues and Thurs. Township site updates scheduled for Tues and Wed; go have a look. Notice that the site looks just like it used to look. They use Zope, its hella easy for content management, not so much for aesthetics.

Looks like my Friday is open. You want to do something Friday?

Leaking into the weekend

Re comments - yeah, I thought so. Anyway...
So Friday, not too much. Phone calls, a couple of meetings about continuing business arrangements. Running errands, you know, the usual.

Nothing on tap for the long weekend. I plan to work all the way through. Web work, keep things updated, and update the things I've been ignoring.

And martinis. There will be martinis.

Commentary

Shameless on my part, but, I note that the hit counter has been gaining speed.
Who reads this? Comment - just give a quick shout out. I'm really curious.

Like Falling Drops of Mercury

The days, they slip.
So Wednesday, an impatient public demands, what of Wednesday?
Started the day with a breakfast at Weber's, with the Ann Arbor Chamber. Always a fine time, that, and I always make good connections with business leaders.
Then, back to downtown AA for a meting with a SCORE counselor. Its really good to get a fresh perspective from someone who's been in the (or any) industry for a number of years, and is not at all bashful to give one a good clear 20000 foot vision.
Then, back out on west Jackson Road to the HBA Associates meeting. A fine time was had by all - I'm really enjoying being a member. And, I think I will do some very good business there.

So then, late Wednesday I got a web site contract (I mentioned a few days ago that it would likely happen), I nearly got a short-term contract to add functionality to an existing Access-based application (project was canceled - bummer!).

Thursday, I went to WRN; a few new faces as the membership drive brought in some new blood business people. Then off to the accountants (whaddayamean I'm not on the schedule?!?! Fine, reschedule for tomorrow!), then out to a new client on Jackson Road. See a pattern? A lot of things are happening on Jackson Road, out on the west side of A2. More than Lowes and Meijer out there. Anyway, the newest client is a contract R&D house. They really, really, need help (anti-virus, malware, firewalls... just a cogent, comprehensive, uniform strategy). I'll go back next Wednesday and start the process of straightening them out.

And, lastly, a client's laptop was dying, and seeing that we must do the mature thing and let it go, we ordered him a new one last week. Well, it came today, and the old one took that opportunity to expire, peacefully. I set up the new one, but getting the files from the old one was a bit of a challenge.

Consider - its a XP Pro laptop, all the files are neatly stored in the MyDocuments folder, and the video system is totally shot. Won't even drive his external analog CRT. Well, I took it back and tried to take ownership of the folders through Server 2008.

That didn't work. Not one bit, stopped me cold. What did work... well, it drove my clunky digital LCD monitor just fine. LOL. Log in, share the folders, burn a DVD, and we're golden.

Enough already - go to bed.