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.