224: Interview With Christopher Holmes of Rooted Consulting & HCS Technology Group

TOPICS:

Christopher Holmes of Rooted Consulting and HCS Technology Group
https://www.rootedconsulting.org/
Twitter: @josemocha
Instagram: @josemocha

Chris and Sam talk up Slack and using it internally

Sam going to set up a tent at a local festival as a new avenue to reach out to potential customers
http://www.seaport.org/

A discussion brews about keeping smaller clientele vs large entities that represent a large portion of your income

To sign or not to sign?  Sam contemplates whether signing a new client was the right fit

An opportunity arises where a PC consultancy wants to partner up

Chris talks about his company, Rooted Consulting and their help desk offering called Flex Desk

Hiring is forever on Sam’s mind…

Why is searching network volumes so difficult?

Easy Find vs Finder
http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

Chris brings up AFP going away in High Sierra https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/APFS_Guide/FAQ/FAQ.html

Preventing updates by clients.  The ongoing battle

iOS screen sharing?  TeamViewer says it’s coming in iOS 11!

https://www.teamviewer.com/en/features/ios-screen-sharing/

223: It's not you, it's me!

TOPICS:

Sam gets back from his European tour and gives us all the details

A potential crisis is averted at a large client while Sam is away

Sam puts out a call for an HP managed switch expert

HP Enterprise support is not a joyous experience for Sam

“Don’t we have people that can do this?” - Becoming a manager and keeping the tech

iCloud Photo Sharing goes “belly up” and Sam finds an interesting way to resolve it

Joe has his own iCloud Photo Library sync issue

An interesting situation for Sam when an AirPort Extreme will not allow outbound VPN connections

Sharing the detailed Unifi app with a client backfires on Sam

Joe has the age old problem of clients pinging him for freebies

Sam has trouble multitasking.  Joe has some answers.

Joe’s client emailed the wrong email address for PsiMac with surprising results

Taking it personal when your contact at a client leaves unexpectedly

uBlockorigin is a fascinating ad blocker - https://www.ublock.org

Joe forces Sam to reveal some recently unpleasant experiences with Windows

Sam goes through a tough negotiation pitching MSP to a legacy client

When your potential replacement seeks details about the client

https://www.patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

222: Flashback Followup, Tagging & More

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TOPICS:

-Joe details some followup on Flashback from Episode 220

• same issue happened again, but this time the user would log in, apps wouldn't open, but we could log out

• appeared to be user level; our admin user logged in fine

• removed Gruntwork, no change

• removed main user account, preserving home folder; recreated main user account; had been configured to auto login

• Could it be solved but deleting the Finder cache? https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5386679?start=0&tstart=0

-Jerry details his struggles replacing a Comcast EMTA ( embedded multimedia terminal adapter ) modem with an Xfinity branded modem/router to achieve faster speeds.

- Dan Monge - MacITPros.com
Workflow App - Create a List Of The Predefined Commands To Text To Smith.ai
https://smith.ai/blog/2016/03/sms-simpler-more-efficient-way-provide-real-time-s/

-Jerry discusses some of the consumer tech podcasts he listens to like:

• Mac Power Users - https://www.relay.fm/mpu

• Mac Geek Gab - https://www.macobserver.com/show/mac-geek-gab/

• Jason Snell & David Sparks - Free Agent - https://www.relay.fm/freeagents

• Tagging With Terptra - MacPower Users - https://www.relay.fm/mpu/390

Automatic filing with Hazel and Mavericks tags
http://brettterpstra.com/2013/12/20/automatic-filing-with-hazel-and-mavericks-tags/

Hazel - https://www.noodlesoft.com
GUI for Apple Scripting, Watch Folders, Filing, Actions, Renaming Tagging

Jason Snell & David Sparks - Free Agent - #26: A Batphone to My Heart
https://www.relay.fm/freeagents/26

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221: DMARC, Eero's & Toupee's

Topics:

- Joe discusses the problem with automatically forwarding mail in the era of DMARC and walks through an explanation from Kerio:

- You have a hosted Kerio email account, with a domain of clientname.com

- You have a forwarding rule configured to forward all email addressed to name@clientname.com to clientaddress@gmail.com

- Gmail enforces a DMARC policy

- Gmail sees the forwarded email as if they were coming from the original sender, e.g.: Facebook, PayPal, etc. etc.

- But the emails are NOT coming from the mailservers of those senders (e.g. mail.facebook.com, mail.paypal.com – fake examples), they are actually coming from the Kerio mail server (mail.itekmail.com)

- This triggers a failure of compliance with DMARC, since the sending mail server doesn't match the sending address.

- Unfortunately there isn't much we can do about this, other than use the main account (name@clientname.com), setting it up on a mail client of your choice, to avoid this problem.

- Joe and Jerry discuss Eero, and Joe explains the challenge of configuring an alternate subnet:

- Eero ad automatically assigned 192.168.7.1 subnet

- AV guy had static IPs manually assigned to two IR controllers

- had to use Advanced settings to hangs subnet to 10.0.0.0 (10.0.1.0 not an option; annoying because that's a common Apple one so this must be a common issue)

- tried to adjust starting IP to 10.0.0.1, subnet to 255.255.0.0, and ending IP to 10.0.1.254; didn't work

- after updating, allowed me to select 10.0.0.0 range and change it to 10.0.1.0 range, which worked

220: Joe's Hard Days Night

Topics:

Managing Client Time: Jerry talks about assisting client looking to run FedEx Shipping Manger.  Parallels installation, Windows 10 and finally a failing FedEx Shipping Manager install.

Joe takes on his long days journey into night, performing Apple Security Updates on Late 2014 Retina 5K iMac and a 2013 Mac Pro, both running El Capitan 10.11.6. Security Update makes the Macs non-bootable.

Update: Stay tuned for a follow up about this issue!

Flashback to Episode 181: Solutions For The Apple Consultant / LSD- What A Long Strange Trip Its Been

- similar symptoms as before: custom app icons failing to show in the dock, generic app icons being shown in their place, same thing happening in Finder windows, folder listing taking minutes before even the contents of the Applications folder would display and even then only generic app icons, Spotlight having weird text overlay, general GUI rendering issues, and generic icon representing the result of a search for Terminal

- solution from the first "trip" didn't work (removing the contents of /private/var/folders/* and restarting), nor did Safe Boot, PRAM reset, SMC reset, reinstall of 10.11.6

- solution on the Mac Pro was boot to clone, use CCC to restore clone to internal SSD

- tried same solution on iMac, booted to clone just fine and used CCC to restore clone to internal SSD, but then it got into a "boot loop" where it would show Apple logo and brief progress bar, then back screen, then reboot and show Apple logo, and repeat

- reinstalled 10.11.6 on iMac internal SSD after restoring the clone, and it worked

- "Just Say No" to updates? Bonus: Are Acid Flashbacks A Myth?

Plus:

Sam takes us through his on site installation of Ubiquiti UniFi hardware and we compare vs. Eero Pro and AirPort Extreme.

Joe discusses setup of Cannon Printer using buggy built in software.

219: Nobody Beats The Wiz

TOPICS:

• Jerry & Joe revisit Circle by Disney - https://meetcircle.com . An issue issue with a test device still sending messages even after it was reset.

Circle Go https://meetcircle.com/circle-go/ - "works anywhere" has lowerd its subscription price to $4.99 per month for up to 10 devices

• Joe discusses offering to upload and merge client photos as a service.Her references an original Macworld article about using iCloud Photo Library to merge photo libraries; and a newer article .
  Jerry talks about using iPhoto Library Manager and PowerPhotos from
  

• Joe wheels and deals with his cable provider, Optimum for faster broadband rates.
  
  Joe contacts Verizon to add a second static IP to cellular SIM for free. PEP Wave device automatically acquired the static IP and reconnected, amazingly; doubled cellular data from 8GB to 16GB+2GB free for $5 more per month; can switch to business plan when using more than 5 lines, with discounts starting around 8%;
  
  Joe contacts AT&T to drop an old iPad line that was costing $10 per month; spoke with retention department and was offered 20GB data for same price as previous 10GB price; they offered to send free Samsung Galaxy Classic Watch (retail: $350) for free to use the with iPad line in the interest of keeping the line active; no commitment or contract; I can set up the watch and then if I don't like it I can keep it, give it away, or sell it and still cancel the line with no penalty; wonder what they'll offer me when I call back to cancel it a second time!
  

• Jerry talks about his first failure with a Samsung EVO 850 SSD. The drive tested fine with an open source tool https://www.smartmontools.org along with other more familiar utilities.
  

• - Joe chats about a recent upgrade To SoftRAID 5.6 that will support running a SMART test on both USB and FireWire disks.

OS 10 SAT Smart Driver -https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver

-A big thank you to all of our Patreon sponsors!