340: Scrooge McDuck Meets Marley's Ghost

Topics:

-A merry crimble to everyone!

-Jerry calls Sam Scrooge McDuck

-Alrhough timing is tough, Sam has to let an employee go

-A topic that is born out of this experience is “offboarding”

-Joe has some experience in this arena. He talks about some of the logistics and difficulties that comes with that. 

-that experience also caused Joe to tighten up his onboarding process 

-One of the concerns of releasing an employee is unemployment benefits 

-Does timing really matter that much?

-Business and friendship do not mix 

-Access for services and devices, while considered, needed to be re-evaluated 

-Sam has one thing to say about Joe’s shared contacts issue: DayliteMac.com

-Replacing the most employee is not on the immediate radar for HCS as of right now 

-Since answering calls was one part of Sam’s for employee’s job, he might now look at a virtual assistant service like smith.ai

-Subcontractors can be a good resource to fill company needs with less of a burden

-Data loss is a major topic that is a point of pride for the crew

-The team gets chummy about the support they have for each other

339: Client Gift Giving & More

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up about the HEViC files wreaking havoc and his photo screensaver.  After changing the screensaver, the files are no longer taking up a lot of space

-Sam & Jerry both use the Brooklyn screensaver from Github: https://github.com/pedrommcarrasco/Brooklyn

-Jerry wants to know what the guys are doing for client gifts for the holidays.  Joe & Sam’s answers: nada.

-What Jerry has been doing over the years is to send gift baskets to key people within his most valuable clients

-An important point that Jerry brings up is that once you start, it is very difficult to stop giving gifts each year.  Sam has a vendor story that is right along those lines.

-Getting back to tech, Joe has a client with intermittent wake from sleep issues.  His team did some bench testing to reproduce the issues, and they found this thread.  All 3 had people use the extension cord solution and it seemed to work for everyone:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/167291/suddenly-apple-wired-keyboard-not-working
https://www.zigpress.com/2014/12/30/has-your-apple-mac-external-usb-keyboard-stopped-working/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5470234

-Jerry has a story about a 21.5” iMac upgrade gone wrong and he gets salty when describing the details.  He was able to perform a repair offsite and save the day!

-Joe has some positive information to share about TeamViewer and how it handles modifier keys

-Sam was excited about TeamViewer coming to Synology and quickly installed the app, only to find that remote access is only available for TeamViewer for Windows:
https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/TeamViewer-IoT-Labs/IoT-Remote-AppControl-solution-and-Synology-NAS-boxes/td-p/33052
Please note that there are some known issues:

• Connections are currently only possible from TeamViewer 13.1 running on Windows.

• macOS, Linux or mobile clients are not supported.

-Joe talks about Sophos being upgraded to Sophos Home.  Jerry also has experience with ESET antivirus.

-To keep our Ubiquiti streak going, Joe discusses changing the wireless mesh uplink priority and how it can greatly improve the stability of a mesh network:
https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002262328-UniFi-UAP-Configuring-Wireless-Uplink#5

-On the flip side, Sam learned from Ubiquiti support that disabling wireless uplink should improve the stability of wired access points

338: Merry & Bright With Addigy

Topics:

-The crew does an Addigy check up to see where they stand with managed clients 

 -Joe brands his Addigy restart scripts after the show and it’s a top rated download!

-Jerry & Joe consider adding snarky comments to their messages to users 

-Joe talks more about his fancy scripts like rebuilding the spotlight index and checking for download sizes
ls -lh /Library/Addigy/download-cache/downloading
The main part of Joe's script:
du -sh /Library/Addigy/download-cache/downloading | cut -f1,1

-TeamViewer’s version upgrades and the lack of ability to manage from an earlier version frustrates Joe

-Inside a scam call center by Jim Browning youtube channel that busts fake tech support scam centers: https://youtu.be/xb_rgQ4IDS8

-Joe complains that users will not accept Apple’s advice for strong passwords but will accept fake tech support scams. Jerry has a different take on the password feature. 

337: These HEViC Files Are Wreaking Havoc

Topics:

-Joe joins the crowd in the cloud 

-The biggest issue affecting Joe in his move to the cloud is “van-width”

-An unexpected issue was dealing with his Dropbox data. Joe's PSA: Symlinks in Dropbox = no bueno.  It just got stuck "checking for changes" for days on end. Found a relevant link: “stuck on checking for changes" issue, which said that the solution was removing symlinks from inside the Dropbox folder. It included a handy command to list all symlinks in the Dropbox folder: 
find ~/Dropbox -type l -exec ls -lah {} \; 

-The old days of Mac HelpMate comes up as Joe is sifting through his Dropbox data

-A new type of filesystem link (like symbolic links and hard links) to be aware of, called a firmlink: 
https://eclecticlight.co/2019/10/13/last-week-on-my-mac-more-than-adventurous/

-Jerry is very happy to report that ClarifyIT has a beta that is 64-bit capable!

-After some finagling, Jerry finally figures out how to get Paste and match style working in the latest version of Microsoft Office

-In updating his Mail Chimp and testing with one of his email addresses, Jerry gets a random tips & tricks newsletter

-Upcoming show on marketing is an idea the CCP staff is kicking around

-Google Ads halts Jerry’s marketing plans by saying he is in violation of terms.  Getting in touch with the right people at Google turns out to be an even bigger challenge.

-Facebook and Instagram marketing can be region specific.  Or is it?

-Sam almost has a major mishap in his travels to Alaska 

-HEVC and HEIF wreaking havoc on Joe's MacBook Pro: com.apple.iLifeMediaBrowser.ILPhotosTranscodeCache in ‎⁨~/⁨Library⁩ ▸ ⁨Containers⁩ ▸ ⁨com.apple.ScreenSaver.iLife-Slideshow-Extension⁩ ▸ ⁨Data⁩ ▸ ⁨Library⁩ ▸ ⁨Caches⁩. This folder grows to consume all available disk space on his Mac running 10.14.6 Mojave.

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335: Your Emergency Contacts Have Been Notified

Topics:

-Sam is off to an undisclosed location in Alaska

-As Jerry complains about Sam’s darkened contact photo, Joe talks custom contact photos

-Jerry has a head smack moment as he too, is affected by the certificates expiring for Apple’s macOS installers. Here are direct download links for macOS installers with valid certificates:
Catalina - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201475
Mojave - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210190
High Sierra - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208969
Sierra - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208202
El Capitan - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886
Yosemite - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210717

-Joe talks about how time consuming it can be to update the installers, especially since he has multiple PsiTool drives 

-Jerry offers a tip which deals with the Expanded Control Strip (System Preferences>Keyboard>Touch Bar Shows) that overrides Control Strip settings that would appear per app

-Backblaze PSA: Business Groups have the ability to keep Version History for 1-year or Forever; this applies to external hard drives that may have been unplugged for more than 30 days for example. Thanks Dan Monge @ Mac I.T. Pros, supporter of the show. 

-BackBlaze B2 is the method Joe uses for his Synology clients.  He has found success in charging clients a flat fee based on the amount of data they have.  Jerry challenges his pricing method

-Joe vents about working with clients that don’t see the light with their IT needs

-Jerry talks about his automation setup when he connects his iPhone 11 to CarPlay.  While in the midst of a ride in his car, he has an incident where attempting to reboot his iPhone caused a 911 alert and for his emergency contacts to be notified.  Jerry researches and learns how to force restart his iPhone:
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/force-restart-iphone-iph8903c3ee6/ios

-Through all of this, Joe recommends going to Apple’s support article about their SOS features:  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208076

-Late breaking news from Jerry - Ubiquiti released their UniFi Dream Machine, which acts as a gateway, router, switch, & access point: https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-dream-machine

-Jerry really likes the Synology RT2600AC router (https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/RT2600ac).  Similar feature set but it also includes a USB port, where you can plug in a drive for network backup

-PsiMac now offers a monthly network maintenance and updates service. But he does have a PSA. He ran into an unexpected issue when testing notification emails were failing. As it turns out, he found that the “test email” button in UniFi simply doesn’t work. 

-Another PSA from Joe - he was receiving multiple notifications about UniFi devices being connected, even though they had not disconnected.  UniFi support didn’t have any reasoning so the advice is to turn that feature off at this point.

334: The Debacle Before The Debacle

Topics:

-The New York City support edition

-Sam had a sizable job in NYC and had to request assistance from Joe & Jerry

-But first, Joe discusses his upgrade to the iPhone 11 Pro and working with the dual SIM feature

-Joe finds out that it is not possible to activate an eSIM with an existing phone number

-Jerry can relate after recalling an experience with his Apple Watch

-To add insult to injury, Joe has an issue with the actual purchase transaction 

-Joe’s NYC client story is a tale of woe that has his team dealing with a network support group that operates from another country and doesn’t keep US based support hours 

-Pop quiz time as Joe reveals how to gather MAC address details from a Ubiquiti USG Pro

-Joe has a PSA about the USG Pro as well

-With the time that Joe has left to Sam, he shares a story of a big job in size and manpower that entailed backing up, wiping and provisioning roughly 200 computers in three weeks.

-Mac Deploy Stick (MDS) by Two Canoes is an excellent deployment tool that Sam explored on this job:  http://twocanoes.com/products/mac/mac-deploy-stick/

-Sam wraps up by telling a funny anecdote in corporate IT