🔒 Patreon Special

IT Pros: exclusive shows await you on Patreon, focusing on the more challenging aspects of running your practice and working with clients and employees.


483: Burning For You

Topics:

-Joe has recently returned from the annual Burning Man gathering. Jerry has questions.

-Joe is part of a long standing camp that  helps supply water to participants.

-This is the first year that they used Starlink for internet access.

-We learn about the details of how Starlink works.

-The conflict is trying to have technology available but to disconnect while at the event.

-Joe has been recommending Starlink for backup internet for some of his customers. He considers what else he can do to make it a package offering.

-Just contact Joe if you have burning Burning Man questions.

482: Would You Like Fries With That?

Topics:

-Sam is not thrilled with 1Password 8 and the functional differences. Menu changes and inconsistency are at the top of his aggravations list.

-Sam describes working with one of his clients to open up a new office space with little to no planning.

-Jerry takes on a job in NYC and has to lug equipment to the job site.

-Common courtesy seems to be lacking. Sam sees this with clients who are unappreciative.

-Jerry shares a vegetarian’s fast food story.

-Keeping in line with the fast food theme, Sam has a story about fries.

-SonicWall seems to be very aggressive with services renewals, even when they are not due.

-Jerry works on a migration project and has to wait 3+ hours for the directory administrator to simply perform a bind due to credentials. All billable time.

-Another Optimum difficulty for Sam. Jerry does not take his side.

474: My Clients Computer Guy

For our “cold open,” listen in on our candid chat about the work that goes into producing a weekly show for nine years, how we share the workload, and what we hope to get back from our community.

We discuss the great response to our recent Patreon-only show with Tim Pearson.

Joe recaps some of the recent Patreon-only episodes that supporters have enjoyed recently, including Mistakes and Adventures in Billing, Rates & Service Offerings with Tim Pearson of CreativeTechs (mentioned above), an interview with Richard Wingfield of GObytes and Envision Design about productivity, organization, and time management, and an upcoming episode about client frustrations.

Jerry brings up email hosts and we discuss Microsoft 365 vs. other options like Fastmail, Rackspace, etc.

Joe describes an issue helping a client recover their Microsoft 365 hosted email account when the client-managed admin account was compromised and the recovery email address was changed to a non-existent email address.

Sam shares a personal story about someone near and dear to him being scammed and having funds taken.

How can we help guide clients to evaluate scams accurately?

Business idea that probably already exists: a website to forward your emails to in order to determine if it’s a scam. Could something like that work for phone calls too?

Wouldn’t it be great if we had stories to share with clients to motivate them to care more about their own online security? Send us your stories! We hope to see some of them in an upcoming TidBITS Content Network article. As Adam Engst says, “People respond better to narrative than nagging.”

Speaking of helping people understand the importance of security, Joe wants to remind listeners about honest.security (by our supporter Kolide) and the 5 Tenets of Honest Security.