260: Live From ACES - "Joe Has Left The Building"

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Topics:

Command Control Power is live at the ACEs Conference in Baltimore Maryland!

-Special thanks to Justin Esgar for inviting us to be a part of ACEs

-Joe talks about the excellent start to the conference with yoga and the first session of the work/life balance with Melanie Curtis

-We are now at 260 shows and counting

-A shout out to Michael of Origin 84 listening live all the way from Australia

-A huge announcement from our very own Joe Saponare!  After much thought and planning, he is taking to the road with his wife Ashleigh.  They will be traveling in their camper van for the next year or so.  An amazing experience and we all wish them well.

-A question from the audience about Wi-Fi on the road.  Joe talks about his AT&T and Verizon connections via a bonded cellular router.  It brings to mind Al Franken on SNL.

-He will start by flying out to LA shortly and head off to the Pacific Northwest.

-Steve Sorbo offers an open invitation to visit him in Seattle

-Richard Wingfield asks how his clients are taking this.  Joe is taking an approach of giving certain clients a heads up but not making a big announcement as of yet.

-Live support!  Sam gets desperate texts from one of his employees during the live show.  He is in the weeds with a Synology migration.

-We are doing a new t-shirt campaign that will include our Patreon sponsors.  If you are not already a sponsor, visit https://www.patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr/memberships by June 1st to have your name on the shirt.

-Command Control Power announces that, thanks to the support of our listeners, we are now able to go sponsor free!

-Steve Sorbo mentions how much he enjoyed the show featuring Smith.ai

-If you have any suggestions for the show, please let us know

-Richard Wingfield discusses how the show acts as his psychiatrist 

-Jerry puts Allen Hancock on the spot and he discusses a new feature coming from Watchman Monitoring

-Joe made the move from Zendesk to RepairShopr

-Adam Engst of TidBITS Content Network has advice about making major changes like a new website or infrastructure and time to estimate to get the job done

-Alex Narvey of Precursor Systems brings up his favorite tip from the show, unlocking a user's session with admin credentials.

Using your preferred command line text editor, edit /etc/pam.d/screensaver change: account required pam_group.so no_warn group=admin,wheel fail_safe to account sufficient pam_group.so no_warn group=admin,wheel fail_safe Back at the lock screen, hold down Option & Return and enter the username of an administrator and enter the password. You will be granted access to the logged in user session.

-Justin Esgar comes up to discuss the day 2 schedule for ACEs.  He also talks about the videos available to view all the amazing content from ACEs 2018 for just $299.  You can purchase them here: http://acesconf.com/video

-Sam briefly mentions his decision to sign a lease for office space in CT

259: Nana's Got A Bunch Of Reds In Her Basement

-This week we are proud to be sponsored by FLEXdesk, an offering from our friends at Rooted Consulting.  FLEXdesk - Help Desk support that grows with you

Topics:

-Sam starts the show by discussing a recent rate increase he is introducing

-Jerry discusses timing of rate hikes

-While on the topic, Sam shares a story about tough negotiations with a particular client

-After an announcement from CrashPlan ending PROe Server for Mac, Jerry has to take steps to keep his server up and running for clients using Parallels and Ubuntu

-A brief talk about storing data in the cloud and FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)

-"All my data is gone" - Sam recalls a story where a client fiddled with equipment and caused a minor scare for herself

-After replacing macOS Server with a Synology, Sam gets the dreaded ticket to report that items are missing.  The story turns to an issue of illegal characters in filenames.  An old favorite called A Better Finder Rename is brought in to do mass renames on the server.

-The Synology discussion prompts Jerry to talk about types of drives used, including WD Reds and Seagate IronWolf.

-DAS PSA from Jerry about Drobo units and a run of bad power supplies

-Sam brings up a great blog discussion about APFS snapshots at the setup assistant thanks to a tip from Arek Dreyer https://smithjw.me/2018/04/23/APFS-Snapshots-Setup-Assistant/

258: One More Pajama Story

This show is brought to you commercial free, thanks to our Patreon sponsors!

Topics:

-Sam has a big announcement - HCS has acquired office space in South Norwalk, CT!  Pictures to come soon.  The only downside is he can no longer wear his pajamas to the weekly meetings.

-Joe was hoping to have some follow up from listeners about the Downloads folder not being in the Dock causing hangs in macOS

-Jerry asks Joe for follow up from MacStadium about an IP block that seems to think its in Russia

-Jerry asks the crew about upgrading to TeamViewer 13 and Joe riffs on how "un Mac-like" TeamViewer is as an app

-Jerry forks over a few bucks for disposable booties to wear at clients

-The old crew discusses styles of young people today

-What to do when Face ID doesn't work?

-Lost VPN credentials have been a recent issue for Joe

-Sam discovers Rumpus for Windows!  He may have been living under a rock but had no idea.

-Jerry has recently started working with Meraki products.  He mentions how you can sign up for their webinars and get free gear as well as a three year Meraki license.

-"Joe's Tech Korner" is back as he talks about issue related to Apple Remote Desktop and issues connecting to a Mac remotely.  Using quick thinking, he power cycled the switch remotely, which caused the computer to re-communicate with the network and allowed him back in.

-The group talks about an influx of spoofing emails appearing to come from Rackspace

-Jerry talks up CoRD as an excellent alternative to Microsoft Remote Desktop:
http://cord.sourceforge.net

255: Live April Show - Deep Down In A Bunker In Switzerland

We welcome our new VIP Patreon sponsors:

Zvon Petric - At Your Server

Topics:

-Jerry has an amusing client story about a lost password and how he put Addigy to good use

-Speaking of passwords, Sam describes an uncanny story about how an Apple employee guessed a user's password out of thin air

-Sam describes a story of how a client was scammed via email for over $200,000.  It calls to mind that Ubiquiti was similarly the victim of an email scam to the tune of $47 million dollars!  
http://fortune.com/2015/08/10/ubiquiti-networks-email-scam-40-million/

-Two possible options for secure mail:
Proton Mail: proton.me, formerly protonmail.com
Mimecast: https://www.mimecast.com

-Joe encounters an interesting startup message in verbose mode: "Too many corpses being created"

-One of Jerry's clients has some issues with spam filtering with Only My Email and directing messages to Fast Mail

-Is long propagation time still a thing?

-GFI sucks! - According to Joe's experiences.  Media Temple isn't much better.
Go to status.gfi.com and view the history to have a laugh

-Jerry has an interesting experience with Sherweb where a certificate trust dialogue box appears for a client's email...

-Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer: https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com

-Sam runs across a situation where copying files using the Synology GUI was unbearably slow.  He ended up enabling SSH on the Synology and used a host Mac to initiate an SSH connection and utilitized the cp command:
cp -pr /source/directory/ /destination/directory/

-ACEs is just around the corner and the group shares some great quotes from previous attendees.  If you haven't already, sign up for ACEs today!

-Sam & Joe have a secret meeting at PsiMac World Headquarters

-Joe spins a yarn about calendar invites and an Apple ID, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Exchange, oh my!

254: What's up, Dock?

Topics:

-This week's show is brought to you by FLEXdesk - your help desk support that grows with your company.  Go to rootedconsulting.org/flexdesk to find out more.

-Jerry takes over Joe's Peeves Corner as he gripes about Apple Remote Desktop and its annoying habit of jumping to different computers when it is populating a list

-It brings up the topic of Addigy and their remote access client and its speedy and reliable access.  Also Addigy's SSH/command line capabilities to perhaps kickstart Apple Remote Desktop.

-Joe talks about users enabling Printer Sharing.  If users turn it on and people connect through it, changing the host computer's name in System Preferences>Sharing will cause shared users to no longer be able to use it.

-Continuing failed updates with High Sierra and the now infamous "missing or damaged" error

-It reminds Joe of a story where a client had a firmware password on a Mac that was acquired from a previous user.  In a similar situation where the Apple Store could not/would not unlock it.  They extracted the hard drive, installed it in another system and wiped/updated it.  They then placed it back in the original iMac and it successfully booted.

-Jerry floats a conspiracy theory as to why these installer issues have been so rampant

"Joe's Tech Clinic" - After an upgrade to High Sierra, the Dock and Finder were slow to respond after booting each time.  Subsequent downloads would cause the Dock to then be unresponsive, once complete.  Joe attempted many fixes: resetting launch services, removing /var/folders contents (except zz), safe boot, resetting NVRAM, SMC, nada.  Also tried trashing Dock preferences and rebuilt manually.  A key was that the Downloads folder was not in the Dock.  Unbelievably, adding it to the Dock corrected the issue!

-A nice addition to the show is additional audio from our interview with Justin Maxwell of smith.ai and Keypad.  Justin talks about his time working for Apple.

-The rumor about being caught in an elevator with Steve Jobs turns out to be true!

-Justin and his wife were at Apple during the famous "I'm a Mac" commercials.  He talks about the underdog mentality that made for a very exciting time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfv6Ah_MVJU

-He was on the team that created and released Aperture

-Joe remembers the time of the release of the Intel processor.  At that time, Justin was part of the team building the iLife website (in Flash!).  At that time, Adobe decided not to release Flash for the intel processors.  Justin's team had to rebuild the entire website, working through holidays and weekends to meet a deadline.  Released the morning of MacWorld, Steve Jobs hated it!  Justin kept a little memento to remind him of that time in his life.

-Of the many things that Justin learned from all of this, Steve was almost always right. He always thought of the user first.

252: Migrate Is Becoming A Trigger Word For Me

Topics:

-Joe has some follow up for same from Episode 223 "It's not you, it's me" about Mail notifications

-Sam follows up on his experience at the ACN Road Show in Santa Monica, CA

-Sam shares a story from one of our listeners that recovered a stolen MacBook Pro with assistance from the police department

-In working with a client, Joe discovers that Find My iPhone was off.  He also discussed enabling show last location, which is a handy feature.

-Sam tries to inject a new segment in the show, "Sam's travel corner"

-Jerry reminds us about taking a few moments to ask clients for an online review

-Jerry talks about an experience with a client that had a failed High Sierra upgrade - "macOS could not be installed on this computer" and used terminal to correct it:
diskutil list
diskutil umount force /dev/disk1
(Take note of your disk id. disk1 in my case)
diskutil apfs convert /dev/disk1

-We reference Mike Bombich from Carbon Copy Cloner and an APFS issue that was found when dealing with sparse images:
https://bombich.com/blog/2018/02/15/macos-may-lose-data-on-apfs-formatted-disk-images

-Not to be outdone, Joe introduces yet another segment, "Joe's Kuriosity Korner"

-A client that politely declined Joe's monthly services plan ends up with an issue with data loss after a liquid spill and the Apple Store replaced hardware.  PsiMac to the rescue: had her order the hard drive from Backblaze. It contained a full copy of her home folder, which brought her data back.  Two fallout issues were Keychain related and the Photos library.  

-Sam has an issue with spotlight and Outlook 2016 and found a more recent support article to deal with the issue using the mdimport command.  This was a welcome new approach to removing and rebuilding the spotlight database:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2741535/outlook-for-mac-search-returns-no-results-and-task-items-are-not-displ

-A story you have to hear to believe - Joe's client has an issue with sending emails from Outlook and coming out as gibberish to receivers.  After upgrading from Outlook 2011 to 2016, the issue remained.  In the end, an errant carriage return in one of her contact names caused this formatting issue to occur.

"Just re-index it dude" 
-Apparently Sam