354: This Is Not Snake Oil

Topics:

-Jerry talks of how business has slowed down for him since all of the recent events have occurred

-Joe has been busy setting up remote access for corporate clients and he hasn’t felt an impact as of yet

-Sam starts to broach the subject of maintaining security on home computers

-One of Sam’s client laid off 95% of their workforce 

-Projects have been put on hold

-How long will the shelter in place for the New York area last?

-An office move that Sam had referenced in the last episode is still going to move forward under special circumstances.  An HCS tech will arrive on site when nobody else is in the office in order to connect equipment.

-Jerry has retail clients that are cutting prices due to the times

-Could we learn something from retailers slashing prices?

-Jerry reminds us that we are relying on supplies from other countries like China, which could cause delays even if we do want to start projects.

-Sam ordered a new MacBook Air

-Simply asking is an approach that Joe says could speak a discussion for moving on work

-Jerry inquires about “Sam’s buddy” with the restaurant, who is surviving with curb side pick ups and delivery

-One of Jerry’s clients receives a very well done phishing scam that does a redirect through Microsoft One Drive.  Thankfully they caught it in time.  Jerry was surprised as to how casual the compromised vendor was about it.

-As the topic of newsletter and reaching out comes back up, Joe has some thoughts of dark web scanning and phishing tests.  Sam has some ideas of reaching out just with information as opposed to a marketing pitch, followed up by individual calls to the client.

-Some of our fellow consultants like Michael Thomsen of Origin 84 and Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys have contributed to the show with some of their ideas for contacting clients

353: Interview With Adam Engst Of the TidBITS Content Network

Topics:

-Thank you to all of our newest Patreon sponsors:
Daniel Carroll
Tim Hannon
Sikko Lucas
Nick Harvey
Sara Gepp - Close to the Earth IT
AJ Protebka - Campfire Technology Group
Remie Cremers - Tesla Pro Tips

-We welcome Adam Engst from TidBITS back to the show!

-Adam comes in to discuss the current times and finding ways to adapt your work life to this new environment

-Things have moved quickly in a short amount of time

-Joe actually headed out west shortly before many of the recent events and had to self quarantine

-Drive through testing for COVID-19 is available but not in all areas

-Adam describes how hard it has been to concentrate on work lately

-This has also affected his local runner’s club events

-Adam’s never had an office and life working from home has been normal for him.  But for others, it’s not the norm and it presents its challenges.

-Another unexpected part of this, as Jerry & Sam have experienced, is working with children at home, who have their own work to accomplish.

-It is important to take breaks!

-Sam has a client move to complete that may not be able to shift dates.  He is trying to figure out how to deal with that.

-If you do go out, it is advised to change your clothes.  But as Adam mentions from an emergency responder, it matters how you take those items off.

-Joe has hardware labor to complete and is contemplating various methods of exchanging equipment, like “dead drops”.

-Take Control Books has a new free book called “Working From Home Temporarily” by Glenn Fleishman: https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/working-from-home/

-Adam’s son attends Cornell University and they, along with other colleges and universities, have their own situations to deal with

-Restaurants are another industry that is taking a major hit and some have shut down operations preemptively since they cannot afford to lose that much business

-Currently, IT consultancies are in demand to support clients with remote support and home office setup.  But how long will that last if businesses do not have the money to move forward?

-A discussion brews about newsletters and what we should be said and how much should you push services

-Adam has been pondering what the theme of April’s TidBITS Content Newsletter (https://tcn.tidbits.com) should be.  Working remotely will be a prime focus

-Some advice from Adam: Offer something new to your clients if possible

-An amazing product that Adam recommends is called Otter: https://otter.ai - which offers real time transcription and can integrate with a service like Zoom.  

-Do your research and get information from verified locations like World Health Organization, CDC, Johns Hopkins University: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

-It’s nice to see people and neighbors offering to help those that may not be able to get their own supplies for one reason or another

-Adam wraps up with some excellent tips about how other countries have dealt with this and what we can do

-In tech news, Apple released new products, including the new MacBook Air!  This is discussed on the TidBITS site: https://tidbits.com/2020/03/18/new-macbook-air-features-magic-keyboard-and-lower-price/

Thank you to our Patreon sponsors!

352: Update - March 15, 2020

Topics:

-Jerry & Sam sit down to talk about how current times are affecting our businesses

-Next week we will have Adam Engst from The TidBITS Content Network to talk more about tips for operating our businesses during trying times

-Sam describes reaching out to monthly clients to make them aware of remote support for the next couple of weeks

-Speaking of TidBITS Content Network, Jerry talks about reaching out to clients with information

-Sam is very curious about how our fellow consultants are handling the situation

-Due to a Jamf 200 class coming up, Sam has to be in New York City this week and expresses his concern. But it does make him think about how to handle interactions

-Misinformation on social media aggravates Sam tremendously

-Supply availability is a very real issue in Jerry’s parts

-Jerry has small client visits this week that he is keeping on the calendar as of now

-Remote access has been a feature that is keeping some of us very busy

-Chrome Remote Desktop is a decent alternative for remote access that can be used in smaller environments: https://remotedesktop.google.com

-Syncing a local Synology NAS with a cloud service can make access to data simpler

-While Sam has not sent out a message to all of his clients but Jerry has taken the step of keeping his clients informed

-ACEs Conference has been postponed until October 20-21, 2020.  Justin & team are working to hold a virtual conference May 19-20 and Command Control Power will be a part of it!  10% of ticket sales are being donated to No Kid Hungry.  Stay tuned for more information.

-If you have topics or something you would like to discuss on the show or mail in to the show, let us know!

350: How Many Billable Hours?

Topics:

-Command Control Power has a few new Patreon sponsors to announce. Thank you to the following patrons for responding to our call:
Bruce Corson
Rocco Russo
Kevin Cox
Steven Kurtz

-Joe wants to know how many billable hours his fellow consultants bill in a given week

-Sam & Jerry quickly produce their numbers as they were not aware there was a quiz

-An addition that Sam mentions is the recurring revenue from MSP clients, which helps as a stable baseline for those slow weeks/months

-Jerry wonders how relevant those billable hours are in comparison to simply knowing how much revenue is needed to “keep the lights on”

-Subtracting raw numbers of a 40 hour work week (for admin tasks, internal meetings, etc.), Joe ends up with 19 possible billable hours per consultant, per week.

-With Joe & Sam having employees, Jerry poses questions about incentives for them to keep the numbers up and bring in revenue for the company

-Sam had an issue where his employee was not documenting quick fixes with MSP clients because he thought it simply didn’t matter.

-Even when time is not billable, or you extend a discount to a client, you should always document and show this to the client. You never know when you need to call back to this information.

-Jerry pushes Joe & Sam to find out how they physically document hours not dedicated to clients

-Quoting job estimates takes time that a consultant can master over time

-Sam disappears right in the nick of time!

348: More Fiddleable Time

Topics:

-Command Control Power needs your support. If you feel like the show has benefited you and your business, please consider supporting us on Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

-Jerry has a real head scratcher with a new client who had files disappearing from the desktop. He tried various fixes, including the keyboard shortcut to show hidden files: Command + Shift + Period. As it turns out, it was Parallels Desktop that had a toggle to hide items on the desktop. Face Palm!

-The next thing Jerry had to deal with was, how much should he charge?

-PSA from one of our listerners - 10.15.3 appears to correct the bug of data loss in Apple Mail. Thanks to Claire @ Passion Support for bringing it to our attention

-Another listener and “verified oldster” Glenn Kowalski describes the details behind some older network terminology like AppleTalk & LocalTalk

-Joe describes some helpful details about local IP address reporting within Watchman Monitoring

-Joe describes his frustrations with diagnosing logs on macOS

-Shout out to our friends at The TidBITS Content Network for their invaluable contributions

-Joe shares a story from listener Tim Nyberg of The Mac Guys where a client fell for a painfully obvious scam

-Jerry has a positive experience to share setting up Eero in a residential environment

-With mesh networks, Joe also leans towards Eero for ease of setup and maintenance.  But he does have concerns about privacy and ownership by Amazon

-The Eero Pro portal to manage all of your clients is a nice benefit to centrally manage things like updates and adding devices. https://pro.eero.com

347: Dream On

Topics:

-Not surprisingly, a UniFi topic kicks off the show.  As Jerry rolls his eyes about the UniFi Dream Machine, it appears UniFi has released a rack mountable Dream Machine Pro: https://store.ui.com/products/udm-pro

-Joe recounts a story of him installing a Dream Machine and Flex HD
https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-dream-machine
https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-flexhd

-Joe has a PSA  and UniFi best practices to share: Turn off Settings > Site > Uplink Connectivity Monitor (only if no mesh access points in use!). Turn off Settings > Site > Auto-Optimize Network. Turn off Settings > Wireless Networks > SSID > Advanced Options > High Performance Devices. 
Modify the DTIM Period? 

-Wi-Fi channel management and manual vs automatic is something Sam & Jerry differ on

-DHCP vs static vs DHCP reservations.  What do you do?

-Joe has a new business idea for an auto power cycling router

-The gang jokes about photos clients take and send to help diagnose issues

-Sam discovers that you can set up a single UniFi access point without the use of a controller and simply use the app

-UniFi “rolling upgrades” via the controller can be confusing, as noted by Joe when doing it recently.  It's mostly been successful, because the Start Rolling Upgrade button is only available when viewing the "Wireless" tab, which only lists the APs – and yet, it includes the switch update as part of it 

-Jerry has a client that requires manual firmware of their 16 Ubiquiti UniFi devices using SSH

-Zendesk has a great API to use with mail clients so you can quickly change the status of tickets, assign to agents, etc.  Sam discovers this late in the Zendesk game but it has already made him much more efficient dealing with tickets: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203691006-Using-the-Mail-API-to-update-ticket-properties-from-your-inbox

-Another PSA from Joe, Apple has begun recycling serial numbers for Mac computers so companies like Watchman Monitoring need a new method of determining the estimated age of a machine.
https://beetstech.com/blog/decode-meaning-behind-apple-serial-number
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/01/06/apple-randomized-serial-numbers-late-2020/

-Sam has an odd end result when dealing with an old issue of Spotlight being unable to search Outlook emails

-The “Focused” email in Outlook can be too easy to click on and confuse the user.  Jerry has seen this all too often.  Joe wants to rename it “randomly hide some of my stuff”.

-As the spotlight conversation goes on, Joe mentions a script he created in Addigy to destroy and rebuild the spotlight database: https://prod.addigy.com/#/macmanage/community/scripts/5dddb3325ff0a156d595558d