431: Pavlov's Squirrels

Topics:

-Jerry describes some of his wireless challenges in his house as he moves from Eero to UniFi. 
-The UniFi Doorbell G4 is the latest addition to his UniFi suit of products.
-Using a headless Mac mini, he utilizes Home Bridge to add devices that are not HomeKit compatible.
-Similarly, Sam uses a Chamberlain Wi-Fi garage door opener with a “Home Bridge” device that is extremely unreliable.
-“Hey Squirrely”
-Hardware availability and keeping devices in stock is a constant challenge and moving target.
-Sam tried to get a straight answer out of UniFi support for default settings to enable/disable to improve network functionality. They supplied a support article: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/221029967-UniFi-Troubleshooting-Connectivity-Issues
-The UniFi Smart Plug is a very useful device at an excellent price point: https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-accessories/products/unifi-smart-power
-Joe & Sam gush over their Apple Silicon computers and Jerry shares his unhappiness. 
-Target Disk Mode and Apple Silicon. Is this still a thing?
-Joe prefers using Time Machine backups as a migration source.
-Jerry uses Fiverr.com to hire a VoiceOver actor for a customer voicemail system.

425: The Appointments You Make Are Equal To The Appointments You Take

Topics:

-Jerry shakes Sam’s tree to get the skinny on a fancy pants email signature he has from Wisestamp.
-As a part of his updated signature, Jerry includes features like a “pay now” link and social media buttons.
-One concern Sam has is including the Harmonizely link to book time.
-We continue part of a conversation from a “patron only” episode.
-What are the fees of waiting for payment vs a fee of a credit card transaction?
-Sam uses Moonclerk, integrated with Stripe for credit card payments.
-Harmonizely is now a full part of Sam’s workflow. He is now convincing Matt on his team to do the same.
-simplybook.me has acquired Harmonizely and has added to their already impressive features.
-Joe talks about a book called “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris.
-Sam talks about the mindset he needs in order to be able to take tech support calls.
-As part of being cautious with available time, Jerry explains methods used to curate his available time on Harminzely.

424: Ducktape and Popsicle Stick Solution

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Topics:

• Jerry recently took the Addigy Certified Expert training

• Text Sniper is an incredibly useful tool that is like OCR for your screen: https://www.textsniper.app.

• Jerry uses it during a presentation to capture text for notes.

• Addigy integrating Splashtop is a welcome addition to their feature set for remote support.

• Joe tells a funny story about Outlook reminders in his latest peeves corner.

• He prefers first party because he likes to know Apple’s solution first and know the ins and outs.

• The group discusses Mail issues.

• Western Digital MyCloud Drive isn’t our favorite choice for customers.

• We have to choose the right equipment or software for our clients based on what is right for them but also what we can support well.

• Sam shares a funny story about trying to talk to a tech person at Staples.

• Should the group start a show where they go to local stores and ask tech questions?

• Joe talks about the times before he was an Apple consultant and shares the story about how he found out about the Apple Consultants Network.

• Is Sam Neo from the Matrix?

• The crew talks about older, unreliable software like Retrospect

• Jerry has an internet recovery issue with a local Mac mini acting as a content cache

423: Dress Your Best & Billable Rates

Topics:

• Jerry talks about the used Mcintosh amplifier from 1967 he recently got for himself.

• He gives a warning about energizing older products like this because it can be dangerous.

• What is appropriate to wear on the job?

• Sam shares a story about his clients dog ripping his brand new corduroys.

• There’s a certain value you provide when you dress the part.

• Joe shares some of his favorite button down shirts.

• The group discusses raising rates and how to communicate that you are doing so with clients.

• Sam explains that he has stopped giving discounts to new clients to win them over because he charges what his services are worth.

• Jerry likes to slowly creep his rates up so it isn’t a huge jump.

• Sam recently increased his hourly rates and he explains how he’d rather have longer term relationships with his clients and his pricing shows that.

• Adding valuable monthly services helps you to bill outside of hourly labor.

• The group discusses billing for network monitoring.

421: Meet Me In The Back Of Sizzler

419: When Jiggled by The Jiggler

Season 8 is here!

• Thank you to our long time sponsor, Jon Brown of Grove Technologies for his continued and increased support of Command Control Power.

• If you would like to contribute to the show, please visit http://patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

• In the latest “I should have known this” corner, Joe learned something new about widgets from the TidBITs newsletter.

• Sam adds another TidBITs tip about AirTags.

• Jerry revisits the Mouse Jiggler app from Episode 246: Let Go Of My Echo or Echo Location that helped his Fusion Drive encryption proceed, and shares some excellent feedback from Tom Bridge re: encryption requiring the mouse to be moving. Tom suspected Apple is "using the entropy from the mouse cursor to do part of the encryption" which is apparently the case in High Sierra with APFS (although Jerry's drive was not APFS). 

• Jiggler 1.9 : No-Doz for your Mac

  http://sticksoftware.com/software/Jiggler.html

• A benefit to working remotely is that the client won’t see every time you have to google an answer!

• Sam purchased a 13 inch MacBook pro M1 and then somehow a random serial number got added to his apple business manager.

• He made the mistake of not listening to Joe’s rules for making a new migration work properly.

• Joe and Sam are both very happy with their newer M1 computers since they finally have devices that can keep up with everything they do.

• Jerry suggests Synology Migration Assistant because it works very well for him.

• While completing a migration Jerry ran into a password problem.

• Both Joe & Jerry have gathered a treasure-trove of knowledge from a series of YouTube videos from SpaceRex. He has put out helpful videos that can improve Synology performance like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYEEfAI-Upo

• Little tips like disabling SMB1 or SMB encryption on Synology to increase speeds have been helpful.

• Jerry also talks about the realities link aggregation.

• Always consider the quality of drives you add to your drive array.

• Avoid SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives and look instead for CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) drives.

• “Cache” is king.

• Jerry has a real issue with terrible unboxing videos.

• Jerry would love to have a better partner relationship with Synology.

• Joe wants to talk more about ransomware, malware, and protecting your data more in future episodes.

• Important tip: Always have a backup!

• There are risks to relying solely on backups without an “air gap”.

• Sam and Joe highly recommends the Security Advisor on Synology