February 18, 2014

037: Anecdotal Anecdotes

February 18, 2014/ Joe

Recorded live February 11, 2014

Topics:

- Jerry walks us through how to resolve a failure to start Mail server and Calendar server on Mac OS X Server after renewing a certificate, and tells us what Dovecot means

- Sam explains how to resolve failure to login to iCloud by removing the NetworkInterfaces.plist

Simplenote

Notational Velocity

SubEthaEdit

ScreenSteps; see also: Clarify

February 09, 2014

036: Low Hanging Fruit & Slow Paying Clients

February 09, 2014/ Joe

Recorded live February 4, 2014

Topics:

- dealing with clients who are slow to pay

- recurring payment processing options: Ryan said, "jotform.com for cheap forms with Stripe recurring payments" and Allen said "keep the card with Merchant Warehouse; stripe will do this on its own; or recurly.com"

- serving on the ACN Advisory Council as a way to get more involved and give back to the community

- Printers going off-line and needing to be power cycled

- why kernel_task sometimes pegs the CPU at 100% or more: seems to be related to throttling CPU intensive tasks to cool the system down when it's too warm by prioritizing simpler system tasks

- re: recent discussion on Accidental Tech Podcast about pitfalls in modern technology that our kids will think were crazy: no one mentioned passwords!

February 01, 2014

035: Interview with Mike Kingsley, Kingsley MacConsulting

February 01, 2014/ Joe

Interview recorded January 21, 2014; Intro recorded on January 28, 2014

Intro:

- testing Mavericks Server; being Client 0

- using Profile Manager to easily configure CalDAV, CardDAV, VPN services; Sam's trick to save a profile without a user name

- the trial and error of troubleshooting a server leads to uncertainty

- using authrestart to bypass FileVault 2 on next restart; installing software updates that require a restart now does this automatically

- force quitting fsck to allow mounting a drive that was failing to mount, even read-only, after letting fsck complete

- using the "security" command to read the contents of the user's keychain

Interview:

- Mike started his consulting practice in 2004, a great year for Apple

- first computer was an Apple IIe in 1984

- Apple Store has been great source of referrals; helps to think of Apple as a partner, and promote their services like AppleCare and JointVenture

- JointVenture can be a great supplement to help from Apple consultants

- first job was working at Disneyland; customer service was ingrained in the culture and top quality; out of five day training for new hires, three days are purely customer service; helps with consulting: owning issues, taking responsibility; e.g., customer drops ice cream cone, and employee walks customer over to the ice cream stand to facilitate the resolution; how to deal with people who are upset, hearing both sides; if you can't help, who can?

January 25, 2014

034: Interview with Ben Greiner, Inventor of Robot Cloud and President of Forget Computers

January 25, 2014/ Joe

Interview Recorded on January 14, 2014; Intro Recorded on January 21, 2014

Intro:

- Sam's friend's lost iPhone

- 1Password's great security audit feature

- Mat Honan's epic hack

- solving the password problem

- MonkeyBox

- Apple's two-step verification

Topics:

- Robot Cloud is built on JAMF Software Casper Suite, customized for multi-tenant use, designed for Mac/iOS management; working closely with JAMF since early 2007

- Robot Cloud has been available as a product since 2013 and is designed for 1-100 seats

- Forget Computers employs 13 people, 10 full time, all but two are technical

- DeviceScout is offered as an add-on for consultants who already have a JSS (JAMF Software Server)

- Inventory & Alerts (JAMF "recon" + added alerting and ZenDesk integration via Support Menu app) @ $5/month/device

- Policies (automated patching, advanced troubleshooting) @ $10/month/device

- Ben's background in consulting: worked as a creative at an ad agency, de facto IT person there; started as a team of 1 in 1998 as Digital Logic, then rebranded as Forget Computers; ACN since 2001; merged with another company in 2005, and attempted to integrate the two companies without success; left with two other consultants at the end of 2005, rebirth of Forget Computers, based in Chicago

- more about Security, Certificates, Network Requirements, etc.

January 15, 2014

033: Marketing and Followup

January 15, 2014/ Joe

Recorded on January 14, 2014

Topics:

- Promise Pegasus R6, 4 TB RAID 6 failed 1 TB drive replacement – live rebuild during a workday, approximately 3 hours; Promise Utility had reported a PFA condition on Drive #5; sent log to Promise support who authorized an advance shipment RMA; drive reported several bad blocks the next day and went offline; drive replaced and RAID rebuilt successfully in 3.5 hours

- Google's algorithms rank local sites higher for local service providers

- Google text ads are often clicked indiscriminately by "normal" people even though we technical people often avoid them

- "white hat" vs. "black hat" SEO techniques

- put your phone number at the top of every page

- put your email address on the page; spam is a solved problem

- good to have separate pages for each type of service you offer, e.g. Remote vs. Onsite

- being a salesperson without sounding like a salesperson

- giving away your time on "good faith" and asking the client to write a good referral; prospects look for recent referrals

- alternatives to the ACN Consultants Locator for reviews, e.g. Yelp

- however, be wary: Yelp often removes positive reviews written by legitimate users, if those users have only posted one review; also, it has been reported that "Yelp will help you remove bad reviews…for a price."