373: Super Secret Squirrel Password

Topics:

-Joe schools us on verified phone calls on iPhone. 

-Jerry has been testing iOS 14 with positive results. 

-Both Jerry & Joe have been using RingCentral for years. Joe decided to clean house with his extensions. 

-Sam just has nana answering his calls. 

-Back to user sentiment surveys, Joe describes how apps seem to pause for an extended period before asking for a rating. 

-Exavault makes a diagnostics tool called MTR that Jerry has had success with for traceroutes.

-Security is brought up again by Joe. It reminds Sam of the “I’m a Mac” commercials with Windows Vista:
https://youtu.be/8CwoluNRSSc

-Screen Recording, a long griped about feature on the show, is an admin only feature as of now in the beta release of Big Sur. The hope is that this will be configurable via MDM. 

-System 8 is now available virtually!
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21346392/mac-os-8-electron-app-download-windows-linux-features

-One of Sam’s neighbors sometimes reminds him of Rick Moranis from Ghostbusters. It then turns into a story about the feud between his dog and the mailman. 

-Sam spins a yarn about setting up new Wi-Fi hardware and SSIDs at multiple client sites and the curve balls that are thrown at him.

-The conversation delves into Joe’s yoga practices.

-Since diving into the Wi-Fi security topic, Joe talks about 802.1x Authentication and other security measures. It starts a discussion about learning new technology on the job. 

372: Way High

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Topics:

-We debate the earth’s shape and whether or not it spins. Share your opinion!

-Satellite ISPs create a new level of headache for Joe’s remote support. 

-Joe thinks he is chronically under billing. Remote work may contribute to that issue.

-Jerry offers some ideas for a sliding scale.

-Michael Thomsen has some valuable input via Slack to contribute to the billing discussion.

-Right in line with the billing conversation, Jerry has a rough go at it while trying to migrate data for a client. It look him to the next day both on and off site and ended up billing only a fraction of his efforts.

-All this talk about how many hours to bill remind Sam of Monty Python and The Holy Grail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk

-A debate ensues about what is a reasonable amount of time to bill and how much the client.

-Not to be left out, Sam has a new client that he under billed for onboarding services. He struggles to figure out how to deal with that because of their history with a previous consultant.

-Sam finds himself in a tough spot when he was “way high” on a ladder

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371: Sometimes It's Not Pretty To See The Way The Sausage Is Made

Topics:

-The show starts with Joe & Jerry as Sam is rushing back from a job. 

-Jerry has been spending his free time on Facebook Marketplace. He gives us a little history of stereo equipment as he picks up a couple of Marantz receivers. 

-A client reaches out to Joe for a fan repair on an old Mac running OS 9!

-Jerry puts out a call to listeners for old stereo equipment. 

-The guys recall childhood stories of being band geeks and nerds. 

-Pro tip from Jerry.  Cotton face masks under disposable masks have cut down on the fogginess that can occur for those who wear glasses. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085CNR5QQ/

-Friendly PSA - stock up on PPE while there is inventory and before the start of school brings more panic buying. 

-Jerry has a possible tip for those that have had trouble using QuickTime to display an iOS device. 

-“How did we do?” - we discuss how beneficial those post support surveys really are. 

-On the flip side, Malwarebytes took a unique approach to incentivize people to attend a seminar. 

-Sam had a negative experience with malwarebytes sales. 

-Some of Jerry’s clients text their requests. Sometimes the informality can create confusion. 

-Pro Tip from Joe: try deselecting the auto join checkbox in macOS Wi-Fi network list instead of removing networks.

-Sam also uses a script to remove unwanted networks. This can be run on an ongoing basis as a maintenance script for computers. 

370: Did I Not Read The Effing Manual?

Topics:

-Fake keyboard sounds drive Jerry bananas

-Amazing calculator tips are blowing our minds.

-A TeamViewer tip from Jerry. Or not.

-Sam has done some research to automate the installation of TeamViewer Host as well as auto assigning and grant easy access. 

-Jerry shared a video of a person scamming the scammers by infiltrating their call center. Here is Jim Browning’s YouTube channel. 
https://youtu.be/le71yVPh4uk

-Joe wants to get Sam’s take on his new AirPods Pro. The noise cancellation feature is incredible. He recalls Adam Engst’s TidBITS review and joe spot on it is.

-Jerry schools us about how to properly insert earplugs.

-Joe’s ears are working overtime with holding in his AirPod, holding up his glasses, and his mask. 

-Misplacing notes in the Notes app creates a difficult restore situation. Jerry gets help from MacMost.

-Joe finds himself in a similar situation to Sam where he received credit for an article with content from TidBITS Content Network. 

-Sam runs into a situation where a product he purchased form social media advertising stopped working and he found the warranty was only 30 days. Word to the wise, stay away from the Magic Bolt. 

369: Treat Yourself To A Nice Cup Of COVID

Topics:

-As Sam ventures out to clients again, he realizes he is not prepared for some basic functionality out in the world.

-Both Joe & Jerry are fancy coffee drinkers

-Jerry was in for a shock as he walks in the door to a client where they were not practicing the same measures that he was for safety.

-Joe was hopeful of a video from Jerry’s incident but no such luck.

-Sam thinks he’s taking the brave approach of assisting a client in setting up Google WiFi remotely. That’s just a regular workday for Joe.

-Google seems to require the Google WiFi app for setup, then the Google Home app moving forward.

-Google WiFi vs Eero. Which would you choose?

-The iOS screen sharing via QuickTime didn’t work for Sam and Joe recalls having a similar issue lately.

-All this discussion of remote access get Joe all riled up again about screen recording on macOS.

-A once exciting and now disappointing “feature” of Ubiquiti UniFi was up alerts. Sam figured this would be a great way to find out once a device came back online but instead, he received repeated and unnecessarily alerts throughout the day. So much so that he had to turn this feature off.

-Joe is in for quite a surprise while attempting to remotely upgrade a client to macOS 10.15.5. His client ended up on the beta of Big Sur! He had to do some extra work to create a script in Addigy using the seedutil command. This would allow him to get the status of computers in the Developer Program. Thanks to Shawn Maddock for pointing him in the right direction with seedutil. Joe has submitted those as scripts and custom facts for the community. 

-Sam also mentions managing beta program access via MDM configuration profile.

-A bug that may occur when enrolling into the Big Sur beta is that your computer will display a message stating that “your computer is being managed by swscan”, as noted in the developer documentation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-big-sur-11-beta-release-notes

368: Finding Your Way Through The Chicane

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Topics:

-Jerry gets a real kick out of Joe’s texts of frustration with clients.

-Joe’s patience is tried with a client simply unable to deal with passwords. It’s a remote session that would have taken down the best of us.

-Jerry has a password story of his own that caused Apple to lock the account.

-In Sam’s early career, he accidentally forwarded a negative email about a client…to that same client. Jerry has a similar story from his past.

-HCS had recently picked up a new client from another consultancy. During a conference call with a vendor, the sales engineer decided to open up and bad mouth the consultancy after just meeting on the phone.

-Jerry has a Dropbox story where terabytes of data were attempting to be synced over a poor internet connection.

-After one of Joe’s clients went down a road of potential concern working with someone claiming to be Norton and providing private information, he decided to investigate. As it turns out, it was a legitimate service from Norton called LifeLock.

-It does bring up a conversation about the validity and safety of using services like LifeLock.

-Somehow we end talking about maps…

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