357: Interview WIth Chad Keith Of Atlas Solutions

Topics:

-Chad Keith of Atlas Solutions joins the show

-Chad originally called his company “Behind The Mac” but decided to change the name to work well with Apple Business Manager and the Apple Consultants Network

-A listener since the early days of the show, he shares how moved to a monthly services model and hearing fellow consultants was very encouraging.

-At one time, Apple had run a ‘Behind the Mac’ ad campaign: https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/14/apple-behind-the-mac-ad-campaign/

-Chad discusses how it did not take much convincing for most of his clients to move to the MSP model, explaining how the even keeled billing approach appealed to them.

-Calculating monthly pricing for new clients can be difficult and needs ongoing attention

-Having mentors that have been through this is key to developing a plan for pricing

-With clients reaching out, defining a point of contact will help streamline requests

-In the current climate, Chad discusses how his business has been affected with support and travel

-He also talks about how local businesses and communities are affected by COVID-19

-If you haven’t seen John Krasinski’s “Some Good News” broadcasts, you are missing out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5pgG1M_h_U

-Joe shares some ideas for contactless food distribution

-Jerry goes to get pizza dough for the family and quickly changes his mind after seeing the conditions

-A short discussion brews about the loans available from the Small Business Association: https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-business-guidance-loan-resources

-The healthcare industry has changed through all of this and technology has been making more possible while keeping our healthcare workers safer

-Chad Keith has a podcast of his own called “Overcoming Average” http://overcomingaverage.libsyn.com

-Link Tree is where Chad has all his available contact and social media information: http://linktr.ee/atlascarolina

282: Interview With Allen Hancock of Watchman Monitoring - Zendesk Private Ticket Creation

Topics:

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

On this episode we welcome long time supporter of the show and owner of Watchman Monitoring, Allen Hancock

-Some news for Allen and the team is that they have hired Ben Mason. You may know Ben from his excellent support at Gruntwork.

-Hiring new staff and remote vs local employees becomes an interesting topic of discussion

-Allen has a big announcement in that they are changing the way they handle Zendesk Tickets. Listen to find out more about Zendesk private ticket creation and how Watchman Monitoring takes full advantage of this.  

-Watchman Monitoring can also work with Zendesk’s Essential Plan

-Zendesk Private Ticket creation is the new feature that allowed this integration to happen

-Looking for help with these features?  Watch the Watchman Monitoring webinar 

-If you need quick assistance, visit http://watchmanmonitoring.com/schedule to set up a time for support.  Pro Services options are available as well.

-Allen will be in Los Angeles for MacTech Conference 2018
Visit http://conference.mactech.com/go/ccp to find out about special pricing for CCP listeners

-The Watchman Monitoring community forum has been recently revamped.  You will no longer receive emails from the forum unless you request to watch a topic or receive responses to your posts.  You can also vote on features.

Visit http://community.watchmanmonitoring.com to be a part of the Watchman Monitoring community. Get involved!

274: Back To The Future

A Special Thanks To Our VIP Patreon Sponsors

Topics:

-We take a trip down memory lane as we go back to a very early set of interviews from Apple Advanced Camp in Austin, TX 2013

-We also have a listener contribution from our friend from the Netherlands, Remie Cremers

Thank you to our Patreon Sponsors!

232: CalDav Migration Madness & A Lost Package Perfect Storm

We're sponsored this week by Watchman Monitoring, a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

TOPICS:

- Joe's switch to Google G Suite: BusyCal list view, 9999 days, sort by repeating events, calendar, etc.; Google Calendar: how are the interface arrows still not Retina?!

BusyCal took about 5 hours to delete all calendar events on Google G Suite, to reset calendar database (to resolve duplication without having to delete recreate all calendars and reconfigure all sharing settings)

Empty Trash in each of Google Calendars

Two Options in BusyCal: Option 1) File: Import (imports to a new local calendar), can be adjusted, reviewed, split, etc. locally and then events dragged and dropped into calendars on server; or Option 2) Drag and drop .ics file onto BusyCal icon in Dock, choose existing server calendar to import into

Google Calendar adds gross text to the end of the Notes field on every calendar event by default, unless you turn off this feature first:

-::~:~::~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~::~:~::-

Please do not edit this section of the description.

This event has a Google Hangouts video call.

Join: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/psimac.com/joe...

Gmail can only delegate the entire email account, rather than specific mailboxes (maybe because there's no concept of "Mailboxes", only "Labels"?). Does it even show in IMAP?

219: Nobody Beats The Wiz

TOPICS:

• Jerry & Joe revisit Circle by Disney - https://meetcircle.com . An issue issue with a test device still sending messages even after it was reset.

Circle Go https://meetcircle.com/circle-go/ - "works anywhere" has lowerd its subscription price to $4.99 per month for up to 10 devices

• Joe discusses offering to upload and merge client photos as a service.Her references an original Macworld article about using iCloud Photo Library to merge photo libraries; and a newer article .
  Jerry talks about using iPhoto Library Manager and PowerPhotos from
  

• Joe wheels and deals with his cable provider, Optimum for faster broadband rates.
  
  Joe contacts Verizon to add a second static IP to cellular SIM for free. PEP Wave device automatically acquired the static IP and reconnected, amazingly; doubled cellular data from 8GB to 16GB+2GB free for $5 more per month; can switch to business plan when using more than 5 lines, with discounts starting around 8%;
  
  Joe contacts AT&T to drop an old iPad line that was costing $10 per month; spoke with retention department and was offered 20GB data for same price as previous 10GB price; they offered to send free Samsung Galaxy Classic Watch (retail: $350) for free to use the with iPad line in the interest of keeping the line active; no commitment or contract; I can set up the watch and then if I don't like it I can keep it, give it away, or sell it and still cancel the line with no penalty; wonder what they'll offer me when I call back to cancel it a second time!
  

• Jerry talks about his first failure with a Samsung EVO 850 SSD. The drive tested fine with an open source tool https://www.smartmontools.org along with other more familiar utilities.
  

• - Joe chats about a recent upgrade To SoftRAID 5.6 that will support running a SMART test on both USB and FireWire disks.

OS 10 SAT Smart Driver -https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver

-A big thank you to all of our Patreon sponsors!

216: The Hokey Pokey

We're sponsored this week by Watchman Monitoring, a favorite tool of ours that should be in every professional consultant's toolkit.

Visit WatchmanMonitoring.com/cmdctrlpwr and sign up for your free trial to find out how Watchman Monitoring can keep an eye on your client machines and notify you of over 100 issues. Be sure to tweet @cmdctrlpwr #CCPsentme to support the show!

Topics:

• Joe talks about slow systems that have not been upgraded.

• Joe offers a PSA: it's not possible to create an iCloud.com email address beginning with a number, but the Mac doesn't specify the error when it fails for this reason. Thankfully, the error message was specified on the iPhone. Also, there's a limit of three iCloud accounts created per device from a Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

• Joe talks about building a Frankenstein MacBook Pro that needed the firmware password reset. Mac EFI Reset Tool to the rescue!

• Jerry mentions delaminating screens and Staingate.

• Joe mentions yet another PSA about it being impossible to turn off two-factor on some Apple IDs created in iOS 10.3 or macOS 10.12.4.

• Sam talks about a VMWare Fusion issue, resolved by turning off the floppy drive... in 2017?!

• We compare the movie Inception to connecting remotely into a Mac running a virtual machine.

• Sam follows up about logging into any standard user from the login window by using the admin account.

• We discuss client confusion when setting up Touch ID. Locating the Touch ID sensor behind the screen (a possibility recently discussed on Accidental Tech Podcast) might make this much more clear for clients.

• Sam discusses feeling like one of his clients – sitting with his Mac in front of the TV, his Mac became haunted... tune in to find out how he exorcised the daemons.

• Joe wonders what listeners are recommending for antivirus.

• Joe discusses issues he's seen with malware such as Linky Search changing the homepage in Safari and making it difficult to change or reset.

• Jerry and Joe discuss the remote power switch capabilities of WattBox and the OvrC app. Thanks to listener Ryan Grimes for the great recommendation!

• Joe outlines his network failover configuration: main router fails over to WAN2 if WAN1 is down for a few minutes. WattBox power cycles both WAN 1 and WAN 2 modems if WAN still down a couple more minutes. The Cable Modem and Cellular Modem reboot if search engines are unreachable. The Router reboots if search engines and the router are unreachable. (Time Capsule reboots weekly.)