Posts Tagged ‘Rants’

No–I don’t want Chrome with my Flash Player Upgrade

Monday, August 27th, 2012

One of my pet peeves is software such as Adobe’s various IE addins, that try to force upon me other browsers such as Chrome / Firefox.  This mornings latest thing is that Adobe Flash Player has released an update.  When I attempt to install the update, as you can see below they have decided that the default is that “Yes – I want Chrome and not only that, I must want Google Toolbar for IE”.

This type of thing is really not appropriate.  For a starter, if I wanted Chrome, why would I ALSO want them to put in the Google Toolbar for IE?  I use one browser only – Internet Explorer – like it or not that’s what I use.  I do that because I KNOW that any patches for it will come down via my patch management systems (be it WSUS on SBS or my Kaseya system), and I’ll be patched.  Why would I want to put in a third party browser that is not tied into that system for patch management?  That would leave me exposed for potential backdoor security vulnerabilities which is not good practices.

Secondly, I worry about my Mum.  Yup – my Mum and all the semi literate computer users out there like her.  She would have no idea what this means and she’d do as instructed and install the things that she does not need.  Not only that, changing her default browser to Chrome would really confuse the heck out of her and it would lead her to wonder what happened.  Sorry Adobe – that’s just not right.

I wish that there was some way I could say “I’m happy with what I’ve got – just give me the updates for Flash Player that relate to IE and NEVER bother trying to force anything else onto me”… but there’s not.  Maybe software vendors will get a clue and give us what we want, not what THEY think we need.

What pet peeves do you have?

Tags: Adobe, Rants
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »

Can you trust the cloud when vendors do stupid things?

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

A news article I read yesterday has me wondering. The news article here talks about how certain Cisco/Linksys routers have last week automatically upgraded their firmware using a factory default setting.  That in itself is not bad.  What is bad however is how Cisco have chosen to tie the router into the Cisco Connect Cloud so tightly that they now control it and can monitor everything you do.  What makes it worse still is that according to their own privacy policy, they reserve the right to terminate your access should they deem what you do to be pornographic in nature… hang on… this is your router and your internet connection and now your router vendor gets to decide what they feel is pornographic in nature?  There are other things too that they may deem as “bad things” that might get you terminated as well. 

What scares me here, is that once you are “in the cloud” you are subject to the whims of the cloud owner and they may very well decide to change what they feel is acceptable.  You will likely find out when you breach their policy and they restrict/remove service to you.  Not cool.  You don’t find the electricity company deciding to turn of the power to your home because you’ve decide to look at some naked women now do you?  Why then should Cisco get to decide to do the same if that is something you chose to do?  (Note I’m not advocating pornography here at all – just commenting on the potential things that can get you banned)

You need to be ever mindful of what you use Cloud Services for and the potential impact on your business/life should changes occur beyond your control.  As always, I say assess the impact before deciding to go to the cloud.  Make sure it’s the right thing for YOU to do for YOUR business.  Don’t just be a lemming and follow everyone else.

Tags: Cloud Computing, Rants
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »

What NOT to do with ShadowProtect.

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

Let me start by saying that StorageCraft ShadowProtect is not in the slightest way at fault for the story I’m about to relay.  The customer who should know better is entirely at fault.  Let this be a warning to users of ShadowProtect, that there are things you do not understand and you should not mess with at all.

We’ve got a client at Correct Solutions who has a number of servers in a datacentre (DC).  This is an installation that we setup earlier this year and we’ve got ShadowProtect doing the backups of the virtual servers running on Hyper-V to a local location at the DC.  We are using Continuous Incrementals because they are well suited to allow us to replicate the small incremental files offsite to a DR location that they have. Continuous Incrementals are cool technology because they take one base file and then smaller incrementals after that point.  ImageManager is then used to roll up those small incrementals into consolidated daily, weekly and monthly images.  It’s a cool system really and one I’ve used for a number of years in many client environments.

Back to this client, we have ImageManager at the DC that does the image consolidation and replication to the ShadowStream server at the remote DR location and it’s been working pretty well for a number of months.  The files in the DC effectively are replicated to the remote DR site so that we can quickly bring things up should a major event happen.  The client has their own IT Manager handling things on a day to day basis and so we’re called in to help when things are not working.  Yesterday he called up – apparently the ShadowProtect backups are failing on the servers at the DC.  We take a look at it and we find that it looks like a stack of files including the base images are missing from the DC location.  We then check and find a similar (not the same) number of files are missing from the remote location.  This is pretty strange as we only ever replicate the small incremental files from the DC to the DR location and if a file is deleted from the DC location it’s never automatically deleted from the DR location unless ImageManager tells it to be… in which case the files in the DC and DR locations would be identically deleted… which it was not.  Ok – so that means someone or something else deleted the files…  We did some further checking and could see that the client logged onto the DC servers AFTER the 9am backup and BEFORE the 10am backup… the 10am backup was the first one to fail.  The client of course says he did not delete the files at all, but in passing mentions about cleaning old files… CLICK…. Yup – what he did was to look at the files in the backup folder.  Below is a screenshot from one of my own servers that I’ve had using ShadowProtect since mid 2010.

You can see the file ending in SPF – it’s the first full backup of this volume – note it’s 168GB in size. The other SPI files are the incrementals or in this case the consolidated incrementals that are the rolled up incrementals for later backups. In order to restore any file from backup, you need the SPF and all the SPI files forward until today. Now – notice the time stamps on the files. The Base SPF file was created on 25th July 2010 – and has not been changed since then. The SPI files have been changed after that to incorporate the consolidation of the incrementals in accordance with the ImageManager plans that I configured. You see the –i109-cd-cm.spi file – it’s not been touched since 6th October 2010 – that’s again due to the consolidation and retention settings I’ve configured.  This is all good and everything works fine.

Back to this customer… what I believe is that he saw that there were a heap of files not touched for some time and he deleted them all… ouch… that is how he broke ShadowProtect.  To make it worse – he ALSO deleted them from the DR site.  Naturally the client denies this entirely, but I’m pretty sure that this is what happened as ImageManager was NOT configured to delete things like the base files etc and I’ve used ImageManager enough to know it won’t mess up like that.

How do we fix it for this client?  Well luckily the solution is simple… delete EVERYTHING and start again with new Base Images (SPF).  Then allow those to replicate to the DR site and everything will be good.  ImageManager needs to be enabled to replicate the base files, but this is a minor config change we can do.  The faster way would be to grab a USB hard drive and copy the Base Images (over 300GB in this case) and then take that to the DR site to seed the DR server.  We’re waiting on the clients decision for this.

Long story short – don’t mess with ShadowProtect SPF and SPI files unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing.  This client has lost his entire backup history for the past 6 months as a result of what he did.  ShadowProtect and ImageManager will handle things just fine for the most part if you leave them well enough alone.  I hope this story can help others better understand WHY some files look like they’ve not been touched and better understand the relationship between the files.

Tags: Customer Stories, Rants, ShadowProtect, StorageCraft
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »

Do you want your PC fixed for free?

Friday, August 12th, 2011

It used to be that if you were a car mechanic that had friends with problems with their cars asking you to “take a quick look” at their problems.  It would only take a minute… but in the end you ended up spending more and more time on this “only take a minute” problem.  In todays world however, it’s the IT Geek that gets this now.  All too often I’ll be at a BBQ or similar gathering when people ask what I do, I tend to avoid telling them that I fix computer problems for a living.  I do that because I don’t want the “can you take a quick look” scenario happening.

Long story short, people do not value the work that we do enough.  They do not realise that it’s not a quick job and that our time has value.

What do you do in these situations?  How do you handle them?

Check out this video below – it explains it a little more humorously than I can

Tags: Rants
Posted in Blog | 4 Comments »

I’m ringing to confirm our appointment…

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Have you ever had a call like that where the caller rings to say “I’m ringing to confirm our appointment for next Monday.”  You’ve never heard of the person before, you’ve never spoken to the company and you really are not interested?  Why do sales people think that this tactic will work?  Are we so busy in todays world that enough people think they’ve made a mistake and go ahead and take the appointment just out of guilt? 

I’m sorry – but this is just plain wrong.  If you have enough time to call people like this and execute a “strategy” like this then you really are in need of serious help.  Both at a business level and at a morals level.

Ok – my rant is over – surely there are better ways to get an appointment than to try to guilt someone into it?

Tags: Business Focus, Rants
Posted in Blog | No Comments »

How NOT to get a job!

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

This week has been an interesting week.  Yesterday I walked out of a job interview we had with a potential staff member after 21 minutes.  In 15 years, I’ve never done that before.  I don’t know who was more surprised, Ryan, our CEO or David, our Service Manager – but the candidate certainly realised he made a mistake when I did.  What did he do that was so bad?

1. Body Language –from the very start of the interview, this guy did not look like he wanted to be there.  He was slouched back in his chair, he was fiddling with his phone, his entire manner made me think that he’d rather be anywhere but here in this interview.
2. Failure to qualify who he was talking to – there were three of us that interviewed him – David our service manager introduced himself and his position as he walked into the room.  I introduced myself by name only as did Ryan.  Now he probably knew Ryan was our Managing Director from the phone interview, but he had no idea who or what role I played in the interview and he didn’t bother asking either.
3. Failure to complete the basic questions – we have a standard set of questions we ask people to complete when they come for a face to face interview.  These questions are both technical to understand what level of knowledge they have right off the bat as well as some thought provoking questions like “How many cars are there in Australia and why”.  The idea being to get an idea on how they think.  Well this guy came in and answered one or two of them and then when we asked him why he had not done more, he told us that they were irrelevant to the job and he should not have to do them.  Bad move.
4. Lack of research – When going for a job, you would think it logical to peruse the company website of the company you are seeing.  This will give you an idea of who you might be talking to, the type of company they are, the products they focus on and so on.  This guy said that he didn’t have time to check our company website initially and then later suggested he had done so briefly.
5. Desperation – this guy focused on the fact that he needed a job quickly, and was “just looking for a job”.  In some lines of work, that’s totally fine.  However in most professional jobs like ours, we’re not looking for someone who is “just looking for a job” – we want someone who has a passion to succeed and the desire to apply themselves to grow.  Someone just looking for a job to put food on the table is not always going to be focused on delivering great customer service.  Come 5 o’clock – they are likely to be out the door without a second glance at the customers interests.
6. Argumentative – this is where he really came unstuck.  When I questioned him about his body language, and asked if he was interested in the interview at all, he started attacking my body language and told us that once more the questions given to him were irrelevant.  He told us that he wanted us to give him a go and he would prove that he was a good worker and knew his stuff.  Sorry mate – but being a good technician is not JUST about knowing how to fix a problem – it’s also a fair degree of customer service skills and being argumentative with someone who you do not know what they do in the company, or their skill set is really not the way to go.  What would have happened had he actually been allowed to talk to our customers?

It was at that point that I’d had enough – I walked out of the interview much to his surprise.  Ryan and David persisted with him and his attitude changed and he then wanted to look at the questions again – and whilst we let him do that, he’d well and truly blown his chance.

Ok – so how about some tips on getting a job?

1. Be prompt for the appointment – if you are running late then call ahead BEFORE the time – not 5 minutes AFTER you were supposed to be there (this guy above was not late).
2. Know the company – check out the company website, use Google to do some research – in 15 minutes you will get a good idea of who this company is and what they do.  If there are staff names mentioned on the website, then check them out on LinkedIn – you can get some valuable information there that will help you prepare for the interview.  Someone who knows about our company before they come in is always going to have a better chance than someone who knows nothing about our company.  It also shows that you are very much interested in not only the position, but the company itself.
3. Introduce yourself AND find out who you are talking to – when you meet the people conducting the interview, ask what their job role is within the business.  Understanding this can help you determine who you need to ask specific questions to as well as who the people are you need to be focusing your attention on.  Be careful though – just because someone is the CEO of a company, does not mean they are the one making the final decision.  As is the case with our team, we have a few of us input our thoughts and discuss how the applicant responded before we decide on a job offer or not.
4. Be calm – easier said than done.  If you are nervous it’s ok to admit to that – most interviewers expect a little nerves.  Say you are nervous, but don’t keep going on about it as it detracts from your overall appearance.  Take a few deep breaths and go in with your best face on.
5. Don’t exaggerate – if you have played as part of a team doing a particular project – be upfront about it – don’t claim you’ve been the Team Leader and come up with all the cool decision yourself.  Also if you’ve had part in a design of something – speak up – but don’t claim that the entire idea was yours unless it was – you will be found out.  This is not the time to try to talk up your achievements beyond what they are
6. Be honest – if it’s not true – then don’t say it.  The number of people that I’ve interviewed over the years that tell me all about these fantastic things that they’ve done with product X and product Y, only to come unstuck when I start questioning them deeply about the claims they have made.  I’ve had people try to tell me they know more about product X than I do – now I’m not saying that’s possible, but surely I would be interviewing to get a job for THEIR company if that was the case?
7. Don’t claim to know it all – one of the things most people are afraid to say in an interview is that they do not know something.  I walk into an interview knowing that I do not know everything and I’m looking for the person to say much the same.  If you claim to know it all you will get found out.
8. Clarify the questions – if you do not understand a question – ask them to repeat it.  If it’s still not clear then say you are not sure about the question.  Ask them to reword the question too if you need to.  Giving incorrect answers to questions can make you look silly if you have misunderstood the question in the first place.
9. Be careful for dead ends – some interviewers might ask questions that lead you down a dead end path – they ask them to see if you are being truthful or not.
10. Don’t discuss salary until near the end – I’ve noticed that people that want to talk about salary right up front in the interview, are normally not the ones we hire as they are more focused on the money than the job itself.  These people tend not to last too long at all.  Salary discussions are really only appropriate if both parties are feeling like there is a good fit.  Also – it may be that not all the people in the interview will be on the same salary as you – some may be lower than you and therefore you need to understand where you fit.  This comes back to point 3 above.

They are a few of my tips for the Interview process – it’s actually been over 15 years since I was on “the other side” of the desk so to speak as I’ve been running my own businesses for so long, so that gives you an idea of the things we employers are looking for.  I hope this helps some of you

Tags: Business Focus, Rants
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »

Microsoft announces death of ForeFront TMG inside Gartner Report…

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

Wow.. what is the world coming too… now I have to pay $1995 USD to read a Gartner Report in which Microsoft supposedly announce that they will not continue on with ForeFront TMG aka ISA Server anymore… I would have thought that such an announcement would be made to their channel partners via a blog post or something, but no… I need to pay $1995 to see this critical piece of information.  Where am I finding this out? From a fellow MVPs blog of course.

I’ve been a staunch Microsoft supporter for many years now, but the decisions and methods Microsoft are using to communicate product direction is just plain infuriating indeed.  One wonders just how they continue to lead the market… oh wait… maybe they are not doing such a good job after all…

How can we partners plan our customers security infrastructures when we don’t get informed of such critical decisions as this?  Do Microsoft leave us wide open and looking foolish as a result?

Microsoft / Mr Ballmer – please wake up… please involve your channel partners in your direction.  Please don’t continue this solitary march to everything cloud in the belief it is the solution to the worlds problems… it’s not.  You are not… and I worry that you will wake up too late to that realisation.

Tags: ISA Server, Microsoft, Product Directions, Rants, TMG
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

AGL mess up my Electricity – cost me money :-(

Friday, January 21st, 2011

I moved into a new home a few months back, and when I went to get power and gas connected, I called AGL first.  I called them because the power companies queue was too long and so I figured I’d get the gas connected first.  While talking to the very helpful AGL customer service rep, she asked me if I had organised the power yet – No – I had not – so she said “We can do that and give you a discount too”.  I figured power was much of a muchness and thought – sure – why not – hook me up.  I figured I’d get one bill from one company and it would all be great.  I knew AGL didn’t do electricity themselves and knew it was coming from a third party company.  It came time to move into the house and I found that power and gas were connected on the day in question – cool – very happy with that.  That was 2 months ago.  This morning I got a call from my alarm company – the power was off at home.  Ok – I was in the area so I figured I’d drop by in an hour to check out what was up.  When I got home, I found that power was off to my home only and none of the others in the complex… strange I thought.

I called the faults line for the electricity company and they told me that they had no record of power being connected to my address   The helpful lady asked for more of my story, which I told her.  She said she had a suspicion as to what was up and asked me to go to the meter box and get the meter number.  Gave that to her and she said – oh that’s not your address… that’s such n such address – I said No… I’m standing right here – I am pretty sure I know where I am.  She told me she could not help me further though and I had to go to the upstream biller – AGL to get things sorted.  Grrrrr.

Called AGL – explain to them and they tell me that my address is wrong… Funny I say to them – I’m right here and the mail gets delivered right here, so HOW CAN IT BE WRONG!  I relay the info to them that Integral Energy had told me and they go away for 5 minutes while I’m on hold.  They come back and tell me that they “might” be able to get my power back on.  They tell me that my address is wrong.  GRRR – you can google my address and it shows me here… how can that be wrong?  Anyway.. nothing more I can do so I head into the office.  Oh they also tell me if it does not come on today, then it will not be on till Monday.  No – nothing they can do about it because it’s Integrals fault.  Hey – I’m the customer here – I don’t care that YOU messed up, it’s me that’s paying for it.  I spoke to a supervisor and he told me that no – there’s no need for compensation, it was a simple mistake on their part, but hey… get over it. Well not exactly those words, but that’s the feeling I left with.  He gave me the email address for complaints though which I intend to use.

I arrived home tonight not knowing if I will have power or not.  Luckily – I do.

So if you decide to get your electricity through AGL or any other upstream provider, triple check things.  I’ll be calling Integral next week to verify my address etc is correct in case I ever need to report a fault in future.

Tags: Personal, Rants
Posted in Blog | No Comments »

In another blinding flash of brilliance…

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Microsoft decided not to offer any upgrade pricing for Office 2010.  This to me reeks of arrogance.  We often had clients that would like to purchase their Office licensing via OEM channels – as this gives them the ability to purchase office at the lowest possible price.  Then later once a new version comes out, if the client deems the business value high enough they have been able to purchase an upgrade for the specific machines that they wish to upgrade to the latest version.  However in their latest decision, Microsoft have basically said no more.  No more upgrade.  The only way people can get a cheap version of Office 2010 is if you’ve been subscribing to Software Assurance.  That means you will have needed to buy into the Microsoft vision for future product development well before you see the product.  It’s like insurance except you don’t know what you will get or how well it will work for your business until it’s there.  Oh and if the product you get is not what you need or they change the product in some way that is not good for your business then too bad… you already paid your money.

Microsoft. Listen up. When you do things like this you really show that you are not listening to the needs of our clients.  You give cause to things like GoogleApps thinking they will own the world.  Unfortunately they are even worse than you.  I would not trust or recommend GoogleApps to any of my clients, and that means right now the only REAL alternative is to pay full price for Office 2010.  I don’t like it, but believe me – when there is another decent alternative… I’ll be moving to it.  Keep on doing what you are doing and you will find that we’ve all jumped ship to other products.  You’ve been told about this for many a year now, but it fails to sink in.

Tags: Business Focus, Office 2010, Rants
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »

Bad website design with automatic language selection

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Many websites are designed to allow for multiple languages.  They often will detect where in the world you are and adjust the language settings to suit that aspect of it.  I had not thought too much about it until now.  I’ve been in Taipei, Taiwan for the last week and I’ve attempted to use some common sites to do various things.  I’ve found that many of the sites all default to Chinese language and some of them do not make it easy for you to change it to your native language – in my case English.  here’s what YouTube looks like from Taiwan.  No where on the page, no matter what link I clicked on, could I change it to English – this made the site unusable to me which was a real pain in the rear.

I tried to hover over various links and then see what URL they linked to in the hope that I could change the language to English – but without luck.  In the end I gave up and will post my videos once I get home tomorrow.  I did like Trends method though.  When I entered www.trendmicro.com into my URL bar in IE, it gave me the Taiwanese site by default, but it also listed the Country in the top right corner of the screen.  I found that when I hovered over it, the site showed me in English a list of all sites in the world – therefore it allowed me to quickly change to the US or Australian English site.

Tags: Rants
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

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