Command Control Power: Apple Tech Support & Business Talk

- Heartbleed; more resources: Heartbleed Hit List, Bruce Schneier, Ars Technica, CloudFlare, NetCraft - Windows XP End of Life; Laplink PCmover ($60) can help migrate from Windows XP; to keep XP machines running or not? - referring clients to the Apple Store and asking them to drop your name; providing written recommendations for clients to take into the store; introducing a client to a representative in the store - iNet, great network scanning utility recommended by Joe

- ARQ recommended by Jerry for backing up to Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier - ZyWALL USG50 recommended by Joe for site-to-site VPN tunnels, very stable router - “cool” clients - dealing with semi-technical “inside guys” at clients: “don’t open the box”; work from a checklist; “ don’t touch the server” and “don’t touch the network” - Ubiquiti PicoStation recommended by Jerry for extending wireless networks outdoors or to another building - Migration Assistant woes: Plan A, Migration Assistant, hung with less than a minute remaining; Plan B, Carbon Copy Cloner, detected I/O errors; Plan C, restore from Time Machine backup, worked like a charm - Jerry called it: Migration Assistant was failing due to bad blocks on the source machine - recommendation before starting Migration Assistant: fully update source machine, verify disk partition map and file system, rebuild disk directory, and check for bad blocks

Recorded live April 1, 2014

Topics:

- Sam is growing the practice

- freeing up time to do business development, plan projects, talk to clients

- travel charge?

- how to reimburse employee for mileage

- use PDFPen to strike through or highlight line items on invoice

- to send or not to send the zero balance invoice

- advising clients about billing for two techs on certain projects

- Jerry’s MacBook Air lockout; manual decrypt using command line

- issues with users connecting via SMB to Mavericks Server

Topics: - Ryan’s comparison of Mac mini w/Thunderbolt RAID storage vs. Synology 1513+: Part 1 & Part 2 - How to set up CrashPlan Cloud Backup headless on a Synology NAS - CloudStation - Plex - complications from Apple changing default connection method for Mac servers to SMB when using Bonjour - MineCraft server - DHCP, DNS, VPN services - Surveillance Station - how to find the "Performa 600" among Synology’s huge product lineup - live demo of DSM 5.0 - cleaning up after non-certified fly-by-nights (“Anger Work”)

- offering clients "self service" options through CasperSuite or RobotCloud - building a "book of service" to work toward an exit plan for your consultancy; building something of value; getting acquired - the benefits of talking about your service offerings to get comfortable pitching them to clients - the fact is, servers should be managed proactively to ensure reliability, and Managed Services is a natural way to provide proactive services, billed automatically on a monthly basis consistent with the way services are rendered - with Mission Critical services, the consultant takes on a psychological burden to ensure that the services keep working; Managed Services makes it equitable for the consultant

- using half-day and full-day rates to discourage "tire-kickers" and very infrequent break-fix clients, helping to position Managed Services as a better alternative - should a Managed Services Provider include Help Desk services? end-user training? value-adds vs. just keeping the systems running - transitioning from "one-man-show" to managed services consultancy; see also: CCP 013: Easing into Managed Services with Allen Hancock and 010: Managed Services discussion with Luis Giraldo - developing systems for consistency, standardization to improve efficiency - Quantifying the Value of Managed Services blog post by Luis - "first 15 minutes free for $_/mo" is a good first step; relieves burden bulk hours - business clients are more efficient billing-wise, and from the perspective of delivering value - residential clients are higher-maintenance, higher-touch, more-demanding, and less efficient - yet, Allen points out that residential clients can be more satisfying to work with, and when charging hourly it doesn't matter because they all pay the same rate - enforcing the use of a help desk ticketing system - user training: why should users use your ticketing system? - reminding clients to restart

- timing vacations as extended weekends instead of full weeks to minimize downtime - teaming up with local consultants for backup coverage; filtering incoming requests in your absence - away messages and advance notice for clients; why shake the hornet's nest? - SendLater plugin - going off the grid for a day... or nine… I took nine. - subcontractor rates; professional courtesies - SIMporium.com - representing the contracting company, or generically Apple, or explaining the coverage arrangement between the consultants to the client - sharing secure notes with trusted partner consultants; e.g. MonkeyBox.com - monitoring client machines with Watchman Monitoring - the importance of comprehensive documentation

- Joe asks and answers: what is the "J" that appears in some emails? (J is a smiley face in the WingDings font) - Joe wonders why some people include an extra "P" at the bottom of some emails, i.e. "P Please consider the environment before printing this email" (the P is supposed to be a nice forest scene in the WebDings font) - Jerry reports being able to receive email using Mail.app in Mavericks version 10.9.2. - Apple's Goto Fail SSL bug: strategies for proactively notifying clients; timing of updates; test your system at gotofail.com - Sam's Mavericks 101 class "aha moments" - Sam recommends Revise IT training app by Amsys - security concerns about Target Disk Mode and resetpassword utility on Recovery partition - Jerry, Sam, and our live listeners offer Joe some ideas about what to do when Time Capsule fills up - Joe offers a tip: temporarily "promote" clients to VIP in order to receive notifications when they email you back about something pertinent, for example when coordinating a time to meet, or if you want to know immediately when a client confirms you should proceed with some work

- Jerry receives a call from the brother of Samantha West - Joe recommends the SanDisk Extreme 64 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive for diagnostic drives because it's extremely fast and reliable; SanDisk finally announced a fast 128 GB version: SanDisk Extreme PRO® USB 3.0 Flash Drive; some non-spammy reviews from Tom's Hardware and The Wirecutter - use FileWave Lightning to automate creating our diagnostic partitions? - Sam recommends the Skooba Design Cable Stable DLX, originally recommended by Ryan Powell in the chat - Sam explores TeenSafe for iOS security and parental controls; see also OpenDNS, Intego Family Protector, and SpectorSoft

Plus: Simplenote, Notational Velocity, SubEthaEdit, ScreenSteps, ScreenFlow, OmniGraffle, OmniDiskSweeper, GrandPerspective, Krypted.com, TunnelBear, MonkeyBox