Thresh your wheat somewhere high

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Everyone grows some type of wheat. My wheat growing usually involves spending time with my family, managing a Tech Ops department at work, nursing a photography hobby, making Twitter Username Decals, and spending (not enough) time with God.

Your type of wheat may include work, hobbies, entertainment, exercising skills, exercising your body, etc. And most of us have more wheat than time. If you have more time than wheat then you can stop reading this as I sort of hate you.

The entire wheat plant isn’t really needed, you mainly just need the grain and not the chaff. That’s where threshing comes in. Old-school threshing involves getting to a high ground (away from the fields and everyone else where the wind blows stronger) and throwing the wheat up in the air. The grains fall closer, because they are heavier, and the chaff floats over into a separate pile. The grains are collected and used because they actually have long-term value, and the chaff is burned up because there isn’t much use for it.

How does this apply to me? Continue reading →

Cheap Compressed Backups

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Some people use incredibly fancy expensive software to create nightly backups and compress files and move them into a proprietary backup system based on date.

Some of us don’t have the budget for all that software, but we need a smile backup of files in a certain directory. Thankfully, there are all kinds of awesome tools to do this!

First, the goals:

  1. The files in a certain directory need to be compressed
  2. They need to be backed up onto multiple locations nightly
  3. We need a rolling week of backups.
  4. it needs to happen automatically
  5. recovery needs to be easy

Second, the tools:

Third, the scripts!

Continue reading →

When a Non Profit is not a Non Profit

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Gmail ScreenshotI’ve been in IT for about 10 years now, and for the past 5 years I’ve been in IT for a Church.  By far the most fun part about being in Church IT is getting spectacular discounts on incredibly expensive hardware and software.

Apple gives us about a 5% discount, Dell around a 50% discount (Dell gives anyone willing to talk with them on the phone and deal with DFS a 50% discount, I believe.), and Microsoft practically gives their software away to us 501c3′s.

Google even offers a Non Profit discount called, “Google Apps for Non Profits” which basically gives you their awesome Google Apps for free!  Because I showed interest in the past, a Google sales rep contacted me to see if we were still interested.  I double checked that we could take advantage of their Google Apps for Non Profits and their response was:

Unfortunately churches no longer qualify for Google
Apps for Non-profits (the discount you were referring to).

However you can still purchase Google Apps from
us.

[em]

Wow.

So at 140 mailboxes I can either spend $700/month or just buy Exchange 2010 with 140 licenses for a one time payment just shy of $900.

Here’s the deal, we all know that supporting your own server and managing Exchange isn’t free, it costs your time. But as someone who uses (and loves) Google Apps for a different business, there is still similar management involved. The only difference is one uses a standalone app and the other uses a web interface.

My users also benefit from having one password that is linked with their email and desktop authentication (and any other enterprise apps that allow the use of Active Directory/Windows authentication).

In order to switch to paid Google Apps as a non-profit Church I would need to be willing to:

  1. Lose some management features
  2. Lose single password for internal resources
  3. Lose account sharing features (where assistants manage multiple accounts)
  4. Lose complete ownership of emails/contacts/calendar items
  5. Spend enough to buy Exchange 9 times over.

Not going to happen.

Oh, did I mention we qualify for Microsoft Office 365 nonprofit discounts?  Looks like we could get hosted Exchange and a much more fully featured online office suite for about the same cost as Google Apps. (Although we still like running in-house Exchange due to ease, security, privacy, etc.)

Sorry for the ranty post, but singling out the Church so we don’t get price breaks even though you give them out to other non profits feels pretty crummy.

Your hotmail address makes you less trustworthy

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Research

According to recent opinion polls I’ve given myself, 100% of those polled don’t trust businesses with a company email address that ends in hotmail.com, gmail.com, me.com, yahoo.com, and especially aol.com.

“Why?”, you ask. (just switched to a narrative, we’ll switch back at a random point in this paragraph.) “I’m glad you asked!”, I reply. Using a free online service shows a lack of research, care, and attention to one of the top 3 methods of communicating. The other two methods are phone and carrier pigeon (a.k.a. fax).

Reasoning

Easily spoofable

I registered albuquerquebank at gmail.com.  Do you know what that means?  That I had 2 minutes of spare time and was curious if it was taken.

Oh, you’ve already got an email address with your company name at gmail.com? No worries, I’ll just register the same at hotmail or yahoo, or register a slightly misspelled version on gmail. (yes, I could do this with a custom domain, but it would take longer than 2 minutes so I’d rather not)

With my strikingly similar email, I can email your customers and get private info, or just spam people and make them hate you. (I won’t, don’t worry)

Unprofessional

What I mean by professional is not simply relating to someone who is doing something as a profession, but relating to a quality that shows why I’m actually paying you rather than getting my neighbor’s kid to do whatever it is. (I know you have the hazmat suit, but the kid has a pretty thick winter jacket and a ski mask… close enough.)  I guess my thought is you don’t care $15/year about your business, which is what it costs to have your own domain. (see the suggestions section for more info)

Really unprofessional

I won’t judge you for using clip art on your presentations (at least not out loud) but I will totally judge you if you use clip art for your logo. Using @hotmail.com at the end of your business email address reminds me of using clipart for your logo.  It is like deciding you want to start a business and you want the image people associate with your company to be clippy the not-so-helpful help character in Office XP.

Open to sharing my emails

This is an opinion that has valid arguments on both sides, so I’ll be sure to only mention the arguments that support me.

Most online email services that are free would rather just give in to the government than fight for your privacy if push comes to lawsuit.  If you run your own email server or use a private service, you can more ferociously protect your privacy as well as your clients’ privacy. (imagine I buy products or services from you and gmail gets subpoenaed for all emails on one of their servers that your account happens to be on and now all of my information is in some public court case? not likely, but slightly possible)

Suggestions

I am not suggesting that you must make everything about your business unique, customized, expensive, or original. (in fact I’ll outline why originality is for suckers in a future blog entry) I am merely suggesting that you invest $15/year on getting your own domain and signing up for a Google Apps account.

Or just sign up for a web host, like bluehost,that has basic email hosting built into your account.

Top 10 reasons IT staff should wear a superhero outfit

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Today’s post comes from Ricky Anderson. Read his stuff at www.shortandsilly.com follow @arthur2sheds on twitter, but still give me money at tweetdecals.com

You’re a network administrator. You’re already awesome – you have the secret IT knowledge your users need, and you have the super-secret server room. What could possibly enhance your awesomeness?

That’s right – a superhero outfit!

Here’s the top ten reasons why:

  1. Gives the users confidence in your abilities. Can he do this? Yes, yes he can. He’s a superhero.
  2. Gives the users a healthy level of respect. Should I bother him with this stupid request? No, he can break me with his laser glasses.
  3. Intimidate vendors into cheaper prices.
  4. Everything’s handier with a Batman-style utility belt.
  5. Make hackers think twice!
  6. Whenever the Acceptable Use Policy was violated, you’d sense a disturbance in the Force.
  7. Instant, onsite remote access.
  8. Make your less-powerful sidekick do the mundane things, like review the server logs.
  9. Awesome job performance reviews – “I’ve been ‘super’? Again? Shucks, you’re too kind, Boss.”

Wait a minute – what’s that? Wearing a superhero outfit doesn’t guarantee superhuman abilities? Then here’s the #1 reason to wear the outfit anyway…

  1. It’ll keep your self-confidence up. When you start to get down about yourself or feel discouraged, your cape will flap in the breeze, and you’ll think to yourself, “Self, you are a dork wearing a cape. But you are also a superhero and can fly. Now go rebuild the RAID array!”

What else would be awesome about wearing a superhero outfit to work?

Kazoos for Koalas

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Today, Friday January 28th 2011, is National Kazoo Day.

Most people look at that and think it is something silly designed to make us look foolish in front of our friends, but that is obviously not true.

As the above well produced and incredibly professional news cast shows, NKD (National Kazoo Day) plays a vital role in the lives of many Koalas.  The best way to celebrate NKD is to go to your local zoo and play “How to Save a Life” by The Fray on your kazoo.  This has a life-changing impact on koalas, who know the song by watching Grey’s Anatomy and realize that you (much like so many doctors at your local hospital) are trying your hardest to save their lives and help them stop smoking tobacco pipes.

If you doubt the impact of tobacco smoke on the lungs of koalas, then please consider this informative chart:

Graph depicting pipe smoking as the leading cause of death for Koalas, and playing the Kazoo as the safest.