Church IT Help

  As usual, when I have issues with vendors I will not name names. There is one vendor whom while they make a great product for churches I will never buy hardware equipment from them. Once before I wrote about getting a hardware quote from this vendor and found the exact product for half the price online. Well, it has happened again on another item. This company quoted the hardware I needed for $1,400 and I had another vendor, a secular vendor, quote the exact unit for around $700!

    I’m guessing this company really does not want to sell hardware or want to leave room for negotiations. All I know is I’ll never use the Lord’s money that wastefully. I’m saddened by this pricing scheme, but I’m worried about ministries who don’t know better and pay this outrageous price. I only know for sure about these 2 products but suspect it would be the same for all their products. I understand about making a profit, but a 100% markup seems wrong to me. Considering this is a so-called Christian vendor troubles me more.

    So, no matter if you are an IT guy, a church admin, or the pastor in charge of all things tech, please shop around before you use the Lord’s money. Again I won’t name the company here but if you email me privately I will tell you. Shame on you un-named company.

  The last 2 weeks has been hard on nearly everyone in the IT departments here. The week before last my Dad had some heart issues and had to have an emergency stint put in. He is doing better and we went up so see him and the family last week for vacation. While I was gone, my helpdesk manager James’ wife suffered a stroke. She is doing better and we will know more this week.  Also while I was gone one of the ladies in the Shelby DB group delivered her baby early, but both mom and bay are doing well. Another lady in the DB group found out her husband got laid off at Nortel after 25 years. Our web coordinator lost a close friend last week as well, and is still troubled by it.

   Vala our part time helpdesk person, became the only IT person on site. She did a great job and James and I were able to come in today and things were actually pretty settled down. Thanks vala for all your hard work! What was toughest about it all was being gone while all these things were going on and being able to do nothing about it. I had my hands full in Kentucky trying to get my dad to slow down some. All I can guess is that we must being doing something good here at the church as Satan was sure attacking us. When you have a minute we sure could use you prayers. This a great group here and I hate seeing all of these struggles, but that is part of  life and of service to Him. Maybe things will slow down this week?  I’m sending Vala out for a spa day as a thank you for saving the day(s) last week.

   My co-worker James and I went to the local Church IT Roundtable last week. As always it was a good time. I was asked more than once what my Twitter ID was. I knew that I’d finally have to commit to using Twitter as there were just too many people using it. Throughout the day more mentions of  Twitter, FaceBook, blogs, email, and other methods of personal communications came up. We heard things like “here let me send you my link to that”, or “my contact info is on the web-page”.

   A few days later it occurred to me that not one person gave me a business card during the entire day. I asked James and he said he only got one card. Most people when asked said they simply did not have a business card on them. Do you think people are just used to getting personal contact info from other sources that business cards just don’t occur to them anymore?  I’m finding I rarely carry business cards myself anymore either. When I do I’m just as likely to hand out a card for my website(s) as I am my work card. The world is changing.

   Below see my cartoon about this I did on my other site dontfeedthegeek.com , maybe you can relate.

                      http://dontfeedthegeek.com/2009/03/03/ways-to-communicate-other-tahn-twitter-and-facebook/

   Nearly a year ago I did a post about how I was resisting Twitter and other such tools. Well, I recently broke down and signed up for Twitter. My user-name is planobarryb.

  I have been on FaceBook for a while now but have recently really been using it. I spend too much time on it but I have actually found it useful. Right now I have my Twitter status set up to update my FaceBook status. My WordPress site dontfeedthegeek.com updates Twitter when I do a post now, thus back to FaceBook. I will also setup this blog to do the same later. I need to do a bit of editing to the php file to personalize the update titles.

   What has changed to make me adopt both of these tools. Initially it was to promote my cartoon site, which actually has worked some. After using it I have found people from my past and I am enjoying reconnecting. The other, and best thing, has been keeping up with people I work with. That may sound funny, but I now know more about the various ministries in the church. I don’t see everyone on the other side of the building much.

   These tools should never be a replacement for face-to-face relationships but they can help you get to know things about people. These tidbits make hallway conversions deeper and more meaningful. I can ask the youth minster(s) how the programs went the night before where before I would have never known about it. I’m really excited and learning more about people I thought I already knew.

   So look me up on Twitter and/or FaceBook and let’s get to really know each other. As a bonus you will always know when I publish a new cartoon, and looking at my cartoons is never a waste of time.

 So my best buddy Sam Adams calls me the other day and asked if I knew what an Osborne computer was and did I want one. Not only did I know I was excited about getting one. My wife asked why I would want it, but she is really geek-impaired after all. If you don’t know Osborne Computer Corporation was a computer company from the early 80s.

  The stats for this bad boy are a blazing 4Mhz Z80 processor, 64kb or RAM, dual 5 1/4 floppy drives, and a 5 inch, 52 x 24 character display. This originally sold for around $2000 and I remember them as being well out of my reach. Someone here at the church asked me did you get it running? The answer is no, it ran on it’s own I just plugged it in. This thing runs CP/Mand can run MSDOS as well. It has Wordstar and Visi-Calc with it. Some of the folks here and myself at the church got a real kick out of playing around with it. It has been a lot of fun.

  The tag on the back indicates it was made in August 1983. I was just out of high school. It is amazing that this “computer” is older than some of the people I work with. I was so excited about getting this thing I did a cartoon about, check it out here.

   I have a Church IT thing on Monday and I’m very tempted to drag it along. It is a portable/luggable and is actually pretty heavy. I look at it and imagine the pleasure this gave the owner when it was first purchased. It was quite a machine in it’s day for sure.

   I have a great server consultant we use named Bill Leeman. He was over discussing some moves we are thinking of making and giving us his invaluable advise. Bill is always on the cutting edge of things and loves to try everything that is new. His partner calls him ‘Beta-Bill’.

   Bill showed me a free service he is using and I knew I had to have it. It is from Microsoft and is called Live Mesh. If you have a MS live ID you can use it and log-in. This is still in Beta but it really blew me away. You get 5GB of “live” space on their servers. You can install a nice little applet for that page or just use the webpage itself. The really nice thing is you can add multiple computers to it and share the space between them. I have my work PC, my kids PC, and my laptop using the service. On each PC you can choose a directory to sync to the “live” page. As you may know I do a webcomic called dontfeedthegeek.com In the past I would start working on it at either home or work, then email it or put it on a thumb drive. Lately I have been using a hi-res version for the creation of the cartoon and later re-size it. The larger size makes the email option difficult if not impossible. Now with Mesh I just create the file using the designated folder and save my progress. Without doing anything else a copy is synced on my Mesh page. So when I go home I just open the folder on my desktop, created nearly automatically, and continue where I left off.

    I can go on and describe it further but you really should just go check it out right now. Another selling feature is once the applet is installed on each PC I use all the PCs show up on my Mesh page. I can then click on the PC and remote log-in to that PC. Of course you have the option of not turning on that feature, but I found this to be a nice benefit as well. The next time I visit my folks I plan on adding their PCs to my mesh network. It adds a very easy way to just take over the machine and fix whatever is wrong instead of trying to talk them though it.

    I won’t be rolling this out to the staff or anything. One because I don’t think they really need such a feature and plus I do not fully know the security implications or even how truly secure it is. I can see how this could be abused and mis-used. Since it uses port 80 it would be hard to limit them. Since they are not admins they can’t install the applet so I need not worry for now. I also do not know how long this will be in Beta and if they plan on charging later for the service. My guess is that they will have the 5GB free version and premium version that has more available space.

  This tool has already made itself valuable to me and I would even consider paying for the service if it were reasonably priced. Even if it were only available via the web this would be worth it. Being able to have all the drives form each computer up to date just adds to it’s usefulness. Being able to remote into any of those machines is just icing on the cake. I highly recommend you giving this service a shot, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed at all. The cost is sure right.

Here is the desktop page. You can drag and drop files just like any folder.

Here is the page that shows the devices. The device with the ‘X’ is my laptop and it is offline.

  This is a subject that comes up before but I think it is worth discussing. I was looking over our IT tickets over the last 3 years, over 5,000 of them and I noticed a change in the pattern. In the first year of the ticket system we had many tickets a week dealing with spyware/adware/malware and issues where users mis-configured or abused their own machines. In the last 2 years that trend has all but dried up.

   2 Years ago I hired James Bentley. One of the first tasks James took on was making sure users were not administrators on their PCs. This took a while and at first blush it added a lot of work. Like many of you out there we had users set up as admins because updates to Shelby required it and the users being admins allowed them to do the update without IT support. Since making users just regular users we now either go to the machines and do a ‘run as’ admin to do the upgrade or we temporarily enable a shelbyadmin account and let users do it. We sometimes even run the Shelby msi via group policy. Of course if users need something added we must do it for them, but the trouble it has saved us is immense and well worth the effort.

   It isn’t that we don’t trust our users. Mainly we do not trust webpages out there. It is true some users will install personal software and other downloaded programs without approval if they are left as admin, but mostly our users are good.

   The net effect of the change is we rarely have malware issues and never have unauthorized or unlicensed software on machines anymore. Although we must intervene when an administrator account is required we end up saving ourselves much more time in the long run. As icing on the cake we don’t see machines get slower and slower throughout the year due to malware and other nastiness.

    Our number of tickets have gone up because of an increase in users and the tasks they do, but the old issues we used to face are a distant memory.   Of all the ‘innovations’ we have done over the years I’d have to mark this one as of our greatest achievements. Not only is it a good idea it is also a best practice standard. I would greatly encourage you to do the same. While I’m at it, let me say the same should also apply to those Macs you may have on your network. I think far too often those machines are left wide open. We have had more than one user screw up their Macs, even though the ‘fan-boy’ in them will not allow them to admit Macs ever have issues or are even capable of being messed up.

   If all of your users are currently admins on their local boxes this will mean a lot of work and staff education to make the change. However, it will make your lives easier in the long run. Another thing that makes my life easy is James Bentley but you guys can’t have him. I hired him first.

  Normally New Year’s Resolutions is not something I do. However I could really use a post on this neglected site, so here goes.

Family: This is one area I feel pretty good about myself. I spend a lot of time with my girls. If anything maybe I will try and spend more time doing more physical activities with them like just playing in the yard or bicycling like we used to do. Mostly I need to try and “date” my wife more. We are both home-bodies who enjoy spending time with our kids, but we do need to go out more just the two of us.

Read My Bible More: This is something that I really need to do and neglect more than anything else in my life. I always have good intentions but… I have been reading it more, but admit some of that was due to some arguements with an old friend of mine about certain scriptures. I don’t enjoy arguing  but did enjoy my research and I learned a lot.

Lose Weight: Duh! This is pretty standard resolution stuff, but sometimes you have to go with the classics. The problems is food just tastes so darn good! I guess about all I can really commit to is maybe trying to eat better food.

Work:  Improve my work attitude. This one is something, unlike the one above, I actually plan on doing. It is too easy in my job to forget it is actually a ministry. Between me being impatient with my users, and my users creating new and unique ways to break their computers it is easy to get caught up in frustrations. I plan on being more patient and nurturing in the coming year. On the same note I also plan on spending more time with our users just getting to know them again. Expand my IT skills. Network more with other church IT professionals.

Post more often on this site:  This one may be the toughest. Seeing as it is already the 6th and I’m posting for the first time this year. Plus the fact that this is my resolutions post and it is a bit late.

My Cartoon Site: My main goal on www.dontfeedthegeek.com is to finally get on a schedule of posting. My current goal is to post a new cartoon every Tuesday and Thursday. You may not be able to tell from the quality of my work, but each of the toons take me a bit of time. Sometimes it is real work for me to complete one. I also want to improve my quality of work and implement more professional techniques. I really enjoy doing the toons, I just want to do them to the best of my ability. I also want to start a new cartoon that will be more story driven. It will be more of a project at first and my kids will have some involvement.

Get a Hair Cut: This is something I did not do all last year, believe it or not. My hair is nearly long enough to donate to Locks of Love now. Just a few more months to go. I really like having long hair, but it is a lot of work. I look forward to having short hair for a while.

General: Be less critical. Learn more. Watch less TV. Read more. Improve myself. Get my CHL. Recycle more, but reduce even more. Call my parents more.

Anyways, happy new years to you all! I hope 2009 is the best year you ever had, until the next year rolls around.

This is the first post by my co-worker James Bentley. I have really been wanting James to post on my site for a while. He has some great insights and I have always wanted this site to be a great resource to all who read it. Hopefully there will be more posts from James in the future. BarryB

Last week I fixed an issue for a Mac user up here at work.

His profile (KennyC) would not load and he had no desktop icons.

It let him login, but after that all he got was a blue screen.

Other profiles (Administrator, SusanJ) logged in and applications worked fine.

The user had no input on what he was doing or may have happened to cause this condition.

I Googled a bit and found this:

http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

Make sure you install AppleJack and then reboot into “Single User” mode (hold down Command + S when you start the Mac).

Once in Single User Mode, I used AppleJack in manual mode (type “applejack” [no quotes] instead of ”applejack auto” at the prompt)

I then selected items 1-5, in that order.

Do look at the options available (such as auto, restart and shutdown) as these can be added to the applejack command you type in at the Command Line Interface (black screen, white text and flashing cursor).

If you only have 1 profile and want to let AppleJack do it’s thing, type “applejack auto restart” (no quotes).

I used manual mode because it let me choose what user ID to repair (I have 3 ID’s + Administrator on this Mac).

Selecting “auto” will do all user ID’s (but I only had issue with one of them)

Anyway, some more info and a Handy PDF are here:

http://creativetechs.com/tips/tip_resources/PocketMod/MyMacWontStart.pdf

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2005041817191411

I was pretty amazed at how easy and quick it was to fix the issue.

I am guessing this user crashed his Mac (is that possible?) or tripped the circuit on his UPS while he was working and that hosed his profile.

It has been a week and I have not heard good or bad from him…so I guess it really is fixed and working.

The computer details:

MacPro with 2 - Dual-Core Xeon 2.66Mhz

OSX 10.4.11

6gb ram

   If you having been reading may last few posts, you know the troubles I saw recently. I found this plug-in I should have been running long ago. I did have some of this set right but there was a few things I missed. I have now plugged the holes that theWP Security Scan Plugin found.

  It is a very nice plug-in that I would say is a must have these days, especially after the issues I found on my other site that are now fixed. The nicest thing is is checks the permissions on critical files, which sure beats a “stare and compare” of all the files. Get the scanner at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-security-scan/

   So if you have a WordPress site and you do not have this plug-in, why are you still reading this? Go install it already! Do not get burned like I did. It was not much fun cleaning up my site after been hacked, even though I learned a lot of useful information.