Category: Work

My first eBay burn

Chad

I bid on and won an out of production Netgear modem router(RM356) on ebay last week. I normally would never buy any type of electrical component especially a used one on ebay, but like I said, the device we wanted is no longer being made.

We have a couple of these units at clients who cannot yet get any type of hi-speed internet access. They’re nice and have worked great. Well, we needed another one, so that why I turned to ebay.

I received the unit yesterday, and as I try it out this morning, non of the LAN ports seem to work. The unit does power up but there is no connectivity on any of the 4 ports. This sucks bad. The seller stated that the unit was in working condition but is being sold as is. Which kind of ties my hands of anything I can do. I did send him an email letting him know, and maybe he will be willing to take it back, but I won’t hold my breath.

So let me pose a question to my millions of readers. Can anyone recommend a inexpensive LAN router that has a built 56k modem that preferably is still in production?

New phone book is out

Chad

We received our new local phone book this week. Which leads to the annual tradition of going straight to the computers section not only to see our new ad, but to see who’s new in the area this year.

Every year there is more and more similar businesses in there. And this year is no exception.

I usually like to check out websites of ‘competition’ to see what offerings they have and see what their rates are. And as usual, most of these websites are horrible. It’s like stepping back in time. Or they have a mega long URL that no one in their right mind is ever going to type in. Or usability is so bad that it’s hard to navigate to find any valuable information.

Of all the sites I looked at today, I still think we have the second best one.

Top of the muffin to you!

Chad

Last weeek we picked up a counter top oven for work. It’s been used almost every day since it was put in. Mostly for making items for lunch. But we’ve also been doing some baking. We’ve done the tollhouse cookies a few times, but today I picked up some instant muffin mix and made chocolate chip muffins. Nummy!

Looks like a nice year end for my company

Chad

Looking back historically, we usually only do 1-2 server installs for per year. As of today, we are currently scheduled with 4 server installs. 2 of those are scheduled to happen before the end of the year. One is a simple server addition, but the other is a server replacement. That one will be a fairly big task. Then the other 2 are scheduled for the new year. Also have a phone system and network install in Jan. as well.

Looks like no loafing around the office for me for awhile. Which is good, I’d always rather be too busy than struggling to find something to do.

Gearing up for a trade show

Chad

Tomorrow afternoon my company will be participating in our communities chamber of commerce business to business trade show. We went last year to check it out and made the decision that we would have a booth this year. So we’ve had one year to prep for this thing, but only started about 2 weeks ago.

I spent most of last week updating our web site to make sure everything was current and that all of our new services were listed.

My boss also owns another company which is a retail packing & shipping store(similar to The UPS Store, except privately owned), and I put up a completely new site for that last week.

I’m hoping the turn out is good, we really need to bring in some new clients. There’s only going to be one other technology company there, but their not really competition as their main focus is more programming and ours is more network, computer consulting.

In our existence, we’ve only done one other trade show, but the turn out was awful so it was a complete waste of time. I really hope this one is better. But if it’s not, at least we’re right next to the big food table and the beer is free!

Quickbooks in a Terminal Server environment

Chad

Yesterday, I had the task of setting up an extremely limited access user to be able to run QuickBooks(and QuickBooks only) through a terminal server session.

I headed to the QuickBooks support site to see if there were any initial pointers before I embarked on this journey. Only to find that QuickBooks basic, pro, and premier are not supported in terminal services, but their enterprise version(starting at $3,500) is. The version I was working with was Premier, so I knew I wasn’t going to get any help from Intuit.

Starting with this KB Article, I created a special OU where these users are going to be placed and modified group policies to prevent access to just about everything. Then setup redirected desktop and start menu folders.

I logged in as a test user to verify my settings, and everything looked good, except there was a Microsoft Outlook icon on the desktop. So I found this KB Article and was able to remove it globally from the system. The article talks about renaming the registry key, I tried that first, but it didn’t work, so I just deleted it. Then wammo, no more icon. Everything was looking great.

So then for the finally, I obviously need to launch QuickBooks and verify that it works. And right away I’m hit with an error message, telling me that my limited user access is preventing QuickBooks from running.

Back the internet. I didn’t find much info searching the web so I searched the newsgroups where I found this site. After looking at the instructions on that site I knew I wasn’t going to reinstall QuickBooks, so I started following it at the registry changes. A quick test, and sure enough, everything was working perfectly.

Thank you Internet! I was able to have this completely working in about 2 hour�s time including all the different researching I did. Maybe these links will be of value to someone else down the road, which is why I made this entry.

Article links:
How to lock down a Windows 2000 Terminal Server session
How to remove the Outlook icon from your desktop
Changes nesescary to make Quickbooks work in a terminal session
Intuits official stance on their products running on a terminal server

2 phone systems this month

Chad

Normally we only do a couple phone system installs a year. But this month we’ve already sold 2 and have a quote out for a third, and had an install just last month. The installs are scheduled for the last week of the month. Should be a fun week.

Next month our vendor is releasing a VoIP system which looks great. I can’t wait to install one of those.

Why do users lie?

Chad

If you ever have to call for tech support and the tech asks a specific question, just tell him the truth. He won’t get mad, and who cares if he does. The problem will get resolved a lot quicker.

Here’s an approximate chain of events from a call I had today.

Scenerio: Client is replacing a computer with a brand new unit. Computer is connected to a linksys router which is connected to a cable modem.

Problem: New computer cannot access the internet.

Before calling me: He’s called road runner to make sure the cable modem is working and they claim it is.

Now calls me: First I have him check to see what he has for an IP address. He’s got a 169 number, so I know he’s not communicating with the router which is doing DHCP. Next I have him check is connections and verify lights on the router and NIC. So far so good. I have him check his network properties. He tells me that it shows connected at 10mbps. Now that triggers something. 10? It’s a brand new computer right? Yes he says. There’s no way a new computer nowadays would ship with a 10mbps card, and linksys have been 10/100 for a long time. Then I ask the question, ‘Have you played with any of the cables on the router or cable modem?’ He responds with a quick ‘No, all I did was unplug the old computer and plugged in the new one’.

Now I know something still isn’t right, so I have him unplug the cable that’s going into one of the switch ports on the back of the router. At which point should give him the little computer with the red X in his system tray showing a disconnected LAN state. Nothing, it still shows as connected. How could this be, I ask. Long story short, somehow magically the cable from the NIC card was plugged into the WAN port of the Linksys and the cable modem was plugged into the switch portion. Hmmm, he didn’t touch the cables? Yeah right. I had him swap the cables, and like magic he was on the internet.

What a dragged out call for something that could of been solved much sooner.

Waste high in VPN setups

Chad

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been working with some high-end VPN equipment for a rollout for a client of ours. I’ve got one of the remote VPN appliances at home and am connected to the main one at our office. All in all it’s working pretty well, we’re just working out some of the bugs. The main feature needed was the ability to VPN tunnels alive even though all the remote sites are on dynamic IP internet connections.

Are initial setup wasn’t working very good, if the tunnel went down, it would never renegotiate without rebooting the remote appliance, which I’m sure the client would complain about if they had to reboot it multiple times a day.

With the help of tech support, we’ve created the tunnels using a different method, and all seems good for now, just seems a little slow.

Right now I’m working from home, and connected to the office which is pretty cool. Outlook/Exchange seems to run just fine, but one of our applications, Timeslips, takes over 4 minutes to load up over the VPN.

Since we need to roll this out later this week, we don’t have much time to work out the bugs, so my day should be fairly busy, again.