Critical Computer

I’m a skeptic… not a newsflash to many of you. When I see an ad announcing amazing sales with 50% off, I think “Yeah, and they calculate that from some artificial retail price which is way more than anyone would pay anyway.” Often there is a glimpse of some disclaimer like ‘restrictions apply’ or ‘not available in all locations’ that shows up so small and quickly you can’t fully read it.

However, marketing professionals tell me that everyone loves a sale, sales increase business… and so, let’s have a sale! We’ll call it the April 2012 Sale! Here’s how it works:

For work done and billed in the month of April, 2012, Critical Computer will take 50% off. If you were paying $150.00/hr for high-end/server support, you’ll pay $75.00/hr. If you were paying $125.00/hr for general services, you’ll pay $62.50/hr. That’s a real 50% off the normal rates. Work has to start and stop within the month of April 2012, so no calling on Monday, April 30 with 40 hours of work you want done before Tuesday. You can call anytime to schedule work to start in April.

The April 2012 sale is an excellent time to get those computer and tech things off your todo list. Things like cleaning up all the debris in the computer, operating system optimization, Windows patching, virus software/malware checks, tweaks to the website, swap out old computers for new, install a new network line for a future computer, etc.

Service will be first-come, first served, and scheduled (if demand exceeds my capacity to complete quickly). I do reserve the right to decline the work (I can’t imagine why, but it is prudent to throw that in there just in case).

Questions? Send me an email at bhayes@criticalcomputer.com or call 612-710-2617 at your convenience.

P.S. Restrictions Apply. Not available in all locations. Your milage may vary. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. Batteries not included. Use only as directed. No other warranty expressed or implied. Do not read while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Subject to approval. This is not an offer to sell securities. May be too intense for some viewers. If condition persists, consult your physician. No user-serviceable parts inside. Subject to change without notice. Times approximate. Simulated picture. No postage necessary if mailed in the United States. Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. As seen on TV. One size fits all. Many suitcases look alike. Colors may, in time, fade. We have sent the forms which seem to be right for you. Slippery when wet. For office use only. Not affiliated with the American Red Cross. Edited for television. Keep cool; process promptly. List was current at time of printing. Return to sender, no forwarding order on file, unable to forward. Not responsible for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error or failure to perform. At participating locations only. Not the Beatles. Penalty for private use. See label for sequence. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Do not write below this line. Falling rock. Lost ticket pays maximum rate. Your cancelled check is your receipt. Avoid contact with skin. Sanitized for your protection. Be sure each item is properly endorsed. Sign here without admitting guilt. Slightly higher west of the Mississippi. Beware of dog. Contestants have been briefed on some questions before the show. Limited time offer, call now to insure prompt delivery. No passes accepted for this engagement. Use only in well-ventilated area. Keep away from fire or flame. Replace with same type. Approved for veterans. Booths for two or more. Check here if tax deductible. Some equipment shown is optional. Price does not include taxes. No Canadian coins, especially Canadian nickles. Not recommended for children. Reproduction strictly prohibited. No solicitors. No alcohol, dogs, or horses. No anchovies unless otherwise specified. Not for resale. Call toll free before digging. Driver does not carry cash. Some of the trademarks mentioned in this product appear for identification purposes only. Record additional transactions on back of previous stub. Decision of judges is final. I’m here all week, tip your waitstaff.

This supersedes all previous notices.

admin Uncategorized

I was recently power-reading some other websites (as I am known to do) and I noted that some of them hadn’t updated their blog page in a long time. While it is still true today – your business needs a website – more often than not it is just not on the priority list of things to do when it comes to managing the business.

And I thought, “Well, that makes a pretty poor first impression.” Most of us still remember when the Yellow Pages was the place to go to find a company.

I hope you recycle your old ones.

There was always the company with the full page ad and then you saw other companies that didn’t even spring for the bold company name. You called the full page ad guys – everyone did – that’s why that full page ad costs thousands of dollars compared to that free listing.

It was about at this point that I realized that it’s been well over a year since I last blogged about my own company… time to stop throwing old phone books and do a little full page publishing.

It’s no surprise: I’m still open, the lights are still on, I still read email in real time and answer our phone all day long.  We have a Facebook page so we can brag to our social media friends how awesome we are. You’re likely to see the latest and greatest projects at http://www.facebook.com/criticalcomputer. I promise: no cute kitten/puppy/horse pictures with built-in captions, although you will frequently see the bare-naked innards of computers without their cases on.  SFW.  The now omnipresent LIKE button is off to your right, just under my contact information.  Clickie if you haven’t already!

I carry my trusty cell phone everywhere and it is still the single, best, fastest way to get a hold of me: 612-710-2617.

Most recently my time has been invested with my two primary customers. In one, I’m continuing to deliver custom software solutions by leveraging our knowledge of the transportation industry and good system design to save them time and money. In the other, I’ve been supporting their web-based order entry system on-demand (code for NOW RIGHT NOW) and adding new map data to their servers during off-peak times as their customer service area expands.

Other than that, things are pretty quiet in the office. All my customers are doing financially well, surviving the ups and downs of our economy. The computer and technology systems I support for them are running and don’t need any attention beyond the occasional ‘whoops, what happened’ (which is, more often than not, a half-installed MS Windows Update program).

I'm so lonely.

Why do I feel a deep, sudden and meaningful kinship to the Maytag Repair Man?

In the computer business, probably more than any other, you have to keep your knowledge current. Last quarter I completed learning all about Ruby-On-Rails as my research showed it was a pretty good core for developing online applications. I put in about 85 hours re-writing some applications from Dataflex to RoR; there is no better learning environment than having an actual thing to develop.

While I still think OS Commerce is the best online solution for retail businesses, the mobile-web revolution is pushing business applications to be ‘accessable’ just about anywhere, from any mobile platform. I’m about to start in on a product/platform called DotNetNuke, which I am told is even better when it comes to offering customer-driven data information systems.

So what’s new with you? Have you been thinking of getting your website cleaned up, maybe removing that employee that left months ago from the ‘about us’ page? Perhaps there is that computer that does that… weird thing… and maybe you should finally have that looked at. Then there are those computers that need their software updated (you can’t run on Quicken 2004 with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 5 forever you know… well you could, but I certainly don’t encourage it).

Or better still, have you wondered what more you could do with technology and your company? How does your site look on your smartphone? (old sites look atrocious, just saying) What would it be like if your customers could get their answers from your computer systems directly, without you even having to be there?

Let’s think outside the box. I want your company to make money because, well, that means I’ll make money and you’ll want me back. Win-win, say the economists. Give me a call and we’ll talk for free.  I’ll even buy the coffee if you want to get out of the office for a bit. After all, look at how much money I’m saving by not having that full-size Yellow Pages ad.

admin Uncategorized computers, dotnetnuke, oscommerce, programming, rubyonrails, update

As a computer ‘guru’, my job is to find out what’s wrong and fix it as fast (and as inexpensively) as possible. It should come as no surprise then that one of my mottos is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The companion to that one is, ‘if it’s broke, just fix it’.

I am compelled when these things break to know why (which is accomplished by take-it-all-apart mode), and then I come to the conclusion that: ‘Aha! I can fix that’. The very last thought in my head is ‘Oh, we’ll need to replace that’.

Those are some handy fellas right there

I put full blame and credit for my irresistible compunction to ‘repair and not replace’ firmly upon my father, Richard. When my brother Mark and I were young and impressionable, every Saturday morning the three of us would take our household ‘trash’ to the community dump. With every passing moment of that ten minute drive, our young hearts filled with anticipation as the car transitioned from smooth, blacktop road to the bumpy, gravel one that finally led to the dump. The smell of waste product from 3M (who also used the dump) would permeate the air. We had arrived: treasure hunter paradise.

First we’d look for Ol’ Joe – the aged, wizened old keeper of the dump and all treasures within. He’d point to a spot at the bottom of the pile with his scepter – I mean shovel – for us unload. No sooner had the car backed into that place than my brother and I lept from the car and into the dump in full acquisition mode: bikes – radios – anything with a plug, wall or spark – lawnmowers – wheels. While Dad unloaded, we kids scrambled madly over other people’s garbage for buried treasures. Mark and I were like frenzied coon dogs off leash, crazy with scent, barking ‘over here’ ‘look at this’ ‘here here here!’ and dragged our prizes back to the car.

But we didn’t have a lot of time. Dad would only talk to Joe for a little while after he’d unloaded (I think to give us kids time to find more stuff). We didn’t want to get Ol’ Joe in trouble for letting us take stuff, so we played it cool while another car or truck was unloading. You know that just meant we should ‘stay near the car, don’t touch anything’ – but it didn’t stop us from infra-red scanning and geo-imaging the dump with eagle eyes. Soon as we saw the tail lights of the last folks leaving – BANG – the hunt was on again.

I think we often brought back more than we dumped.

Back at the house, we couldn’t wait to unlock the potential of our booty! YAR! Mark tended toward items of a mechanical nature, I tended towards things electronic. Surely there was nothing wrong with this radio… see! Just a loose tube! It works! Or maybe just a little cleaning of this flywheel and… spark! This engine will run!

We were totally in disbelief of what people through away… perfectly good stuff… easy to fix. These people had to be stupid or something. Every Saturday was Christmas day, just add a little elbow grease.

And now we come to the crux of my compunction: it was burned into my synaptic memory just as sure as ‘don’t leave food on your plate’: Never be one of those people and throw away good stuff. Just fix it. Repair, don’t replace.

Fast forward 30 *cough* years. What I learned as a youth has served me well in my professional life and provides my family a source of income. Those days of examination, evaluation, postulation and experimentation serves me perfectly in my career. Admittedly, when I take some salvaged electronic carcasses to the recycling center, my eyes lock on to all the things around me. Look at that flat screen. Bet I could make it work.

So, while fixing a 5 year old computer is an achievement ($1.00 part… but 6 hours labor) sometimes it would have been better to just say goodbye and get a new one. Especially in the area of consumer electronics, a 2 year old anything is obsolete.

In the day, this was awesome!

It runs against my grain. I just know that someone is going to see my 1989 Zenith Data Systems Z-SPORT 425S laptop (which still works by the way, DOS 3.1 for the win!) that I threw in the dump and say “Why is this here? It still works! What stupid people!” I have a lot of good memories in that plastic case. How can I throw this away? I’ll just keep it.

And it’s not just me – Mark is infected too. I’ve been to his place. *knowing nod*

To make matters worse, you just know the very moment I throw away that old 200W Compaq Deskpro II power supply, someone’s going to call me and say their old computer isn’t booting up and – uh huh – I used to have the very part that would fix it.

Ultimately, I guess the answer to the question ‘when is it time to say goodbye’ is when the time and cost to fix exceeds the cost to replace. My dad has told me ‘you could be working and earn enough money to just have a professional fix it rather than take the time yourself.’ True with cars, true with computers, true with floormats made from left over high-density plastic that I once used to make a Symbol Microwand III downloading stations (another story, another time… except to acknowledge I still have the downloaders in the garage).

From left to right: Cailin's Sony, Lisa's Dell, Brian's Sony.

And yes, I am writing this on my old Sony laptop with the bad screen wiring and bad power connector, sharing the desk today by my wife’s old Dell laptop (which the screen goes black on for no reason) and my daughter’s old Sony laptop (which has some odd virus on it which required me to take it apart to separate the hard drive for scanning). In the driveway sits a ‘00 Saturn with a loose rod bearing, a ’95 Dodge Caravan with an engine tick and more rust than metal, kept good company with the ‘94 F ord Explorer which still runs, thanks to Mark and his creative auto repair skills.

Guess I’m still working on that last lesson, Dad.

admin Uncategorized

In my many, many… many years of work, I have built a rich (and often colorful) history of phone calls from clients, coworkers and customers describing a computer problem they need me to help with. I’m better than average about listening closely to the description of what’s going on and then asking the right questions to narrow the focus of possible answers.

But sometimes, no amount of question-and-answer will get us closer to a solution. And I know it can be very frustrating to try to describe a problem when you’re not fluent with tech-speak. Computer troubleshooting is not unique in this respect; how often have we described “some weird grinding kind-of clunking noises from wheel” rather than “I hear the rotor rubbing on the frame of the brake shoe” to our vehicle mechanic? Often it is just easier for me (or the mechanic) to see the problem is first hand.

However, thanks to the connectivity of the internet, I can now look at software and operating system problems on your computer without having to bring it in or for us to have to come and see it.

On the main page you’ll see a new section called Remote Support. Clicking here takes you to a page where you can download a program to your computer. Once installed, you can use it to call our computers and then we can see your computer screen together.

Now, I am the most security conscious person I know when it comes to my computers. I don’t like the fact that someone would put a program on my computer that would let them get into my computer without my control. So why would you? Let me share some facts about this very special remote process.

Q: Can you get into my computer without my permission?
A: No. Unlike other programs, you have to enable the connection. So when the program is not running, nobody can get into your computer.

Q: Do I have to uninstall the program when I’m done?
A: No.

Q: Can I see what you’re doing?
A: Absolutely. We see the same screen at the same time. You can say ‘watch this’ and show us what happens. Likewise, we can say ‘here’s what we’ll look at first’ and you can watch and ask questions all you want.

Q: Do I need to change the firewalls of my computer or my company so you can get in?
A: No. We want all these security measures in place at all times. Because this software calls us, you can leave everything on and enabled.

Q: Can you get access to other computers on my network?
A: Only if you can access them with the computer running the program. The moment you terminate it, we can’t access anything. The program is for the computer only and does not connect us to servers or other workstations not running the program.

Q: Do I need the computer to be able to access the internet?
A: Yes. If the problem you’re having is that you cannot connect to the internet, this program won’t be able to help us. That said, even if you cannot access email or the browser, your computer may still be on the internet and able to use this program.

Q: Can other people access my computer with this program?
A: No, only Critical Computer.

Q: Can I connect to your systems and then tell co-workers that my computer is haunted?
A: Yes, we’ll play along with that. It is very Hollywood-SciFi-Special Effects-ish to watch your mouse moving and keys typing like your computer has a spirit all its own.

Q: Will this work for Apple and PC?
A: Yes.

We hope that the addition of this new service helps us help you more efficiently than ever. That said, we would still like to see you once and a while… how about for coffee?

admin Uncategorized remote connectivity, remote diagnostics, remote support, screen sharing, vnc

Labor Day, that special day where we pay tribute to our working men and women, is upon us. It has been celebrated as a national holiday in the United States and Canada since 1894. It usually means:

• A day off of work and a three day weekend
• The end of summer and the beginning of serious BBQ time
• The Last day of the Great Minnesota State Fair
• You’re going back to school
• Labor Day Sales
• More Labor Day Sales

There have been some truly awesome folks that I’ve had the pleasure to work with in my years in the computer industry (and some not so awesome ones, and you know who you are). So in this quiet, joy-filled moment of reflection, it seems appropriate that I join in the tribute and do something… generous, and arguably crazy.

And here it is: All labor of Critical Computer done in the month of September in the year of 2009 will be invoiced at half our regular rate. Half off. 50% less. Same 110% CritCom value. First come, first served. This is a limited offer. Call now! Operators are standing by (well, voice mail anyway). Excludes parts and internet fees (which are fixed costs, sorry).

Disclaimers: Your mileage may vary. Above terms subject to change without notice. Always drive on roads, not on people. Batteries not included. Call before you dig. Consult your physician before use. Do not bend, fold, mutilate, or spindle. Do not use if seal is broken. Driver does not carry cash. Exclusions may apply. For great justice, take off every zig. Handle with care. If you cannot read these instructions, please notify a flight attendant. Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times. Made from 100% recycled electrons and magnetic particles. May contain material some readers may find objectionable; parental guidance is advised. Misuse may cause injury or death. No other warranty expressed or implied. Not available with other offers. Not responsible if you’ve fallen and can’t get up. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Price does not include taxes. Rebroadcast is prohibited without the express written consent of the National Football League. Seek shelter and cover head. Shin pads cannot protect any part of the body they do not cover. Shipping & handling extra. Some humor and satire included. The truth is out there. This is not an offer to sell securities. The views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of our sponsors. Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T. Void where prohibited except where not prohibited. This supersedes any previous disclaimer.

Happy Labor MONTH!

admin Uncategorized computer repair, computer service, half off labor sale, labor day, programming, promotion, software installation