Category: "Opinion"

From the Playboy Interview: How Computers work

http://www.txtpost.com/playboy-interview-steven-jobs/

What a lovely interview with Steve Jobs. I had never read this before and I’m quietly stunned. His explanation is simply brilliant.

xkcd: Devotion to Duty

xkcd: Devotion to Duty.

http://xkcd.com/705/

Sysadmins: We’re a bunch of freaks. Some are freaky on the downlow and others let their freak flag fly. Either way, when some crazy technical issue has got you down because it’s JUST SO “OUT THERE”, you want one of us on your team. So don’t piss off the Sysadmin. Love them. Feed them. Give them gifts….. and all your shit will just.work.

Do you want me to fix it for free?

I want to thank Wayne Small for this post on his blog. It says what I could never say before now. http://www.sbsfaq.com/?p=3015

Do you want your PC fixed for free?

Are you the person in this video ? Don’t be that guy. Yes we are good at fixing computers. But when you deny responsibility for the problems that are often caused by actions YOU take, you suck all the joy out of our work.

KAAS (Kindness As A Service)

Recently I’ve been following Dan Waldschmidt on twitter @danwaldo and I’ve learned a few amazing things. Today I was reading his blog and noticed he used a term that just knocked my socks off: Kindness as a Service. It perfectly describes the UberGeekGirl way of business and way of life.

First a little rant about acronyms such as PAAS (platform as a service) , SAAS (software as a service), HAAS (hardware as a service), etc. It all sounds so simple, just pay us a monthly fee and you get everything you ever wanted. Sounds great right?

Just a few questions:

Who is selling it to you?

When the shit hits the fan (it will), who is there to take the call? Will they call YOU when something is wrong?

Do they feel your pain?

Do they CARE?

I am willing to wager that 98% of IT Service companies hawking these wares do NOT care about YOU or your BUSINESS or your FAMILY.

What can you do? I think the answer is fairly simple, is price the deciding factor whether you do business with a company? Real people who care about you will not work for free; will not undercut the price to get your business. Real people who practice KAAS need to earn a living and will always repay you 100 times over. You need to feel like it’s the best check you’ve ever written.

Next: go and evaluate your vendors, evaluate your computer person and make the decision to ONLY do business with companies who practice KAAS. And when you’re ready, call UberGeekGirl for the real SAAS, PAAS and HAAS. We’ll throw in the KAAS for free!

Considering PSA Solutions for 2011

We’re an IT service company and we need to automate some functions of our business. Invoicing clients is key to cash flow and we’ve relied happily on Freshbooks for several years now. They offer fantastic customer service and price points that make sense for small businesses.

Business owners such as myself who are in the midst of growing their company (we’ve just hired our first tech), really need to make every decision count and research tools so that they can make an informed decision. We don’t have time to try all sorts of products and drag our clients through different procedures.

As we review 2010 and set goals for 2011, it became obvious that we needed a PSA solution. Our choices for PSA software are really very limited. We’ve tried Autotask and while they have a fabulous product, we found it too big for our needs and our budget. It seemed like a product that solves a problem we only hope to have in 2-3 years. I thank them for the time they spent with me and wish them every success.

I have lots of colleagues who couldn’t live without ConnectWise. I again looked into their hosted solution and found that I would probably have a very similar experience like I had with Autotask. So I decided not to proceed with a trial.

CommitCRM offers a package that is installed locally on your own server but it’s very affordable. I’ve downloaded a trial and we’ll see what it can do.

In the meantime, I just received a login and a big marketing packet from ShockeyMonkey which is a PSA solution by OwnWebNow, the company that provides ExchangeDefender. I spent about 8 hours playing around and was so happy with it, I was ready to enter my credit card and upgrade to their Pro package. I did have a few technical questions, so I called tech support. I was placed on hold for over 30 minutes at which point I just hung up. I then placed a “call back” request on their website and within about 1 hour received the following bizarre email:

Dear Jessica, We regret to inform you that we cannot extend you the service under our current TOS / AUP / SLA. Please consider one of the following alternatives: ConnectWise, AutoTask or TigerPaw.

Thank you for your understanding,

Shockey Monkey, Inc.

Now I was really confused. I was so excited about ShockeyMonkey, had watched all the videos, instructed my employee to learn the interface and watch all the videos. I had invested many hours of time and was feeling like I had finally found the right solution for my company. Then BAM! They disabled my account. It turns out that last year, I had alerted them to a security issue on their website and they didn’t like that I had also tweeted about the issue. I had so offended them that I had been essentially blacklisted. Every business has a right to refuse service to anyone they choose, but seemed pretty arbitrary and petty. I’m grateful that they made it very clear that they wouldn’t be the right partner for me. To be clear, I wish them every success in 2011 in spite of this situation.

To use a term I really dislike but seems to be appropriate here – when you CHOOSE a PSA tool, it had better be a company you can trust because you’ll be in bed with them and you need to respect them in the morning.

Why I (still) do I.T.

This is a little bit of a rant, but with a positive spin. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Look around you, how many women in IT (technology) do you see? Yeah, not so much huh?

I used to be a secretary. Not a very good one mind you, because I was bored to tears. Then the universe gave me a big ol gift of being slammed into by a garbage truck while driving my little Honda Civic down 28^th St. in Minneapolis. Now most people wouldn’t see this as a positive and I sure didn’t at first. But here’s the deal. My left hand was broken in about a bazillion places. Not so good for typing eh? I simply had to change careers, or least change jobs. I ultimately landed another admin position but I loved it, I was doing simple admin stuff but not very much typing. I was surrounded by technical people as I have been in most jobs. But somehow this was different. My bosses noticed that I had some talent, some drive and I was progressively given interesting tasks. I was still very young and didn’t know all of the “rules” and kept asking and pushing the envelope. There were actually technical women in the department I worked in and it was very inspiring.

On becoming a boss

As an entrepreneur for 5 years, I’ve always held onto the belief that no one could do the job as well as I can and my clients would never tolerate anyone else coming to help them out. Over the last year or so, I found that belief wasn’t really serving me or my clients well. I found myself exhausted and approaching burnout. Because I believe so strongly in providing the best computer service experience to my clients, I knew that I needed to make some changes.

Once I made that decision, a great thing happened. A former colleague contacted me about a possible employee. I spent several months interviewing, background checking and just putting them through my paces. As it turns out, I’ve gone ahead with hiring this person and I look forward to the benefits my clients will experience with additional support.

Feel the fear and do it anyway!

Great Customer Service

What does it mean to provide good customer service?  In my work, I am constantly on the phone with vendors. As a service provider, I make those calls for my clients usually because I want to protect them from bad service. I think the key to doing it right is to listen twice as much as you speak!  If you’re in contact with customers by phone, pay attention to how you feel as you begin to speak with a customer. If you find yourself unsympathetic, angry, irritable or annoyed then it might be time to make a change.

Now for the good experiences… I was so pleasantly surprised today with a call I had to make that I just needed to share it. A year or two ago, my husband gave me a Skil iXo2 drill. This little screwdriver has made my work so easy, I just love it. Well all of a sudden it would not charge. I take very good care of my equipment so you can imagine my frustration. I called the company, was only on hold for a few minutes and spoke with a representative. I expected to pay for a new charger base. Surprise and shock when the rep said she’d be sending me a new charger at no cost. I said she didn’t have to do that but it was very kind. I’ll never forget her words. “I don’t want anyone out there to be unhappy with our products”.

Thanks to Skil for not only making a great product, but taking the time to make it right when there is a problem.

Smartphones – Part 2 of 3

This is  a continuation of last weeks post on smartphones. Last week I talked about the Blackberry and today I’ll be roasting the iPhone. Let’s have a look.

Apple iPhone

My thoughts: Apple sure knows how to do marketing. People line up for everything they produce! As a long time Blackberry user, I too was sucked in to the hype. I waited for the 2^nd generation though and this is my experience.