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• Post #4360141

  Over the weekend a residential client asked, "Can I pay you with Zelle?" I said yes. Then, I immediately logged into my US Bank business checking account and enabled Zelle payment processing. Years ago when I asked my CPA if I should start taking credit card payments, he said, "Bob, if someone wants to give you money, find a way to say yes." Since then, in addition to credit cards, I've added PayPal, Venmo, and now Zelle. #entrepreneurship #techsupport

• Post #4144024

  Over the weekend a man in Oregon called for tech support (I’m in Washington). “Bob, I can’t get my printer to work.” I connected remotely to his computer while we talked on the phone. He’s running Windows 11 Home, 25H2. I opened “Printers & Scanners” to see what’s up. He has one printer, and it had an error message. I started from the beginning: downloaded and installed the current driver package directly from the HP website, power cycled the printer, and rebooted the computer. I tested pr...

• Post #4043021

  While making coffee for my mid-morning break today, it occurred to me that my stainless steel coffee filter is an appropriate analogy for the security of your information when you pour it into an AI LLM. #ai #cybersecurity

• Post #4023073

  I replaced the keyboard on my desk setup today (laptop, but with external monitors, mouse, and keyboard). And I am reminded once again that my favorite keyboard of all time is STILL the keyboard on a Commodore 64.

• Post #3997521

  A man passed away recently. He had eight different email addresses, including a couple that belonged to his wife before she died in 2019. His family is paying me to close down his social media presence and close out the email accounts. I just closed an AOL email account that he opened in the 1990s. A couple of the other old emails (anyone remember Juno?) had no MFA, and the passwords consisted only of uppercase and lowercase letters. These old email addresses are a spammer’s dream. Easy to crac...

• Post #3928016

  Downtown Seattle saw a big boost from the FIFA World Cup, and now they want to keep the increased foot traffic. This is not rocket science. Deal with the homeless problem. Reduce the crime rate. Provide adequate, affordable parking. Voila! Foot traffic will return to downtown. #Seattle

• Post #3919209

  We watched "Blackberry" on Netflix last night. I highly recommend it if you're into the history of modern technology. It says right in the description that it's fictionalized, and inspired by, actual events, so don't take it too seriously. But even with that, there was one element - an innovation by the RIM engineer to improve capacity - that I'm sure was the origin of something we now take for granted in all Internet-based communications systems. I don't want to gi...

• Post #3847231

  My primary domain was down for about 4 hours today, and my work email went down with it. Having no email for 4 hours is not cool! (I know, you're probably one of the people who prays to the Almighty for freedom from email).

• Post #3838559

  Operations Manager: “There’s a beeping sound coming from the server room.” Business Owner: “No worries, it’s the UPS. You’ll see a button that says Mute. Just press the button and it’ll stop.” A full week went by, and then the Ops Manager called me. “Bob, the server is wonky. Can you come take a look at it?” I told her yes, and drove to the client’s office. The server was indeed “wonky.” It didn’t come back online correctly after a power glitch. But wait – what’s this? The Uninterruptible Powe...

• Post #3570463

  Cybercriminals who have never been arrested, help us out: which certification exams did you take to become experts at cybercrime? It seems to me that if we want to be great at cybersecurity, we should take the same certs that made you masters of network penetration. #humor #cybersecurity

• Post #3536958

  A couple of weeks ago a new small business client signed up for firewall monitoring service. After I got set up with remote access, I started poking around and discovered that they were paying for licenses for features that had never been enabled. I didn’t cost them any more money – I just had to flip the toggles on the dashboard and activate the features. Then, for a couple of those features, there were some choices to be made and settings to adjust to refine the operation. THE LESSON Buying h...

• Post #3525901

  “OSCP+ has a ~30% pass rate.” In that case, the exam is shit, and the official approved study materials are shit. Background for those not in cybersecurity: OSCP is Offensive Security Certified Professional, a penetration testing exam by OffSec. Someone on LinkedIn, who sells OSCP training, provided that 30% statistic. I don’t know if it’s accurate, but a quick check on Reddit makes it seem likely. I asked OffSec for their pass rate, and they declined, saying they don’t publish that information...

• Post #3479376

  Today is the culmination of about a week of – what – meditation? reflection? And I came to a realization clear enough that I can now articulate it. I was waiting for the water to heat in the kettle for an afternoon cup of coffee when it finally all came together. Now, with coffee brewed and by my side on the desk, I’m going to write it down while it’s still fresh in my heart and mind. There’s an expression about jumping out of the tree and figuring out how to fly on the way down. Life actually...

• Post #3474151

  #introduction (updated) I’m an old guy who chooses not to retire because what I do is so much fun. Why would I stop doing something I love? I’m safe to be around in the Fediverse, regardless of your ethnicity, gender identity, age, whatever. You be you; that’s important. Self-employed since 2003. I do remote English-speaking tech support for small business and residential clients. “Your personal Help Desk.” I do a lot of tech support for the elderly. It’s still a small percentage of my total...

• Post #3421839

  “Bob, one of my employees can send email from his iPhone, but he’s not receiving any emails.” Well, that’s backwards – usually I see problems the other way around; they can receive, but not send. I tried working with him on a phone call yesterday morning, but when you can’t see the screen, tech support is more difficult. The client’s main business location is in a town less than an hour from my office, so I went to their location after lunch to work on it in person. Oh, so many details were l...

• Post #3418757

  “Bob, my printer quality is low. Please come fix it.” I drove to the client’s office. It’s a small business, about a dozen employees. The VP fills multiple rolls, something that you’ll understand if you’re in a small business yourself. She’s Head of HR, and also Senior Accountant. When I got there, she said, “I can’t print the employee insurance cards. Look at this mess. They’re illegible.” Thanks, Delta Dental, for issuing insurance “cards” as PDF files where the text on the back of the cards...

• Post #2573832

  Merriam-Webster: "When movies were shot on physical film, the film was measured in feet. This is why any recorded thing is now called 'footage.'" Haseeb Aslam: "@grok is this legit?" Merriam-Webster: "Where do you think grok gets the info?"

• Post #2040654

  If your experience in the Fediverse seems to be deteriorating, and you're thinking, "This isn't as fun as it used to be," there's a solution, and I don't mean dropping out. 1) Unfollow a person if their posts are starting to be unpleasant to you, even if you've been following them for a long time. 2) Look around a bit and follow someone else when you read a post you like. Your experience in the Fediverse is intimately related to who you f...

• Post #1941274

  Want to reduce "alarm fatigue" caused by false positives? Then quit alarming the wrong stuff. Here’s how to decide what needs to be alarmed: If it requires immediate human attention, it's an alarm. Otherwise, it's a log entry. This is one of the most common mistakes I see in the field when I’m working with clients on streamlining their operations and reducing downtime. There is a strong (super-strong!) tendency to say, “I’m not sure, so I’d better make this a...

• Post #1141984

  Given the abusive policies, poor working conditions, and job insecurities of working for many large corporations, here’s my recommendation: if you’re looking for a job, look closely at Small and Medium-Sized Business (SMB) opportunities. Mega-corporations are no longer the goose that lays golden eggs. They are shedding jobs and shredding souls. If you have the personality for it, I encourage you to start your own business, but I know that’s not for everyone. “But Bob, I can’t make as much mon...

• Post #837169

  There is never a viable business where security must be sacrificed to obtain profitability. Over and over again I’ve watched business owners sacrifice security to obtain convenience.

• Post #622349

  PROBLEM: How do you know if there's an extended power failure when you're out of town? Will your meat in the freezer spoil and refreeze before you return? We're flying to Las Vegas to spend Christmas with our son. We'll be gone for a few days. The weather report at home is for high winds and power outages. SOLUTION: I put a single ice cube in a glass in the freezer. When we return, if the ice cube is still shaped like an ice cube, any power failures were of short...

• Post #505814

  My brother just called me to check up on me. He received a text message from Indigo Urgent Care asking him to fill out a form for me. They used my correct name. Except I'm not in an urgent care facility, I'm in my office, working, doing fine. Be careful with any unexpected message about a friend or loved one's emergency condition. It may very well be a scam like this one.