50 Shades of Geek

Windows 11 preview.

2021-08-28T15:12:00.000-04:00

So after many years of hearing "This is the last version of windows.." Now we have a public preview of the all new windows 11! Here is what it looks like below,

This post is being typed on a pc running windows 11. It is a Bee Link mini Desktop running AMD Ryzen 7 with 512GB Solid state drive 16GB of ram. This little machine is really powerful for its size. It has Wifi 6 as well as the lastest bluetooth and even Dual ethernet connections. If I can setup a test network with this as a test bed this will be a great feature. As you can see a few big chnages in windows 11 so far. The Start menu is out in the center of the task bar. (I can hear the tech support calls now...) And as seen below the notifications look a little different. The whole OS is different. They have a 10 minute video of how they designed the new logo for the company. Big chnages are coming as you can see. Hopefully they will not cause too much change that all us IT folks will have to reteach our older family members how to use the computer again!

Technology Saved the day today

2020-12-16T21:59:00.000-05:00

November 11 started just like any other day. But at 7:50 am as I was getting ready to start a full day of work despite it being Friday, my network appeared to have quit working. I looked over at my mesh router and saw a red light. “Oh CRAAAAAPPPP” I Greamed to no one in particular. Goan Scream. incase you were wondering what that word was… Anyway, I went to the main router where the internet comes in and that device too was stuck in red light city. A reboot of both did nothing for their status, so a reboot of the modem was needed. We had a pole out front and it was due to be changed today, I was hopeful I had a few problems in the past few weeks just as they started to investigate this pole and plan for the change out. So, the service stayed down after my modem reboot, you could see the online light was not lit up in any way. This is now a bad day getting worse. My work was getting backed up and my team was already down a person and that can be a challenge as it is. The guys show up to change out the Pole and as they disconnect our cable line, (It had to be taken off it was in the way of installing the new pole) They show us the cable and we can clearly see the issue… this cable was about 40 years old and had not been changed in all that time. It was so old the needle in a normal coaxial cable was gone. I should have taken a picture, but I just did not get to! So, they will reconnect everything, but they cannot promise ANYTHING will work. During all this I used the providers app to schedule an appointment for service and it said it could see an issue with my service. It was not an outage no one else on my street had any issues. My appointment was for Sunday afternoon from 4-6 pm. I also threw my name into the waiting list hat hoping for first thing Saturday Morning to get my service fixed. Now the new Pole is up, and all the cables are back to where they belong for now on the old pole. OH yeah, this crew puts the pole up… a 2nd crew and another company must come to move everything. (Nothing is ever simple!) After the line is reconnected, we have 1 working tv in my father’s room. He has the small old cable box that gets 13 channels. All he cared about was channel 7 for some news and to watch Jeopardy of course! Well, all the channels on his tv came up but jumped a lot and lost volume. Service was degraded quite a bit. We had no internet and no phones. The modem laughed at me with the same online light being out. The main tv worked at what ever channel it ended up on which was msnbc today. Probably from a car auction show the night before. So, we could not change the channel since the internet controls that part of the tv service with the provider… (They really do lock you in to need all their services) and any button press on the remote brought up the ever so helpful message that they are having trouble connecting to the internet and won’t we please check our connections and try again. So now not only is my work impacted but Dinnertime tv is now impacted. We now have a mountain, no mole hill here! Being a technology and gadget freak I had many options to try to get internet working for me and then steam some ABC TV for us to watch some shows in the evening. The best choice with the most advance options turned out to be my newest purchase aimed at trying to separate work and personal data further to make things easier, that device being the Microsoft Surface Duo! Thanks to ATT I live in a spot with 5G service and its pretty good in my house! I got 60 MB download speeds and 15MB upload speeds!

The upload speed added an extra 5MB onto my normal upload speed which was great as some of my work requires a public cloud connection with decent upload speeds. I set up the Surface Duo as a hot spot and connected my laptop to it. I ran my personal cell phone as the desk phone using the VOIP APP of my company to handle any calls. I ran like this all day and was able to help my team with support issues and help any customers without missing a beat. I use a remote connection tool and was able to remotely connect into machines and did not notice a performance difference at all. I had topped off the Surface Duo’s battery the night before, so I just left it there being a hot spot and it only went down to 60 percent battery life. Not bad! I even connected my printer to it so I could scan to PDF and it did that without any fuss at all. I ended my day at about 5:30 and shut down all the work stuff. I put the duo to sleep and turned off the hot spot. I was impressed. I went through the day and did not have to change my workflow much at all to be able to continue. In a normal situation I would have just went into the office to get the rest of the day done, but thanks to Technology I did not have to, that was a stress reliever in itself! As I prepped Dinner and started cooking, I knew I had to get ABC streaming some how so we could watch some news and shows. Luckily since my living room smart tv has limited apps to it, I needed something to get more content and I had just purchased a new apple tv last month. So, I planned on connecting the apple tv to the Surface as a hotspot and then running the ABC app. The connection worked as expected and within minutes my apple tv was on the hot spot at 5G! The ABC app had me sign in on my phone and verify my provider. I signed in and there we go, News at 6pm is on and steaming… And we steamed that way all through Primetime on ABC no stutter, no lag no jumps, just watched it like it was cable tv and a normal night. At 8pm we were done with TV so my father went to do his hobbies and I got an idea to see if I could play Grand theft auto 5 on 5G speeds! I connected my desktop to the surface duo and checked that I had internet and I did, ok let’s fire up Steam and GTA and here we go…. OH NO NOT GOOD>….. I got a message in the corner about double NAT something is wrong and could impact your play….. Essentially the way a cellular connection is made, the GTA game does not like that so it did not play well at all. I got on the game and was able to drive around, but I had no access to much else. I could not get my personal things or join any online missions. Ok it does not like that so we will quit that and forget that idea. How about Forza 7 Motorsports? Nope same thing. No access to anything. Gaming platforms do not like connecting through 5g hotspots. There could be some settings I would need to adjust to make it work, but it was only for one night. Because at this time I had gotten a text alert that a Saturday Morning appointment from 7 30 am to 9 am was open for me as long as I responded in the next, I don’t know how many minutes it said, I sent the letter Y for yes faster than I ever sent a text before! So, we were locked in for an early morning visit from comcast to fix our troubles. At 7 30 the next morning the technician was there checking all our lines out, I went out and spoke to him about what I was told and what we had going on, he looked at the line and said he will replace it, meanwhile he had another tech coming as he needed a line truck to replace a tap on the line as well. All of this was completed within 2 hours and by 9:30 I had full working service again. I had my full connection speeds of up to 600 download and 15 upload. The tv looked great and the home phone line was working. I later found out the tap we are on is an end tap, its just myself and my neighbor across the road. This answered my question as to why no one else in the neighborhood had any issues. Our service was restored in a very quick time frame, our technician was very polite and knowledgeable and answered questions while he did the repairs and neatly cleaned up. All in all, a much more pleasant experience than I have heard about from others. (some of the bad customer service stories are legendary!) I was pleased with the providers response and really pleased that technology helped keep us going during an outage and gave me hope that if they sort out all this 5G service, it might really be an upgrade we can all use.

Always check the simple things first.

2020-09-18T13:35:00.000-04:00

I have said it many times and Ill say it many times in the future, when a problem appears, always always check the simple stuff first. Take my example today, My Cloud drive suddenly shows up with a solid red light....

And now I am thinking great, its curtainsfor all that data.... How much did I backup to the other drive last time?..... I was swampped in work today, so I unplugged the drive and let it sit for the day, fast forward to a half hour ago and I took another look. I plugged in the power and it sat and spun with a flashing blue light. Back to a solid red light... ok lets see what google turns up, some times you can save a lot of time just seeing what others have done. A quick search turned up some horror stories about screeching disks...crunching caclunk clunk sounds..and the high pitched wails of I DIDN'T PRESS SAVE...... Then in a forum someone posted the same issue as me and said loudly at the end in bold letters CHECK THE NETWWORK PLUG TO THE DRIVE...NO REALLY TAKE IT OUT AND CHECK THAT IT IS CONNECTED! Well ok that is a very simple step but I saw it before I was.....wait there is the end and when I trace it back and count the devices I have one missing! Well look at that there it is....

Editors Note: My picture shows it unplugged from the drive for example. But in my case it had come unplugged from the switch I remembered that earlier I had a crazy moment where I elbowed a full mug of coffee all over the place as the phone rang, In my hast of saving all electronic devices I must have pulled the ethernet cable free from the switch. So yes that person is right and 90 percent of the time that is always the answer. Check the simple things. So remember to do that and you will breathe a sigh of relief when you see the network cable unplugged and you can go back to your adult beverage!

Do you need to buy a premium device for a premium experience?

2020-05-24T15:03:00.000-04:00

I bought a mid range device when I bought the Motorola Z2 Play a few years back. I since sold that phone but I also just recently bought the Motorola Z Power phone. That is a mid range device with a lower price point. Both phones have decent hardware in them, can do lots of great things for taking photos and have great play back for sound and video. But what are they missing from a premium device like the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+? Well basically, a stylus... maybe some performance improvements for playing graphic intense games on the phone.. maybe a touch more battery life thanks to Samsung's power management system. Both screens look vibrant with lots of color. Pictures look great on the screen on both phones and both take excellent pictures.

So why the Higher price tag for the Samsung? Well the Note 10 Plus is rated P68 for water resistance which means you could submerge it in fresh water for some time and retrieve it, dry it out and the phone will still function. As I found out this is not the case when it comes to salt water... anything goes if it goes in salt water. But the Motorola phone is not rated for water resistance like that so it only will be protected against splashes like from rain. Also the Motorola does not have NFC so no contactless payments from the phone. Plus you cannot wireless charge the Motorola. That is not a deal breaker for me. I rarely use wireless charging. I'm still not thrilled with it and feel like it's better for the battery to always charge with a cable. The motorola does have some things the Samsung does not, like an audio jack for headphones. You can use any headphones for that phone without needing a dongle to connect them in like you would with the samsung which is sans audio jack. One personal thing I like more on the Motorola is the fingerprint button on the back, it works 100 percent of the time! Samsung has the in glass fingerprint unit and it works but its 60/40 if it will read the print correctly. I hope they improve that design on future phones. Mid range inexpensive phones can offer great features but there are always trade offs that you have to look at when choosing a lower end device. But there are a wide variety of mid range devices that are affordable and will offer a user a great phone experience.

How many phones is too many? UPDATED

2020-05-24T12:41:00.009-04:00

Do you love cell phones? Do you have more than 2 of them? For “backups”… sound familiar? Don’t worry you’re in safe company. I have said the same thing. I am currently up to 4 cell phones unless you count the dead flip phone that I have no charger for…? Ok 5… The flip phone is an LG Dare? I forget the name of that one. I also have an LG G7 ThinQ from 2 years ago. It is still a great phone and is being updated to Android 10 OS very soon according to the Android news feeds. It’s the lightest of the 3 phones and has the best night vision for taking night shots. They always come out so bright on this phone and the other phones have trouble with night shots.
My daily driver of a phone is the Samsung Note 10 Plus. It has become one of the best phones I ever used. The size is perfect in my hand and not hard for 1 or 2 handed uses. The battery life gets me through a day and a half even if I am using the phone heavily. The camera takes amazing photos and I have not even really used the video feature yet. OH and the screen looks amazing. I currently still have the original screen protector from Samsung on the phone. But soon I will be putting on a Zagg screen protector. Just as soon as I watch the video more to make sure I can install it right.
UPDATE: Took off the stock screen protector and installed 2 from a company that does glass protectors applied with UV glue. I do not recommend these types. If the phone gets cold at all from air conditioning the glue will give and you will be prone to potential damage. I also have the HTC U11 phone. This older droid was just updated to Android 9 which was shocking as most of HTC phone staff moved to Google. This phone is STILL getting updates. I turned it on to check on the battery for this article and there is a software update pushing through. This phone is the shortest of all the phones but also the fattest. It is slightly uncomfortable to use single handed. This was before they went “bezel free” so there is 2 bezels at the top and bottom of the phone. But this phone sounds amazing for music. It was enhanced for audio both from the speakers and for when you plug a set of headphones in.
The last phone I have is a Motorola G Power. I just purchased this phone for 250 bucks. It’s unlocked for any carrier and it has a huge battery in it. I used it for one day just trying to sign into everything and get setup and I was about 6 hours of screen time in. The battery still lasted for another day after that! The phone does not have NFC built in and it does not do Wireless charging. But the phone is a great cheap phone to get and store in a drawer in case someone needs a phone in a hurry. Moto has some great actions they setup to make the phone easier to use. Make a chopping motion with your wrist and the flashlight comes on. Twist your wrist and the camera comes on. The phone is ringing on the table and you’re in a meeting, flip it over screen down, the phone shuts up till you pick it back up.
I am working to set these phones up so I can switch back and forth at a moment’s notice. If the Samsung suddenly develops a hardware issue and has to be sent in to replace, I want to be able to take the sim out pop it into either the Moto or the LG and continue working. Most of my stuff is setup in the cloud for backup and syncing. The last thing I did not have in a cloud backup was my text messages and I thought it wasn’t a big deal but more and more text messages are being used in business and starting to become items of record. So I stopped using the default Text program on the phones and moved to Google’s messaging program. This way all my stuff is backed up to Google’s cloud and when I sign into a different phone it can sync all the messages up and I won’t miss anything. I was getting close to the limit of Google’s free 15GB of storage. So I opted to pay for the 100Gb of space on Google’s Cloud. This way the phones can be backed up to the cloud as well and its one less thing I need to worry about. This is a whole other topic but I also have a Microsoft One Drive cloud with over 100 GB of space on it that I don’t pay for. I am not for one or the other, I use whatever works best for my needs. So that’s all my phones. What do you have in your collection? Leave me a comment and let me know. Apple products welcome too… there is no better one here, its whatever works for best you. Which should be the goal of all technology.

I forgot how fun it is to build a PC

2018-05-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

My new custom built pc is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 8 core processor
There is 16 GB of Gskill DDR 4 ram 2 8 GB chips.
The motherboard is an MSI X470 Gaming Pro board
I am running a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD drive as well as a 1 TB WD Blue Drive for storage.
The video card is an MSI GTX 1080
The Audio is the high Def Realtek chipset on the X470.
The power supply is an 800 Watt Corsair Modular PSU
The case is the spectacular blue Fractual Design Super Quiet!

All in all the most surprising thing about this build was how quiet all the fans are even when the system is cranking away keeping FPS up high. There is 2 120MM case fans along with the mighty Prism Cooler on the Ryzen chip. There is also the dual fans on the GTX card and a fan on the corsair. That is a lot of air flowing, but its 3 times quieter than my 5 year old Asus Tower I had. Was this a big upgrade for me? IT was. The Asus was an Intel Core i7 3.0 GHZ CPU with 8 GB of DDR3. The GTX 1080 I had for the last 6 months and it worked well in that Asus. (I also got the card right before the price shot up due to all the Crypto Currency mining demand.) I wanted to have good gaming performance so I went high end on the GPU as that is bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to gaming. I play Grand Theft Auto V and Forza Motorsport 7. Both visually stunning games with heavy GPU needs and a thirst for CPU cycles, both of these games have a stunning amount of detail to them. You will not enjoy them properly without the right hardware to keep visuals looking sharp. Building the new custom rig was a joy to me. I always loved building pc’s and I missed getting to do it on a regular basis. So I started with the graphics card and got the best one I could afford at the time. Then I started looking into CPU and motherboard combos and had to spend a lot of time deciding if I was going go use Intel again or check out the AMD offerings. AMD was always easier on the wallet but at times not always the best when it came to performance and heat dissipation. I liked all the Intel stuff I saw, the Coffee Lake CPU’s looked great. Everyone said you’re a gamer? Don’t bother with AMD! Just get the 8700 and you will love it. I really was leaning towards Intel. This was before the Ryzen 2.0 was announced. But then the Ryzen lineup was refreshed here comes the 12 MM CPU’s from AMD. And guess what, they include a heat sink and fan! I spent the next 2 weeks trying to read all I could about the new AMD stuff. Info was scarce no one had much info as AMD did not want to release anything before they launched.
So I set my calendar. I said let’s wait until the AMD comes out, give it a week then check out some reviews from the field. After that the new Motherboards started being released by all the vendors to support the new chips. I started looking at all those boards and options and finally decided on the 2700X 8 Core Ryzen and the MSI X470 Gaming Pro. I could have gone higher on the board but I do not plan on doing much over clocking, and I don’t need more high end features like Wi-Fi and USB C. They are both great, but I don’t use Wi-Fi on a desktop. I want the best online gaming experience and one small glitch from your Wi-Fi can mean the difference between taking turn 7 perfectly or being pushed into the Wall. Thanks to this well thought out designed case, putting all the components together was easy fun and there was a lot of room for nice clean cable management. A lot of cables can sit behind the motherboard tray and its easy to bend them into a nice clean design. (I still have the front cables to clean up yet but I have one more install to do. I did not realize how much motherboard design had evolved since the last build I did was about 12 years ago!

When did Fan ports go to 4 port? What is that USB connector? I don’t have one of those do i? These were some of the question s I had when I was reading through the Motherboard manual the night before. I always read them cover to cover to make sure I know what I am doing. Ok well this time, in the interest of time I skimmed a lot of the BIOS section. I just wanted to know how to set it on a good stable setting and leave it alone. This case also has a section on the back of the motherboard tray that you can mount an SSD Drive to it. I did not choose to do that as I wanted all the storage in the 3.5 bays in the front of the case.

I was very happy to test the Audio quality once I was booted into Windows 10. I also wanted great sound quality as I do enjoy a lot of music playback on my pc. I stream a lot of you tube clips and like to listen to my Satellite Radio on their web site. The sound is excellent and crisp and will go louder than is allowed in the noise ordinance section of the town code. Performance of this machine has been top notch. The PC boots up in less than 20 seconds thanks to the speedy SSD drive and the Gigabit Ethernet connection keeps me running laps with the best racers in the Forza Community! Performance has been ultra smooth with no glitches that I can see. Shadows and water looks great and realistic in Grand Theft Auto and standing at the Pier watching the sunset in game with the boardwalk behind you is memorizing and leaves you questioning which side of the screen you’re in.
Oh the Operating system is important too isn’t it? I am running Windows 10 with the latest updates. I had installed Windows 10 on this drive a while ago then put it away till the new build was ready. It booted right up allowed me to sign in and validate my copy of windows and everything came up with the settings it brought over from the previous pc. I was able to let it boot up and Windows took care of getting all the drivers in order to make sure it could boot and operate while it found the best drivers during the next update. I ran the pc for 3 days before I even remembered to check out the drivers on the cd and make sure I had the ones I needed. Of course I ran to the website and made sure to get the latest versions of drivers but I did install the CPU-Z that came with the board and I had a blast playing with the LED patterns in the Mystic light app. The LED lighting on the CPU and the Motherboard looks great and with the Window in the side of the case I get a nice colorful glow under my desk.

This has been a fun build and went pretty smooth. Building PC can be a lot of fun and rewarding, care just has to be applied to always be consistent how you build and be thorough in following install guides. Now if you will excuse me I need to practice running some laps on the Indy track..

The Motorola Z2 Play. A premium device with an affordable price.

2018-03-21T21:22:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I got the desire to try a different device. Not because of any issue or anything like that, I just decided I want to have a different phone. For some reason the thought of jumping between devices to try a few out is appealing to me. And now with the cloud holding most all of the data I use on the phone switching back and forth is easier than ever. I currently have an HTC U11 phone that has been a blast to use every day for the past 6 months. I never had an issue with it, everything runs smoothly and the battery life is great. I get a day to a day and a half if I’m conservative with my streaming. The phone looks awesome it’s a bright red metallic color that everyone notices. I have it enclosed in a clear case and put a shatter proof screen on it. I had a spur of the moment inkling to check out the Motorola phones again after they sent me an email with a large sale on some of their newer flagship devices.

I checked them out and decided on the Z2 play from Motorola. This is a nice thin lightweight phone with a 5.5 inch LCD which is bigger than the screen on the HTC. The phone is so light and easy to hold too. I forgot how much weight the HTC had to it till I picked it up to do this review. Its not a bad thing either its just different.

The Moto has a nice bright screen that is easy to see and everything looks vivid and sharp. The camera is a 12 MP shooter in the back with a 5MP in the front for great self portraits. Pictures look great on it and seem to capture a lot of detail. The phone is quick and responsive and everything is easy to find when looking for your favorite apps. This is an unlocked device that is carrier neutral so there is no bloat ware on it. I love this feature as the HTC was the same way and it is great not to be force fed apps that I cannot uninstall and will never use.

The phone being a bigger size is still easy to use one handed thanks to the thin sized footprint. It has a head phone jack which I like and it also has a usb C connector for the charger. I tried USB C headphones but they did not recognize on the phone so they cant be used unless you have the head phone jack adapter. The battery life has been outstanding I can push this and get a full day and a half out before I need to charge it again. There is also a Moto Mod add on that is an extended battery should you need more juice. I stream quite a bit and run different music apps like sound cloud and the Sirius XM app for on demand shows. I have more than 40 percent battery life left at night before I put the phone down to sleep. The included turbo charge will give it a 50 percent boost in 15 minutes so to get you through a long day should you need it. The phone has one downside when coming off the HTC, it is running Nougat of Android 7.1 and the 8.0 Oreo update is still pending. Moto seems to have an issue getting updates out quickly. This has not been an issue to me except I miss the nice emoji icons when doing text messages. I have not seen any major issues with the phone and it has been a joy to use. I have only seen one small issue and I am still testing to see if it happens on all audio apps or just one. What happens is after some time the volume just decreases half way. The volume is set all the way up on the phone and on the app but it just is a lowered volume. This happens on the
Sirus app and closing the app and restarting it takes away the issue. I have yet to test this on other apps and I am not sure if it’s a power saving feature or some bug. Either way I will keep testing and report back. This is a really great phone and for a less expensive price point it can be an affordable device for someone who just needs a phone and doesn’t need the latest and greatest. I will probably use this for a few weeks then I may switch back to my HTC device. Either way I have two great devices that can get me through a whole day without fail and they are both reliable and dependable. That’s all I want at the end of the day.

3 days with a signal issue can teach you how to be agile with different devices.

2018-03-10T13:03:00.002-05:00

Having to switch between 2 devices day and night while waiting for a signal issue to resolve has made me quite nimble and aware of the annoyance it can be to juggle between 2 devices. But since more data gets stored on the cloud it has made it easy to switch from one device to another. In my case I use the regular old text message app that is on whatever device I am using at the time. So when I switch I have to jump around on conversations as they do not sync with all the other data. I really should move to something that will store them in the cloud but I’m still figuring out which app I want to use. But for all my other data the cloud has made it just come across like its nothing. So it made the switch easier. I wanted to get to a point like that because I wanted to be able to try different phones at different times and be able to test them for a bit before going back to my other daily driver. There is a new HTC U 12 rumored to be coming out around April some time I would love to try another HTC phone and the specs really make it worth an upgrade. My U 11 has been a dream to use until about 3 days ago… Let me start at the beginning..
3 days ago I got out of my car and sent a text. But the text never went. It was late and I saw it was not sent and that the service was out and had an x. I dismissed it and went to sleep thinking maybe the network had a glitch and it will be better by morning. I awoke early the next morning to see I still had no service and was not sure what was happening. I had data mostly if I was not on wifi but the data would fade in and out. This was like this inside the house, outside the house, and about a mile down the road before I switched towers maybe and the signal came back full and I then had zero issues. I went about my day at my office and the phone just worked like it always did since I bought it new in September. I never had one issue with the phone. Signal was never a problem in my home. If the phone rang I got the call. But to then have this weird signal issue that is still ongoing and I am waiting for the carrier to resolve the issue. Someone told me it’s my sim. But if that is the case why does it work perfectly 3 towns away all day and the only issue is when I am near my home? And why does the same behavior not occur to my old Samsung device when I put that same sim card into the phone? When the sim is in the old phone there are no issues at my home phone calls and texts come fine. When the sim Is in the HTC phone I get sporadic connections for minutes then the signal will just drop out and not come back. If it was the phone then why would that behavior not continue in other places? When I am anywhere else but my home, the phone works with no issues whatsoever. The data connection that runs streaming and audio will stay up and buffer enough that the stream will be uninterrupted even as the phone switches over to where it can work well. It is about a mile radius away from my home that I cannot get signal then it comes back on that device. Keep in mind this is an HTC phone it is not sold or known well to Verizon at all. It is known as a certified open channel device or BYOD device. When this first came out there was a lot of people online that had issues getting a sim to work with version. They had to work close with Verizon tech to get it to work. And the store techs were not familiar with the process when the phone first came out. My search on google with this issue has not turned up much. Most posts are older and the options and tricks mentioned have been tried. I rebooted into safe mode. Same issue and I even cleared the cache in the device. I also reset the network settings. I called Verizon and asked the first level tech to refresh my device which she did but it did not make much difference. I have another sim card and I will flash it if needed but I am going to wait first for Verizon to tell me what they find. In the mean time, I will be a skilled device ninja deftly moving between devices till this gets sorted. 3 Days later it finally got fixed by Verizon as part of a larger issue. Now I’m back running at 100 percent with the HTC. It really has been a wonderful phone to use and very easy to enjoy. But being the device switching guy for a bit made me realize I want to try another device. Especially now since its so easy to switch back and forth. So in my next post I will be discussing my new device which is on its way to my shop right now. Stay tuned!

HTC U11 A Review and a toast!

2017-09-20T15:10:00.002-04:00

The HTC U11 is a great phone! Fast, sexy, and easy to use are some of the first thoughts. The look of this thing is so nice. The Solar Red glistens and changes to lighter and darker shades of red in the different lights. It is a great size and not too heavy when you add a good case and a screen protector. INVEST in a good screen protector! More on that in a bit. The size of the phone is a good size and very easy to use with one hand. The layout and swipe directions are designed for a one handed user. It is very fast and the battery lasts all day unless you live on the phone. And the audio.... Holy.....crap! The audio is so awesome. Lets get into it
Even the packaging is cool. Its a fully recyclable package and laid out well. You get the charger and the usb C cable as well as a clear bumper to protect the back of the phone and the paperwork. The thing is a work of art. I am told all the colors are beautiful to behold and all shimmer in the light to make a great looking phone. The screen is very bright and the auto brightness works very well. You can see the screen in the direct sunlight and still read everything well with the default fonts. A note here: the screen is EXTREMELY FRAGILE. Get a screen protector with the phone. Get one that is shatter proof even if its just for the front of the screen. You can buy a full clear case from Spigen that covers the sides and protects the rest of the phone. You want a clear case so that the colors of the phone shine through and catch everyone's eyes. Even with this case and the screen protector the phone is much lighter than my Samsung s7 edge with the Commuter Case and no screen protector. When you hold the phone in one hand, its very easy to see why they thought of the "Squeeze Sides" idea. The way you hold the phone naturally puts your fingers in the perfect spot to squeeze and its able to be done without feeling like you will drop the phone. It makes taking pictures very easy. I am thinking about how program this feature how to do something else for me other than just take pictures. It can be annoying though some times when you take your phone out of the car the way you hold it can activate the squeeze. I've had to delete 3 different pictures of my front yard that snapped as I got out of the car!
Here is a photo I took with the phone using the squeeze sides. It came out nice and clear and was very fast to snap the picture. The phone has a lot of filters and adjustments you can make to the photos when you take them and after the picture is taken. I am not going to snap a lot of photos and compare them to other phones. There are other sites to view that sort of comparison this is not one of them.

Switching to the USB C plug has been enjoyable its much easier to plug your phone in while in the dark, not having to worry about which way the plug is facing to plug it in. (I have come from the land of the micro usb and I do have to replace some accessories but its not a huge deal.

Another thing to get used to coming from the Samsung world is that they are reversed with their onscreen buttons. The Back button on the Samsung is on the right and the app switch button is on the left. Every other manufactuer like the HTC has them reversed, and that is how it should be as it makes it so much easier to use with one hand. The back button is used more than the app switch button and after inital adjustments, it works great for me.
The new Nougat OS is quick smooth and has great battery power management. The phone has seen none of the weird software glitches I used to see on the Samsung. Multitasking is very easy with the app button and it ran multiple apps without breaking a sweat. ON any given day I have a google maps open along with Soundcloud as well as company email and other time wasting, battery draining apps! But I get through a full day with at least 30 to 40 percent left on the battery. I pushed the Samsung that hard and I was at 10 to 20 percent at the end of a day. The battery is good and I am glad, I would hate to invest on a premium device and not be able to get a good battery life out of it. I have had many tablets and phones do that. You only found out they were empty or dying at the most inopportune time like Right when you need them the most!
This new HTC U11 is lightweight, easy to use, and has a long lasting battery. I really hope that it will continue to be a great phone for a long time and that I will continue to enjoy it as they update to Oreo and beyond. This phone has been wonderful for the first 2 weeks I have used it and I look forward to writing a bigger review after some real time used on this phone. Im sure there are many different options I have yet to try out and as I learn the phone more I will find ways for it to help make life easier for me when it comes to my digital life.

Samsung smart switch makes moving to a new Samsung very easy

2017-07-22T11:14:00.000-04:00

So I have had the pink line for about a few months now and it is getting worse on my s7edge. It has started causing the top right corner of the screen to not respond to touch . So i decided to get an s7 to use so Samsung can fix the pink line if possible. I have not heard back from Samsung yet about fixing the pink line but that is a story for another day. I dread having to switch phones as the process has not been as easy as Apple makes it. Their iCloud works well and makes moving to a different device very easy. Well Samsung has a program that is very similar called the smart switch. It works with any device and will make switching very easy to get to a new Samsung device.

The transfer can happen 3 ways, via Wireless from one device to the other, with a usb transfer cable, or connecting the devices to a pc or mac.

The Smart switch will let you choose your items you want to sync like your contacts, photos, and text messages. It even keeps most of your settings the same. I cannot speak if that works across platforms but switching from one Samsung to the other kept all the settings. I had my icons right where I liked them and all the apps opened and worked with no issues. You do need to sign back into each app and reauthorize if you have a 2 factor authentication setup. But all your data comes right over and its very easy to get back up and running in no time with very little hassle. I did have to readjust my sound settings so I figured it was time to pick some different ring tones for messages and alerts and calls. The program works well it is very easy to download and install and very easy to follow the steps. It was pretty fast too as it flew over the wifi and I have a good amount of photos on the device's storage. It took less than an hour to get everything moved over. It may have even been about 30 minutes.
It is a great app to use and if your going to move to a Samsung I highly recommend getting this app. I will probably have to use it one more time once I get my s7edge fixed. I will update about that later on once I find out what the status of getting it fixed is. I hope to just be able to get it swapped out but I am not looking forward to getting a refurb if that is what they offer me. I know I will not pay for the repair as it is not caused by use its a defect in the phone. I really hope Samsung does a better job with their s8 line than the issues that plagued the s7 line as well as the Note 7 debacle. If you are getting a new Samsung just make sure to use the Smart Switch app to move to the new device seamlessly.

Its time to start thinking about 10GB Ethernet

2017-07-12T17:06:00.002-04:00

10GB Ethernet. It is here, it is blazing fast and it is probably expensive right now. But its going to get more popular in use and its adoption will drive the price down. I don't know how many homes might decide to move to it but it would be a huge upgrade cost to do so. But if you are running something like a Home studio for video production then it may be something that is needed. Even the hardware is starting to be forward thinking. The Buffalo TeraStation TS5410DN has a built in 10GB port on the back. Lots of NAS drives are starting to put them in. In this Video review by David Gewirtz just a month ago there was 6 of them and each one talked about 10GB Ethernet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MArqG6Aouw

Data Centers have have been using this standard since 2007. Of course if you have Gigabit Ethernet and want to upgrade you are going to have to buy new switches and hardware that can support 10GB Ethernet. Plus you need to have Cat 6 Ethernet cable or Fiber cable to run it through your network. You can run it up to 100m (330ft) After that signal loss will occur. 10GB is the only standard that has come out that does not offer the option of Half duplex communication. The standard reads Full Duplex only. Would a home user ever use this standard? Sure they would, if they were in video or music production you will take all the speed you can get! Plus having 10GB to stream from your NAS box to your internet to upload, things are going to get done pretty quick! If you are a cloud provider for customers or Run a small data backup company you will want to have your backbone at 10GB speeds if at all possible to make sure that data will get to where it needs to be.
10GB Ethernet is almost here and its time to start thinking about putting budgets against it to make sure you have the speeds you need to transfer the ever increasing amount of data coming out of your network. This is a developing topic and I will discuss it more as it starts to make a larger headway into Mainstream networking. As always feel free to leave me feed back about my topics.

This age of instant response can make for missing a moment alone.

2017-07-09T14:16:00.000-04:00

Your getting out of bed trying to remember what important things you have to do today and you get "Bling" "Blong" Your cell phone chirps that someone has sent you a text. You respond then start to think again, I need to make sure I go to... "Bling Blong" Again the response comes in what feels like milliseconds and you couldn't even finish your small thought about going to the market! Later in the day you have been dealing with 5 emergencies from every department and then you found out you need to leave early to go to your house on your lunch break to deal with something and you just want to close your eyes and gather your thoughts for a second...Ahh..."Bling Blong" . It never ends. This instant response with technology has made us lose some of our razor sharp focus we once had. They say multitasking is bad and does not work. Well it used to before you had this instant response device working. You could start a project and finish it without an instant interruption that started and had five responses or further questions before you even got to pick up the phone to look at it! It has caused people to have less patience as well when it comes to waiting for answers. Everyone thinks you should be able to text the response back no matter where you are or what you are doing. This is not the case and you may need to let people know in advance. You have to block off time where you may even turn your phone to airplane mode or off to not hear those messages. Tell all you important friends and family you are doing this to focus on something important. Even if its for a work out and meditation. Does not matter. That is your time to get things done that need to be done. Those texts will have to wait. And for business, set the same ground rules. Let your co workers know, If you have something quick fire off a text but if it requires more than 3 responses, send an email or call about it so the message is clear. Let your clients and customers know, I do not do business by text message. You can give me a text to ask if Im in the office or can I call you? But anything else must be in written or verbal form via an email or phone call. Set the precedence right from the beginning and you can gently remind them if they forget later and do it. And if you get coupons or offers via text message think about them do you really need them? If you do, you just have to hope they are not at 2 in the morning!
It really is hard to try to focus for a long time when you keep getting some kind of alert from an electronic device. Even as I write this now, I had 5 text messages come through and my tablet had 3 alerts from apps come through. So my train of thought stopped a few times and I had to try to pick up where I left off. So if you have tablets you may have to put them in airport mode or at least disable all alerts that are not needed or are duplicated by your cell phone. Try to start small, start with 20 minutes maybe in the early morning. Put your devices to airplane then just close your eyes breath deep and think about something that relaxes you. Don't think about work or anything else you have to do, just think of something relaxing like an image of the sunrise at your favorite beach, or the feel of the breeze as you sit in your screened porch. Just make sure to take some time to your self for your thoughts. The more you do this the more you will be able to focus better and you will feel sharper and sometimes feel less overwhelmed at larger projects. Put on some of your favorite music and just listen to it for some time to your self. If your phone goes off while your in the middle of juggling three tasks at work that are small, don't answer or look at it until you get at least 2 of them done. Then take a quick moment to look at the text. Or if you feel better not worrying about it then don't look at it until you got all three tasks done.
They say we reached the age of instant communication. Well I would like to go back 3 steps where I don't have to respond in an instant and I can get things done without hearing sounds in my head, "BLING BLONG" .

Sonos Play Review

2017-05-20T19:41:00.000-04:00

I was looking into some new speakers for my home and I did not want some big monster speaker or have a mess of wires to play with. I was looking into the Bose system as well as the Sonos Play series. After reading about each in depth I decided to get the Sonos Play speakers.
I picked up the Sonos Play 5 which is their largest speaker.

I also picked up a sonos play 1 which is the smallest speaker. The smaller Play 1 speaker will be perfect for upstairs to have a surround sound effect while the Play 5 will be down stairs in the living room. You can connect the speakers together to play the same stream or you can set them up to be different and play different music. Everything is done with an app loaded onto an iOS device or Android device. These speakers are very loud! The sound quality is top notch. Setup is very easy to connect the devices to your wireless network. The option to put the speakers together in sync or separate is an easy option in the software. The devices update with any new software needed when they first connect to the network. And it is setup to auto update as needed later on for any new software updated. The other great feature that Sonos has is the True play configuration. You can select the room you will put the speaker in and turn on true play and it will adjust the settings to get you the best sound for that room. I have not even used that feature yet on either speaker but they still both sound excellent.
The app once downloaded is how to control the Sonos System as well as play media to the speakers. The app connects to your local storage of music on the device as well as many common apps such as Spotify and Tunein. All in all there is about 30 different services you can connect the Play to.
The very cool feature about the Sonos systems is that they do not connect by bluetooth. They connect through your wireless network. This keeps your phone free to continue to be used as a phone, or to make sure notifications do not get missed. The music does not stop if you get a call on your phone. The music is streaming through your wireless network. This makes a world of difference. Bluetooth is ok for a small speaker to stream with. But for multi Room sound the Sonos is the way to go.
The Sonos Play one is a smaller model but it fills a room with big sound. All the bass and treble is there along with a rich depth to the music your listening to. When you turn up the sound to max it does not get distorted either. The bass notes stay crisp and thumping and the highs get high without any distortion. The Play one is also designed to resist humidity so you can take it outside for some BBQ music or even in the bathroom to play while showering. (Who needs an LED bulb that can stream music?). This will probably be the way the Play one will be used at my house as my wife likes to play music while getting ready in the morning. The design of the play one is also very bold without being flashy. It was designed to be put in small places like on a shelf or a book case to be out of the way but to give you great sound so your music is always a joy to hear. There is a choice of black or white. I choose the Black for both units as it will go more with the decor we have through out the house. Once I did setup the Play units in their place they did look like they belonged and matched well. If you didn’t know they were there you might mistake them for just some kind of decor!

The Sonos Play 5 is the big bad Boss of a speaker from them and it has some large sounds to come from it. It has 3 large subwoofers and the sound from it is really impressive. It is designed in such a way that you can stand it horizontal or Vertical and the music sounds good either way. I have set my Horizontal and it sits in my living room at the far end. I have an open floor plan and when I crank it up the music flows right into the kitchen and even upstairs and sounds dynamic. If you sit upstairs and close a door it sounds like you live above a dance club. Before I got the Play 1 I went in the back yard and turned the volume up full blast and when opened the screen door, the neighbors wanted to know if they could borrow my system for a party! They said with sound like that you don't even need to bring it over, just open your door and face it outside and let us send you songs to play! Yes this thing can PUMP! I have set up both units so they play together and for the moment the Play 1 is in the office which is around the corner from the kitchen. This makes for a very wonderful sounding setup which you don't need to turn up loud to make sure you can hear it while your doing things in the kitchen. You can also purchase a 2nd Play 5 to put with the first one and then they automatically play in stereo mode with a right and left channel. I listen to a lot of Electronic dance music and rock and both sound so great. All the little sounds that are in a song can be heard clearly even while the bass is thumping along.
If you want to get a speaker that can give you great sound and is easy to setup and doesn't look out of place with your decor the Sonos is the way to go. People asked me why I did not look at Bose for a speaker but I did and I liked the support of more apps and options that came along with the Sonos. Plus the support is top notch. I think if your in the market for a new speaker for your home you cannot go wrong with any of the 3 options from Sonos.

Greatness is achievable.

2017-05-06T07:33:00.001-04:00

Think about greatness, it is attainable. But it means showing up everyday ready to work and not slacking off. It means going the extra mile and making sure your work is done correctly and efficiently. You can not slow down, you can not take it easy. You must work diligently and be as detail oriented as possible. You must be able to anticipate problems before they arise and be able to come up with a quick solution when needed. You must be able to keep your temper in check and respond without prejudice when a client is upset or angry. You must be able to be like a mentor and help those working alongside you. You must learn new skills and be able to implement them and show that you are a resource of knowledge and expertise.

Start with your body. Go to bed early Rise early, work out and get in shape! Eat well avoid the crap, for it will kill you eventually and take away from your greatness

Your mind, stay focused, keep calm and carry on as they say. Do not get riled up at the small bumps in the road. Take detailed notes if you must to remember things. Think of how you speak to others and how you respond to criticism.

Don't be nervous around Upper managers. They are just people just like you are. They may have a title in their name, but they are just people and were once on your side of the fence so to speak. They need you to assist them with technology. That is why you started down this path right? You know technology and you want to be able to help people learn it, master it, become one with it. You want them to be able to use technology and all its tools to get work done faster and more efficiently. People will look to you to help make it simple for them to understand. They need your help cutting through the garbage that is thrown at them when it comes to technological terms and megabyte this and gigawatt that. You need to be able to explain to them in a way they can follow and understand the point you are getting across.
Some people are just nervous around technology. Understand that and help them to remove a little of that fear when using technology. Show them “Hey, You got this!” Now they can do something that helps them get their job done.

Man can do anything he wants. You can go anywhere you want on this journey. Just work hard, and don't slack off, and keep an open mind. You can be great, at this and at anything you want. Just do it. You can sleep when you're dead!

What is the best thing to learn in the IT field to advance your career?

2017-05-06T06:55:00.000-04:00

I have been working in the IT field now for 20 years. I have learned a lot of new technologies and seen a lot of changes in the way we use computers every day. One thing that I was trying to figure out is what to someone with my skill set should try to learn next. I have a lot of experience with Servers and cloud as well as experience with network infrastructure and and now VOIP and telephone configuration and support. If your at this level you may need to learn something new that will make you valuable if you were to branch out. I thought maybe someone should go about a certification in one technology but those are easily outdated and tend to be hard to obtain. Plus if you land in a new company that does not use that technology now you have spent all that money and time and get no benefit from it. Perhaps doing a combo of things is worth time such as the theory of support like the ITIL certification. This certification covers the codes of practice when it comes to supporting computers in large environments. According to many online sites, Comptia's group of certs can give you a very well rounded foundation. You can do A+ which says computer hardware and software are a specialty of yours and this certification is one of the first ones that IT people go for. It is relatively inexpensive to go after and does not take a large amount of time to study for and pass. Also with this cert you can go for the network version which is network+ which gives you a well rounded view of networking and how it all connects and works. This is a little more challenging to get and there is more studying you have to do to get the understanding down. If you can get hands on for this and the A+ it makes it that much easier to get the certs. Comptia also has the Security+ which proves you are knowledgeable about security and how to keep an enterprise secure on their network and the internet. The other one they have is the Cloud+ and Cloud essentials. The cloud essentials is an overview of using a cloud computing and isn't a very technical certification to get. This is a good one for anyone to get once they work in a cloud connected office to show they have the knowledge of how the cloud works and how it brings value to the company they work for. Then you can go for Cloud+ after that. This one is a little more challenging. This cert validated the skills of IT practitioners in the ability to implement and maintain cloud technologies.
These are some certifications that can help you get to the next level in your career and make sure to tell potential companies that you know your stuff and can bring them value right from the start of your employment with them. Now if your in a company and you find out they are going to start implementing Cisco networking gear then by all means start hitting up the Cisco training to get the Certs from them. Or if you know you will be supporting Microsoft servers with your current or future companies then try to go after the Microsoft certs like MCSE. These tests are all expensive and if your taking multiple tests to pass a certification like MCSE then you have to pay for each test you take and this will add up. One perk some companies have is they will pay to have you take the test or reimburse you the cost of the exam. If your with a company that will do that then you should go for as many as you can handle. With this benefit the retests down the road cost less so you can get a retest cheaper and do not have to pay out so much to re certify. There are a lot of free sites out there that share some information about the exams you are looking into. Some of them offer free study guides or low cost guides that you can purchase. Again, if your company offers to reimburse you for training then get the study guides. They are a valuable tool in preparing for the exams as most guides have great summary pages alerting you to the most important things to concentrate your study on. Its also best to check out where you can get the best deal for the books you will need to read. (I hope you have room on your book shelf and it can hold heavy books!) You can find deals on the exam books and some places you can find deals on slightly used copies of the book so your cost is lower to prepare.
There is some great certifications out there that can prove to companies that you keep current and have a high set of skills when it comes to IT. There is many ways to tackle the exams and great study guides to help you pass and become certified. It just takes time and dedication and to remember that it will only help you to achieve the next step in your Career.

Samsung S7 Edge One day something Pink appeared

2017-04-08T09:11:00.004-04:00

I was fortunate enough to be given a samsung Galaxy S7 Edge by my company to test drive. My motorola was older and had old software that was not being updated, and the battery started to really go downhill. So I swapped my SIM card and started using the Samsung. What a wonderful phone! Bright beautiful screen as Samsung is known for the best displays. My battery life lasted a day and a half almost (a little less if I was really hitting the phone hard) and the phone never hesitated or got stuck. The phone worked as a phone should work and I finally thought I found THE perfect phone. All the apps ran great and did not eat up a bunch of memory, the camera took some of the best pictures just as nice as my Motorola Droid Turbo pictures used to come out. The phone came with a Commuter Otter case and was in perfect condition. That was 6 months ago, then one day something showed up on the display. An uninvited pink line showed up on the right side and ran down the entire length of the display. I was horrified, I did not drop the phone, it ran in a case all the time, how could this happen what did I do?
I locked my phone and placed it on my desk next to me where it sat unused for a few hours as I was at work and busy with help desk issues. Lunch time came around, I had to run some errands so i grabbed the phone and went to the car. I took the phone out and unlocked it ready to connect the AUX cable to steam some music while driving, wait a minute... where is that pink line? Its gone! What the heck??? I locked the phone a few times and unlocked it wondering what was going on. Then put it out of my mind and went about the rest of my day. The phone was used more the rest of the day and the pink line was gone. I started to chalk it up to maybe it needed a reboot and so I rebooted it that evening back at home. The next day I woke up and unplugged my phone from the charger. I had to check for some emails and so I unlocked the phone and HELLO!! "Hello my name is pinky mcliney and Ill be your riding shot gun on the right side of your phone..." So there it is again. I was mystified I figured I must have done something to cause this and I wasn't sure what, I became convinced that I just had to go through the company warranty and get the phone repaired or replaced and I had a feeling that I may have a denied claim if they said well you dropped it and caused that. I was not looking forward to switching back to my old phone as it now felt outdated and slow. And I was really looking forward to getting the Android 7.0 Nougat on this Samsung to see what it would do.
Fast forward a week goes by and Pinky (the pink line) shows up a few times on and off, I found if I touched the upper right part of the screen it sometimes went away and stayed away for a long time. I did not go to warranty yet, I decided to live with it and I would go to support if it got worse. But then I was looking up stories for my blog and came across a post that said the same issue with the pink line. It was a story about people having the pink lines,
http://wccftech.com/galaxy-s7-edge-display-pink-line/

I was elated sort of, I didn't cause this? Is it a manufacture defect? Apparently so. I read more and more looking at people's comments waiting to see a long list of people who sent the phone back and got a replacement with no hassle. I did not find that. Instead there were a couple like that, but then others who said they were charged for the repair or told a high cost to replace. Then there were more reports of the pink line, ON THE REPLACEMENT DEVICES PEOPLE RECEIVED! So this is a bigger issue than I first thought. Guess what, my phone is still with me. I'm waiting on doing anything about pinky. The rest of the phone works still just as good as it first did 6 months ago. Even the battery is still holding up. My co worker who heads our mobile administration asked me the other day about the phone and if I wanted to get a warranty claim going, I told him no, and told him the stories and the news I found through my research. He agreed that was the best course of action, keep a wait and see stance to find out if Samsung was going to officially acknowledge the defect. So far they have not said anything and there is still an issue and people are not getting answers when they speak to Samsung outside the normal canned tech support responses.
I am a fan of Samsung, I have some of their televisions, I have the washer and dryer (yes it was the washer that had the off balance defect) I have almost all Samsung monitors for all of my computers as well as some of my family's computers. I tell everyone the best screens for a computer are from Samsung. But the company is starting to become a worry to me and my ability to recommend them to everyone is becoming less and less. They did fix the washer quickly, I had a warranty visit from a tech and a new bigger S screw was installed to keep the unit from breaking apart. But that issue along with the pink line issue, along with the Note 7 Battery issue and even some reports about bad TV software glitches has made it harder to trust that Samsung is doing QA well enough and will be able to make great products again that don't have defects. I watched the Galaxy S8 unboxed event. I heard the vow made by the Samsung Executive to get better at this and learn from the Note 7. I watched the video about how they are testing batteries and saw the stress test they run. It makes me feel a little better about Samsung. But this issue with the pink line needs to be addressed. Tell your customers if you can fix it. Tell us you at least have an engineer looking at it. Work with customers on a case by case basis if needed and try to fix or replace the phone. If you cannot fix the issue then at least have some kind of upgrade for the customers. Even if not a full replace to a new device if the customers device is a little older, then just provide the customers with some kind of better discount on a new phone. The Note 7 was a safety issue, the washing machine was a safety issue. This does not appear to cause the phone to become unsafe to use but it is a huge defect and makes the using of the phone more cumbersome it aggravates the user when it should not have to.
In a way it IS a safety issue...to the Safety of Samsung and their future sales and loyal customers. Samsung if you do not acknowledge this or look into it for your customers, they are going to turn away in droves. It will make your customers pause before they buy that beautiful new S8 and S8+ you came out with. Even corporate customers who love the Samsung devices, will edit their policies and tell their sales reps, "Show me all the Android devices but take Samsung out of the search" I think if this pink line is at least discussed by Samsung and acknowledged it will help. if you tell us it will take time to fix but you are looking at it, it will help us feel like you really care. Don't be a company that just bets on your name and won't take the time to listen to your customers. Help us get rid of the pink line AKA"Pinky Mcliney"

When buying networking equipment cheap is not always the way to go

2017-03-18T10:21:00.003-04:00

There is an old saying "Cheap is not always good, and good is not always cheap" This holds very true when looking at networking products. A lot of these products send your data through your network and get it to the computers for the users to see and use. If you purchase a product that turns out to be poorly designed, you will find your self with a lot of angry calls at the help desk and wonder why. I have seen cases where the users do not consult their help desk and they go out and buy a piece of equipment and buy the cheapest one they can find. Then they hook it up and have problems with connectivity and call the help desk to find out why. Those routers that are 39.99, there is a reason they are that price. They are not good. They will not last, or they have limited features, or they break down every other day. I had a case where a company who I worked for did this very thing. We had provided them with a medium grade business router. It had a dual WAN connection so you could have 2 internet providers for redundancy and it had some decent features on it to manage the device even from a remote location. It was a major name brand and was about 4 years old. It had come time to replace the device but before we were able to it stopped working leaving the users unable to connect to the internet or their cloud to do work. So rather than call the help desk and let us work with them to try to resolve the issue they went to the store and bought a 39 dollar consumer grade router. I don't even remember what the name was, it was a brand I had never even heard of. So they brought it back to the office and plugged it in and put the old one off to the side. Now not only did they run it without changing any configuration leaving it vulnerable to be hacked into, they did not have any idea that we had special settings in the old device telling it how to send data to specific devices that needed to be configured in a special way. Now keep in mind, at this location we have a monitor tool connected remotely that pings their internet connection and reports if the ping stops working. So in the morning I was alerted the site went down and saw it drop out. I reached out to the office to inquire if they were having issues and offer support but the person had already left to go to the store to buy the device. It was a small office with 3 people and 2 of them were out that day. So about an hour goes by and I see the monitor tell me they are back online, so I figure ok they had an internet issue from their provider and the provider fixed it. Great! Nothing to worry about....
What followed was half a day troubleshooting and trying to get things working with that junk device the users purchased! I almost immediately found out that they had switched out the device and because the IP scheme was different, printers that went by IP address could not find the network. The old setup had 192.168.0.X and the new device had the way too popular 192.168.1.X So I had to go in and change that setting to fix that problem. Then I had to adjust the DHCP to go from 100 to 200 not 2 to 150.... Those were easy fixes and after changing the WiFi built in to match what they used to have with the same password (which was pretty secure with numbers and symbols) things were looking up. Then I came to the part to add in firewall rules to forward ports to their respective devices... If you never did this basically you tell the router, if you see traffic coming from a port named 1088 for example: send that data to this address, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. That tells the router to take the traffic and send it to a specific device that needs data from the specific port address. This would have maybe worked if the developer working on the software for this router was not a complete bone head, who never worked with computers before... The interface to do this was mind boggling and even after I figured out what the hell they were trying to convey on the menus, the programming I put in to allow this did not work. So now the remote IP phones that were at worker's homes would not work. They had an IP based phone system and needed the workers to be able to work from home so we had implemented a PBX that would allow this. Sadly this would never work due to the poorly designed router, and we needed it sooner rather than later, as it was December in the North east and this area was prone to 20 inch snow storms... Now at this point, 3 hours into the call your ready to ask the user, why the **** did you go and buy this piece of **** without consulting me first???? But you cannot do that it is frowned upon and will cause tension on the other side of the phone call. Instead you must mute your phone take 3 deep breaths and then explain to them that they must hobble along today until you can overnight them the correct router they need to have their network run at optimal performance. You must also pray that there is a unit in stock in your storage and hope you can configure it and get it out the door to shipping by 3 pm... Luckily for this office, I did have a new unit in stock and was able to put all the settings in they needed, and was able to apply the latest firmware to give the device all the best security and feature patches the device manufacturer had. The only downside was the device was just a firewall/router without WiFi so they would have no WiFi as the WiFi units that tie together were not in stock and back ordered. The users were fine with this and said WiFi is not a huge deal and they could work without it for a few days. The silver lining on this was that when they got the new router that I sent over, we found a huge wiring issue that was causing network drops and the old router was not smart enough to tell them about it, but the new one did detect it in a rather off the wall way and thanks to its error logs I was able to find out this wire issue and have a tech go out and fix it. Now you might ask, "OK they spent 39.99 on the crap consumer grade router, how much did yours cost, 500 dollars? 750 dollars? 1000 dollars? Is it a large brand name that is huge and popular? "
No, the router we sent out is a Mid grade enterprise device and costs roughly 300 bucks with a 2 year warranty, that also includes a cloud log in to manage the device and there is no additional cost for that feature. So we didn't go top of the line for this new device but we did not go cheap either. Our idea has always been to get the users good hardware that will last, and suite the needs of the office without being too expensive and try to be future proof at the same time. The device we gave them fits that bill to a T and the company that makes it has been updating its firmware to add more features to give them more usability. These devices have been put into 95 percent of our locations we help manage and we don't have too many break down. We always try to make sure the locations know to contact us before they go and buy something so we can get them the right equipment. Spending money for a good product even if it is more money is always better in the long run when it comes to IT and hardware. You will improve the reliability of the network for users, and cut down on user frustration and wasted time calling the Help desk to fix an issue. So remember, Cheap is not always good and good is not always cheap.

Lenovo T460s Ultra book review

2017-03-06T15:58:00.001-05:00

I was able to get my hands on one of Lenovo's newer ultrabooks to check out and test drive, the T460S. At 3 pounds with a nice clear 14 inch screen it is a perfect weight and size to take on trips and not be a heavy shoulder partner while standing in most lines during travel.

This model sports an i7 Cor Vpro running 2.6 GHZ and has 12 gigs of ram. It also has a 500GB ssd drive which helps keep things running very quick. This mix of hardware makes for a fast booting and fast running PC. The average boot time is about 14 seconds from a cold start! So shutting this unit down is not an issue you will be up and running in seconds when you start back up. The SSD drive is fast and roomy. I ran some antivirus scans and told it to do a full scan and it was done in a matter of minutes. File tranfers through a network drive were rapid and easy and the amount of storage is great to hold just about anything you would need without having to rely on much cloud storage for space saving.
This model also has a fingerprint scanner next to the track pad that works very well. In Windows 10 just program some fingers through the wizard and you can just press a finger to log in. The pad is very accurate and its not hard to line up your finger to log in like other models. The track pad is the standard lenovo track pad with the buttons at the top and they have their unique red tracker ball that can really make you a speed demon if you take the time to learn how to use that plus the top buttons. The track pad is very responsive and a double tap is accurate and does not make you over click when moving files and doing point and click applications. The track pad also does not suffer from the "palm touch" like others that move your cursor around as your trying to type and you lazily rest your palms near the track pad. The keyboard is a very comfortable keyboard to use for long periods of time and should be acceptable to fast touch typists. The layout and spacing is good enough to allow for some speed typing when needed for crunch time when projects are due.

The laptop comes with plenty of ports, not like those other brands that try to force you to use one port for everything in the name of space saving!
There is 3 USB 3.0 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI port as well as a memory card slot. The power connector is Lenovos Square design which seems to be a little more sturdy than the typical round power ports. There is also a headphone jack and a display port adapter. The laptop also has a dock port on the bottom so it can be docked to Lenovo's docking station. This makes for a true desktop replacement for a travelling user and gives them an easier time using a larger display with the laptop.

There is also a 720P Hd webcam for better conferencing. I have not used this as I do not do web cam meetings so I cannot comment on how this works. Battery life is very good, they claim up to 18 hours of battery life but the milage may vary depending on how you use the notebook. I average a full day of battery roughly about 8 hours before I need a charge. Less if I am travelling and using more of my power hungry applications. The battery life and the weight were the 2 biggest factors that made me select this unit has my every day laptop. I was tired of a 4 to 6 pound monster on my shoulders and I wanted to have more battery life to be able to charge less than I was. The only drawback I have is some cloud applications when you log into their interface they have tenancy to run small so if you have issues seeing small fonts this could hinder your using some cloud applications on the unit. I mostly work on the local side when travelling so it is not a big deal to me. All in all this is a really great laptop for any road warrior and Lenovo designed an ultra book that is durable and lightweight but can get you through a whole day of work without needing a recharge.

Distractions and Information Technology

2017-02-25T11:14:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine who is in accounting told me he read a lot of articles on being more productive and avoiding distraction. So he said he is going to try a bunch and tell me the best ones then send them over if they seemed to help. I am of a skeptical nature so I figured he would come back and tell me none of them worked. I read some of those same articles and lots of times I think they are just not practical for real world working conditions. Well he came back and said some of them really helped him and he sent me some links to read.

One of them was how to avoid distractions and stay focused… Ok sure. Some great tips in there, keep your office clean and well lit and post a quiet Mantra that you can look at and try to calm yourself with. But the rest of them are not ideal for anyone in the Information Technology world. One tip was to turn off the internet… that is where all the links are that I need to do my job! All my monitoring tools and all my remote connections to different locations all come from some links in the interwebs. Next tip: Turn off your cell phone. Not possible. Sadly if you have 4 ways for someone to reach you when you are in a support role in IT they will find a fifth way and reach you there! Facebook and tweeting, no that’s out, I do not use them and I try to avoid them I know they are worthless and time drains when working. But texts I do get occasionally. However I make sure to tell them to call the help line or send an email. You cannot track a text or store it for future reference and that is important. So I make sure to manage the person and help them understand that yes text is fast but we don’t do text for support.

Now lots of studies are coming out and saying now that Multi tasking really doesn’t work and it sometimes hurts productivity rather than help. I can agree with that and I can understand that but when it comes to support for IT multitasking is a must and it happens. Trying to concentrate on one task at a time is the best way but does not always work in the IT world. As you’re focusing on trying to clean up an active directory list, a server might go down that you cannot wait on, so you have to become good at marking where you left off and be able to pivot really quickly to that server problem to fix it. Or a phone system might stop working at a location you manage while you’re trying to write up some technical reference guides for your team, save that document, you need to fix that phone system and figure out what the issue is. So yes is multitasking bad? Maybe but when it comes to support work in IT you don’t have a choice. Many things happen at once and you have to be able to stop and jump into whatever event has arisen and resolve the crisis.

I started reading the other article that he sent over and it was something about the habits of productive people. I read the first 2 bullets and stopped right there. The article says email is a big time waster. Don’t do it in the morning. This is also not possible in a support role, tickets come by email. Important vendor related issues come by email, Internet providers send new install contracts by email. Email is a vital function for IT. Maybe for a journalist or someone else it’s just junk and you can dictate that email is done later, but not in IT. I do however agree with one thing: If the email goes more than 2 replies, pick up the phone to resolve, emails will get things confused and can be a lazy way out. The last thing I read on that article made me laugh and it sounds completely made up like the author is trying to scare people. It said: Changing tasks more than 10 times a day drops your I.Q. 10 points. If that is the case than after 20 years of IT work, I should have no memory left and not be able to remember my own phone number… Wrong! I remember lots of stuff, and to keep myself sharp I challenge myself to use my brain. I do not use a password manager. I use different passwords and force myself to remember them without writing them down if possible. I strive to remember phone numbers and account numbers, and even how the boss takes his coffee! That is a soft skill of critical thinking that I like to make sure is always sharp and ready. So I do not think that statement is true and that article was deleted without being fully read through.

One thing that I did read, I found on my own and I sent it over to my buddy. He really liked what is said and was going to try to live it. I was going to work on living it too; I felt it was a powerful message. That is even if you’re doing a task that to you seems trivial and meaningless in your job, do it 110 percent. Strive to do everything at 110 percent no matter what it is, do not take shortcuts. This was advice given by a very successful CEO, who started his career as a waiter and was struggling to break into his field. He had an epiphany while jogging one day and realized he was taking lots of shortcuts and wondered if that held him back. He stopped taking shortcuts and became very successful. He said to this day that same restaurant where he was a waiter; he still holds the record for most steak sales in one night! He worked there almost 20 years ago! This article was wakeup call to me. I know I took shortcuts and on some tasks I did not enjoy I did just enough to get it done and did not give them much thought. I stopped and reevaluated how I did things and even posted the quote on my wall above my monitors so I could see it and make sure to always remember it. Even the trivial tasks might get you recognized for hard work and put you on a successful path if you strive to do them the best way you can.
So is multitasking bad for you? Do you take shortcuts? How can you just improve your overall career in small ways that help you strive to be greater? These are just some of the things to think about, as you grumble to yourself about having to go through that stack of bills that need to be paid. 110%...

The IT Team are the unsung hero's of today's workplace.

2016-06-05T09:50:00.003-04:00

The Information Technology Team are the unsung heroes of today's work place. You may not always see them or know everyone in the group. You may never see them come in during the morning, because they have come in early before everyone came in and they left late at night well after everyone went home. All the upgrades and the improvements that your computers and network needs has to be done with minimal disruptions during the day. So all those upgrades have to be done late at night. And if it breaks while being done then the IT team has to stay there until it's fixed. Sometimes that's an all nighter.
You may walk past their desk and see papers all askew and see them staring intently at their monitor. You may wonder if they are working on something or just reading about the next installment of The Walking dead. Believe me they are working. They might be looking at multiple monitors and be looking at multiple things at once. One screen may have a chart showing the network performance as things go to and from the office via the internet off your network. The other may have a desktop display of a server in another state and the person is trying to figure out why it keeps rebooting when no one asks it to. IT people have a lot on their plate just like everyone else. Lots of times they are working on 2 or 3 things at once because they have so much going on. Especially if they are understaffed like many are. Companies do not like to spend as much money as they should on IT because they feel there is no return on investment. If only they understood that all that time the IT crew spent upgrading the network really does make a difference for the performance of people being able to get to their information faster. If only they knew that expense for that new backups server already saved data that almost was lost because a server crashed during a busy budget time. You cannot put a price on some of that data so its hard to show a dollar expense for it.
IT people constantly have to think ahead and anticipate possible issues. If you see an IT person deep in thought they may be wondering about that small glitch in one server that makes the printer stop printing at times. It hasn’t happened in weeks but the IT person is thinking about it and trying to figure out what causes it to stop it before it happens again. IT people sometimes stay up laying in bed wide awake wondering about why something broke that day and what caused it and how to fix it from happening again. IT people have to think on their feet and when faced with multiple issues at once they must be able to figure out the one to go after first that is the most critical. You may not think that issue is the one that should be looked at first but there is a reason why they went for it first.
If you have a decent IT person at your company then make sure you thank them for their hard work. A good IT person is hard to find and they just want to know someone appreciates the work they put into keeping the IT running smoothly.

Toshiba Tecra A50 Laptop review

2016-05-14T09:17:00.000-04:00

My HP laptop that I have used for the last 3 years for work was getting old but still running well. We just got a refresh of Toshiba laptops which is our company standard. So I traded mine in to check the toshiba out and it has been a good trade off. Gone is the bulky tecra a50 of last year and in its place is a sleek light weight machine that has a lot of great features for its price point.

The Tecra A50C is powered by an Intel Core i5-6200U CPU. Mine is clocked at 2.30GHZ and comes standard with 4 GB of DDR3 ram. I was able to upgrade to 8 GB of ram to make sure all my server and cloud usage would not tax the machine while on the road. There is a 500GB Toshiba hard drive for storage and it is 7200RPM and works very quick to shuffle data around and has a great transfer rate. An Intel chip set powers the network connections which includes AC capable WiFi and gigabit Ethernet for being wired into the network.

On the left side you can see you have your Ethernet port along with 2 USB 3 ports and the head phone jack. A slim line DVD Burner completes the line up for the left side items.

On the right side you have your ac adapter plug in which is a smaller power brick to keep weight down. Then you have a fan vent for cooling along with your VGA and HDMI inputs for monitors and projectors. 2 more USB 3 slots round out the right side and then a SD Card slot for memory cards. They did away with the worthless dust cover for the SD card slot which is a good thing, one less thing to get lost as you transport your laptop to and from.

The keyboard has been completely redesigned and the key spacing is very well done. HP has always been number 1 for me with keyboard layouts but this toshiba really shines when you need to do some heavy typing. Also gone is the horrible track pad of old that used to click randomly even if your palms sat no where near it. The new track pad is a full featured pad that has built in right and left click buttons and feels very fluid and smooth to move and click with. There is also a track ball and keys if your used to the track ball coming from a Lenovo laptop. Both work very well to move around the screen and the amount of mis clicks is very minimal. Im just now getting used to the scrolling which makes more sense to scroll with 2 fingers on the pad rather than one finger on the far right of the pad as HP used to have setup.
The lower part of the laptop below the track pad has a very well placed finger print reader that works very well once setup. You can use Toshiba's finger print software to manage log ins or you can use Windows Hello which was very easy to setup and execute. Did I mention the keyboard is backlit? That alone sold me on swapping my laptop. I sometimes sit in bed at night with the laptop (Yeah I know blue light is killing my sleep and all...) And being able to find the keys and see them easier is very convenient. Most laptops at this 800-900 dollar price point should have this feature and some do not.

Lets discuss the one thing that is my most important feature in a new laptop and that is the battery life. It has to get me 6 hours or more to win my approval and my old laptop only did that with the help of a larger capacity battery that was bulky and added more weight to carry around. Thankfully this laptop is powered by a 45 Watt 4 cell battery that can achieve 6 hours of usage with medium screen brightness which is more than easier to see while typing away. The charge time can be long as now I ran the battery completely down for the first time and the chart is telling me it will charge fully in 2 and a half hours. The battery is removable so you could buy an extra to keep with you for long travel if your not going to be near an outlet for a while.

There is DTS studio sound and the speaker is very loud and crisp. No tinny sounding videos for the traveling professional! The screen is a 15.6 inch HD TFT LED Backlit screen and has 1366x768 screen resolution and supports 720p content, 16:9 aspect ratio. Pictures and videos are very clear and crisp and the Intel video chipset has a world of features if you want to tweak color settings and gamma options. There are also plenty of power settings that can be used to tweak the most juice from the battery to keep the laptop going longer when away from a power source.

The laptop has the docking station connector on the bottom and is compatible with the same docking station as last years model which is a savings of not having to buy a new docking station.
The laptop configuration that we order comes with the Windows 7 downgrade installed and the discs included if you want to upgrade to Windows 10. Being that my home desktop runs windows 10 and has no issues I did a quick backup of Windows 7 and upgraded to Windows 10 as soon as I setup the machine. My settings for my profile carried right over and the performance of the system felt very snappy and bug free. I have been using the laptop heavy for the last few weeks and it has not given me issues yet.
Did I mention its light? A mere 5 pounds which is a great thing when travelling. I already have a lot of weight with my extras in my bag and this will help keep the shoulder from complaining much when carrying around the laptop in the bag. Its light enough to walk around with and hold to look at the screen if there is no table or chair to rest it on while working. The build quality feels very solid and the tecra series was always well designed for long life and usage for the business professional. Some might say "why no touch screen?" Well our configuration we build we opted out of that as its not needed in the line of work we are in and it would possible confuse some of our end users while they were working in the cloud. I am also not sure that I personally would use it that much.
All in all this is a very solid laptop and a great value to purchase and use if you need a lighter laptop and something that is durable and will last for some time.
What are some of your favorite models laptops that you use for work? Comment and let me know.

How long will this go on?

2015-11-07T08:04:00.001-05:00

How long will this oppression go on? How long will the leaders who cant lead go untouched? Why do people allow this to continue to go on? Will it ever get better?
these are a few of my questions as I take a drag of my cigarette and scan the current news for the day on my local paper. I glanced up and looked all around at the sea of faces before me. many reading the stories I just had read and I did not see one face get angry with rage at the injustices their eyes just scanned. Everyone just sat there sipping their coffees and let that story sit. Some scrolled across things on their phones not seeming to be interested in the news that will affect them greatly. The shop was busy during the morning rush of people looking to get their caffeine fix before starting the day. It was warm on this autumn day. But the sun was fighting for space in the sky with the clouds. The week before had brought heavy rains and ran off fears of droughts. Now this week we were starting to see the autumn weather we all loved. Crisp air with bright zaps of color as leaves fell down from the trees. It was cold enough to run the heat in the morning but then you turned it off in the afternoon and maybe fired it up again in the evening.
I had spent the previous evening on the phone trying to convince my attorney that we should start a class action suit against a company making sub par parts on a popular vehicle. He tried to tell me that my thinking was out of line and my drinking was blurring my thoughts. I argued my case back and fourth with him for half the evening but in the end he finally gave up and hung up on me. Wait till he sends me his latest bill. Ill make sure it gets lost in the mail. I am sure this company should get heavy fines and lots of bad press. They cannot keep making these cars so shitty. Never mind the safety impact but the people will stop buying them and then they will complain that they cant compete in the global market place. The auto market place is a rough place to be in right now. Every one is cut throat with their pricing and if you don't give the customer the best bang for the buck your sales will fall. I decided to go look for a new car after I finished my coffee.
I dropped a tip on the table and left the coffee shop. A few moments later I was zooming down Smith street at 80 miles an hour looking to beat that god awful red light that comes up suddenly. I got through it as it was pink... Some honking and a few angry drivers, eh, let em bitch! I decided to head over to the car shops at North street. At least there I could get a good selection of cars from all the dealerships and see which one I wanted to buy. I was thinking a new BMW was in order.. I had grown tired of this red Audi with the turbo charger. Maybe I would go with a 7 series with some nice leather. It had been a while since I got leather in a car. I stopped getting it because the heat from the summer sun made sitting in shorts so unbearable. Too many days I had spent driving a useless car that I hated to drive. Now that I have the choice and the power to choose what I want I will always buy the car that I want without settling. If it does not have all the features I want, then I am not buying it. If i want it to have a button press that flips off the person behind me then i better have that option to put that in. Otherwise the car is not for me. Since I came into this fortune I have become the annoying consumer that most sales people don't want to deal with. Because I know exactly what I want and you cannot upsell me unless I planned to go all out on that item anyway. And I'm pushy. If I don't like you I will tell you and you will not be selling me anything. Ill go to a different sales person and ill keep moving around till I find the one that I want to deal with.
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Are smart devices causing us attention issues?

2015-10-21T16:28:00.000-04:00

You see it all the time. Your out eating and you look over and there is a family of 4 at the other table. No one is looked at each other because they all have their noses buried in their phones. Then you keep watching and one of them asks a question to the other person and the answer is "HUH?" Then they are trying to place their order with the waitress and they cant accurately convey the message of what they want so they get upset and blame the waitress as if its her fault they cannot speak correctly.
Mobile devices have given us unlimited access to countless Gigabytes of data. But what cost does this come with? The ability to work anywhere and look up anything at any place is an awesome concept. But does it cause us to forget common logic and keep us working at times when we should be doing our own things? People tend to lose the ability to unplug and disconnect and take time for themselves. I have done this before and now make sure I take time for myself and let the phone beep and buzz with its updates. I tell myself "we can check them later". Same goes for the other way too. The person sending the email at 1 am may even expect a response, smart devices have created this effect as well. People send messages and think the other person is looking at their data 24/7 no matter what time it is.
I have talked to people of all ages and noticed those who grew up with this technology and use it heavily seem to have some difficulty speaking to people face to face. I do feel that these devices take away the ability for people to communicate if smart devices are used at a younger age. Now there may be classes that will be taught to reinforce proper communication and general conversation skills. But these may be a way off and will not get to all the people that need them now. Is limiting children from using these devices frequently a good way to stop this? Perhaps setting an age limit to say 12 before introducing children to these devices. By this age, they should already have developed decent communication skills and have been through quite a bit of English and grammar teachings.
Smart devices are here to stay, but we need to make sure they do not make us dumb at the same time! People need to learn to "unplug" and truly go off line to relax and keep stress from work to a minimum.

Your post here!

2015-09-28T20:43:00.001-04:00

As I posted on my Facebook page, I want the audience to suggest a topic for me to blog on that is tech related. It mayb be something I don't know much about. If it is I will research it and find out more about it and post about it. I love to learn and read about new things and always enjoy expanding my knowledge. My goal for this portal is for it to be a place for people to come and discuss technology. I want the audience to give their feedback and post their love of tech. So think about something you want to read about, suggest it and I will look it up and post a blog about it.
https://www.facebook.com/50shadesgeek

Even if you love your career frustration can set in...

2015-07-25T09:23:00.000-04:00

There comes a point in every career that you start to have bad days and start to think things, like why do I do this? What is my goal? Do I even want to do this anymore? Does what I do matter to anyone?
If you job is high stress this can come on quicker than in other fields. When it comes to the IT Field you can face high stress almost every day. I started feeling like this about a month ago. The calls would come into the help desk and while trying to deal with those I was doing other projects that required a lot of attention to detail that I could not provide because I was on the phone helping users and doing other things at the same time. I used to wake up and look forward to going to work and facing new challenges. Now I wake up and I have to talk myself into it. I knew there were a ton of projects that I needed to work on but I just did not have the drive. I felt like why bother, there will just be another one right after it and no one cares. Going back to a retail store to stock shelves all day seemed like a better alternative than this. Basically I forgot some of the most important things about myself.
I lost sight of why I got into this field. What I loved about it. What used to drive me to try to be better every day. I wasn't sure how to get it back. Even my co workers could see I was stressed out. I would normally just answer a question and talk a little about something related. Now they would get a one word answer and I was short and barked at them gruffly. I knew it wasn't right to do and they were all working as hard as me, but I felt like I was drowning.
But then one day something good happened. I had several calls in a row and everyone thanked me for my help and told me how wonderful I was to work with. How I always can get them out of a jam and that I was truly a valuable person to have at the desk. Then as I was going through helping people by email requests, they were each coming back saying the same thing. One person said, "I know you guys don't get the respect you deserve sometimes, but this office really appreciates all that your team does for us. That email got flagged and marked in a category called "keep going you're on the right path".... I then had a moment to myself, it was quiet on the desk and my projects were waiting on updates from others that would not come for at least a few hours, so I started cleaning out my desk drawers. They get to become a disaster If I don't try to keep up with them. As I was going through the one drawer a small card fell out, It was a thank you card I got one of the first years I started working there. The person had written up a small note thanking me for the amount of time I took to make sure her offices were up and running and how she was so thankful for the amount of time and effort I put into the task. She said I went above and beyond what was needed and she was thrilled. I had forgotten I had that card. So I put it on my desk near where all my papers sit that I have to work on every day so I could always see it.
I went home that night and made sure I replayed all the good comments and remarks I heard and read throughout the day in my head. I asked the important questions that needed to have answers to make it all clear, "Why do I do this work?" "What gave me my passion for this role so long ago?" I remembered how back when I first got into the computer field, I was not sure what I wanted to do, I didn't know where to start. There were a few people in my neighborhood I talked to all the time, I told them I was looking into getting into computer work. they all asked me for some small help on the computer. Basic stuff, how to get AOL to dial up right, (I know, no body remembers that stuff!) How to make Windows 98 run a little quicker. All small things I knew how to do. And each person was so happy I could help them in some small way. They all said I had great patience to work with them and I would go far in the field. I realized then that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be in a support role to help people with the computer. People need someone who can give them help stay focused and not get upset when its hard to explain to them how to do something. I remember how I would work hard on learning how to talk to people and explain technical things in a way they would understand. I felt better that night.
I woke up the next day and went back to work with a new recharged feeling. It was a hectic day, the desk was really busy. There were several issues going on that needed to be fixed with a few steps each time. I worked with every person until they were working and happy, I stayed calm, focused and did not feel stressed. I was enjoying the challenge. The day went by really quick. It was a great day. I made sure to remember how I felt that night and thought about more ways I could improve. I started reading about some new technology we were going to be using. I made sure to know how to work with it and thought about what issues I could face with this new stuff. I was back. It was great again.
So how do you get back to a place where you love what you do? I don't have all the answers but reminding your self of why you went into that field can help. Also get feed back from others. Find out what drives your peers in the field and why they started in the field as well. Ask co workers to evaluate you and tell you what they feel you need work on. When you have a bad day, before you leave, make sure to shake it off and leave it at work. Go home and doing something you love to do that has nothing to do with your work. Once you feel better try to think about the day and how things went. See if you can find ways to improve things. If you do that after working on a hobby or something you love to do, your mind set will be better and you can look back at the day with a fresh outlook and it may help you make the next day better. If you can do these things to help you feel better about your path again, you will start to have better days. It will bring you back to enjoying what you do again.