On behalf of CSI Onsite…thanks Mom.

Welcome back to the CSI Onsite blog! If this is your 1^st visit to our website, thanks for stoppin’ in! To get you up to speed and prepare you for this post may I suggest that you read these past blogs:

Creativity…the greatest resource

Creativity – “Artists find a way.”

More Creativity…the kind that changed summer forever.

After more exhaustive research into the world of scientific and technological inventions, I have uncovered more accidental discoveries, proof the creativity really does serve us as our greatest resource. And I want to share them with all y’all.

Before you read on, let me ask you a question; in your opinion what is one of the greatest accidental discoveries ever made? You can respond to this query in the Post a Comment section below the blog post. I look forward to reading your answers.

Are you ready to learn some interesting historical tidbits? Here we go!

The Color Mauve (Chemist Sir William Perkin-he was knighted in 1906)

Here is an instance where a scientist became famous and wealthy for non scientific reasons. 18 years old Chemist William Perkin was pursuing the big dream was to cure malaria. The year was 1856 and Perkin was working on an artificial form of quinine, yielding less than encouraging results. However, this young Englishman noticed the color of the dark, sludgy byproduct of his efforts. It was a unique shade of purple, a hot color among the fashionistas of that era. As William experimented with the sludge, he was able to isolate the compound that produced the color–mauve–and discovered how well it worked as a dye. Perkin patented his dye, the first synthetic/aniline dye ever made, and opened a company to make and sell it…all in a year’s time. Not bad for an 18 year old kid who screwed up his experiment.

Plastics-Bakelite (Chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland)

In 1907 shellac was used as insulation in electronics. It was costing the industry a pretty penny to import shellac, which was made from Southeast Asian beetles (made from the excretion of Lac beetles…I know, Icky!), and at home chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland thought he might turn a profit if he could produce a shellac alternative. Seriously, he entered the world of plastics for one reason, “to make money”…making shellac from a source other that the Lac beetle.

Instead his experiments yielded a very heat resistant, mold-able material that handle high temperatures without distorting.

Baekeland’s initial thought his “Bakelite” might be used for phonograph records, but it was soon clear that the product had thousands of applications. Bakelite was the dawn of the Plastics era we enjoy today.

See what you can do when you let creativity flow…this works in IT, corporate business, sales, carpentry, ministry, education, martial arts, as well as science.  Like my son says “Artists finds a way.” The next time you feel stuck or thing you have failed, sit back, take a breath, and let creativity lead you for a little bit. You just might find the next big discovery, and change your world.

Of course, if this happens, you will probably make a boat load of cash. Don’t forget your trusted blogging friend John at CSI Onsite who inspired you to press on…I expect a cut.

Mark W. & John after food packing at Feed My Starving Children. Completely unrelated to this post, but a dang funny picture.

Howdy campers!

We hope your week is moving along nicely, rather than  a week filled with   s   l   o   w   d   a   y   s.

At CSI Onsite we have had a very busy start to our week!  Some of our customers needed our help to troubleshoot hosting site issues and tele-com mishaps, so we’ve been a hoppin’ to keep them up and running. After some hard work by our amazing techs, so far – so good, everyone is up and running! I’m not bias, they really are that good…ask them, they’ll tell you it’s so. Or better yet go to our Buzz Page and read what our customers have to say.

Enough prattling about, to the Blog!!

I thought I’d break up your week and our routine of a weekly post by throwing in a quick productivity tip, something to increase your efficiency and decrease your fatigue.

Today’s tip, or should I say tips are all keyboard short cuts that you can use while a person is utilizing Google’s Gmail. I have been experimenting with these short cuts and have found that they do work quite nicely

If you are wondering why you would want to use keyboard short cuts…you haven’t been reading this blog longJ. Simply put keyboard shortcuts do two things:
- Saves you time.
- Saves you wear and tear on your hands, wrist, and should thus minimizing the risk of soft
tissue inflammation of your arm.

All of this is achieved because the short cuts reduce the number of movements, or number of times you take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. And these are fun to teach people in the office, at parties, well mostly in the office.

For you to use these short cuts you will need a few things

1. A Gmail account
2. A standard 101/102-key or natural PS/2 keyboard to use the shortcuts.
3. Some time to fiddle with the keyboard short cuts to learn how & when to use them.

Rather than creating my own table, I’m going to send you straight to the horse mouth. To access this information in your own Gmail account:

1. Click the gear icon in the upper right, and then select Settings.
2. Choose the option next to “Keyboard shortcuts” to turn them on. You can also enable shortcuts automatically by going to http://mail.google.com/mail/?kbd=1

You may also click of this link Gmail keyboard short cuts; this will take you to Gmail’s help page where they will not only tell you how to turn on the short cuts, but gives you a list of all of the short cuts available.

I hope you find this short post useful and maybe a little fun. Give the short cuts a try and let me know how they worked for you.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great rest of the week.  Come on back next week!!

Carrying on with the theme of our past few blog posts, let us explore another couple of incidents where discovery came about from the failed attempts at the desired outcome. My premise throughout theses posts is that your greatest resource in problem solving, project management, and even in entrepreneurialism, is creativity.

The greatest evidence supporting my premise is the plethora of everyday items, products, and companies that developed as the inventor did stop at failure. These “failures” thus became discoveries, many of which have shaped out culture over the past century.

Here are two more examples for your reading enjoyment.

Coca-Cola (Dr. John Pemberton)

May, 1886 – Coca Cola was invented by Doctor John Pemberton a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia. John Pemberton concocted the Coca Cola formula in a three legged brass kettle in his backyard.  He was trying to make a cure for headaches. Doctor Pemberton mixed together a whole mess of ingredients – nobody, except for the Coke folks know what they are, so don’t ask…they aren’t telling. The recipe is still a closely guarded secret. It only took eight years of being sold in a drug store before the drink was popular enough to be sold in bottles. The name was a suggestion given by John Pemberton’s bookkeeper Frank Robinson. As Robinson had excellent penmanship (common for bookkeepers of this era) he rendered the flowing letters that form the Coca-Cola logo so quickly recognized the world over.

But that’s not the end of how “Creativity found a way” with the Coke story. The soft drink was first sold to the public at the soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta on May 8, 1886. About nine servings of the soft drink were sold each day. Sales for that first year added up to a total of about $50. The funny thing was that it cost John Pemberton over $70 in expanses, so the first year of sales were a loss.

Enter Asa Candler another Atlanta pharmacist and businessman. In 1887, Asa bought the formula for Coca Cola from inventor John Pemberton for $2,300. By the late 1890s, Coca Cola was one of America’s most popular fountain drinks, largely due to Candler’s aggressive marketing of the product. With Asa Candler, now at the helm, the Coca Cola Company increased syrup sales by over 4000% between 1890 and 1900.
Tid-Bit:  Until 1905, the soft drink, marketed as a tonic, contained extracts of cocaine as well as the caffeine-rich kola nut.

Popsicles  (Frank Epperson)

Imagine this:  An 11 year old boy fancies himself a purveyor of liquid refreshments. He accidentally leaves one of his creations, with his stirring stick in the concoction, on his parents’ front porch overnight…a cold night. When the boy found his cup the next day, the liquid inside was frozen to the stick. At the time, he didn’t really know what to make of this occurrence.  That was in 1905.

Almost two decades later he patented his “frozen ice on a stick” and called it the “Eppsicle Ice Pop.”  Frank changed the name to “Popsicle” because his children liked that better (well, that’s the story anyway). Popsicle eventually ended up in the hands of Unilever (parent company of Good Humor) Frank’s original Popsicles came in 7 flavors. Today we have over 30.

Can you imagine a summer day without Popsicles? Me neither.

You know the old saying “the proof is in the pudding”? These are two tasty examples of this maxim. Well…I need to go; I want a bright green Popsicle.

Tune in next time for some more discoveries that came by way of creative handling of surprising outcomes.

Greetings from CSI Onsite and welcome to our blog page. Thanks for taking some time to explore our company through our website. Aside for this post, we have many other blogs that range anywhere from keyboard short cuts to reflections on Memorial Day in the U.S.A.  Mostly you will find tips that can increase your productivity as well as improve your computing experience.

If you are interested in what others say about CSI Onsite, check out our Buzz Page to read what our customers own words.

Now…on to the blog.

Last week our post was about one of the greatest resources available to us, Creativity. To reinforce this premise I thought it would be interesting to take a brief look and what can happen when creativity has its way in the life of those who are facing challenges or should I say looking for specific solutions and accidentally discovered whole new inventions.

My son Elijah, one of the smartest people I have ever met, at 6 years old said to me when facing a failed artistic venture “Artist find a way to make mistakes work.” And he did. He has since shortened this phrase to “Artists find a way” and uses it whenever we are challenged as a family to find solutions. I think that is how these accidental discoveries were made, the inventors found a way to creatively apply their failures.

Let’s look at a few of these accidental discoveries. As you read about these accidental discoveries think through your work week, your home life and see where creativity might aid you in how you approach the challenges your face on a daily basis.

Teflon – Roy Plunkett (DuPont chemist)

In 1938While working on development of a new chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant using tetrafluoroethylene (TFE). The Roy and his assistant Jack Rebok mixed TFE and hydrochloric acid and filled canisters they then placed on dry ice overnight. When they looked the next day, one container wouldn’t open. They sawed this canister in half and found that the gas had turned into a smooth, white, snowflake-like powder. Plunkett tested the new polymer and found it to be quite heat-resistant. It also had a nonstick, slippery quality. He eventually figured out how to reproduce the accidental process and patented it in 1941, then registered it under the trade name Teflon in 1944. By the 1960s, Teflon was a household name.

Post-it notes  Spencer Silver & Arthur Fry (3M Chemists)

In 1970, a chemist named Spencer Silver was working in the 3M research laboratories trying to develop strong glue. His work resulted instead in an adhesive that wasn’t very sticky. When pulling apart two pieces of paper stuck together with that adhesive, Spencer discovered that the glue stuck either to one paper or the other. That seemed like a pretty useless invention. Four years later a colleague who was singing in the church choir was however hit by a brilliant idea. He (Fry) used markers to keep his place in the hymn book, but they kept falling out. So he coated them with Spencer’s glue. As if by magic, they stayed in place yet lifted off without damaging the pages. The Post-it note was born. Today, it is one of the most popular office products available.

Isn’t that something? Just goes to prove what my son seems to instinctive understand “Artists find a way.” Creativity can lead you through a failed attempt to resolve one situation, and into a whole new world of discovery. I think that is pretty inspiring, don’t you?!

Come back soon and we will explore some more accidental discoveries.

Thanks for droppin’ in!

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas A. Edison

I bid you welcome, one and all to this fine day and to our blog. If you are a first time guest, thanks for checking us out!

Our goal with these blog posts is to share some of our best with you. Our best practices in productivity, efficiency, and enjoyment while using computers at work or in your own home. This could include ergonomics, hardware, software, IT trends, and productivity tips.

We also employ a somewhat eclectic bunch of people who happen to be pretty talented at what they do. Check out this interesting group of folks.

We have people who are or have been:

• a Navy Vet (served on an Aircraft Carrier)
• a cowboy
• business owners
• a college wrestler & football player
• an aircraft mechanic
• a Proper southern gentleman
• a stunt double for Sean Connery
• an automobile mechanic
• a plastics welder
• pig roaster
• security guards
• a gravel pit weigh-master
• a plastics sales rep.
• a zoo keeper
• a D.J.
• a blues guitarist
• a special forces operator
• a bouncer
• Martial Artist
• A pastor
• The manager of a youth hostel in Australia
• A dancer with the Rockettes

Now there may be a few embellishments on this list…send us an email with your votes (2-3 whoppers in this list) but for the most part it’s all true.

Why is this relevant to an IT company’s blog you might ask? It has to do with the topic of the next few posts.

We want to explore with you the creative part of business, productivity, and efficiency.

As the social media dude for CSI Onsite I read a lot of other bloggers, tech articles, and the latest news in the IT world. But I also keep up with the world of business, leadership, and personal development. As I consider blog topics and discuss them with our team, and they with me, we find a lot of ideas outside of the IT industry actually have a lot of pertinence to what we do as a company.

More than once I have heard a technician relate a solution, or an issue to our customers through shared life experiences or simply through the lens that was common to the customer. I have also witnessed an interesting phenomenon whereby a tech that is stuck on a problem get inspiration on a new path from a short conversation with another team member…something in the life of another that falls outside the purview of IT. Or something the learned from a past life experience comes into play to set the tech in the right direction.

So here is what you can expect over the next few posts:

• A look at discoveries that happened by accident
• Some guiding principles that have served all of the CSI Onsite team well in our quest to be “Techs You Can Trust”
• Some fun stories about our creative efforts and the results

How much more could we accomplish with our work life, home life, community life  if we could synergize all the lessons we have learned in all areas of life into a creative problem solving process…

Until next time I will leave you with a quote by Thomas Edison –

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. “

The title of this comes from 2 things:

1. A great Ella Fitzgerald & Louie Armstrong song:  “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”
2. Some fun experiences we have had with customers

This post might just sound like I’m taking shots at customers, which simply isn’t the case. I would not do such a thing…well that’s not entirely true.

We have some customers who, although very professional, very excellent, leaders in their field, are downright playful. And they can dish it out…I can tell you that right now. Now those customers – I might poke fun at them.  When these people started to send me email or post on my personal, as well as our company Facebook to tease me, I knew I was doing my job of connecting with customers. These are folks that make it fun to work at CSI Onsite…and they have made me laugh very hard.

Sufficed to say this post is not about teasing anyone or making fun of people with little knowledge of computers. What we would like to do is touch base on a proficiency skill that you, a consumer/customer can look for in your IT technicians – clear communications.

I have watched as our technicians begin to explain the many facets of the possible solutions options that a customer may choose from to gain a desired result. It is one of the darnedest things I have seen…as they speak I watch as the person’s eyes slowly glaze over. Now the tech is really just trying to be a good communicator and keep our customer in the loop and that’s a good thing. Since I am not a tech and I too have fallen into a glassy eyed stupor, I quickly realized what was happening. These people (techs) speak a foreign language and when they speak with the non-tech person it seems to produce a sedative effect. I can only speak for myself, but I think my pre-frontal lobe seizes, and all neuro-electrical communication ceases with in my corpus collosum.

I have meet with our techs afterward and asked them if they saw what was happening…sometimes they say ‘I was wondering what was going on, I thought he was bored.”  Most of the time if this happens I try to let the technician know that no one was bored they just exceeded communication capacity for that person.  This is the point at which the tech is now looking at me with that glassy eyed look…I bring them back to the conscious world by saying something like “is that the newest 4G blue tooth phone?”

So here’s what I’d like to do with you, show you an image, tell you the correct name, then tell you what it has been called by people we have helped out over the years. Sound good?

Correct:                This is a monitor.

C.C.D.*                 Computer

Correct:                This is a Router. A router is a device that forwards data packets between computer networks, creating an overlay internetwork.

C.C.D.*                 Modem/Computer.  That thing with flashy lights.

Correct:                This is a flat head Craftsmen flat head screwdriver

C.C.D.*                 A hammer, scraper, chisel, an adjusting tool

Correct:                This is a tower sometimes called a Desktop

C.C.D.*                 Modem

*Creative Customer Description. These are some of the descriptions we have been given over the phone. More than anything this demonstrates the need for education, for clear communication, and for due diligence when it come to communicating. In other words, make sure you are on the same page when you are dealing with computer technology. If you don’t understand what is going on, ask questions. Also trust your tech…if you can’t it is time for a new IT Technician.

Blogger’s Note: Look for the Tid-Bit at the end of the blog; it is his word for Take away…and this photo is not him.

Hi, my name is John (you’re supposed to say “Hi John” back to me) and I’m a blogger. Sounds like the Man Prayer on The Red Green Show doesn’t it? In fact the very blogs you have read at this site were composed by me.  Although I do all of the keyboard input (which is typing for those who don’t work at an IT company), most of the research, and formatting, and publishing the finished product, I have a lot of help.

First of all, while doing a good deal of research from multiple sources, I touch base with our CEO who happens to be a ding dang genius when it comes to all things IT related. I do this to make sure we are on the same page in terms of focus and vision.

Then I will “build the monster”; which means to outline the blog’s premise and pertinent, applicable resources for the reader. After I have composed a draft I run it by my editor (that’d be my wife) who checks the blogs syntax, spelling, grammar, and readability.

After this I discuss the whole post with either our CEO or another one of our highly skilled and ruggedly handsome technicians to assure that what I am writing is accurate from a technological stand point. And you know what? Often times the research I have found doesn’t always have the real world application promised in the research materials.  These discrepancies” are important to discover so as not to impugn the integrity of the blog, me, or our company…but most importantly we don’t want to steer anyone down a bad road.

I don’t want to throw any company or my fellow writers under the bus, I am sharing this with all y’all (which is Texan for all of you) so that I can make simple point: When it comes to IT infrastructures there are a few sayings you need to abide by if you want to make the best investments of all your available resources and really be a company of excellence.

1^st  Saying:               

“Measure twice cut once.” This is carpentry wisdom you learn early on if you do any kind of building. It applies to IT infrastructure decision making as well. Just as I have come to learn that not all that is written concerning IT & computer technologies is entirely accurate, you too must do you due diligence before settling on a specific purchase or system/process change. An example of this happened at one of the jobs I had in the late 90s. A product called Media Shout had just come out, and it made our senior leader drool. He was told it was compatible with our IT infrastructure so our company paid a pretty penny to purchase this product. It was never used in week to week operations, do you know why? That’s right; it was not compatible as had been promised. However it was not the company’s rep that made the error, it was the senior leader, he didn’t “measure twice”, and never made sure all would work as needed before the purchase.

2^nd Saying

“…lean not on your own understanding;” I often read reports or articles that seem to promise the sky…and in some instances, the idea/product really delivers. But I have found that more often than not as I consult the Techs who are daily in the trenches of the IT industry, (3^rd Saying) “all that glitters, is not gold.” I am researching some possible global changes in the way we use technology in business and at home. As I have shared my research with Mark (our CEO) I have learned that this new technology is not currently the replacement process for corporate business its many advocates claim it to be. There are any number of issues to be considered, questions to be asked and challenges to be resolved before any company should go with this tech exclusively to operate their business. But I’ll bet you a $10 bill (that’s all I have right now) that we are going to get a number of customers with executives and/or “wanna-be-tech experts” (you know who you are don’t you…) touting this new technology as absolutely the best thing since the advent of computers. And there will be this huge push to switch over to this new way to do business. Sometimes this happens and we are brought in to find out why certain aspects of the business IT are working anymore and we have the unenviable task of telling people it will not work without a lot of untangling, chasing gremlins, and making many complex connections between their company and the IT vendors/customers involved in their business model.

This typically leads to a very unhappy CEO, Boss, the Big Shot…you catch my drift.  When I hear a CEO asking the question “why did we make this huge financial investment into something that has mucked up our business?” This is almost always because the company has not coordinated their investment with the advice of a trusted IT professional. If you don’t have a dedicated IT department, you will find a trusted IT technician worth their weight in gold…find one

Last saying

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

There is a saying I have heard amongst IT techs (not ours of course) “If it ain’t broke, you’re not trying hard enough.” Techies, Geeks are notorious for their love of the new gadget, program, and the need to reach the potential of a certain item. It could be hardware, software, or a new system, they love to tinker. Problem is some things work just fine the way they are; the system is time tested, the set up is solid and dependable. It just isn’t worth the opportunity cost, to monkey with something that is currently meeting the demand. So you have to ask the question “is the increase in functionality or productivity worth the risk of losing what we currently have working?” If the answer is no, then for goodness sakes, leave well enough alone.

As you may have discerned all of these saying are integrated. When you use the wisdom behind them in concert most people will make wise IT decisions. And I have found that most of the successful corporate leaders I meet actually do have all four of these idioms as part of the modus operandi. Hey maybe that’s why they are successful?! Give it a go and discover the good outcome as you:

“Measure twice cut once.”

“…lean not on your own understanding;”

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

O.K. that last one really doesn’t fit as a “do”…it’s more of a “not do.”

Tid-bits:

•          Do you your diligence, before any purchase or change. Measure twice and cut once.
•          Find an IT company/person who has the credibility, the experience, and the wisdom to trust and lean on their understanding of Information technology. Keep Up on IT trends, but don’t fall for the shiny new gadget, software, or hardware
•          Remember not all of the promises given in advertisements, blogs, print or electronically are accurate. Dig into the promises if you are considering a large financial investment or a global change to your existing business model.
•          If you have an existing IT infrastructure that meets your current needs, keep it. Unless the return on your investment in a new system is quite sizable and worth the opportunity, don’t make that investment.

I hope you had a couple of laughs as you read through this blog, but I also hope you see the wisdom contained in these old sayings. Have a happy week working hard and making good, clean IT decisions.

As we continue our pursuit to make your business & personal computing as efficient, productive and enjoyable as possible, let’s review this very important topic of Malware. Now if you have been following our posts you know that we call troubleshooting IT problems (including Malware issues) “Chasing Gremlins.” We also use a generalized term for viruses, worms and phishing efforts…we call them “Nasties. Please take a moment to review these posts.

Our hope is that our posts will give you a basic understanding of the numerous threats out there on the Internet & through electronic communication. Another purpose for these posts is to give some easy to follow direction in securing your computing from these threats. Remember there is a whole business now centered on malware and the info the hackers can glean from these attacks…we are talking millions and millions of dollars each year! If you depend on computers for business or at home for organizing your life it is very important to know this information and practice safe/protected computing. Now I feel like I’m talking to a group of soldiers being deployed overseas for the first time.

Don’t be paranoid, be diligent and you will enjoy a relatively safe computing experience at work and home…and that’s good news for you and for us. We really do want you to win at work and at home!

Have a fantastic day. Look us up on Facebook and Twitter and drop us a line.

p.s. Chuck Norris is immune to all forms of malware