Having been involved with disaster recovery plans for several large organizations I wanted to take a few minutes to share some procedures to prepare for the upcoming Hurricane Irene. As of this morning the weather models indicate that we will be hit in one way or another. What we can expect are high winds over 100mph and heavy rains for a period of at least 8 hours as Irene is a slow moving storm.

So here are my recommendations:

The concerns are High winds and heavy rain
The high winds will create missile hazards that can go through windows and allow rain to damage the interior of your homes or offices.
If there is a construction site nearby your office or home make sure that any building materials have been secured to the ground.
The heavy rains will find their way through the roof and cause leaks also it will saturate the ground so trees are more likely to fall over.
Flooding is possible so if you are on the ground floor of an area that has been known to flood it is a good idea to get computers and power supplies up off the floor.
Disconnect the power from the computers before the storm arrives, unplug them from the wall, telephone poles are knocked over or trees fall on the lines it will create major power surges through the electrical system which can damage your equipment.

BACKUP!!!!!!!!!!
Make sure that your backups are current and take copies of your most critical files especially accounting files offsite with you.
Use flash drives or thumb drives to backup your data files. Take tapes offsite.

COMPUTERS
Make sure if you are on the ground floor to put your computers on top of the desk. If you have ever had a roof leak or not wrap the computers in heavy plastic bags. This will protect them if a window breaks or if the roof leaks. Alternatively if you are on an upper floor put the computers under a desk in case the ceiling collapses.

PRINTERS
Cover printers with plastic to prevent water of falling debris intrusion.

NETWORK DEVICES
If you have a router or Unified Threat management device. Disconnect the power and the cable leading to the Cable Modem.

AFTER THE STORM
To return systems to service begin by getting the network up and running first and then connect the PC’s and printers.
DO NOT Plug anything in that has suffered from water damage.
If there is a lot of damage in your area and power was knocked out do not rush to restore systems until the power grid comes back on.
If you need help restoring services feel free to call me.
If have any questions about preparations don’t hesitate to call me.

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Below is an example of a QR Code with contact information embedded in it:

You can get QR Codes for free from http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Many of our customers have a need for improving their internet presence, what I have started referring to as “Web Cred”.  Pernell Taylor Consulting provides hosting services for a number of customers.  I looked at doing SEO myself for my customers, This was not a cost effective option as the time that can be spent on doing an SEO campaign at my hourly rate would make it very expensive for my customers.  I looked at companies providing SEO services.  One of those companies was Local Edge, I looked at their offering and signed up a rep to come meet with one of my clients.  I never heard anything back from them.

I met Dimitri Loucas when he joined my BNI group Network Masters of Virginia Beach.  At first I was skeptical of AdzZoo based on my previous experience with SEO companies.  So I looked into AdzZoo more deeply.  Evaluating their processes and the work that they do for their customers.  I met several times with Dimitri and learned a lot more about the differences between SEO andSEM.  Dimitri comes from a car dealership environment doing internet marketing so he has been in the internet marketing business for many years.  This experience adds un-measurable value to assisting companies with increasing their “Web Cred”.  I now consider Dimitri Loucas and integral part of Pernell Taylor consulting and consider Dimitri and AdzZoo as our Internet marketing Department.

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The UK’s Safer Internet Centre have developed resource packs for primary and secondary
schools with each pack containing
- 4 quick classroom activities and supporting resources
- A full lesson plan
- Teachers’ guidance
- A poster to start discussion
- An assembly, plus script to help with delivery.
These free to download resources are available at: www.childnet.com/safety/sid.aspx
The top messages for the day for the various user groups to take away are that games are fun - indeed the first words that come into children’s heads when talking about games are, ‘friends, free, fun, competitive, multiplayer and chatting to friends – but to remember that internet safety messages and advice apply to games as well as other online activities, and there are tools available to help.

The new UK Safer Internet Centre, brought to you by Childnet, SWGfL and IWF and co funded by the European Commission, have developed a new website www.saferinternet.org.uk, hosting
a range of information on internet safety, and new teaching resources designed for schools to use for Safer Internet Day. The website is the portal for UK Safer Internet Day information and shows the activities and events are happening across the UK to promote Safer Internet Day, as well as initiatives by other partners including the internet industry.
Activities organised by the new centre for Safer Internet Day include a ‘12 hour interactive radio programme broadcast globally and hosted by Russell Prue. The marathon programme will feature Internet Safety News on the hour every hour, coverage of the The Young Peoples’ Symposium being held by Childnet International in London as well as featuring advice and guidance on The Internet at School, Young Web Users, the Tweens (11s-12s), a Special Teenage Hour, Tea Time Tricks, Mobile Internet and a Prime Time live Phone-in planned especially for Parents. The aim is to provide real, sensible advice from experts throughout the day and to encourage listeners to engage with the show and take part through the phone, texting, tweeting and emails.
The Young Peoples’ symposium hosted by Childnet will bring together 40 teens from across the UK to explore their online habits and needs, and to gather their thoughts on the creation of relevant and effective educational campaign ideas in a Dragon’s Den theme activity, pairing youth teams with industry experts.
For more information about the day, the radio programme and to access the resource packs, go to www.saferinternet.org.uk.

MY MOBILE OFFICE

Not unlike some of you, I live on my laptop. It is my mobile office. My truck has internet access. I can work from anywhere that I am. It all started a couple months back. My 2.5 year old Compaq laptop humming along. Trying to get the most out of my investment I pushed it to the edge. Installing all the necessary tools, Microsoft applications for all manner of business needs, word, excel, visio, project, powerpoint, Network sniffers for packet capturing, video imaging and editing, billing and invoicing software, Palm Pilot/Treo integration, antivirus tools SYMANTEC CORPORATE EDITION, NORTON GHOST for backup, Anti-spyware tools, Adaware, Spybot search and Destroy, Spyware blaster, FTP tools, HP tools for managing printers, NETCRUNCH by ADREMSOFTWARE,

Management tools for NETWARE, WINDOWS, CISCO, NETGEAR, HP, VPN Software, the list could literally really go on forever, I think you get the point. There was probably 40 to 80 man hours invested in making my Compaq laptop do everything it needed to do.

BACKUPS

I use the Norton Ghost product for backing up my laptop to an external HP 160GB USB drive that stays in my office. I backed up fairly regularly, not as often as I would tell my customers to backup but I felt it was often enough. I have since begun performing daily backups as I have now lost too much TIME in recovery. Not data because I am very good about keeping copies of data, but TIME is more important.

FAILURE ONE

About two month’s ago the 60gb hard drive in my COMPAQ PRESARIO 2585us laptop failed. It just stopped working one day. Hard drives do that. No big deal I have a backup. I go to the local Best Buy and pick up a new hard drive. Oh and I can upgrade at the same time. 120 Gb for about 130 bucks! That’s double the capability that I had, now I can store so much more information, pictures, videos, packet captures, network drawings, etc. etc. I return to the office with the new more powerful hard drive. I install it in my old laptop. I restore from my external hard drive using NORTON GHOST, In a matter of about an hour I am back on the road again. There was very little pain. I hadn’t backed up in a couple weeks but I keep all my email out on the internet so redownloading it was simple enough. So back to work I go. Whew that was close. It’s a good thing I do regular backups. But now with my new hard drive, more powerful with twice as much storage it can’t fail on me anytime soon.

BACK TO WORK

So I spend my time working on website updates, other customer’s issues like rebuilding laptops. During this time I rebuilt a couple of workstations and laptops and I determined that requires between 8 and 16 hours of installing software, and performing updates; there are over 100 updates to Windows XP since Service Pack 2. All the hardware drivers for your computer don’t have a simple easy executable file that you can run and make sure it will work properly. Then reinstalling the software. Microsoft Office has Service Pack 2 with a dozen or so security updates. Now I think what a great revenue opportunity!!! I can bill for all this time. Then upon further thinking through this I realize that it isn’t cost effective to reinstall everything on a computer. If I charge a customer my full rate of $150.00 dollars per hour for 8-16 hours = $1200.00-$2400.00 that is the cost of a very good computer already preloaded with software. I will go into this further a little later. Considering most of the time is spent waiting for software to finish installing, oh and then waiting for the computer to reboot, and then downloading new software or updates, and then waiting for the computer to reboot, I didn’t feel right about charging full price as some of you already know.

Now I have gotten pretty good with getting software downloaded while other software is installing that is why I have several storage devices and computers.

FAILURE TWO

So I’m going along and I find out that there is a new firmware update for my mobile Kyocera Router which lets my truck be an internet access point. And I go and download this update. And I figure that while I am taking a break in my truck I can go ahead and download and install this update, cool, ya gotta love technology. So I turn on my laptop… and nothing… I turn it off check the power connections, everything seems ok. I test the power supply with a voltmeter and nothing… Well that is to be expected. Two plus years I am surprised it didn’t finish working sooner. Radio Shack carries a higher level universal power pack made by iGO for $125.00 so I go pick up one of those, no big deal, cool. Plug it in and the lights go on for about ten seconds and it goes bad. So guess what that means it must be the internal power supply on the laptop. So I figure what the heck maybe it’s a loose connection on the plug so I spend 4 hours disassembling the 78+ screws(I stopped Counting) soldering the connections on the power supply and voila!!!! Nothing… Alright not one to be discouraged I start working on my alternate plans. My new more powerful hard drive (which I now believe is responsible for killing the power supply in my COMPAQ laptop) is only a month old so I should be able to install it in a new laptop and bring it up, update all the drivers for whatever laptop I buy, and start working again. Right?

THE LAPTOP

With eBay and the Internet it should be no problem to find a really cheap used laptop just like my old one that I have spent many hours getting to work properly by getting all the updated drivers installed in the right order. But to no avail there was not one available. Now if I could afford to wait maybe I could find one. I don’t have the time available and besides it would be another old laptop. So I start looking at new laptops. COMPAQ; with my past experience with their tech support I was not overly excited about that route. HP; I really like HP but their combination with COMPAQ gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach. Now HP servers I still really like.

Many of my customers use Dell. I have had very good experiences with Dell Tech support not to mention the fact that I already have two Dell Desktops in my office. So I start looking at Dell catalogs. Very attractive machines. I put together a custom configuration with all my options on the DELL.COM website. We are up to $2800.00, Shiver me Timbers!!! That certainly is not in the budget right now.

What other options do I have?

I talk to some of my business partners and see what they can do. We get down to $2300.00 but I don’t have a docking station and an extra battery. Laptops eat batteries for lunch. So I find OUTLET.DELL.COM and start looking around there.

WOW! These are computers that have been returned for one reason or another not the right config, bad component, etc. etc. The way it works is “What you see is what you get”. The inventory shows what they have in stock, which changes by the minute, so you have to decide what exactly you need and what you will take and keep watching the inventory until what you want appears. To give you an example of what I was able to get.

Dell Latitude D820

Windows XP Home (I didn’t want XP Home but that’s the config it had I now have XPPRO)

2.0Ghz Centrino Core Duo processor

2Gb 667mhz DDR RAM

100 Gb EIDE 7200 RPM hard drive

512MB Nvidia display adapter

3945 Intel PRO Wireless 802.11a/b/g

Broadcom gigabit Ethernet controller

350 Bluetooth Wireless adapter (allows wireless syncing of Palm Treo)

8x DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability

15.4 inch wide aspect ratio WUXGA 2048X1536

(The highest resolution you can get on a laptop)

Extra 9 cell batter pack (I paid list price for this item)

D Series Port Replicator (I paid list price for this item)

Three year warranty (yes it includes a three year warranty)

Nylon Carrying Case (Didn’t need it but I got it anyway)

Price tag: $1750.00 (Shipping included)

Brand new price ordered on the web: $2795.00 (without shipping)

BACK TO WORK

So my plan was to take my new laptop install my old, new hard drive and go back to work. NOT… it doesn’t fit in the new laptop (note the EIDE listed above) the old laptop was just IDE. The E stands for Enhanced IntegratednDriveElectronics. Again, not to be discouraged, I found an external hard drive case for 2.5” laptop hard drives for $8.99 (that’s right) on TIGERDIRECT.COM and now I have an extra 120 Gb external storage device for backing up that actually fits in the laptop case. That took about three days to arrive because I was too cheap to pay the extra $8.00 for next day shipping. Meanwhile I continued with the reconstruction of the new laptop using Microsoft Windows XP Professional. Fortunately I do keep all my software in one location. Starting from scratch still requires installing the operating system, adding all the Microsoft Patches, Installing Microsoft Office, Installing all the Patches, Installing antivirus, adding all the patches, installing anti spyware, adding all the patches, installing extra applications, photoshop, photoalbum, studio, FTP, VPN, Tools, NETCRUNCH, NETSCANTOOLSPRO, ETC. ETC. Oh and adding all the patches…

Get the picture.

Adding all the Patches

THE MORAL

Some of you are in the business of providing hourly billable services, some of you are not but your work directly results in your business being able to bill for services. Either way all of you are busy professionals that rely on computers to run your businesses.

So to summarize this story and put it in to dollars and cents perspective.

At my highest billing rate of $150.00 per hour a 40 hour week represents a potential revenue of $6000.00. While rebuilding a laptop which enables you to do work you are unable to provide services rendered by the laptop. If you stop to work on something else it takes you that much longer to reinstall all the necessary products to be able to get your work done. Now in all honesty the numbers you see below could be quantified in a number of different ways. My main goal here is to show a real world situation and how much can be saved by following a few backup practices that will reduce the lost time in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Cost of recovering from a Catastrophic Computer Failure

Lost Time $6000.00

New Computer $1700.00

Total Cost $7700.00

Cost of recovering from a Catastrophic Computer Failure with Backup

Lost Time $150.00

New Computer $1700.00

External Hard Drive $200.00

NORTON GHOST $65.00

Total Cost $2115.00

Savings by doing regular religious backups on single individual computer recovery.

$5585.00

So it costs over 60 percent more to recover without a backup $265.00 is cheap insurance for your system.

BACKUPS Priceless

So if any of you are concerned about your data integrity feel free to give me a call or send me an email. Phone: 757-435-3812 email:pern@pt-consulting.net and I would be glad to discuss ways of insuring the ability to recover from single machine failure. For those of you with Fileservers and tape backups you are safer as far as the servers go but you can still loose time from single desktop or laptop failures. Instead of buying external hard drives, you can store backups of your workstations on your servers for an added layer of protection.

Yours Truly

Pern

DROID, DROIDX, DROID2, which one is the right one for you?

I started out as a Palm user years ago.  The Palm IIIxe and then the Zire and then the TREO, I was one of those guys who felt as though one would need to pry the palm treo from my cold, dead fingers.  It was hard to give it up but once Palm started putting windows on smartphones and stopped working on updates to the Palm OS I saw the writing on the wall and knew it was time to move to something new.  Brand loyalty told me that I should look at the Palm Pre…  and I did.  It was too small for my aging eyes and I couldn’t type very well on the small keypad.  The WebOS looked good but the application I was using, TimeLogger, (http://www.responsivesoftware.com) wouldn’t work on the Pre.  They were planning on moving the TimeLogger product into a web based solution so that meant I didn’t have to go to the Pre so I kept looking.

When the Droid first came out I went to the local Verizon store and checked it out.  It didn’t immediately grab me because I was so used to the Palm Treo.  So I stood in the store for at least an hour.  Trying out apps, searched the app market for time tracking software, I found a product called Gba Hours, tried the keyboard, tried the built in apps.

gba hours was what sold me on the potential of the Android platform.  The developer of Gba Hours was wicked responsive to updates needed on the app and upon notifying him by email he made the modifications within a week.  I think because I have so much experience with legacy products that I just couldn’t get the paradigm right and just could stand not having my Timelogger software.  So I looked for other products.  So I found TIMR.  It worked pretty good but the things missing from both TIMR and Gba Hours was it didn’t make a very good record keeping system.  So I couldn’t easily lookup what I had done for a customer and when.  So the search continued.  I still havent’ found a good mobile time tracking app for the Droid that I like.  So I have started using Trackmyhours.com.  on a new Laptop.  But that’s another Story…

So I drooled for month’s waiting for the Froyo 2.2 update to android.  I just got it this week and was pumped about trying the tethering and hotspot capability.  After 2 hours of mucking around with Tethering, since the Hotspot feature isn’t available on the original Droid…  I gave up it’s not worth the effort.

I have now started looking at the DroidX and the Droid2.  The story is a little misleading as far as which one does what.  The way I see it, the big deciding factor is do you want HDMI video output to a TV?  If so look at the DroidX.  I just setup a DroidX with access to a corporate exchange email account for a client and it worked like a champ.  But it doesn’t provide a hotspot:-(.  So the Droid2 comes to the Rescue.  The Droid2 has a built in keyboard and a hotspot capability.  Now that’s what connected business people need!!!

So I will be doing some testing of the DroidX and the Droid2 soon and will provide more info as it is available.

Droid Does

Your Humble Servant,

Pern