Power of 2
Fires, it seems, are like buses. You know, you wait for ages without seeing one then you get two in quick succession. I’d hardly finished e-mailing last month’s effort off to the Shopper production office when Alan informed me that he’d just been told that a client company (whose premises I’d visited just days before) had been “burned to the ground”. Like the previous fire it was big enough to make the regional TV news and, amazingly, once again no one was hurt.
Further investigation revealed that the “to the ground” was a minor exaggeration and, miraculously, the office building had been saved and (again) no one was hurt despite there being over £1 million in damage.
When I’m talking to customers about new systems I always stress the importance of backups and we give them a handbook that outlines the best practices for safeguarding data. This includes keeping your backup media (usually DAT tapes) OFF the premises (in case of fire or other major disaster) and only bringing the oldest generation of tapes into the office for the purposes of recording the latest backup. This council has always been delivered with the hope and expectation that a major fire would be a theoretical possibility rather than a real threat. Recent experience has shown that the treat can be much more that theoretical and both systems survived probably because the wind was blowing from the west (admittedly the prevailing direction) and had it been the other way either might be just a pile of ash by now.
As a matter of interest just where are your offices back up tapes right now ?
Stop thief
Another thing coming in pairs seems to be thefts. OK our “burglary” didn’t really count and was only of interest because the miscreants thought the junk they’d nicked, including some empty memory packaging, was actually worth anything. Of greater concern though is that two clients have had laptops pinched from office desks. One office was actually locked using one of those remote electrically operated latch thingys while the other, although not locked, was up a flight of stairs and down a corridor with two intermediate doors.
In the case of the locked office it seems that the thief waited until the receptionist had gone to lunch then attracted someone’s attention and been let in on the pretence of having come to see “Mally”. The person who’s let the stranger in was too busy to escort the visitor to Mally and had left him unsupervised. In the other instance several people claim to have noticed a stranger on the premises but had assumed that he was there on legitimate business.
At first you’d think that a thief would need to have one hell of a “brass neck” to just walk in like that and steal a portable computer. Personally, my experience would say otherwise. Announcing yourself at a reception desk as having “come to see about the computer” will often get you access to the building with very little extra formality and, even if challenged as to why you have a computer under your arm, it’s enough to say you’re taking it for repair.
Quite apart from the financial cost of replacing the hardware you’re back with the inconvenience (or worse) of losing the information on your portable work mate. Once again I ask when was the last time you backed up the unique data on your laptop and where do you keep the media ?
Just before delivering replacement computers to the luckless clients I researched the market of products for preventing laptops going walkabout. There’s a stack of stuff around at prices varying from as little as £15 all to way to many hundreds. At the cheap end of the range you get some kind of variant on a cable bike lock that fastens to the security port on your laptop. While these devices wouldn’t resist a theft attempt by someone using, perhaps, a pair of bolt cutters I think that it’s unlikely that the sort of person who’d try to talk their way into an office would want to attract attention by carrying anything like that and, consequently such a simple security device would have been enough to save both clients from filling out the insurance claim form.
If you are worried about more serious theft attempts several hundred pounds will buy either a lockable box that bolts into the boot of your car thus preventing removal by the crude thief who gains entry by the “brick and window” method or a “portable” casing (assuming you have arms like Schwartzenegger) that handcuffs to your wrist. Most of the rest of us would find that such a security casing had turned your “portable” into a “static” but what you choose depends on just how paranoid you are. Try a Google search for “laptop computer security” to see what’s available.
I’m just hoping that, contrary to popular superstition, fires and thefts don’t run in threes.
Fires, it seems, are like buses. You know, you wait for ages without seeing one then you get two in quick succession. I’d hardly finished e-
Further investigation revealed that the “to the ground” was a minor exaggeration and, miraculously, the office building had been saved and (again) no one was hurt despite there being over £1 million in damage.
When I’m talking to customers about new systems I always stress the importance of backups and we give them a handbook that outlines the best practices for safeguarding data. This includes keeping your backup media (usually DAT tapes) OFF the premises (in case of fire or other major disaster) and only bringing the oldest generation of tapes into the office for the purposes of recording the latest backup. This council has always been delivered with the hope and expectation that a major fire would be a theoretical possibility rather than a real threat. Recent experience has shown that the treat can be much more that theoretical and both systems survived probably because the wind was blowing from the west (admittedly the prevailing direction) and had it been the other way either might be just a pile of ash by now.
As a matter of interest just where are your offices back up tapes right now ?
Stop thief
Another thing coming in pairs seems to be thefts. OK our “burglary” didn’t really count and was only of interest because the miscreants thought the junk they’d nicked, including some empty memory packaging, was actually worth anything. Of greater concern though is that two clients have had laptops pinched from office desks. One office was actually locked using one of those remote electrically operated latch thingys while the other, although not locked, was up a flight of stairs and down a corridor with two intermediate doors.
In the case of the locked office it seems that the thief waited until the receptionist had gone to lunch then attracted someone’s attention and been let in on the pretence of having come to see “Mally”. The person who’s let the stranger in was too busy to escort the visitor to Mally and had left him unsupervised. In the other instance several people claim to have noticed a stranger on the premises but had assumed that he was there on legitimate business.
At first you’d think that a thief would need to have one hell of a “brass neck” to just walk in like that and steal a portable computer. Personally, my experience would say otherwise. Announcing yourself at a reception desk as having “come to see about the computer” will often get you access to the building with very little extra formality and, even if challenged as to why you have a computer under your arm, it’s enough to say you’re taking it for repair.
Quite apart from the financial cost of replacing the hardware you’re back with the inconvenience (or worse) of losing the information on your portable work mate. Once again I ask when was the last time you backed up the unique data on your laptop and where do you keep the media ?
Just before delivering replacement computers to the luckless clients I researched the market of products for preventing laptops going walkabout. There’s a stack of stuff around at prices varying from as little as £15 all to way to many hundreds. At the cheap end of the range you get some kind of variant on a cable bike lock that fastens to the security port on your laptop. While these devices wouldn’t resist a theft attempt by someone using, perhaps, a pair of bolt cutters I think that it’s unlikely that the sort of person who’d try to talk their way into an office would want to attract attention by carrying anything like that and, consequently such a simple security device would have been enough to save both clients from filling out the insurance claim form.
If you are worried about more serious theft attempts several hundred pounds will buy either a lockable box that bolts into the boot of your car thus preventing removal by the crude thief who gains entry by the “brick and window” method or a “portable” casing (assuming you have arms like Schwartzenegger) that handcuffs to your wrist. Most of the rest of us would find that such a security casing had turned your “portable” into a “static” but what you choose depends on just how paranoid you are. Try a Google search for “laptop computer security” to see what’s available.
I’m just hoping that, contrary to popular superstition, fires and thefts don’t run in threes.
Well Fax me !
We’ve been developing a Quotation/Costing/Job control application for an existing client who already has one of our thin client application servers. All was going swimmingly but he asked if we could make it fax quotes and invoices to his customers. I explained that the best way to do this was not to build functionality like that directly into the application program but to use some fax server software installed as a service on the operating system. Anyhow didn’t he already have some fax stuff (Red Rock if memory serves correctly) already installed ? Yes he did but it “bloody well doesn’t work” came the reply.
Which begs the question as to why he hadn’t reported the problem to have it fixed. I promised to get Patrick to have a look. Which he did, simply by logging in remotely using a VPN. And he pronounced the fax software alive, well and working.
“Have you told Graham” I asked. “Yes” replied Patrick “I sent him a fax – from his own server of course”
Sage Advice.
Another client this month had their accountant/book keeper up and leave for “a more challenging opportunity”. They use Sage’s middleweight accounting package Line 100 (strange name which I think is supposed to imply use by firms with 100ish employees) and, as you might imagine, requires quite a bit of training and experience to master.
So, they did the logical thing and sought to hire a replacement, who was chosen and, we were assured “knew about Sage” ‘coz they’d asked the applicants at interview. The first of the month arrived along with the appointee. And within an hour we had an anguished call from the new book keeper who couldn’t make head nor tail of the software she’d been asked to work.
Which version of Sage DID you work with, we asked. “Instant Accounts” (a simple beginners package for VERY small businesses) came the reply. Oops.
French Connection
We have several clients with French subsidiaries. One in particular uses us for network support but has, historically (should that be hysterically ?) developed in house a lot of the software it uses. Great if you have the skills but otherwise potentially dodgy.
Anyway they had this MS Access application (yuk) that’s supposed to store French orders and deliveries then finally prepare a sales invoice. Sometimes the invoicing didn’t work and they’d also like some additional features. Problem was the “author” had long since left and they’d be EVER SO GRATEFUL if we could help out. Frankly sorting out someone else’s rubbish application is less than appealing but, as my last boss used to say “if it was easy we wouldn’t need you”.
So I went to see the (French) lady in the local office who looked after the French records. She gave me a list of things that were required some using Access functions and some needing some VB scripting. Alan did the Accessy things and Davey Blake did the VB stuff and all seemed well.
Well, all except for one requirement that said “on the order screen give me a button that does the same thing as the Customer button on the main screen”. Which was fine, except there was no Customer button on the main screen. So I phoned and asked what this new button should do and was told “show ze customers I vant viz all ze delivery addresses zey use”. OK so we did that too.
When I took the revised program back she commented that the new Customer button screen was much nicer than the old one. So I told her about the missing button explaining that we’d looked on every screen in the Orders application but couldn’t find it anywhere so had made something up from the description she’d given on the phone.
“Oh ees not zere” she said “Ze customer button ees in anozer application altogezzer”
Under Development from Issue 188 of Computer Shopper Magazine