It comes to my attention at this point that I am not always getting through to people that I communicate with via email, web or telephone to the best of my ability, even though I try to make myself available, whether the voice mail is sitting a waiting half a day or my email waits for that same length of time, it isn't because I am ignoring you. Partially it is the fault of the service, whether it is my voicemail service sending messages directly to voice mail, due to my phone being active on the Internet or talking with another customer, sometimes it will be hours before I can return a call, and in some bad cases, a day, in this case always because of technical problems with the service. It seems that some of my messages will not come to me unless I check voicemail. On these occasions it is usually when I am out of my "home" range, and the forwarding feature seems rather slow in forwarding the fact that there is a message waiting. On some occasions, I have not known that I even received a message until I just miss a call, then check voicemail and find that in fact there were two calls. Sure technology is helping with the "missed calls" feature, but when your phone is out of range, you won't realize this until you are back in range. It is at this point that you are supposed to be notified of voicemail as well. This doesn't always happen and so then there should be some other method of notification and there is, this is by the double beep sound you will get when you go to make a call. Again, realize that this may not be for a few hours. Of course when you have voicemail, you shouldn't have to worry about it, because the person should be able to leave a detailed enough message so that you can get back to them. This is of course where I turn to email and highly suggest all of my existing clients use it whenever possible.. And this is where some clients truly take advantage of it, and I certainly do not mind it, in fact I often suggest it, simply because I can give a more thorough answer to whatever your question or problem might be, by directing you to various websites that have already created a detailed instruction list of how-to-fix, or I can explain with pictures or whatever might be the problem. Of course not to mention the need for the IP address so that I can even attempt a repair or at least a look to see if I can not diagnose or get to understand whatever the problem you may be seeing on your computer. Much like making that house call and finding out as soon as you look at the screen, the problem is clear, which is why it is so great to be able to take advantage of the remote ability of your computer via the Internet. This is of course why I ask my existing clients to always take advantage of this service. Now, as I mentioned, some of my clients will take advantage of this, by means of a simple email asking a question. This is also something I highly suggest, especially since I volunteer with Allexperts.com in as much as I take the questions and answer them in hopes that if I require research to answer the question, this research will be something of knowledge that I can use for my own clients over the period of time. Quite often, once a problem occurs on one computer, I am going to see it over and over again, especially in the case of Spyware. It is for that reason why I have created this blog and the ability to communicate with my existing clients as well as anyone who happens past this blog via search engines, that I can leave my notes or what some may say "words of wisdom" towards a problem, available for everyone, without the need for me to repeat myself. In some cases, from my TIPS page, I will make mention of a tip by directing people to it, once again, no having to repeat myself. In the case of the Blog and the RSS feed, you too do not have to worry about visiting the website since you will be notified anytime I create a new blog. This being said, it means if I have something of importance that I wish all of my existing clients to read, I can simply place it here and then they will read it.. The problem is, they need to know what RSS is, and what a blog is, and then understand what tools are required, in this case, a web browser capable of RSS feeds (almost all browsers with the exception of Internet explorer have this ability now and IE 7 when release, will also have this integrated within the browser). For now, you can get third party news agregator programs that will work in conjunction with your Internet Explorer, to allow you to subscribe by "right clicking" or by means of a toolbar button. No matter what though, the only way I can be sure that each and every client has subscribed is by first notifying them, probably by email, that this feed even exists and what the purpose of it is.
This then brings me to the topic of me being around, as I mentioned in my last blog, that yes, I may not be making a presence of many blogs or other information, and my emails may be taking a little longer to answer these past few weeks, but it was because of my own personal server being down and me working on it while still fixing computers on my bench. These computers would be the ones I have rounded up from my clients that have services that require more then about 2 hours of work. This is something that I have pretty much implemented full time, since I have started utilizing my employees, which I built.. Yes, my employees I like to refer them as, which are the service loaner computers that I have constructed and that I pass on to each client as I swap out their computer to be worked on from my bench. The main reason for this is the time that I can spend on it and get the job done correctly. Unfortunately depending on the speed of your computer, especially when I first look at it, is probably quite slow and when dealing with any windows computer we unfortunately have to do a lot of reboots which take time.. The typical fast computer will take about 3 minutes round trip from the shutdown command to full start up, whereas this can be as high as 6 minutes on some. Think about that if you did it 5 times to remove or install 5 different programs? That's half of an hour with me sitting there waiting for it to restart. This is the number one reason why the bench becomes home in more ways then one. So that is why the email becomes key in questions for me to answer, and yes, if you happen to have a question each and every day of the month, so be it. It would be like we have communicated on a daily basis pretty much all month. Right now, I would have to say this has been limited to hopefully one or two times a month, that is, if I am doing my job right, and you have managed to create that list of questions, which would allow for a true one on one lesson then that is the best approach. However, if you feel you must make comments or ask very basic questions, knowing that you may not receive an answer right away, that is fine as well. But please, do not expect me to have all the answers all of the time, nor think that you must email me when you are unsure of how to proceed without taking that leap of faith and trying it out, remembering that you are in charge and that you always have the power to turn the power switch off on the computer, in which case hoping that when you turn it back on, the problem will be gone, which is probably half of the times this will be the case. The other half of the time, common sense in what you just attempted to do initially that caused the problem in the first place, will not be duplicated the next time because an entirely new set of parameters is in place, since the computer has now just been reset by the power down and restart.
So why am I mentioning these technical issues and the fact that a lot of them can be answered by your own initiative by simply trying it out. Worst thing I always say is " you can always start over" and that means even if you had to completely reformat and rebuild your computer to get things to work properly, it is something that can be done quite easily. The key is to remember that this is NOT YOUR DATA. It is the DATA that you created that should become the most important issue when dealing with anything on your computer. These are all key issues that I bring up with each and every client that I see on a daily basis and hopefully am increasing the education process as our relationship continues and your knowledge of your computer becomes greater.
So when I say I am still around, I am, and I am trying to keep my own computers operating at their peak performance so that I can in turn get your computer working the same way. I am still making tweaks to websites and connecting to client computers remotely, diagnosing and repairing as the requests come in. As with any service in this world, the squeakier the wheel, the more grease it is going to get. That being said, obviously if you have a very serious computer problem, whereas it just no worky.. Then obviously you are going to get priority, over a simple question or comment via email that I may not get to for over a day.. I do try.. honest! But remember too, that not all email I receive: requires a response, as I have also been told by some clients that have been quite overzealous in the amount of mail that I may receive in a typical month, that I am not required to respond to it all. If you receive no response at all via one method, such as email, obviously common sense would prevail and you would pick up the phone.. Right? Well, maybe not, and since I want to promote all forms of communication, I will always point to some method that is digital, whether that be in email or voicemail.. Once the message is sent out, it is now up to the respondent to respond, this is why when you leave a message or email, it is always an advantage if the more information on the problem is given, if this means the IP address so that I can connect or at least attempt to connect to your computer remotely, then so be it. If this means leaving me a voice message with the IP address, since your email is the problem, then so be it. But leaving no voice message or an email with a simple comment and then no real question, please understand that I am not a mind reader, nor can you always count on the missed call feature from working. When your question is something as basic as how to turn off the computer, never feel that it doesn't require a response because you feel it is such a stupid question. This is actually a common problem of many computers that have Spyware or hardware issues.. The computer will not turn off. But then again, if you are simply wanting to turn off the computer and the normal procedures do not work, you shouldn't be afraid of simply pulling the plug. I guess this is where I have to say "think" before simply writing to me saying you have no way of turning off the computer. Even though you may laugh and say "nobody is that foolish", it has happened! Not to mention the obvious "no sound" and after checking all the cables, device connections, they realize that the volume control on the speaker was turned down... How stupid is that? Well, if your mind tells you one thing and you 'think' you have already checked the obvious, not always will you find that is the case. This is where I have found it does help if you step away from the project at times to see just what it is you might be overlooking. I am not suggesting you always take the initiative each and every time you have computer problems and attempt all repairs yourself, far from that. All I am suggesting is you be less cautious of what may happen if you do the wrong thing and more confident that you will be prompted by something when you are doing the wrong thing. Therefore if you find you are constantly getting prompted for some reason, it is probably because you are continually doing something wrong, in other words, you are going down the wrong path and should stop and take that step back. You would be surprised how often you have overlooked the obvious. So, when I say I am still around, it means that if you are not hearing from me, I am busy but never too busy to at least answer any Question I get thrown my way. As for you overzealous clients that can't help but email me almost daily with some sort of problem.. I am not asking you to ever stop doing this because I could quite easily write a book on the amount of times I hear the negative comments about computer problems simply because the person has been so frustrated over and over again with computer problems and are sick and tired of dealing with them, but then these are the same people that wish everything to work properly but would rather never remember the right way to do things and will close their mind on trying to remember what they did wrong in the first place, simply because they are trying to learn too much at one time. I believe it is always better to learn one thing good enough so that you can "take that step back" and know when you are going the wrong way in whatever you are doing, by means of prompts you may be getting to you sitting there scratching your head saying.. "now what have I done?"... And most of all, remember that because of the profession I happen to have chosen, it deals with computers, and this means that in some way or another, I am probably staring at one or working with one, which means I should never be too far away from some sort of communication with you.
I am constantly looking for better ways to do things and obviously that means making it easier for me as well, allowing me more time to do the other things I want to do. This is pretty much everybodys feelings now a days therefore I will continue to pursue these technologies in hopes that I can make both you and I have a more peaceful day with your computer.
