Category: Electronics

When Should You Replace Equipment and Why

Today I thought I would talk about a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of most CFO’s. Money and budgets.

In the IT ARENA as it were all hardware has a lifespan.

Desktops 5 years
Laptops 3 years
Tablets, PDA’s and phones about 2. *

HAM or Hardware Asset Management is close cousins to SAM or Software asset management.

Many that I deal with in this industry are loath to do either of these.

Why?

What seems so intuitive to a business minded person is out in left field to the IT Manager.

While most hardcore IT people will undoubtedly have the updated newest most magnificent PC at home, they will be loath to keep the hardware at work current. Either budgetary constraints, lack of planning on their IT staff, laziness or foolishness on managements parts while keeping the dinosaurs alive.

IT is a moving target.

One of my clients was experiencing a strange anomaly on one of their machines. I was there for other reasons, and they ask me if I had ever seen anything like it.

On occasion, the mouse pointer would change with some strange addition to it, making the original tip Indistinguishable from where it should be pointing.

Nobody has seen everything and the same is true for me. Offering my services, as they did not have the time for this, I did the usual stuff.

After hours of doing my routine including removing the hard drive and running scans on it outside of its operating system, the problem looked more and more like hardware. Faulty graphics adapter perhaps.

After moving the PC into the shop, the problem disappeared.

Going back to the work area where the PC was, under the desk was an old UPS. Taking the UPS into the shop and checking it out, I soon discovered that the sine wave of 60 cycles was anything but clean and, it was not holding the right voltages even though the battery was good. Upon further investigation, I learned that they had a routine of replacing batteries in old UPS’s and putting them back out.

Putting a new ups under the ladies desk, solved the problem. It was a $79 solution which should have been automatic.

I don’t want to go into the weeds here, but electronics have a lifespan. Things called MOV’s for one (metal oxide Varistor) are sacrificial devices that are designed to clamp power spikes keeping them from going downstream, in this case, into your PC and monitor. They have a finite lifespan.

UPS’s or Uninterruptable power supplies are insurance. When the battery dies, replace them.

Recycle them after you remove the battery and dispose of it accordingly. I would bet that all over every office building they have surge protectors that are no longer functioning. For the same reason, they too have an MOV across the 120V AC line. They die!

I have written about PC’s lifespan before, so I don’t want to repeat myself.

Hardware Asset Management protects the company in many ways.

You should never put an old machine at someone desk having them limp by with a clunker when they need a Corvette. The software today is memory and CPU intensive with the ever growing demands of anti-virus software and the numerous updates, it is worse.

Soft dollars are real. If you have employees that cannot work because their network is down, that is real money!

Employing a good software deployment strategy along with keeping the same model of machine in the business is wise, and worth looking into.

Software and Hardware management are critical pieces of a business strategy.

One client I had, bought whatever was on sale on New Egg. Support was a bloody nightmare and oh by the way, why do you think it is on sale?

Always purchase from a VAR, and build that relationship with them. You may need them one day!

Leasing vs. owning is worth looking into for many reasons. Bottom line, you change out the PC’s every few years, and you get the same PC to support throughout the company.

The clunkers end up on eBay and eventually, someone somewhere will be playing solitaire on it. Today’s Corvettes are tomorrow Clunkers, simple truth!

Depending on the size of your company software licensing needs to be evaluated and care taken to make sure that you are in compliance. An enterprise license is excellent to have if you are large enough. Software and licensing are evolving daily it seems, with lease being the operative word. Subscription services much like antivirus software is commonplace, ensuring a revenue stream for the developers.

Gone are the days of buying a box of software with a few floppy disk and using it forever.

I was visiting some friend when I saw an old 486 computer sitting on his mother’s desk.

My first computer was a Kaypro, and I went through the 8088 @4.7 mhz to GHz and beyond. To see the old 486 running with Solitaire on the screen and windows version three, you could see the mindset and how it evolved.

I recently trashed (recycled) a bin full of disks with programs, backups, and god only knows what all. The next week I tossed an entire bookshelf full of technical books from Novell to MSCE windows NT stuff. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours studying in the bin. SAD

Your PC is not too dissimilar from your car. You don’t buy it as a thing but as a resource. When your vehicle starts to spend more time in the shop than on the road, you trade it in. The same is true of your PC, Laptop and the rest.

Somewhere in my closet I still have a 16mg stick of memory that I paid over $500 for back in the early 80’s. $500 back then was a lot of cash. The stick of memory is nothing. What it did for me was why I bought it.

If you are not connected to the internet as long as you can keep your 486 running, and it does what you need it to do, it is viable. If you still have a copy of lotus 123, you too can relive the days of / .. 🙂

* 2 years on the average portable device is recommended because they are portable, and often dropped. If you budget 2 years, you can indeed budget correctly.

If you find my blogs helpful or entertaining, please follow me.

-Best

Don’t throw it away just yet!

Batteries are a troublesome thing and can be a real source of irritation. Batteries used in devices like this keyboard, for instance, can be in there a long time before they need to be replaced. The Current draw is small so the battery could last years.

My mouse was recently acting squirrely so I decided to change the batteries. When I opened the battery cover the familiar white crystals of “leaked battery” were everywhere. Managing to clean the contacts I decided to change those in my keyboard as well. Also leaked everywhere but not near as easy to clean. Removing about 25 screws to separate the keyboard I was indeed able to clean the contacts and remove the crystals which had formed.

The batteries had a shelf life until 2023. They were indeed still working. I had another device that I had used at Christmas last year and put up with the batteries in it. Retrieving it from the closet I took pictures for you. Also still had power in them which was amazing but defective.

Duracell has been my go to battery for decades. Occasionally I get the other brand and it is a good thing that I did.

Another apparatus that I depend on is a lightening defector by Acurite.

As a radio enthusiast and a bit of an outdoor nut, I want to know if there is weather around. Here in Texas, we get some rather nasty cloud to ground lightning.

The backlight in the detector was dim so I decided to replace the batteries before the last storm.

Installing the new batteries the apparatus did not work.

Taking a closer look at the batteries it became apparent that the new version of Duracell AAA batteries has a smaller tit on the positive end. This means that it may very well not make contact with the battery contacts.

If you look carefully you can see that there is a gap of a few thousandths of an inch between the end of the battery and the terminal. This is a common type of connector in radio’s and other battery operated things.

If your device fails to work after replacing the batteries, check this!

If you happen to know anyone at Duracell you might forward this to them.

Houston you have a problem!

Save the landfills and your hard earned money, check the batteries and the connections.

-Best

Kits and other fun stuff from eBay

I admit it; I am a gadget freak! Ever since I was a little guy and I heard an announcers voice come out of a radio, I was hooked.

There was indeed something magical about listening to a baseball game on the radio. We had this Zenith floor standing Radio with that magic green eye in the dial. Lights from the dial illumined the room as often you would find yourself transfixed on their voice and their description of the action on the field.

Those days are gone.

We have ample flat screen TV’s in super ultra 4 K extra high definition! Whatever all that means. Much like having a stereo that faithfully reproduces a square wave frequency from 20 to 20 KHz when the human hearing is good up to 12khz or 14Khz tops, one has to wonder. How many colors can my eye slash brain actually discern?

Satellite Radio offers some nostalgia for those of you who like Johnny Dollar or the Shadow knows. There are many more stations that one can listen to on road trips. The art of producing such a radio broadcast is probably all but lost today.

What you can hear on the radio itself, pales in comparison to what the radio used to provide.

AM radio is basically talk radio or news all day.

FM radio, of course, is everything from soup to nuts.

Portable radios of not too long ago, 70 years or so, were tube based. Two batteries were required, and of course, the longevity of the batteries was not that great.

The TR-1 was the first radio that was a joint effort between two companies.

Other companies jumped on the bandwagon with the advent of the transistor. Now you could build a portable radio and power it with inexpensive batteries. This device would fit into a shirt pocket or purse comfortably.

I have purchased two kits from eBay sources that are radio’s that mimic those of today.

One was a straight AM radio with a similar design to those of 60 years ago. There were no directions included with them that a non-Chinese writing, reading person, could make much sense of.

Building the device using the knowledge that I have, I was able to get it working satisfactorily. The AM FM radio kit that I bought was also lite on instructions and some parts.

Thankfully the parts missing were easily obtained from my supplies of parts.

This radio contained SMT (surface mount technology) which is always somewhat fun to “weld” as they say in their instructions. I don’t guess that there is a word for solder in Chinese.

I am always thrilled when I first power up a kit, and it works from the get-go. No smoke or other short circuits. Noise with modulation did indeed emanate from the speaker. Soon enough there was a ball game being broadcast which, caused me to pause for a moment.

After everything seemed to work as it should, I finished the assembly installing it into the case provided.

The difference between this radio and one of the 70’s was that there are three integrated circuits inside this radio.

One of them is the AM radio.
Another is the FM Radio
The third is the amplifier

Now give that some thought for a second. The significant parts of the radio were all on chips. The SMT chip is the FM radio. The eight-pin DIP is actually a stereo amplifier chip. The third which had I not looked carefully at resembles a transistor complete in a TO 92 case. Three legs only. That is the AM radio which is actually a several transistor AM radio.

All of the rest of the components are supporting components that they could not build inside the chips.

A handful of capacitors and a few resistors, switches and one variable capacitor.

The FM radio oddly enough does not track linearly as it should. At either end of the band the stations come in, but in the middle, there are “birdies” and dead space. This might very well be a design flaw in the circuitry. You can get all of the stations, but they are not where the pointer says they should be. After adjusting the trim cap on the variable capacitor, I was able to get stations to come in but again not where they belong.

The AM radio is another disappointment. Yes, it works, and I can get the stations to come in where they should however…. The strong stations swamp the weaker stations. I have two strong stations close to my house, so they indeed swamp the receiver. If you ever had a crystal radio, this is much like that only it has a speaker and power.

Some quick research on the AM chip, I learned that this is a flaw of the chip. One person has designed a circuit to lower the voltage to the semiconductor alone. This modification supposedly allows the AGC to act correctly inside the chip enabling the radio to have more selectivity.

I have ordered some of the AM chips. I plan to “play” with that design myself to see if indeed there is a way to build a radio with that chip that is satisfactory.

As a Ham Radio Enthusiast, when I see a complete dual band handheld radio with a flashlight and FM broadcast radio built in for under $50 dollars, one has to wonder how the major brands will compete with this.

In short the Chinese have multiple “kits” that are on eBay. I firmly believe that many of these kits were sub-assemblies for larger apparatuses that were discontinued. The market for DIY folks like myself is rife with such things as most of us don’t need instructions. If on the other hand, you are one of those “step one, step two, folks these kits may not be for you.

The lack of instructions requires that you bring to the table a wealth of experience. Knowing how to “weld,” solder is mandatory. Having some idea of what you are building so you can take precautions with static electricity and of course high voltages is also a good idea.

One of the “kits” on the way is a device modeled after the Tesla coil. There are high voltages present. If this turns out to be worth it, I will blog about it.

If it works as expected audio from some device should modulate the plasma.

Why, why not? It might modulate the gases inside CFL tubes or neon lights too!

Hope you enjoy the blogs and of course take advantage of your tinkering time.

-Best

Are we cooking ourselves? Here is some food for thought.

As a technology minded person, I often wondered about those who design cordless devices. In particular, I am addressing phones. I assume some government agency somewhere spent millions of your tax dollars to come up with what someone thinks are safe levels of radiation.

Maybe these people know more than the rest of us, or maybe they don’t.

Case in point.

The standard cordless phone in 2017 most probably transmits to the base either at 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz. While your phone may advertise the higher frequency of 5.4 GHz that is most probably from the base to the phone.

Split frequency designs like this are prudent as it takes more power to transmit higher frequencies.

Now, these cell phones that we all carry around transmit either in the 850 MHz range or 1.8 ~1.9 GHz range.

MHz (Mega Hertz) stands for millions of cycles per second, GHz is (Giga Hertz) or billions of cycles per second. So every second depending upon the frequency, the RF (radio frequency) cycles millions or billions of time. IE 2.4 GHz is 2 billion, four hundred million, cycles per second.

Frequency should not be confused or conflated with power.

Power for our conversation today is watts. How much power or how many watts of RF (radio frequency) are we talking about?

Cell phones transmit up to 1.7 watts of power.

Cordless phones transmit as much and possibly more than a cell phone. The interesting aspect of this is there is this DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) technology that has been around for a little while now. They sell it as a plus but European studies have shown this might be more hazardous to your health than its predecessor.

The base of this technology is transmitting full power all the time whether your phone is in use or not. If the base is next to your bed or on your desk you are constantly bombarded with 5.4 GHz or at the least 2.4 GHz of radiated power in the form of RF.

Move it away from your body.

Why am I writing about this?

Ever since the first cell phones came out I wondered what they were doing and why. These phones are always talking to the cell towers announcing their availability and telling them where they are while checking in. The phone was and is smart enough to adjust its power level depending upon what is needed to communicate with the tower effectively. The reasons are many but the main idea is to “talk” with one cell tower at a time.

My phone, even today will often time be warm in my pocket, or just sitting on the desk.

While we really have no idea what a smartphone is doing all the time, you can bet if it is warm, it is transmitting something.

I built this little device with a few diodes. I will not belabor the technical aspects of this device other than to say it does not have any batteries. These devices are passive in that the only way that they are energized would be by outside energy fields or EM (electromagnetic) forces.

I got the idea from the crystal radio of my youth. Yes, I built one and housed it inside a pen casing. With a single diode and a coil and very little know how I had a radio that would pick up local radio stations and never needed a battery.

Since my original device that I designed and built years ago, I found this version on the internet for a few dollars.

Setting this thing on top of my phone it soon became obvious that the cell phone is transmitting constantly.

Is it looking for data?
Is the phone talking to the tower?
Is the phone talking to my Wi-Fi network?

The answer is yes. We really have no idea if the phone is doing anything else in the (tin foil hat category).

Now with 1.7 watts of RF at 2GHz, give or take, right next to your ear hole, one has to wonder if that is healthy.

Out of curiosity, I moved my device around the phone to discover that the most of the radiation or highest amounts come out of the phone right by the earpiece. Why?

Knowing RF and the possible link to brain tumors, lymphoma and other nasty things why would the engineers put the transmitting antenna where it would be closest to your head?

This is the iPhone 6S.

My curiosity got the best of me so I checked my cordless phones.

The light powered strictly by RF from the phone is very bright, right on the ear hole and down by the mouthpiece, the light, or power output is nonexistent.

Imagine that your phone has enough RF power to illuminate an LED to full intensity and that energy is being pumped into your head right through your ear hole and of course next to your skull.

Tell me; why in the hell would you not put the antenna at the base of the phone where it would be furthest away from the body/brain? The energy required to light the led dissipates with distance. Logic would dictate that the less energy radiated close to your brain would be a good thing.

The pictures speak for themselves but now you know what you are looking at.

What can we do?

First off, we should ask the government for our money back that they paid for these studies. One would think that if they can come up with SAR (specific absorption rate) and what is safe that just maybe they might have said, “you know, you phone makers should place the transmitter/antenna away from their brains.”

It is kind of like that commercial where the bank is being robbed and the guard says, “Oh I am not a guard, just a monitor… you are being robbed.” What good is the FCC if they cannot think outside the box? The government, which they are part of, is to protect its citizens from faulty designs, much like the Corvair of the 60’s. Where is Ralph Nader these days?

It is amazing to me that they did scientific studies to figure out how much tissue would cook or be damaged by rf. Then they came up with the acronym SAR and finally did nothing more about it. “Look for a phone with a low SAR rating.” Are there labels, using this phone can cause brain cancer?”

What is so germane about 2.4 GHz and why am I sounding a little stressed about this?

That box in your kitchen that burns popcorn so nicely happens to work in that same frequency range.

Since there are millions of microwave ovens out there the FCC put broadband Wi-Fi, cordless phones, and many other unlicensed transmitters that the public uses in that same frequency range as the microwave oven. Part of your license on each piece of equipment reads something to the effect that this device must accept and deal with RFI or radiofrequency interference.

How does the microwave oven work and what does that have to do with my phone?

Microwave energy excites the molecules in stuff causing them to move faster. Much like rubbing your hands together you get friction which causes heat. That is how a microwave heats your lean cuisine dinner or left-overs from Sunday Brunch. Yes it uses more power but I ask you, would you stick your head in your microwave to see how long it takes to fry your brains? Consider the cell phone or cordless phone like a microwave crock pot, it might take longer but eventually, something is bound to be heated up.

Just for you people who think that I am a tin foil hat kind of person think of this one.

How many of our urchins you call grade schoolers now have the very latest iPhone sticking out of the back pocket. A trip to any mall will answer this question. Even if it is a hand me down generation 5, it puts out all sorts of power right next to that thinner more malleable skull and younger more tender, still forming brain tissue.

Then there is this whole blood brain barrier thing that doctors talk about. Does it really seem like a wise idea to put that kind of power that close to those newly formed brain cells? They are future tax payers you know. Wink wink…

Possibly one of them will say, “someone should really put the transmitter in the base of this thing away from my brain.” Will it take a child to figure this out? Maybe a riot on the Berkly campus to get the attention of corporate america who might tend to overlook such things.

I know, I am gettin my tin foil out…

With telecommunications being a multi-trillion dollar industry it is no wonder that this is overlooked. Much like the back scatter x-ray porn scanners at the airport which virtually strip search you, there is a greater good. Bombarding our bodies with ionizing radiation is not harmful as long as the government says that it is ok. (sarcasm)

Calling attention to it might cost Nokia or Apple or Panasonic a few dollars. What is the big deal about a few brain tumors, “can you hear me now?”

Since industry will probably not respond, how can you protect yourself?

Blue Tooth technology also uses RF in the same 2.4 GHz range but the power is very low. A class one transmitter uses about 1mw or Millie Watt. There is a newer headset that wraps around your neck with the earpiece extending from them. That would put the blue tooth transceiver around your neck away from your brain.

Try to always use a headset or speakerphone, and if they still have them, a corded phone.

Use e-mail or text and by all means try talking to people face to face. I know that is a radical concept but, I don’t think you are in danger of getting exposed to radiation that way.

About the device…

While the original crystal radio of my day used a 1N34 germanium diode this device uses nine 1SS86 diodes one tied to the other with an LED as one of the diodes. The legs are purposefully left long like that as they act as the antenna to capture any energy that might be present.

If you are creative you could make it look like a bug with a tail and a head that glowed. Just a thought.

I am not claiming to be an expert on any of this. Just a person who thinks common sense is in limited supply. These days we too readily accept that which is, without asking why. Ask Why!

Cheers!

Scott

What If?

Every day someone finds something. This day was no exception. The more creative the attack the more interesting the day. If you call that number they try to get you to give them $199.00 to unlock your computer.

You can send me some money if you like but, here is the fix for this…

CTL ALT DEL , task manager, kill the process, aka browser and then do not restore the page when you reload the browser.

I am not affiliated with CCleaner but I sell a heck of a lot of it for them. Install it and let it clean your browser after every use. $25 a year and damn well worth it!

As one might use an explicative to emphasize a point, I often use a somewhat tawdry analogy for this purpose. Surfing the web with inadequate anti-virus software is like “hooking up with a stranger” without using protection. Not only is it idiotic, but dangerous!

Having been in Data Processing, or the IT business since before Steve Jobs or Bill Gates was a household name, I know a thing or two. The scars on my back are from arrows taken in the trenches of digital mayhem. This bedlam was caused by such things as bosses wanting to be on the bleeding edge, to software not ready for prime time, been there done that.

Free antivirus software is not worth what you pay for it!

The best security software is going to have a price or cost to it. Why? It takes many engineers, coders, and much research to create and maintain a massive program like anti-virus software. Who is going to do that for free? More importantly, why?

While someone might write an app for free, to get their name out there; anti-virus software takes a village.

Much like hiring someone to sell your home, you don’t hire someone who does it part-time or as a hobby. If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. If you want to sell your home, hire someone who’s lively hood depends upon them being successful. You want a secure computer, hire or purchase the product with the most to lose if it fails.

There is much more to the process of considering which product to purchase but, free is not a reason. I would argue that free is a cause to eliminate that choice.

The reality is that the internet has become the wild west. The bullet that finds you can come from almost anywhere. Every company that uses computers should have a security officer. His or her job should be to focus their attention on threats out there and the best way to keep them from affecting that company.

I find it surprising that politicians are screaming about Russian hacking of our computers. What the hell do you expect? You just assume that someone with a certification gives a damn!?

What worked in 1982 does not work now. Having a “PC Wizard, or your grandchildren” working for you is tantamount to a trapeze act, blindfolded and working without a net. Insurance companies and credit card companies are now aware of this and demanding your strategies to be secure in the world of cyber threats. They should audit you, and they should hire folks like me who know what to look for.

White Hat hacking allows us an inside look at what one might expect. We learn many ways to infiltrate a company. The same applies to the TSA in homeland security. While I would probably choose a job to be that guy that test the security systems of the homeland, airports and such, it is much easier to check companies.

The first thing I must do is understand you. More importantly, know that entity many of us in the biz call “users.”

Too many infiltrations are accomplished with something called click bait. “Ten pictures that should never have been made public…” With half a picture of some scantily clad woman visible, how many will click?

Human nature dictates men will want to see what the camera saw. “Boom, you’re infected.”

Good antivirus software will stop any activity created by software manipulation but, the caveat or keyword there is “good.” What if you bought the bargain basement software or just used the free stuff?

For the coders to write the fix, someone must fall prey to it, report it, and then they must institute a fix. That is why Software of this type is never static. Updates are consistent and often. New threats are released hourly. To run a company dedicated to this is no small task.

Maybe you own a plant which produces widgets. Your widgets are better than others, and your competition wants the skinny. You hired someone like me for your IT manager or CIO so they cannot get in through your firewalls. Your safe, or so you think. Industrial espionage is rife in the competitive world of gadgets and widgets. If I want in bad enough, I will contract one of my guys to write a program that will hide on a computer until certain key phrases are typed, and then it will activate.

“Wait, you said my firewall is secure, Fort Knox secure!”

“Why yes I did, so I am going to place this little program on a thumb drive and…I am going to put some naughty pictures on it with some commercial looking writing on the outside of the device to make the person who picks it up from the parking lot where I dropped it, think that they have something juicy.”

Possibly just tossing a thumb drive out the window of my car near the parking lot with a few files on it, and the Trojan would be enough to get me into your network. I will purchase some chrome colored or fancy looking thumb drive to be sure that it is spotted. I will know when the landscape folks work, so I make sure and plant it after they have done their thing so that one of your employees will find it.

Maybe I send one of my spies out to places that your guys eat and leave the drive on the table by the ashtray or the salt and pepper shaker at the table they eat every week on a given day and time.

Possibly I get one of my people inside your company, hired by you. They install some remotely controlled program like Team Viewer on their PC and Viola; you are hacked.

Because your IT guy is so sure that his firewall is good enough, or your engineers are so demanding that he left the USB ports open for use by them, with lax policies he leaves your company vulnerable too.

How do we stop the threats?

One way we do this is with training. Every employee should sit through CE training on the essential use of the corporate computers. This is information that they can bring home and share. Education is by far the best tool one can have in their arsenal.

All of the policies are trumpeted for them to hear and before they leave they sign a document saying they will adhere to them. With it harder and harder to fire people these days, that too is one more tool in your belt. Good employees, you want to keep, those that prove lacking, they need to go.

I could easily make the argument that good computing practices are patriotic. I could certainly apply this to purchasing respectable anti-virus software and creating policies and procedures that protect your business but, the bottom line is, in the end, it will save the company money.

I was making this argument to a CEO of a good-sized company when he stopped me and said, but viruses help your bottom line too.

I argued that I would much rather use my time and talents to design safe environments for companies like his than put out fires. It is considerably less expensive to install a good fire retardant system then to try and rebuild. Yes, a metaphor for using robust best practice standards in computing vs. reacting to noise.

Noise is the result of a problem created by an event that was unplanned or caused by employee error.

A good security person is somewhat paranoid and is always asking, what if? I do this in disaster recovery scenarios balancing those “what if’s” against statistics and a risks assessment.

With proper education, we can mitigate the employee errors. Using proper procedures and policies, we can diminish the unplanned events, i.e. viruses or other malicious code.

When I run into companies that think free antivirus software is adequate, it makes me a little crazy. If they are a public company, trust me, I will not purchase their stock. Flirting with disaster out of sheer frugality or ignorance is idiotic.

If you keep your guys around because you like them, think again. I may love some folks, but I would not hire them for certain positions if I could find someone better. I don’t have to like you, for you to work for me. If you are the best person for the job, you get the job. P&L trumps feelings! Feelings can be costly and can be a liability. Logic in business is your ally. Logic must always be forefront when making business decisions.

I have walked away from companies who have their kids working for them. By hiring the children, you open yourself up to losses that could be untold. One company had their children not doing the paperwork necessary to complete the task, thus losing money in that department. Hiring me to do an analysis, it did not take long to find the problem. I fired her children after trying to work with them. I kid you not one of them actually cried in my office after telling him time after time he must do all of the job. A grown man crying! There is no crying in IT. Either perform the work or get the hell out! Either do all of the job or learn to ask, “Do you want fries with that?” Is that too tough? I felt for the kid but, feelings do not dictate policy.

Do your kids a favor and don’t hire them. The real world does not work that way so why in the world handicap them, and make them believe that it does?

Over the years there are best practices that have been created by time trusted procedures and policies.

Some are things like:

Hardware Asset management.
Software Asset Management
Security both physical and digital

I could write a book on the subject, but I will spare you the details.

Today, now more than ever we must harden our networks. We must have sound policies and procedures in place, and they must be adhered to. Documentation is essential, and it must be updated.

I don’t relish firing people but, sometimes their people are the problem, and the CEO is so far removed from the process they just don’t know it. If training can fix it, I am all for it. Attitude too plays a crucial role in the process, and I will not tolerate a crappy attitude. Life is too short, and the subject matter is too important.

I love the HR folks because often they are the gatekeepers, saving the CEO from disaster. Good HR folks are worth their weight in silver. Gold, maybe not, so let’s stick with silver. Worthy people are not that hard to find as many would have you believe. Upright people are around, but they may not have everything that you are looking for immediately.

Instant gratification is an expensive luxury and can be elusive at best. Where employees are concerned, I want to start with a “good foundation.”

We place certifications above character, and that is part of our modern day conundrum.

I hired a grocery store manager and trained him for a job in IT. He had little experience in the job I hired him for, so why did I hire him?

He had the right attitude and wanted to learn.

I had the time to train him.

The money used for training him was penny’s compared to hiring exactly what I was looking for.

He did not have the bad habits that come with so many “experts” with the certifications, and their egos.

He ran a grocery store and let me tell you; he was not afraid of work!

Back in the day, we had interns or apprentices. Folks, we need to look carefully at that once again. I have hired many over the years that had the right attitude and the skill set to learn. American people are out there struggling, and we won’t give them a chance. Why? Instant gratification. We need someone who can step into the job right now, and we run with minimum employees because of what? Because it is so expensive to have employees.

That is one of the things we need to push back on Congress and health care to fix, but the reality is, internships and apprentices I think are essential to finding and creating good employees.

Every job fair that I go to has thousands of workers looking for work. If you can’t find them, you are not looking! I spot good employees daily. There are times I would love to go work for a recruiter just because I can spot talent!

Are they the exact racehorse ready for the Derby today? Maybe not, but can they be trained? There are virtual diamonds in the rough everywhere, looking for a chance! We are begging to bring in more H1B folks instead of taking care of our own. That is not very damned patriotic if you ask me!

Our schools are a disaster in my opinion. In speaking with college graduates today, I am frequently amazed at just how ignorant and totally out of touch with reality that they are. Someone somewhere screwed them to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars for an education that is worthless. When they think voting for a socialist is a good idea, they were screwed by their college and should demand their money back!

Today we have kids tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and they cannot find a job. I know of several college grades making much less than $15 an hour. Our educational system needs an overhaul.

As quickly as a company can get a process documented and packaged, they send it overseas via a VPN over the internet, sending jobs out of the country.

Trades are being overlooked for white collar jobs which are going the same way. IT jobs are vanishing in the states. Virtual IT shops are set up in some foreign country, hiring an English speaking American to act as a liaison between them and their Indian or other counterparts. With an American point of contact, it is then up to the American to manage the folks in another country who speak little English, making little money, to be the IT shop for these American companies. This same person puts an American face on their business while working with their client managing the “noise.”

“Do you see any security risk there?”

You have no clue where your intellectual property is going or who is seeing it. Maybe you have a contract but so what. Much like HIPAA was created to protect your health information, do you honestly feel as if your information is secure? If you do, you are fooling yourself. Read the documents you sign when you visit the doctor. You sign things saying that your information is protected and then you sign a document which pretty much gives them a pass to do whatever they want to do with your information. Smoke and mirrors.

Doctors and hospitals are hacked and the information is stolen all too often. Why? How? Piss poor planning on someone’s part. Using some cheap method to get things done perhaps?

Your contract with your Virtual IT company is as worthless as the paper it was printed on. Yes, that deal might make you feel better but, know if you are a developer, someone in some other country has your work and if they can use it, they will.

I want to touch on Software Asset Management as it is germane to this subject. All of the subjects are salient, but that one, in particular, is in the case of security.

There are tools which you can use to inventory every program on every PC. Why? Why would you want to do this?

Licensing of software is an issue, but more importantly, you should want to know what is on those PCs. The first time I did this for a company I was struck with the reality of the sheer number of programs designed for remote control of a PC, that was active.

In this world we live in, corporations can ill afford to have the wild west inside their computer networks. Besides the games and other foolishness that was identified, the risk to the infrastructure was phenomenal. The company is liable for every program on their PC’s, no matter who put it there. If they are audited for their licenses, and someone like myself does an audit and finds them, they must then produce that license. Can you? Can you put your hands on all of your licenses?

Ignorance is no excuse!

Having been part of the evolution of the business process, dating back to the secretary and the typewriter to current day, I have seen the learning curve first hand. Fighting the first virus on a network before there was anti-virus software; asking “what if” became second nature.

Back when Gregg shorthand was used, a business letter cost an average of $100.00 back then. Now we type out e-mails with the ease of few keystrokes and dictation is a thing of history. Technology has improved the business process, but the bad guys have found a way to make it interesting.

The very tools we use to make our lives easier are under constant threat by evil forces that look for ways to extort money or steal your property either through the exploitation of your network, or your employees themselves.

We use the cloud as if it were a hard drive in some vault in our closet. We send information to the cloud without a clue where the cloud is and who has access to it. Why we don’t encrypt that data before it leaves our computers is beyond me. If I were a villain, I would be looking for ways to infiltrate the “cloud.”

“What if?”

The opinions expressed are my own as well as the intellectual value of the information put forth for your consumption.

When is the right time to think about Disaster Recovery?

Spring rains bring on more than just flowers or in my case, weeds. The phone started ringing early the other morning. My coffee was still brewing when the continuous ring of the phone demanded me instead of the regular answering service.

It would seem that lightning hit a pole close to one of my clients.

Lightning is far from respectful of your deadlines or the amount of work that your staff has lined up to accomplish. From simple power outages to fire, lightning all by itself is a disaster in the making. Some simple steps ahead of time can keep your company from being a victim to what this client was.

One girl had her headset in when the lightning struck and was shocked. Happily, she is ok, but their systems were not so fortunate. Had the grounding been worse; she may have been the path to ground.

Once the power was restored the server, router, and switch, did not recover.

The one machine on a UPS died as the power went out.

What went wrong?

Surge protectors have a finite lifetime. People buy these power strips with surge protectors and forget about them. Surge protectors are nothing more than a power strip with something in them known as a “Metal Oxide Varistor or MOV.”

Any power surge above an acceptable voltage is clamped or shorted to ground by this device. The problem is the MOV only last so long before it no longer functions. Every time there is any spike in the line from compressors shutting off to other electronic “noise” these components are adversely affected.

What is better?”

A UPS of enough wattage to allow the computer to be safely powered down in the event of a power failure. Along with the backup power ability, these devices have more sophisticated line conditioning circuitry protecting your equipment from stray voltage spikes.

One note to remember, these too only last so long before they must at least be maintained, or replaced. Any CIO worth his salt is familiar with Hardware asset management and has this is mind for his budget. CEO’s hate surprises like unexpected expenses. It is much easier to argue a budgeted expense than going hat in hand begging forgiveness for your ineptitude.

Suffer a catastrophe like this client, hope your boss does not hire someone like me to do a root cause analysis.

At the very least batteries must be changed out but keep in mind that an MOV is also part of that piece of hardware. I would budget the replacement of a UPS, rather than just the batteries if it were me.

Unless you have electrical engineers on staff, who are qualified to re-certify that equipment, it is too cheap not just to replace it.

Along with outdated hardware or not enough of it, I have seen too many times the ground plug defeated to save a dollar from an electrician. Those ground plugs are there for your protection, not because someone wanted to make it difficult for you. The problem with temporary is all too often it becomes permanent.

Lightning struck outside one of my client’s offices hitting a pine tree. Finding the electrical ground for the building, which was poorly grounded, everything in the building suffered a power surge knocking out much of their equipment.

Many times, building management will only do what is necessary by code and leave the gamble up to you the tenant.

Depending upon your location, achieving a good ground could be difficult. The type of soil must is taken into account among other things. Again, depending upon your location, you might want to invest in grounding your building with lightning protection equipment including lightning rods or now they call them “air terminals.” The idea is to have some amount of confidence that if lightning hits, it will strike your planned target and be dissipated safely into the earth.

Since all computer equipment and now phones are wired through the network, this last customer lost computers and phones along with the network infrastructure.

Failure to plan is planning to fail.

The cost of the hardware and time to repair was minimal, compared to the amount of time the company was out of business.

Insurance will only get you so far. As these spring storms fire up, there is a real element of danger to your building, business and, like the one young lady found out, to her person. Had proper grounding been utilized I doubt the girl would have felt the shock in her ears.

While a tested, reliable disaster recovery plan will allow you to sleep at night, preventing the disaster in the first place is what you should shoot for. That starts with planning.

From your building security to network security, right down to protecting your infrastructure from mother nature, accounting for every contingency is paramount.

Truth told, there are seldom good surprises in business. Mitigating the surprises with proper planning can prevent poor performance. Asking “what if” is key to any plan. Weighing cost vs. probability allows anyone with some business acumen to make sound decisions without breaking the bank. Understanding the risks, are the starting point.

-Best

Am Radio kit from China

Cheap Chinese Radio Kit

As a radio enthusiast from way, back I thought that it might be fun to build a radio from a kit.

A quick search of eBay turned up a simple six transistor kit for less than $10.

I was interested in a kit that was as close to the radio’s we had in the 1960’s which would leave out anything with integrated circuits.

Ordering the kit it was about 3 weeks before it arrived and another 2 months before I opened it.

Not wild about the color of the case nor the front plate, but this is a kit, not a work of art; right?

notice the 2 transistor places marked v4

The board looks pretty straight forward.

Problem 1… the instruction are all in Mandarin.

T2, T3 and T4 Are not interchangeable.

Those character by the purple blotch are the designations of which are which.

On another part of the document is a chart for the resisitor color code. Since I know what it is I can work it backwards and figure out what the colors should be.

There you go…the primer as it were. BBROYGBVGW

Now working this backward…The IF cans were identified.

T5 is the audio output transformer and it too has a key. Notice the white dot on the board and the slightly raised up bump on the housing of the transformer.

The rest of this was simply to populate the board correctly and see if you guessed right.

I noticed on the circuit board that there were traces that were not completed for some reason. If I could read Mandarin I am guessing that possibly those are stages at which you could do tests before completing the entire circuit.

Notice the C and the D… There is also an A and a B which are not completed either.

Over to the left of the board you can see two of the incomplete circuit paths.

If you look carefully at the parts layout you will notice that V4 and V5 should really be V5 and V 6 as there are two V4’s wich in our nomenclature would be Q4,5 and 6.

So not only are the instructions worthless to those who cannot interpret Mandarine the printing is flawed.

My review and guess of this “kit” is that someone bought a bunch of them because they were dirt cheap as the printing was flawed.

The kit does not use a detector diode which causes it to lack sensitivity. My guess is that they are using the driver Transistor as part of the detector as well.

Since these are silicon transistors and not germanium that too hinders the performance as a detector.

Once built you must insert a 455Khz signal with the variable capacitor open and tune the black If can for maximum sound output.

Using a non-metallic tuning tool you can then tune for your radio stations. The two adjustments on the back of the variable cap work in conjunction with the oscillator and the last IF can to set the stations on the dial accordingly.

Even though this kit was cheap, unless you have some pretty good radio savvy, I would take a pass.

As an FYI the speaker is very tinny sounding.

I took a short video of it working but, the video type is not compliant with WordPress. Sorry about that.

-Best

Dear #CEO #Recruiter #LinkedIn

I find myself between contracts on occasion. If there were something, that is a good match for my skills and talents, I would love the opportunity to speak with them or you about it.

As a seasoned professional, I bring many things to the table.

If I had a nickel for every time someone would ask me, “I got this C:\> on my screen, what do I do now?” Family is the worst, you cant charge them!

I started working with computers when DOS was in its infancy; nobody knew who Bill Gates was and Wang, IBM and Xerox were the major players with Atari, Tandy and the Commodore PET was in vogue for the affluent home user.

DysanRemovableDiskPack.agr.jpg — Early hard drive which had to be in a really cool room. The media was removable, the heads would stay inside the machine.

Steve Jobs had just stopped being a criminal with his phone freaking hardware, but still was a nobody, while building the first apple in his garage.

GU.SteveJobs.9.3.15.jpg — Alex Gibney’s newest documentary, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” chronicles the famed Apple founder. Courtesy photo

BBS’s or Bulletin Boards hanging off a POTS line at 300baud were the standard. 1200 baud was certainly not common as some were still using acoustical modems.

Al Gore had not invented the internet yet…

Truthfully I think he had something to do with legislation allowing the public access to it. Somehow it got conflated with him as the inventor.

Main Frames were what most companies used complete with water-cooling.

Networks went from different coaxial types for the physical layer. Arc net was the least expensive, Ethernet was still in the works, and Token ring, IBM’s idea was the standard; but few could afford it.

Starting on the ground floor of this industry, leaving a rather successful career in electronics was a valuable experience for me.

Witnessing the demise of the typewriter, dictation equipment, Gregg Shorthand and the secretarial pool replaced with high-powered laptops and smartphones has been quite the thing to see.

Yes, I actually worked on these…Mylar belts were the media.

The cost of one business letter in the 70’s was well over $100 in 1970’s dollars. Today a quick e-mail re-defined the way we communicate. In today’s 2016 dollar, that is $627.38…

If you do not believe me about the price of a business letter, ask me about it. I was there.

The first virus I fought was before there was anti-virus software. The cleverest virus I fought was the “pong” virus. Modeled after the Pong game, one would be working in some program and a ball resembling the ball in pong would appear. As it struck a character, the character would fall to the bottom of the screen. This of course was destroying your document but at least you had some entertainment while it did it.

Moving from the XT Based 8086 systems in the late 70’s up to the recent, has been a nice ride and I have enjoyed being part of that evolution. As hardware hits the brick walls of physics and bigger better faster slows down, software must carry the advancements forward until such a time that chip manufacturers figure out how to get more speed and throughput maximizing everything from RAM to video and disc performance. Embracing advancements while constantly positioning the company strategically ahead of the curve, but not on the bleeding edge is my long-standing history.

Once included in your world, seamlessly; I will become part of that world knowing your business and how technology fits.

Every part works in concert to fulfill its intended purpose. Employees must necessarily “fit.”

While focusing more on business applications vs wiz bang hardware, I specialize in providing an ROI to the people who have to pay for it. Is this technology necessary? How will it help? Will it prepare me to transition in the future?

Spending much of my life with technology, I have run a business now for the last 10 years providing ad-hoc IT services, while performing disaster recovery services.

My specialties include, but are not are limited to:

Over 30 years hands-on IT projects.
Over 15 years in Management.
Data Center design and installation
Power
Placement
Controls
HVAC
Fire retardant
ADA compliance
Security design and audits
Physical security design
Disaster Recovery
Best Practice
Business Acumen
Compliance issues with SOX or other regulations, as the need requires.
Visionary and forward “out of the box” thinker.
Troubleshooter

From the desktop to the cloud, I have it covered.

Some of the typical calls I receive while on site.

The internet is slow.
The server crashes.
We think we might have a virus.
This computer cant “see” the printer.
I don’t know what we have?
I thought we paid for that software?
Somehow this computer got hacked.
Cant get on the Internet..

If these sound familiar the underlying causes may surprise you.

Through best practice, a complete inventory of your hardware and software it usually does not take long to figure out why?

Lack of documentation is generally the common denominator.

From a startup that just needs things set up right the first time, to a company that let some family member set it up, and now needs help, I am your person. No sugar coating…

This letter is meant for those of you who see my profile on Linked in and wonder if I am available. Drop me a note, I might be!

Unlike others who will blow smoke, I will not. If you are seeking a trip to the moon with funding for the carnival, I will tell you. If I cannot help you, I will not waste your time. I know many people in the industry, I might simply refer you.

As someone who has written many job descriptions, hired and let go more than I care to think about, I am a tried and tested realist. I find options for you, and then you decide.

-Best

Periscope or Pervascope?

Full disclosure…I have been working with computers before the internet. And I can tell you Al Gore had nothing to do with it.

One thing that we as a race of beings seem to do is seek the lowest level. Some would argue it is our nature, and others would argue it is because we are fallen as a people.

Porn was one of the first things to make its way through cyberspace even before the Internet; when there were only BBS’s … I think that the first or second time that I saw it, it was a novelty…Now things of value are the novelty.

One of my author friends discovered something called Periscope… She announced that she was going to do this “periscope talk” which prompted me to look into it.

“I watched someone broadcasting Ted Cruz live…I watched someone send video from a storm, another from a beach in Indonesia and I even chatted with Danica McKellar who was doing a live broadcast while one of the Hallmark movies she was in; played. It was nice to see that she was still grounded as a person.

While watching some of these events…artist and such, it further amazed me that the “people” who will try and get ladies to “open boobs.” What the hell is “open boobs?” How do you open boobs?

These people have such poor English and are so deviant that they will do their best to get people to show them some part of their anatomy.

Ignored Behavior Goes Away

One would think that after a while that these “people” would just go away….

The problem is that the behavior is not ignored…

There are “ladies” out there that use this “forum” as a marketing tool to take in money from the people who would be willing to pay for a peek that their goods.

They are in fact feeding the stray dogs, encouraging the riff and the raff of the internet.

These “people” know no boundaries either… If your daughter or other child should find this mud hole to play in, they will undoubtedly be taunted and coerced by unsavory individuals from anywhere on the globe that the internet reaches to; “open boobs” or “pussy please.”

Know what lies in the water before you jump in…. Parana’s and other leaches are there waiting for you, your child or your credit card…

-Best

GreCom PSR 700

Tacky radio

Well, one would think that I was about to write a commentary on some DJ, or perhaps some radio personality that was messy, or ill fit for their job but, that is not the case.

This is actually a technical article regarding the GRECOM PSR 700.

This radio is actually a very nice, easy to use scanner, for the person who wants to listen immediately without punching in all of those dozens of frequencies.

The data base comes on a small SD card that you simply install in the radio under the batteries and it is then menu driven with familiar controls as it mimics the old iPod in many respects.

I picked up the radio the other day as I have not used it in over a year. With Trumps visit coming up and all of the protesters I thought that listening in might prove interesting.

When I picked up the radio it literally stuck to my hand. This thing was made in China and I am guessing that like their famous capacitor flub up they too did not do something right with the chemical makeup of the case on the radio. The plastic actually started to break down and reacted with the atmosphere “I am guessing.”

If you run your fingernail along the back of the plastic the “sticky” actually comes off and adheres to your fingernail much like the glue on those nasty little labels that you find on so many things that you buy now days.

Going on the web looking for a solution there was not one. There are others that have reported this but, Grecom is out of business. I am guessing that the refund or warrantee of all of the radios that this affected was too much for them and they abandoned those customers.

I took the battery cover off and simply tried to wash it. Dish soap and a brush just made a sticky mess of both the brush and my hands.

Even if it worked you could not run the radio under water so some other form of “fix” was going to have to be discovered.

Goo Gone to the rescue.

Using Goo Gone and that little plastic tool that you use to take laptops of smartphones apart worked nicely.

Simply get a little goo gone on your finger and rub it on to the area that you want to clean.

After it sits for a few minutes use the tool much like a scraper and small deliberate strokes and you will see the sticky crap come off and pile up at the end of the stroke.

If you feel comfortable dismantling the radio first that might be your best bet as any mistake will have this stuff inside your radio.

I carefully did this too all of the surfaces removing as much as the sticky stuff as possible. I then got a cloth rag and with some force rubbed and buffed the rest as best I could.

I finished the process with “Windex,” and a paper towel. Dampen the paper towel with Windex, never spray it on to the radio. Small deliberate forceful strokes, removed the rest of the nastiness that was nothing more than flypaper on my radio. Cosmetically the radio is not as pristine as it once was, and the lettering that was under the sticky mess disappeared as well.

The radio is still usable, and does not stick too anything any longer.

If you are thinking about buying one of these online think twice as you may be buying a sticky mess.

This is not for the faint of heart and I am disappointed that I spent that kind of money and have a radio that clearly is not as pristine as it was when I bought it.

If you have one of these here is the page for downloads and if you want third party out of warranty service.. I contacted them several days ago and no response so, your mileage may very…

http://www.greamerica.com/

-Best