Welcome!

In case you’re reading this and wondering, “What the heck is going on here?” I’ll offer a brief overview of what this blog shall be like. I run a computer service business in North Carolina called “Tritech Computer Solutions.” Personally, I think that some of the things I deal with on a daily basis are downright mundane, but just in case there is interest in anything that comes into my frenzied mind, I thought that starting a blog wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Hopefully you’ll enjoy what you read here. If so, E-mail me at jody@nctritech.com and let me know! I’ll be far more motivated to post interesting things if I actually know that they’re interesting. Please note that while this blog is written by a business owner, it is personal in nature, and all content herein is the ownership and responsibility exclusively of the writer, not Tritech Computer Solutions, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Tritech and its staff. All content not directly created by the author is generally used under the fair use doctrine of United States copyright law unless otherwise specified.

(This was reposted because I somehow totally busted the original “Welcome!” post…)

Using Firefox? Get Adblock Plus NOW.

If you’re using the Mozilla Firefox browser (or one of its variants like Swiftfox, Iceweasel, etc.) you need to install the Adblock Plus plugin and subscribe to EasyList NOW.

If you’re still using Internet Explorer, Safari, or some other browser, you need to get Firefox.  Trust me, Firefox with Adblock Plus will make a huge difference in your browsing.  I haven’t seen an ad in years.  Firefox with Adblock Plus comes standard on all Tritech Computer Solutions new and used computer systems for a reason.

Additionally, you should get your hands on NoScript.  NoScript blocks JavaScript, which is largely responsible for unwanted popups, things that can block or bypass Adblock Plus, and many other annoying things you don’t want to see on websites.  Unfortunately, JavaScript is also responsible for most of the sites that you love being able to have pop-up menus and other user-friendly capabilities.  NoScript lets you “whitelist” the specific domain names you trust, while blocking those you don’t, which allows you to block ad scripts and things you’re not sure about while turning on just enough JavaScript capability to make sites such as Gmail work properly.

If you’ve got these installed but still want to maximize your Firefox browsing speed and keep your experience clean, FlashBlock is the way to go.  It’s very simple, really: FlashBlock replaces all Flash content with boxes containing a “Play” button instead.  The content won’t load and play until you click on the box, and it can be turned off for sites that you visit regularly as well.

All of these Firefox add-ons can make Internet browsing faster, ad-free, and much more enjoyable.  Plus, because fake security software “vendors” are able to easily purchase top ad placement on Google and other services, you’re also lowering the risk of accidentally clicking on one of these dangerous sites.  NoScript will also protect you from those confusing JavaScripts that try to force virus downloads upon you.

So, if you don’t have these things,GET THEM NOW.  End of story!

A rant I posted recently, regarding Internet security…

We drop Avast on ALL computers that come in, while simultaneously telling every single customer that it will do nothing to prevent them from brand new threats…and neither will anything else on the market today!  Quoting myself, “viruses are a cat-and-mouse game, and antivirus vendors are always the cat doing the chasing.”  Software firewalls are also junk, because any virus that does take root can easily bypass such a program.  In reality, the only two things that are needed to keep a secure network are (A) a hardware firewall between you and the Internet and (B) well-educated, cautious, skeptical users.  Education seems to fly out the window when an erection or free music is involved, which is why 90% of what we see is porn seekers downloading whatever they think will be porn (and obviously wasn’t) and teens who grab LimeWire and proceed to download every virus known to man in the process.  Computers and their software stopped being the weakest link over a decade ago.  The most commonly exploited security hole on a computer is the device which sits between the keyboard and the chair, not the IP stack or WMF rendering libraries.

Building KDrive X.org servers in the year 2009

I’ve been looking for info on building KDrive (a tiny X server implementation) from the X.org sources for a while, and  I finally found some information that makes it nice and quick and doesn’t mess around at all.

KDrive – Making Embedded Debian

Everything else online dates back to 2005 or older, so this is pretty good info to have for new embedded developers who don’t have a clue how to do it yet.  Like me.

Using Gimp on a netbook

That’s right, I am officially crazy enough to try to use Gimp on a netbook.  While they may be small and underpowered, the ability to use an advanced image editor can come in handy at the most unexpected times (and often does!)  There are a few tricks needed to make Gimp’s tools fit on the screen of a netbook, though, particularly a 7″ netbook like my Sylvania G, and I shall reveal them now.

The biggest problem is the sheer quantity of space the two default toolkits take up.  Fortunately, these are highly customizable, and we can take advantage of a simple drag-and-drop to fix the issue.  Under the toolbox on the left pane, you’ll see a series of tabs.  Simply take all the tabs on the right pane and drag them down to this tab bar, and right-click and “close” any tabs you’ll never use (the brushes tab, for example, is not necessary unless you work with lots and lots of custom brushes!)  Pulling all the right-hand tools into the left-hand tools lets you remove the right pane entirely, freeing up oodles of space.  This is the most important goal: to dump a pane and reclaim what little viewing space we have in the first place.

Another big key to shrinking the toolbox is changing the theme from the Default to Small.  To do this, simply open the Gimp Preferences (look under the File menu) and click Theme in the left side of the window, then change it in the right side to the Small theme, and click OK.  Your toolbox tool icons should shrink significantly and more of your toolbox will become visible.  If you haven’t shrunk it vertically yet, now is a good time to do so.  You’ll need to toy with the vertical and horizontal size of the toolbox until it all (or most of it, anyway) fits on the screen well.

But wait!  In Gimp 2.6, they added some pesky eyes to everything!  That’s “Wilber,” the Gimp mascot, and while it might be cute and acceptable on a 17″ widescreen, I have 800×480 dots to work with and Wilber’s eyes will actually force the bottom of the left pane off-screen, even if I shrink it to its lowest vertical height.  What to do?

It’s quite simple, actually.  To remove the “eyes” of Wilber from the top of the Gimp toolbox, you need to find the “gimprc” file and add a line to it  The hard part is finding the file, but we can make that process easy.  If you’re using Linux, it’s under ~/.gimp or ~/.gimp-2.6 or something similar; on Windows, it’s under your Application Data folder in your user profile.  Windows users can simplify the process by using the Windows search function to locate “gimprc” instead of fishing around.

When you try to open gimprc on Windows, you will be asked what to open it with.  Normally I’d tell you to use Notepad, but Gimp may use Unix-style newlines which will render the file unreadable to a normal person in Notepad.  WordPad will open the file properly and should save it okay as well, so use Wordpad.  (If you’re a power user, why aren’t you using Notepad++ yet?!)  Go to the end of the file and add the following line to it:

(toolbox-wilber no)

Save the file and run Gimp to check that the eyes are gone.  If they aren’t, make sure you spelled it right, otherwise feel free to enjoy Gimp on your netbook!

Google Chrome OS: Why it will suck, and why I don’t want it

Ah, yes, the much-speculated Google Operating System.  Rumors about a possible OS from Google have been floating about for years now, and it seems that Google has finally delivered the cornucopia of computing goodness to your door.  Coming soon to a netbook near you:  Google’s new operating system.  The news is practically flooded with articles about why Google’s fancy new OS is so important and interesting.

I’m here to tell you why it sucks, and why it isn’t really that special at all.

First and foremost, Chrome OS is based on Linux, and Linux has already been out for a long time, with Ubuntu being the most well-known and possibly the most available distribution.  What makes Chrome OS different from any other Linux distro?  It’s Linux with yet another face, but under the hood it still shares far too much with Linux to be considered its own “operating system.”  (Watch for my next post to clarify the difference between a true operating system and what is merely labeled an OS but in fact is more of a “software environment.”)  Chrome OS = Linux with another pretty face.  End of story.  If you want Linux, download Ubuntu or Debian or Fedora or ArchLinux.  At least they offer up real applications and a fully featured environment…

Second, Chrome OS suffers from the most serious problem that other “cloud-centric” distributions of Linux are plagued with: the all-too-often wrong assumption that the computer will be connected to the Internet most of the time.  The OS is centered around the Chrome browser and the primary apps are online apps, with support for traditional offline apps likely to be minimal.  Case in point: gOS, which came with my Sylvania G netbook.  The first thing I did was toss out gOS and install something else–anything else– because it was such a nuisance.  gOS comes with icons for OpenOffice.org and Firefox, and that’s really about it.  Every other “application” seemed to be Internet-enabled.  Most of the “applications” were Google, Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, Google Docs, and other garbage that requires a (fast) Internet connection to work.  What good is having an ultraportable laptop if you need an Internet connection to use 90% of its functionality?  That’s one reason I documented some of the things you can do to get more out of the G netbook, because it actually comes with the majority of the standard GNOME environment, which includes a significant number of games, control panels, applications, and other tools…none of which has an icon in the default installation at all!  Chrome OS is doomed to suffer the same fate, because it is nothing more than “gOS reloaded” for all intents and purposes.

FEW PEOPLE WANT TO BE TETHERED TO THE INTERNET WITH THEIR LAPTOPS AT ALL TIMES.  LEARN THIS, GENIUSES: INTERNET APPLICATIONS SUCK.

Which brings us to my third point:  INTERNET APPLICATIONS SUCK. The ones that don’t suck aren’t Internet applications at all.  I don’t know anyone that uses Google Docs, and Google Docs is no replacement for an installation of OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office.  One might be tempted to counter with a mention of the heavily-used Google SketchUp or Google Earth, but the difference is that those are true applications which just happen to be Internet-enabled or come from a site on the Internet.  Google Earth uses data pulled from the Internet, and Google Earth totally rocks.  Google Docs, though, is sparse on features and not very compatible with other office applications.  It is not a viable replacement for a real office package for most people, and it feels like “Microsoft Works lite” in general.  Looking beyond Google, we see sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and other “social networking” sites taking longer and longer to load, being plagued by excessive use of widgets, and other serious issues.  Contrast this with traditional instant messenger applications and even the ever-hated AOL, which may not be the smallest programs in existence, but provide much better performance, a larger feature set, and better integration with other programs.  Internet applications are limited in their implementation and capabilities, as well as by the lack of proper support for industry standards that have been around for a long time now.

What’s very depressing is that I actually see many reputable sites hyping Chrome OS and discussing whether or not it threatens Windows, Linux, Mac OS, or even embedded operating systems.  Chrome OS is nothing more than a Linux distribution with a stupid idea behind it, and Google has spent considerable time and money on dumber things (can you say YouTube?)  This isn’t like Android, which opened up options in the mobile phone market considerably.  This is something targeted at machines that can already do more than Chrome OS can do.

In short, Google Chrome OS is obsolete before it ever rolls out.  Apparently, I’m not exactly alone in my opinions, and this article sums it all up quite nicely.

My netbook returns from the grave, and why it rocks in the car

The warranty place must have replaced the motherboard on my netbook, because every problem (including what I didn’t remember to tell them) was fixed when I got it back.  The low volume in Windows XP went away, the headphone jack works great, the unit doesn’t freeze at all, the power button works when there’s a serious problem, USB booting isn’t flakey anymore, and the only problem I have had is the problem I always had from the start: the gOS installation on the Sylvania G likes to lock up the system sometimes.  This is probably due to a lousy or hastily created Linux X.org driver for the VIA video chip.

Anyway, the warranty people did an excellent job.  When I talked to them on the phone, I made myself look a bit foolish because I thought I nuked the OS, when in reality I didn’t, but that’s beside the point.  I talked to them about my problems and I swear unto you, the day after I talked to them my machine was delivered!  They had it for a couple of weeks and got tired of looking at it, and they overnighted it back to me.  Quite a lot of  service for a laptop that originally cost $300 and can be bought for far less even now!

You’re probably more interested in what I have to say about my netbook and my car.  I picked up a cassette tape adapter and used it to link up the audio from my 64-bit laptop to the tape deck because my stereo is stock from 12 years back, but the laptop quickly overloaded my AC inverter.  Ouch.  So, I whipped out my Sylvania G and hooked it up instead, and my inverter didn’t overload once as I drove to and from jobs all day long.  One of the primary design considerations for netbooks is minimal power consumption, and if you don’t have a real 12V lighter socket and/or you have a cheap inverter, a netbook is highly likely to work just fine whereas a “real” laptop will overload things, shut down the inverter, or maybe even cause a fuse to blow out.  MP3 listening requires very little in terms of modern processing power, so a netbook is very well-suited to this role in a car.

On top of that, having a running netbook in the car gives me immediate access to wireless services, so if I need to check an email quickly, I don’t have to dig out a machine and wait for it to start up.

Viva la netbook

How was the first day with minimal telephony?

GREAT.  I was able to contact T-mobile and get my phone to ring for much longer, giving me more time to answer a call in lieu of the now-disabled voicemail system picking up.  That alone has already come in handy, as I have been able to pick up calls from my wife and my techs long after it would have kicked over to voicemail, inevitably leading to phone tag and wasted time.  I’ve instructed my technicians that calls asking for me are to be screened aggressively, and only those which they are completely unable to assist should make it to my desk (as in one customer today who inquired about a custom computer and needed to discuss the options for getting that custom computer.)

Because I am being interrupted less often today, I have managed to mostly finish converting a multi-language website for one of my long-time business clients to a PHP-based and easily managed layout, including langauge-coded folders and more standardization across the board.  This has been difficult to work on for days now because of all of the unnecessary interruptions that customer service matters have caused.  Now that only essential issues reach my ears and break my concentration, my productivity is already seeing a significant boost.

This is the way it should be.  A business owner needs to focus on one thing only: the business and making it better.  Customer-oriented approaches to doing business are as crucial to success as ever, but the best advice I can give to a small business owner starting out is this: learn the value of making the people you supervise handle things; that’s what they’re there for, and you can’t do your job of supporting their efforts if you’re too busy doing theirs. A business relies not only on good personnel who know what they’re doing and have enough authority to help customers sufficiently, but also on good managers who can coordinate and support the creative and assistive forces of those personnel to ensure that they work together optimally.  Put another way, it seems impossible to coordinate and supervise your workers if you spend too much time doing their job and not enough doing your own.

Separating myself from customers and letting my people shine, both on the phone as well as in person, is proving to be crucial to my ability to do my job.  My techs can’t be expected to do work if I’m not out there revamping the website or performing SEO or passing out flyers or hitting up local businesses or whatever else I have to do as the most important manager in the business.

I can’t emphasize enough that this doesn’t mean I won’t ever talk to customers or do tech work myself.  It’s important for a manager of any kind to be “in touch” with what’s going on amongst the managed, and to provide guidance and assistance when it is seriously needed.

The problem is that many of us want our business to succeed so badly that we forget about the high-level management stuff as we worry over minutiae.  I’d say that as of today, I’ve learned that lesson, and I hope that this post helps others to do the same.

Telephone? Bah! Why I am making myself scarce on the phone.

“Well, if we’re all done, I’ll just make myself scarce.”  I don’t know where I picked up the expression, but it’s really cute and gets a chuckle now and then.  In a more serious light, though, “making one’s self scarce” is exactly what I’m doing with phone calls, starting today.  Now, me being a small business owner may incite much questioning about this new policy.  Doesn’t a good business owner answer the phone and talk to customers?  What could possibly be the reason behind this?

There is an article that covers this topic well which deserves an honorable mention: Should You Turn Off Your Telephone? Now I’ll answer the question about why and how I am getting away from the telephone.

I have access to three professional telephone numbers: two at the shop which are daisy-chained together by call forwarding, and my own cell phone.  Both sets of phones have voicemail at the end.  Well, had voicemail.  About 15 minutes ago, I cut my T-mobile voicemail service off completely.  Every time I made a voicemail greeting, it would politely recite the shop phone number, insist on calling that number, texting, or calling back in 10 minutes, and explaining what to press to unblock a call, followed by a request, then a demand, to not leave voicemail because I won’t get it.  That request was not respected at all, and my phone would constantly blip up voicemail notification reminders despite my explicit demands to simply wait on a call back! Where did people lose their ability to understand basic English, and to respect my explicitly spelled out request and warning that I don’t check voicemail?

I felt disrespected beyond belief every time someone left a message.  It’s like they said “okay, I’ll leave one anyway because I don’t give a damn about what YOU want, Mister Smarty-Pants Business Owner!”  It’s like someone else spitting in my face.  There’s no excuse for it.  Nowhere in the realm of human decency is ignoring an explicit request even remotely close to existing, yet people do it daily.  I’ve come to realize that many people simply do not consider the human factor of people in business.  The reasons are obvious, but the most significant one is that each ten-minute conversation to them is one ten-minute conversation, while to me it’s just one ten-minute interval in a huge flood of calls that eventually ruins almost half of my potential work time per day.  I need that time to grow my business, write some software, redesign the website, print business cards, and things like that, but instead it is completely drained away having conversations that my technicians could easily handle if callers would stop demanding to talk exclusively to me for anything and everything under the sun.

I want to be available to help everyone, but I am being forced to come to terms with the fact that I am one person with only 16 hours a day to do everything that must be done.  I understand now why corporate types rarely talk to customers: it’s simply not possible to do that and still get their own jobs within the company finished too.

I have decided that I must take charge of my time.  I must manage my time and treat it as the most precious resource in this company, as well as in my life.  It is limited and non-renewable, and I need to make all of it count for as much as possible.  If that means making a customer upset because they can’t speak directly to me, then so be it.  If a customer would refuse to do business with my business simply because they can’t talk directly to me whenever they feel like it, then I wonder whether they are the kind of customer we are in business to serve.  I hired and mentored a team of professionals so that I could extend my capabilities to more people, and it is extremely important that customers take advantage of their knowledge and willingness to help.

Not to mention the fact that some work might actually get finished around here now…

The Sylvania G dies, but yields an AWESOME customer service experience.

It’s official: something went severely wrong with the Sylvania G netbook I bought in October.  The keyboard AND POWER BUTTON will completely “lock up” at random and QUICKLY, yet the computer itself still runs in the background, and the hard drive developed a couple of bad sectors (which I remedied by doing a zero fill–more on that in another post).  It’s fairly unusable now, and it’s still within the warranty period, so I called up Sylvania’s support number for help.  The company that actually makes these netbooks is called Digital Gadgets, and it is them who I have dealt with.  So, how did it go?

I haven’t been this happy about a customer service experience EVER.

I explained to the tech that I bought the netbook in October 2008, that I run a computer service shop, and detailed heavily what was wrong and the evidence that I had gathered to make my judgment call that the netbook was screwed up.  Apparently the ink used for the serial number sticker is poor, because it had smudged off to the point that it was unreadable, which I made very clear early on in the call.  This is about where you would expect me to spew off about the run-around I was given and the stupid hoops I had to jump through to prove to the person that it was indeed screwed up, because 99.9% of service and support agents have almost no authority to help customers and are usually in the business of preventing warranty returns at any cost.

But that didn’t happen, not even a tiny little bit.  No run-around?  Surely I jest, right?  WRONG!

The tech support agent, named William Lee, promptly started the process of generating an RMA and took my shipping address to send a totally free return shipping box to.  About eight hours later (and after business hours, no less) I had an RMA number in my email inbox, with instructions on what to do when the box arrived.  As of this writing, the box hasn’t yet appeared, but that’s because I only called them a couple of days ago.

It is astonishingly refreshing to be able to deal with someone like William.  He did everything exactly right, without a single flaw in his procedure.  He LISTENED TO THE CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM, taking the time to ensure he understood exactly what was going on from my perspective.  He also BELIEVED THE CUSTOMER’S STORY AND EXHIBITED BELIEF IN THE CUSTOMER’S GOOD FAITH, which is the exact opposite of what most suppot agents do: showing a lack of faith and general distrust of the customer right off the bat.  Because he LISTENED and BELIEVED, this brought about the UNDERSTANDING  that there was a clear issue covered under the warranty which needed to be resolved quickly as possible.  Within a reasonable time frame, he PROVIDED A SPEEDY RESOLUTION TO THE CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM.

Let me explain exactly why I am writing in this fashion.  William’s example should be followed by all companies, and sadly it is almost nonexistent in the corporate customer service landscape of today.  The benefits to the customer (in this case, myself) are fairly obvious: the problem was resolved quickly and the customer’s precious time was not wasted to achieve that resolution.  But what about the benefits of William’s actions to the BUSINESS?

1. William spent as little time as possible chatting it up on the telephone.  This left William free to service other customers, reducing overall load on the customer service department at Digital Gadgets.  It also made William a much more valuable asset to the company, because William is able to service more customers than an agent who is given no authority and is required by the company to simply  toss customers through hoops.
2. On the flip side, William did not abbreviate our conversation.  He spent the time required to understand my situation, but did not ask me to perform senseless exercises when it was quite clear that the problem was hardware-related and not fixable over the phone.
3. I was heard but not patronized, AND a SIMPLE solution was presented QUICKLY.  This greatly increases my faith in Digital Gadgets as one of their customers, increasing the chances that I will purchase from them in the future AND RECOMMEND THEIR PRODUCTS TO OTHERS  AS WELL.  Over time and across many customers who are similarly situated, this leads to MORE SALES, which can quickly and easily exceed the cost of a warranty repair on my one individual netbook.

William is doing it right.  Other businesses could take a few lessons from how he handled my situation.  I can’t wait to get my fixed toy back in good working order, and I’m very happy to have bought a computer from a company that treats me like a customer should be treated.