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Wishing You and your loved ones a safe and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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From my family to yours, I wish you the best of the holiday season. Please drink responsibly and compute responsibly!

Merry Christmas

and

Happy New Year

As part of our holiday spirit we are offering 50% off our computer repair services (see our new site in the new year which will link to this site). Yes, that means $30.00 instead of our regular $60 for in-house work and $35.00 for our mobile services instead of $70.00 Offer ends January 15th, so call or email before then and book your appointment!! So some people ask, what do I do?

First I am a A+ certified, MCSE carrying computer expert. I am familiar with most operating systems including several of the popular linux distributions.

I am also a certified low-voltage technician who specializes in security and networking. Any wired (or wireless) product I support. I am proficient with security systems, surveillance systems, telephone systems, in addition to your typical computer systems. My company sells a fully integrated solution that marries all your systems to work together, improve automation, reduce false alarm issues, improves legal documentation, and helps you sleep better. Serious solutions that WORK.

I do hardware diagnostics and repair. From laptops to servers, any computer can be diagnosed and fixed from our in-house repair depot. Even if the PC DOES NOT BOOT, we can diagnose the problem.

I also do data backup, recovery and restoration. We can recover deleted files and filesystems. If you use our restoration services, I will also provide you with a custom backup solutions, so that you never have to worry about losing your data EVER. Many folks do not pay much attention to this service but we have saved many important pictures from being lost forever.

I also do malware discovery and removal. I have spent the last several years studying malware and how to remove it. We also provide effective security products to eliminate the risk of infection. We rather spend time making your computer do more things than fixing these issues, so we do NOT just clean it and forget it.

I also design and provide Intrusion detection systems for individual networks. Whether your a small home network with a few users, to large data centers with hundreds of users, are products are designed to not impact your network performance and provide you with the information to enforce policies, and ensure your networks are not being used by the bad guys.

Additionally I have built many custom computers for various needs, from personal video recorders, to network accessible storage, home theatre PCs, to high end gaming rigs, dedicated process servers (file servers, streaming servers, digital video recorders, etc.)

No problem is too big and no request is impossible. Contact me via email for any questions you may have.

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Just to wish all my friends and family, including my extended families the best holiday wishes.

Have a Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year!

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I know some avid mac users are going to try to flame fest me with this comment, but I really hate stupid support people.  You know the type.  Don’t have a clue, reading the flowchart like it’s a bible.

Yes, sometimes it’s important to follow procedures and ensure all bases are covered, but I welcome anyone’s comments regarding my personal experience of recent. Frankly, even Apple is not immune to this!

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I was a lucky person who received a Ipod Nano for Christmas.  I really didn’t see myself as a Ipod user, and never would have bought one myself, personally I was more interested in the RCA Lyra (sp?) or a PSP. But I still welcomed this lovely black beauty in my gadget collection.  So I set it up, and discover that it’s using a custom proprietary driver to copy files via another software tool called “Itunes”. I really don’t want Itunes as it behaves very poorly with Avast Anti-Virus, and since AV solution are more important than another media player, I can well do without Itunes.  Not any more.

Yes, in order to transfer my content I much use Itunes driver.  Ok.  I can handle this if that’s all I’m going to be doing with it.

So last week a couple advisories were posted, one involving Quicktime, the other involving Ipod Software. I had JUST installed the latest version of Itunes and really didn’t want to upgrade again, or thinking I didn’t need a upgrade but I confirm my version of Quicktime is old.  I decide to see if the programs themselves are competent at finding the newer version and upgrading automatically. Wrong.  Quicktime offers no facility for “check for updates” so I check Itunes since the downloads are combined these days.  Itunes quickly tells me I’m running the most current version of the software.  A quick audit, shows that I am running the latest Itunes, but not Quicktime.

So I gave up on this facility, and do it the old fashioned way.  Search out the download directory and download the file.

Get the download no problem, and install fine.  Now I’m patched.  But WAIT!  I still have to get the latest Ipod software yet. 

So back to apple.com searching for this, I find the slew of versions for various Ipods in existence, and locate my version and click on the download link.

It wants to know if I’m the registered user, if I registered then login, if not fill out this form.  I never register hardware I don’t trust anyone with this information, and in this case they also elect to put you on spam mailing list from undisclosed third parties. 

Anyways I fill out the form, and click on the submit button, and I get greeting with a white page.

No file, no download, no link, just a blank page.

I try this a few times to the same results.  I try another PC same results.  I decide that I am eligible for support so I call the number on the web page.

I get a nice fellow who discovers I’m Canadian, not American and directs me to Apple Canada Support.  I explain I only need to download the software off the .com site, and really don’t need ‘official’ support., but I get directed anyways.

This is one of my pet peeves.  The site does NOT disclose the various support numbers nor assist the user in self-directing themselves to the proper support line.  Instead they inconvenience and waste everyone’s time with this ‘I cannot help you, let me transfer you to the department that does’. syndrome.  I usually take ineffective companies like this and flush them in the toilet.  I could still get a refund on my Ipod and I’m thinking very seriously about it.

My partner says I should give it a try as there is probably some stupid easy solution to this (you’ll be amazed at the solution), and to be patient and try the Canadian Support.  Well I’ve heard good things, and investor solutions (yes we used to own Apple Stock years ago) was fabulous to deal with.  So I’m really expecting good things even though this upgrading is annoying me to no end.

I get this lady on the phone who asks how they can help, I explain my Ipod is working fine, I just need to figure out why I cannot download the Ipod software from their web site.  She asks me what I’m installing the Ipod on, I explain it’s on a Windows XP box.  She asks if it is SP2, and I state no, it’s only SP1.  She then tells me to go to microsofts website and install SP2, and try again.

Ok, I’m stunned.  I’ve been downloading files off of networks for over 20 years, and never told my OS was insufficient to download a file.  I try very hard to explain this to the lady to no avail.  She gets very rude, and tells me that I do not meet the minimum requirements for the Ipod.  I explain that it WORKS FINE!!!!  I just want the latest version of the software due to the security vulnerability.

I may as well have asked my dog to fetch me a new car. I stated that I’ve NEVER had to meet minimum requirements to download software EVER in my life, and I have no intention of installing XP SP2 on these boxes.  Yes, I own two copies, but I regressed to SP1 since I did not require any of the features of SP2.  Did not matter, she would not help me.

So now I’m off the phone very dismayed with the nonsense I was told.  My partner is even getting upset over this nonsense (yes she does tech support for a large ISP) and can’t believe it, so she tries to download the file for me.  When the form loads, she tries it fails.  I get really annoyed and debating about causing a short but heavy load on the server submitting 1024 charater data strings into each of the forms, but then I decided to fill it with vulger comments instead.  Email address youassholes@apple.com   Name ‘Whatdoyou *censored*ingcare’, I think you get the point.  After filling out the form I then click submit, and I’m then presented with a download.

 

I guess unless you tell them off in the rudest fashion your not allowed to download software.  Perhaps someone else may have registered this email address and it recognized this and allowed me to download the software.

Now I have to install it.