An Unlikely Victim of Sandy

I was all set to fly this morning from Long Beach, California to San Francisco on a direct flight so I could attend and help lead the regional CITRT meeting there.  My flight was at 7am, and I got up at 4:30 so I could get through security with plenty of time.

I arrived there as planned, parked, checked in, went through a security pat-down, and waited to board my flight.  After boarding I took my seat and waited as the plane filled, then they closed the door and pulled the ramp back.

A few minutes later the pilot greeted us over the PA system, and let us know that communications with their operations had just been lost.  I was on a JetBlue flight, and their operations are all done at JFK.  Apparently they are unable to access their system from any other location, so the entire JetBlue fleet was grounded until communications were resumed.

In today's Cloud technology era, there is no excuse for this!  They should be able to take a few notebook computers to anywhere there is a secure Internet connection (or simply do this at another airport), login, and do their work!  Instead, I missed the CITRT meeting and now have a JetBlue credit to manage.  And a parking expense because the airport isn't responsible.

So, as a west coast resident and traveler today, I was a victim of Sandy-- albeit an unlikely one.

Quick Review of Mountain Lion & Windows 8

I just released a new article for publication that is a brief review of these two new operating systems. A preview is available on our website at http://www.mbsinc.com/mac-osx-10-8-windows-8.

Cool Sighting: White Bellied Sea Eagle

While on a bike ride yesterday a large bird caught my eye. It was more than 2' tall and was perched on the leaf of a cell tower impersonating a palm tree.  I took some pictures of it with my cell camera, but their quality wasn't great. (The best one is included here.)

I wondered what kind of bird it was, but thought it looked like an eagle!  So today I did some research.  It was an eagle!  Here in Huntington Beach!  Who knew!

CCB -- Totally Forgiven

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about an integrity concern I had with CCB (Consistent Computer Bargains). I had called CCB's leadership, but didn't get a response. Since my endorsement and recommendation of CCB has been so public over the years (more than a dozen print articles and numerous referrals while speaking at conferences), I felt the appropriate action was to post that I could no longer recommend them.

Last week the founder and CEO of CCB called to ask what happened and, when he heard, he asked me to forgive him and his team. He assured me their rep had acted outside of their policy. As one who has been forgiven much, I obviously forgave them. Then I told him the only way he could begin to build trust again would be if his next layer of management also said the rep's actions were outside of their policy. We had that conversation, and I believe them.

CCB has been a pioneer and strong advocate in securing software licensing discounts for charities. They are driven by their heartfelt desire to help the Christian church, and I believe their desire to serve The Lord is sincere.

I hope those who read my previous blog post will agree with me that they are forgiven and should have the opportunity to prove their sincerity. I plan on giving them that chance, and hope you do too.

MBS Response to the Sophos False Positive Support Issue

We sent the following to our clients this afternoon about this challenging issue:

What a week this has been!  Let me catch you up on where we are with this issue:

• Sophos put out a virus signature update last week that mistakenly identified some of its own files as malware.  Though they corrected the problem later that day, because so many did what they were supposed to do (tell Sophos to clean up the problem files), damage was done and it set off a domino effect that affected workstations and servers worldwide.

• We have been working on our clients' servers and workstations nationwide to correct the problems this has caused.  It has meant a lot of 'after hours' work because of the multiple server restarts that were required.  We hope to be done with this process by Monday morning.  Already we have spent about 60 hours on this!

• As you know, MBS doesn't sell or distribute hardware or software.  It was the decision of our board early on that we wouldn't profit from the hardware and software we recommended to help ensure that we remain objective rather than profit-driven.

Even though we are not responsible for issues hardware and software vendors create, we don't believe you should have to pay for this mistake the software developer made; it's just too big.  Thus we have decided to internalize and write off the time we've spent on this.  It's part of our partnership with you in Kingdom building.

Please accept my apology again that other support issues have gone unresolved.  We hope to catch up next week, and are working hard towards that end.

New Article on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)

BYOD is a wave that is just beginning.  There are management, legal, and even tax implications!  This article will help you prepare and plan for it.

Click here to read a free advance copy if it!

Mountain Lion: Thumbs Up!

When I blogged early last month about Mountain Lion, I had reservations and cautioned adopting it too early.  Apple has released a number of updates including a service pak, and it seems to be stable now. I recommend going for it unless you do some research and find that one of the apps you rely heavily on advises not doing so.