Time your words wisely

For many of us who are out there using Social Media, sharing our lives and thoughts with others, we have a tendency to communicate the same way in print as we do face to face.  This is usually a good thing because the messages are received as if we were there.  It’s an easy way to connect our readers, sometimes on an emotional or spiritual level.

However, we need to be careful how and when we communicate when it’s not face to face.

Here’s why.

Timing is everything.

  • Stress changes the way we receive messages
    • Depending on the person’s stress load or stress tolerance even stating the obvious could be a major source of irritation.
  • Written messages via (facebook, text, instant messenger, emails) to a friend on a really bad day/week might be misinterpreted.
  • Verbal messages are a little easier to deliver.  You might change how you share the message based on how they’re feeling that day.

Some examples of bad timing

  • An unemployed family member or friend
    • “You really need to get a job”
    • “You need to look harder”
  • An underemployed family member or friend
    • “You really need to get more work”
    • “You aren’t making enough”
  • An already stressed out and overextended family member or friend
    • “You should be spending more time doing (Insert activity here)”
    • “You should be doing more (Insert activity here)”

Suggestions to remedy this situation

  • Be aware of the receivers condition before you communicate.
  • Avoid using the word “You” with stating the obvious.  It can be taken as an accusation that they aren’t doing enough.  This results in increased stress.
  • Be helpful.  Is there anything “I” can do to help you?
  • If you use sarcasm in your communication, I NEVER USE SARCASM ;-), reserve it for when you’re face to face.  You might avoid “eating crow”
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Guard your passwords

Spammers, Malware & Virus writers are always trying to catch us off guard especially when it comes to our passwords.  When we’re on Social Networks like Facebook we have a tendency to trust email messages that appear to be sent from our trusted friends and colleagues.  We click on links assuming that they’re being helpful to us by providing a one click method to visit a helpful website.  They entice us with a prize at the other side of a submit button.  All you have to do, they say, is give us an email & a password to get access.  Without considering the consequences we provide them with the tools they need to pose as us.  With these tools they can login to our accounts and spread their deception to even more unsuspecting family, friends and colleagues.  Have you fallen prey to their schemes?  Perhaps you may already be a victim but haven’t discovered it yet.

The problem: Many people use the same password for all their accounts including all their email accounts.

The solution: Make each password unique for each account.  If needed write it down then store it in a secure location.

The challenge: Change your passwords NOW for each account.  If you’re like many, you probably have several accounts that share the exact same password.

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Time Machine is my hero

It’s midnight.  You’re trying to finish some documents before going off to bed.  One last document to create that is similar to one I had created the day before.  No problems, just open the file, change some information then select “Save As” option and everything will be good.  The problem is instead of clicking “Save As” option, I clicked on Save out of habit.  All that work on the previous document was replaced with the new changes.  In the past I would have been a little stressed this little mistake.

Fortunately, I have  some software that has my back.  Yesterday after I had made the changes, it made a backup of my file for me.  The software is Time Machine.  All I had to do was enter the Time Machine.  Go back to the previous day, then click on the file I had destroyed & tell Time Machine to restore it.  Within a minute my file was restored and life was good again.

I can’t tell you how important it is to backup your files.  You never know how important backups are until you need a file that has is no longer available.

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Routers crash too

Most people take their wireless routers for granted.  They never think about the possibility that their router will ever crash.  However, I can tell you that they do fail and of course thanks to Murphy’s law 😉 they crash at the most inopportune time.  In my case the router crashed right when I needed to print from my wireless laptop to a remote printer.

Over the past couple of days my router had been acting more and more unreliable.  The performance was slowing down and the connection was being lost.  The quick, but temporary, solution was to cycle power on the router.  However, eventually the router talking to all the wireless devices.  When I investigated the problem I discovered that the router decided to do a factory reset on me.  All of my previous configuration information was gone in seconds.  In order to get it functional again, I had to modify the router’s MAC address so the cable modem would be talk to the router, then I had to reset the communication parameters & passwords.

Because I was the one that configured the router, it didn’t take me too long to restore it to its previously functional state again.  However, if I had the job of reconfiguring this router from scratch it would not have gone so quickly.

I mentioned this story just to remind everyone that most network devices that have a considerable amount of configuration usually have a backup feature built into the administration portion of the firmware.  If the router had been backed up, it would have restored and functioning again within minutes of the hardware failure.

My old wireless router served me well over the past decade, but reliability is a must in my line of work.  So, out of necessity, I’ll be switching out this one in favor of one that has a little more horsepower.

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BlackArmor NAS 110 storage server

A few weeks ago I was looking for a Network Attached Storage device.

My search criteria was pretty basic:

  • 1TB or better storage
  • cost less than $150
  • works with Windows
  • works with Macs

Initially the NAS 110 seemed to fit the bill until I tried to use it in practice.  After some trial and error I resolved the issues and now have a usable backup system.

Some gotchas I hadn’t thought about before.

  • Compatibility with Mac’s Time Machine software.
    • I found this article on how to convince TimeMachine to use the NAS drive – how to enable time machine on unsupported volumes.
    • After running the magical incantation I was able to mount the drive using smb://IPaddress/TimeMachine
    • That was half the battle, the backup failed because it couldn’t create a sparse bundle file
    • I found another article that help me create the sparse bundle file that helped convince the Time Machine software that it could continue time machine on nas
  • Compatibility with other backup software
    • It had issues with the Windows XP Backup software
    • I ended up using the BlackArmor Backup Software for Windows OS.  Fortunately, I only needed to use 2 windows machines.  By default the NAS 110 gives you 5 licenses.

Some Final Notes:

  • Setup separate shared folders for each computer you plan on backing up.
  • Setup your NAS device with a Static IP not a Dynamic IP
    • Your automatic backup software depends on your drive being at the same address every time.
    • If your NAS has DHCP enabled, you never know when its IP address might change.
    • When the IP address changes, the backup software cannot find the drive and will not be able to continue the backup operation.
  • If you have a mixed computer environment Windows/Mac you might want to Google the drive you’re considering to see if it’s compatible with the backup software you intend to use.
  • In future posts, I plan to review various networked backup solutions
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