Auburn Computer Magic

Twin Lakes Computer Magic is now also known as Auburn Computer Magic. We now service the Auburn, CA area along with the Mountain Home, AR area. Check out our new website here.

Everett's Sawmill Website is Live!

That's right, we've just completed another website. This one for Everett's Sawmill. Everett was a pleasure to work with and we were amazed with the beauty of the logs he creates for custom built log homes. Check out his website at www.everettssawmill.com.

Mountain Home Arkansas Restaurant Videos

If you are looking for Mountain Home, Arkansas area restaurants then check out the new YouTube Channel Bill & I setup. You can find it here.

Remember, most posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Website is Live for Sew Unique of Mt. Home

Sew Unique's Website is now live. You can visit it here. Owner, Debbie Horton, will be keeping her Blog updated with the latest happenings in the sewing world. Check out her site for all things sewing.

Don't forget, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

QuickBook and Windows Vista Compatibility

We run an older version of QuickBooks and the only version of QuickBooks that works on Windows Vista is QuickBooks 2007. We didn't really want to upgrade QuickBooks so I created a work around so that I can access QuickBooks 2003 while in Vista. Here's what I did:

1. Downloaded Virtual PC 2007 for free from here.

2. Booted to Vista and installed Virtual PC 2007

3. Setup a Windows 2000 Pro virtual machine

4. Setup Virtual machine on network

5. Installed QuickBooks on the virtual machine and connected to network data

6. Created shortcut on my desktop to my newly created virtual machine

That was it. Now when I want to use QuickBooks while in Vista, I open my virtual machine and there it is.

If anyone is interested here is a good article explaining why the previous versions do not work with Vista. It looks like QuickBooks is killing their brand with the slow performance of new products, forcing upgrades by not supporting older software, and by not taking steps years ago to get their product up to date. I guess they really should change their name to SlowBooks.

Check Design Ninjas for more frequent posts.

You Know It's Time to Say Goodbye When...

Picture by Peter Kaminski.


1. They say, "You know, we just want it (referring to everything) to work and not have to call you to come out here again (implying everything must work forever - nevermind the upgrades)"

2. They say, "Our accountant has said we spent too much money on support last year." Even though they spent more the previous year, and appx 1/3 of what they spent in the year was because a previous computer guy installed illegal software. Even though when I compared what they spent to a competitor of theirs it was 4 times less - a competitor who by the way has a network that works pretty darn good because they listen to what I say. (They thought they shouldn't be compared).

3. They say, "We can't remember you saying we needed to get rid of Norton Internet Security, even though it was on the last invoice and I had told them at least 3 times."

4. They say, "It's (referring to everything) is not working when 1 out of 5 programs is not working.

5. They say, "It's a program we use everyday but we are not sure if it worked at all in the last year."

6. They do, "Use two other computer people for support in the last 3 or 4 years and end up coming back after they find out those guys suck"

7. They say, "We should be paying $40 per hour for computer support." When the worst company in town (that employs one of the guys in #6) charges $60 per hour.

8. They say, "You fix stuff and then we don't know if it works and we have to redo it." Even though I follow up after every service call and they say it's working great (good thing I take notes of date time and person I spoke to about how great the service was).

9. They have, a hateful attitude and blame instead of just stating there is a problem and they would like to get a better understanding.

10. They say, "If you ever want to work in this town again, you will do blah blah blah!"

That's when you know it's time to fire the client and say goodbye. By this point they've built up too much resentment and are refusing to look at facts.

Windows Visual or Windows Experience

I run Windows Vista in a dual boot with Windows XP. I was feeling mixed on whether or not I liked Windows Vista more or not and then I figured it out. I noticed when my computer was booting and I had 30 seconds to make a choice of Vista or XP I went through this thought process:

Do I have something to get done today? If so I went to XP

Do I have time to play around and deal with a bit more annoying things? If so I went to Vista


I was a bit surprised at my thoughts on this, but it's true Vista doesn't support everything I use and it is slower than XP. I think the names say it all, XP is for Experience and Vista is more of a visual thing. So, it comes down to, do you want to see pretty things or do you want to to have the experience of getting work done faster?

Remember, the majority of posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

AT&T Killed Cingular

AT&T bought Cingular and now our service doesn't work anymore. We always had great coverage at our home until Friday. Now, sometimes we can make calls out, and some calls get in, but most the time the calls are dropped and the signal fluctuates greatly. It's just gravy that our Cingular contract ends in 3 days. The only other option here is Alltel, and to be quite honest I would rather have Cingular. I spoke to tech support and they told me 3-5 days before it might work. That's not acceptable, I have kids, we do business on our phones, and we only use cell phones. We can't be down for more than 24 hours. So, in frustration I punished the Cingular logo above.

Check Design Ninjas for the latest posts.

Word 2007 PDF Gives Error Message

Picture by indi.ca.

I've been working on creating a PDF file through Word 2007, but when I uploaded it to my website people were getting Adobe Reader error messages when they tried to open it. It turned out they had to have the latest Adobe Reader Version 8.0 to read the document I created with Word 2007. What a bummer. I did find this way cool free software called PrimoPDF that did the trick. PrimoPDF allows you to take any document you can print and convert it into a PDF. PrimoPDF saved the day!

Remember most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Outdoor Wi-Fi Hotspot Installation

Last week we did an Outdoor Wi-Fi Hotspot Installation and had a lot of fun with it. We used two D-Link DWL-7700AP Access Points for the installation. Before doing the install we were surprised that we could not find much information on the Internet about these units, so we decided to create a document containing step by step information about the installation. You can view the document here.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Medicare MCE Claims Not Sending

I hate dealing with transmitting medical Insurance claims, but that's what I did today. It all started about five years ago when I got a call from a lady at a local Doctor's office that told me her modem wasn't working. I thought, Gee, no big deal, that will be easy to fix. I went out and found out that she referred to her computer as her modem and when she said not working she meant she didn't know how to use it. I've now learned to ask people, "What do you mean so & so is not working, or how do you know it isn't working?"

Back to the story, after some questions I found out what she really needed was to get setup with Medicare to do electronic claim submissions. So, after about a week of me studying the software, and talking to Medicare, and learning about billing codes, and inputting a zillion codes, we were set and uploading claims.

Fast forward about five years and it stopped working. Claims were only being sent partially and sometimes not at all. We found that the Medicare Claims Express Software, or MCE, had corrupted data. The symptoms were when we went to "Workday Wrap up" the blue bar did not go to the top of the screen, but it did create the file to send. We could transmit the file just fine through Hyper Terminal, but Medicard did not receive it correctly.

As luck may have it, our the backup started failing last September and no one ever checked it. We were able to take all the files from the backup that started with ptnt* and overwrite the current corrupted files and then all started working fine again. Who would have thought a failed backup would save us?

Vista's Zip Extractor & Snipping Tool

I'm now into week 2 of using Vista and I have found that the built in Zip extractor is extremely slow. It took it over 2 minutes to extract a 1.38MB file. I did find that WinRAR works on Vista and it extracted the same file in seconds.

Now, one thing I have found that I love about Vista is the Snipping Tool. It works like Print Screen on Steroids! You click the Snipping Tool and then select which area of the desktop you want to cut out as a picture and then it automatically opens up a new box with the area you selected. You can then save the file as a JPEG and you're done.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Getting Oriented with Windows Vista Business

I've been working on getting Windows Vista Business Edition loaded this weekend. Currently, I have it setup in a dual boot with Windows XP. I ran the Vista Beta for a few months, and enjoyed it even though it was a bit slow. I'm pleased to say the final release of Vista seems to operate a lot faster than the Beta did. Here are some of the things I've ran into during this initial setup.

1. The start menu of course has changed, and I believe for the better, no more pop-out menus. Hooray!!!





2. Windows Mobile center automatically detected my Dell Axim, and after I deleted current partnerships it started syncing up just fine. I like the Interface here also.





3. I keep getting these pop up messages about switching my color scheme. Currently I'm running Windows Aero, but anytime I open Macromedia Fireworks, Trillian, or any web page with Active X content it switches my Color Scheme to Windows Basic. It's somewhat annoying, but the good news is as soon as I close the program causing the problem Vista automatically goes back to Aero.





4. Vista has some black and white wallpaper choices...finally. I don't like my wallpaper to be noisy and generally I stick with just a plain color, but now Vista has added a few black and white selections.





5. Vista Help and Support is actually helpful. I had to search for where to change the hidden files settings and when I went to Help and Support there was an option that Vista would do it for me. I clicked and boom Vista changed the setting. I was shocked.





6. Of course there are some program compatibility issues that I have noticed. Zone Alarm gives a big warning and I had trouble installing AVG. My AVG Resident Shield still will not load, even though it ran in Beta and AVG claims it should work.





7. Adobe Illustrator fussed a little after install and told me I did not have privileges. I went to help and support and Vista suggested I right click the program icon and go to the Compatibility tab. Once there I could tell it to "Run this program as an administrator" and what do you know........Vista Help and Support came through again.






My overall Vista satisfaction rating is about an 8, even though Vista only rates my experience as a 2.6.





I would still recommend people wait 6 months to upgrade and give software companies time to work out these minor issues.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

QuickBooks Performance Issue

I've had a ton of trouble with QuickBooks lately, it was almost time to call in the QuickBooks Queen, but alas I solved the slow QuickBooks mystery.

Here's the scanario: Computer A hosted the QuickBooks company file and ran QuickBooks. Computer B ran QuickBooks locally, but pulled the data from Computer A. Both computers were had the same hardware specs and all other programs worked normally, except QuickBooks.

Symptoms: QuickBooks opened terribly slow after logon...32 seconds to be exact after entering the password. When switching company files it was the same thing, 32 seconds. (Keep in mind these are good computers with a lot of RAM and Processor power).

What we found: Computer A happened to also be the Spector CNE server and Computer A & B both had the Spector Recorders installed and reporting data to Computer A. When we uninstalled the recorder from Computer B the QuickBooks company file would open the file from Computer A 10 times faster.

The problem: Apparently if you host the QuickBooks file on a computer and that computer is also the Spector CNE server, and if the other computer wanting to open QuickBooks has the Spector CNE recorder then the performance of QuickBooks is degraded. It seemed that even if I switched the files around so that Computer A was pulling the data from B that there was still a performance issue, so I think that if you have Spector CNE Recorder installed at all then QuickBooks seems to take a hit over the network.

Remember, Check Design Ninjas for the latest.

Restore QuickBooks Updates After a Reinstall

I usually hate it when I have to reinstall QuickBooks and wait for all of the updates to load. It seems to take forever. I finally figured out that the QuickBooks updates are stored in the C:\Program Files\Intuit\QuickBooks Pro\Components\DownloadQB13 folder and all you have to do is back this folder up. Once you reinstall QuickBooks you then can copy the DownloadQB13 folder over the top of the newly installed folder, and then when you open QuickBooks it will load the updates.


If you don't see the folder DownloadQB13, then just look for a folder under the Intuit directory named Downloadxxxx. The folder number varies by version of QuickBooks.


Check out Design Ninjas, where we post on a daily basis.

Can a Computer Think Outside of the Box?

This computer can!

Be sure to check Design Ninjas for the latest posts.

DAVE Is Cool

Robert Scoble introduces Seagate's new product, Digital Audio Video Experience (or D.A.V.E):

It's a device that fits in your hand, or your pocket. Other devices talk to it through USB, BlueTooth, or WiFi wireless connections, and it stores stuff. Music. Videos. Photos. Or standard old files. You can play those off of a cell phone, or a laptop, or a desktop computer.

With 10GB or 20GB of storage for less than $200, it means your mobile phone can be your mobile computer. Nice.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Photoshop Drawing Practice

I like to draw people, but I have never really entered the digital world of drawing people until a few days ago. A few days ago I decided to take a stab at drawing a face in Adobe Photoshop and I liked it. It will take a little getting use to before it feels comfortable, but above is my first attempt at it.


Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

MSN Sort Of Asks What We Want

I went to MSN homepage and saw this:





My first thought, "Oh MSN, is asking for feedback. I will do that and I think I will suggest that they allow each user to customize their homepage with widgets, like Google. Then I could add feed readers and whatever other information I want." So, I clicked on the link and went to this little survey giving me four options of what I wanted MSN to add, like below:



Well, I chose the Neither option and apparently so did the majority of people. I did find that you can customize your MSN homepage with widgets, but it seems like too much work to mess with it. I'll just keep using Google. I think MSN should have made this question a little more open, where people could have actually suggested things that they want.


Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Symantec, "We Cannot Pass This Information"

From my previous post, you've probably noticed I'm having some trouble with Symantec. What you may not know, is that I've been having trouble with different versions of Symantec for the past two years. I've been slowly migrating all my clients away from them and anyone who is running their product. Today I had some problems with Symantec detecting Spector 360 as spyware and disabling it even though the end users told Symantec to Exclude scanning this. So, Spector sent me an email on how to fix it all (basically reinstall everything) and a link to Symantec's chat. When I connected with Symantec's chat service I was number 29 in the queue and after I go connected this is what was said:

user Misty_Olen
has entered room.

We are experiencing higher than usual service times. Please wait and an analyst will be with you shortly.

We are experiencing higher than usual service times. Please wait and an analyst will be with you shortly.

We are experiencing higher than usual service times. Please wait and an analyst will be with you shortly.

We are experiencing higher than usual service times. Please wait and an analyst will be with you shortly.

We are experiencing higher than usual service times. Please wait and an analyst will be with you shortly.

analyst Shailendra has entered room.

Shailendra:
Hello Misty_Olen. My name is Shailendra.

Misty_Olen:
I have Symantec Corporate Edition 10.1 that we paid for about 50 licenses of, I have Spector 360 that we paid for 50 licenses of, both of these costs thousands of dollars. Now, Symantec has killed my Spector install, even though I clicked exclude. I want someone at Symantec to do something about Spector being detected as spyware.

Shailendra:
Hello , thank you for contacting Symantec Live Technical Support. Please make a note of the Chat Request Id [268368] for this interaction

Shailendra:
Can you confirm the telephone number as

Misty_Olen:
870-xxx-xxxx

Misty_Olen:
870-xxx-xxxx

Misty_Olen:
bottom number is the correct one

Shailendra:
I suggest you please contact enterprise support.

Misty_Olen:
I suggest Symantec get it's act together and you pass this information on

Shailendra:
I recommend that you please post your message / query to the respective product group. Doing this will direct you to the exact group of Technical Support Engineers specializing in that particular product group, who will study your case and provide you with information that match your needs.

Please click on the URL link provided below and choose the respective product from the drop down list of products:

>Web URL:
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/enterprise/select_product_contact.html

Shailendra:
Is there anything else I can help you with?

Misty_Olen:
Yes, you could help me

Misty_Olen:
You could agree to pass this on, instead of telling me to call a phone number after waiting through a queue of 29 people

Misty_Olen:
This whole waiting time has been pointless unless you are actually going to do something besides be an online phone book

Shailendra:
I understand your concerns .

Shailendra:
But we cannot do that.

Misty_Olen:
you can't pass on information

Misty_Olen:
?

Shailendra:
Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.

Misty_Olen:
No I don't accept

Misty_Olen:
I accept results

Misty_Olen:
not what you are offering

Misty_Olen:
You should have a boss or someone that you can tell about this

Shailendra:
We cannot pass this information.

Misty_Olen:
that's what I want you to do

Misty_Olen:
so, are you saying symantec can't communicate

Shailendra:
I suggest you please contact them.

Misty_Olen:
?

Misty_Olen:
who are you? Do you work for symantec?

Misty_Olen:
This is technical support,

Misty_Olen:
you work for symantec

Misty_Olen:
you have a boss

Misty_Olen:
tell your boss to tell whoever needs to know that there is a problem with this

Shailendra:
Please click on the URL link provided below and choose the respective product from the drop down list of products:

>Web URL:
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/enterprise/select_product_contact.html

Misty_Olen:
Thanks, but you just lost at least 10 customers from this one exchange, way to go Shailendra, you should look for a new company to go to work for

I lost a snippet of this conversation where Shailendra told me that I was at the Home Users Support group. I understand I didn't have a home user product, but nowhere in the waiting time did it talk about connecting to Home User technical support. My problem with this is that if you work for a company then you should be able to send an email to somebody who could take a look at this problem. I wasn't looking for a solution from Symantec, I already have one from Spector, all I wanted from Symantec was for them to step up and do something about this happening in the future. But it looks like they couldn't even do that.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Symantec's Never Ending Queue

I posted earlier about Symantec killing Spector 360. Well, it turns out that I was wrong, and you don't just have to exclude a couple files, you have to completely reinstall Spector, and configure Symantec to exclude Spector from scans. This alone was enough to make me want to kill Symantec, but there's more, I went to connect to their online chat and I was number 29 in the queue. That's like telling me to wait forever. I've moved most of my customer's off of Symantec, but after this I'm ready to persuade the rest to switch also. The thing is that Symantec should know that business's spend thousands of dollars on their Spector 360 software and thousands on Symantec, so why on earth they would detect legitimate software and disable it is beyond me. Get a clue Symantec, better yet just go ahead and die like the dogs you are!

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Symantec Kills Spector

I have Spector 360 installed at one of our customer's locations and it has been running successfully for a month. But, today Symantec attacked. Apparently they released an update that detects Spector 360 as spyware and quarantines it. Symantec detects Spector as Spyware.Spector, so the first step is to go into Symantec and in every scan you have setup you have to configure it to exclude Spyware.Spector. Then you have to get two new files from Spector: spuninst.exe and spsetup.exe. Those two files have to be copied over to the Spector 360 and overwrite the old files with the same name. You then have to go into the Control Panel and create a new configuration file with the Deployment utility. Then you must redeploy all Spector installations. It's frustrating when Symantec attacks.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

WordPress Website

Today I've been working on a website redesign for TLCmagic. Bill and I wanted something simple, fluid, and functional. We decided to try out WordPress for this transition after we read this article . In that article they mention these as reasons to base a website off of WordPress:

* editing without needing to know HTML

* reader participation through comments

* organization of the content using tags

* seamless handling of pre-existing URLs

* easy addition of new functionality (because it is “open source”)

* free support by the very responsive developer and user communities

Remember, the majority of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Windows Vista. Upgrade? Or Not?

At the end of this month a new version of Windows will release, Windows Vista. I ran the beta copy for a few months and found it to have a lot of nice eye candy, but I'm not sure that I will upgrade. I'm afraid a lot of people are going to go out and buy Vista, not realizing that it will probably slow their PC down, unless they upgrade the hardware (like in the video above). I'm not sure yet if we will upgrade to Vista right when it comes out. I am however looking forward to 2007 Office because it is just so darn cool looking. So, before you run out and buy a Vista upgrade be sure to do some research on what hardware you have and how it will operate with Vista.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.

Sonicwall CDP Connection Problem

Today I had a connection problem with a Sonicwall CDP 1440i. I could not connect using either the Enterprise Manager or the Agent Tool. I could bring up the Sonicwall CDP login page in a browser, however it would not accept my user name and password. When I entered the wrong user name and password it displayed an error message at the bottom of the screen about being out of space.

So, I called Sonicwall support and got Frank. Frank had to login remotely and do some of his Sonicwall magic to fix it and then all worked fine. So, unfortunately I don't have a fix to offer other than call Sonicwall.

Frank let me know that this was a known issue that had been happening lately. I expressed my concern about the other units I have installed that did not have current support agreements, but did have valid warranties. Frank let me know that if I was unable to connect to the unit then they would either RMA it or tell me how to fix it if the unit was still under hardware warranty, but out of the support agreement. Frank wasn't one of those evil support guys (like the guy I had to talk to from QuickBooks later in the day), he actually knew what he was talking about, fixed the problem quickly, and gave me good advice about the other units. Thanks Frank!

Remember, most of our posts take place at Design Ninjas now, where we Kick Ass on a daily basis!

Bill Gates Must Die

I actually like Bill Gates, but I thought this video was funny. My thoughts: If you hate Windows enough you will spend enough time on learning how to use Linux or a Mac. Personally, I don't hate Windows that much.

Remember, most of our posts are taking place at Design Ninjas.