The Raging Tech

Vacation Season: Rent a Car

Rental cars take a lot of abuse! People always think that just because it’s not their car, they don’t have to live with it in the future, so why take care of it? Especially if they purchase that rental insurance at check out time. Renting a car should be considered a means to an end. It should be something to get you from A to B while you’re away from your own car.

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t rent something nice and enjoy yourself, if you do have to rent a car. In fact, you should not only get something nice, but you shouldn’t pay a lot for it either. Always do your homework and shop online for your rental when planning your vacation, and plan way ahead to get just the car you want.

Advantage car rental is not only a website where you can preview their cars available, you can also manage every aspect of your car rental from the web. You can check rates, make reservations, see if they have locations near you and / or your destination, and there’s even a frequent renters program.

Their website details what discounts and specials are going on now, so check that out if you’re planning on going somewhere and need to rent a car.

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Tags: car rental, holiday, online shopping, vacation

Google Docs: Safe Enough for Your Business?

I’ve recently been testing out Google Apps for Your Domain to see how well Gmail integrates with my web host and apparently it does the job pretty well. I like Gmail’s interface way better than SquirrelMail (no offense to those of you that swear by SquirrelMail).

I came across this blog post about a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the way IE handles things when you’re using Google Docs. The developer that discovered it reported it and it was quickly patched, and there were no reports of the security hole being exploited.

Some people have said that using Google Docs or any other 3rd Party or online office suite isn’t a good idea because of possible security breaches and privacy concerns. I say, provided you aren’t in education, medical systems, government, or politics, the rest of you are probably OK to share your documents online within your organization - and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper (free, even) than other alternatives.

What do you think? Is Google trustworthy enough for your family finances, personal word processing documents, budgetary spreadsheets for your business, or your personal digital photos? Should small businesses trust their data on Google’s servers in exchange for convenience and cross-platform compatibility?

Let me know in the comments what you think.

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Tags: breach, exploit, Google Docs, patch, privacy, Spark

8 Random Facts about the Raging Tech

Roxiticus Desperate Housewives pinged my blog with this 8 facts blog post of hers, and so now as a good neighbor, I’m going to try and do this myself. Here are the rules:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story.

So here goes my 8 Random Facts:

1. I ended up with 7 wisdom teeth; They were all removed at the same time, and yes, it hurt.
2. When I was in Cub Scouts, I needed one more merit badge - the swimming badge - to earn my Arrow of Light award. I was afraid to swim on my back, so I never got it in time. My mom told me to go ahead and at least give it a try, or I would beat myself up for it later. To this day, I don’t regret having never earned that award, and I swim just fine forwards and backwards.
3. Through the art of social engineering, I was able to secure six large one-topping pizzas from Dominos for one of my D & D groups for no charge, all I had to do was go there and pick them up.
4. When I was in High School, I was suspended for two days under the policy in the Student Handbook about “Disruption of School” because they didn’t yet have an “Integrity” section that included rules on ethical use of electronic systems, including but not limited to computers and the network. The next school year they included it.
5. I learned to drive a stick shift before I ever drove an automatic. My first car ended up being a stick shift ‘96 Dodge Neon - cherry red. I currently drive a sport-shift luxury vehicle that does both.
6. I was once a model. I went and auditioned and signed a contract with Take One modeling company. I didn’t have any money, so they didn’t charge me anything for modeling lessons. I learned to pose, walk, and how male models wear and apply make-up. And what’s more - I was good. I would have kept going too, except they never had any opportunities for me near my hometown and I wasn’t allowed to travel unless the pay was exceptional.
7. I once dated a girl who broke up with me over Instant Messenger and then two days later she ran away to Florida with some guy from England that she met over the internet. Internet, you are a cruel mistress!
8. In my life I have learned how to play and have since forgotten how to play several instruments: the piano, the violin, the drums, and the acoustic guitar. I currently still own a guitar and recently purchased a harmonica, and would love to have the discipline to sit down and get the hang of both.

I’m supposed to tag ten people, but I don’t know ten bloggers well enough to do that, so here goes 5 of them: Lunchtime Discussions, The Point Blank Critic, The Fate of Tyrlon, Creatively Insane, The BenSpark

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Tags: 8 Facts, Blog, chain mail, fun, meme, random

Consumerist: 7 Confessions of an Apple Store Specialist

Consumer watch-dog website Consumerist has an informative article about things every consumer that shops in an Apple Store should know.

My favorite part:

1. If you fill out the survey and rank us 6 or lower, a manager will call you the same day or the next, corporate policy.
They usually will ask why you had a bad experience, and offer to make it better, usually by discounting something or another for you.

Check out the other 6 confessions over at Consumerist, and be sure to bookmark their site. It’s one of my favorites that I read from time to time.

I can also tell you, as a former hardware technician that dealt with Apple a lot, your Apple Care does NOT cover accidental damage. If you trip and fall and break the screen, you’re out of luck. If you accidentally spill coffee on your MacBook, you’ve just lost a lot of money. If you accidentally knock over your Mac Pro desktop and something comes loose and hits a logic board component and now it won’t boot - too bad. Apple Care only covers hardware failure by faulty part.

My recommendation: if you do buy a Mac laptop, put it under your home owner’s insurance, and make sure you keep back-ups with Time Machine or some other back-up app.

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Tags: Apple, Confessions, Consumerist, frustrations, Mac, tech

The Rage You’ve Been Missing

So it was mentioned that I don’t do a lot of raging on here about crazy incidents with customers. I’ll give you a good one that’s been happening a lot lately:

Our university went with Windows Live Mail to outsource our student e-mail service last semester. Students were given until April 15th when the server went off-line to setup their new e-mail accounts and forward any old messages out, and notify other people of their address change.

A week or so ago, the Provost sent out an e-mail telling the students to setup their accounts or they would “be out of compliance.” This scared a lot of people into setting up their e-mail accounts. Some, however, could not follow the included directions, or could not be bothered to read them. So they’d call us. The call would go like this:

Caller: Um, hi. I need to setup my [University Student E-mail] account. It’s asking me for my current password, but I’ve never set a password!

Me: Yeah, no problem. The directions in your letter should’ve told you to use your current [Student Portal system] password as the default password.

At this point, it is important information to know that the setup screen asking you to change your password is within the Student Portal system, which they must first login to in order to see the setup screen.

Caller: Yeah, but, I don’t KNOW my [Student Portal system] password. Can you reset it?

Me: Well, I could, but can you see the setup screen?

Caller: Well, yeah, duh. It’s right in front of me asking me to change this password I don’t know.

Me: Where did you go to get into this screen?

Caller: I logged into [Student Portal system], then clicked on [University Student E-mail].

Me: And did you login using a password?

Caller: Yes - what are you getting at?

Me: If you can see the screen asking you for your current password, which is your [Student Portal system] password, then you must know your password or you wouldn’t be looking at it.

Caller: I see what you did there.

And this is just a small taste of the forehead-slapping fun that is tech support. Look forward to more of this in the future, as I have many stories to tell. I’ve even got a book that I started a while back, it’s about four chapters in currently, but I’ve neglected it for far too long. The Rage is back.

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Tags: frustrations, IT, Tech Support, The Rage, Windows Live