FireHaus Network

For a variety of reasons the main server room for the firm I support is located in an electrical “closet” in the headquarters building’s basement. There is no AC, only a powerful blower to introduce fresh air to the small space. This has meant that the servers have always been sucking in very warm air, frequently very dusty, and sometimes literally full of small flying bugs.

To make things a little stranger there is an actual properly built server room also in the basement. However, it is a very large room that was obviously set up for the oil company that used to occupy the building in the 1990’s. Currently this “server room” is used for filing storage for client discovery and up until a few months ago the room was quite full of file boxes. I gave my IT Admin the job of figuring out how we could fit in a 4-post server rack inside this room without losing any storage space for the files. Seems difficult since the room was full but when I looked at the way things were in there it seemed like there was a lot of wasted space.

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• If the price seems too good to be true that is because it probably isn’t true.
• The lowest price is not always the best price. Verify shipping charges before the final step of your order and if shipping charges cannot be verified then stop the order process immediately (close your browser if you have to).
• If it isn’t in stock then move on.
• Make sure you get a receipt online immediately, don’t wait for it to come via e-mail.
• Use search tools such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing to find reviews if the online retailer is unfamiliar to you. Try a search similar to “newegg opinions” or “best buy reviews“. You can also check up on a company using the bizrate.com store rating guide, resellerratings.com store ratings, or epinions.com.
• Read the customer reviews–if available–of the product you are buying as this may save you a headache later.
• Follow up afterwards by checking your credit/debit cards statements to make sure what you charged is what you were charged.

Sit back and enjoy the holiday shopping madness from the comfort of home.

There are many situations where a rack mounted 1U or 3U server just doesn’t fit into the budget or specific needs of a business. Many of us Apple IT guys have been using and/or recommending the Mac mini with Mac OS X Server installed as a great way to keep within budget while still retaining full network services.In fact I have an earlier post about using Mac minis in a 24/7 environment.

So Apple finally made it official a few weeks ago an now has a Mac mini server. It fits the bill for many business uses, creative uses, as well as even for a simple home network server.

In fact one business makes it their business to use Mac minis almost exclusively as their servers, providing web hosting and other services to their customers.

I get asked from time-to-time what software and hardware is used in a Mac-only law firm. This is a start that I plan to flesh out shortly.

For case management we use a custom in-house developed Filemaker solution which manages the contact-side and the matter-side. We are able to do nearly 100% perfect conflict checking because of the way ANY contact in the database can be linked up to a client/matter. On the accounting side we do use an “off the shelf” product called Brief Accounting.

I have investigated other solutions and the ones that are out there don’t work for us, because of our size, but might work for a smaller firm with less than 10 attorneys (we have 19). The selection is limited. Frankly, we are planning a complete ground up refresh of our Filemaker solution and expect to have something in 2010 that might cost about $20-30K which would also incorporate document management. This is using local Filemaker developers.

LawStream – this has been around for a long time but there hasn’t been a client/server model which is why it would not work for us.

Hipersoft P.I. Powertool – this is a Filemaker solution.

We don’t have a true document management solution in place–yet–but we are taking baby steps in that direction. We rely heavily on our Fujitsu scanners combined with ScanTango. The ScanTango software allows you to create scanning workflows that help automate (or more accurately semi-automate) repetitive scanning tasks. Mindwrap, the company that makes ScanTango does make a full document management system called Optix. I haven’t fully investigated this as this is really a decision that needs to be made by our records dept.

I am a sysadmin, aka “systems administrator”, which means that yes, I manage servers and networks, but I also manage circuit breakers, AC units, desktop and laptop computers, Blackberrys, iPhones, and the occasional audio cassette. I am a guru of technology (or so all the users I support hope I am).

The reality is that I become a generalist and even though I have a few things I am definitely an expert at, with most things I know “something” about them but not everything.

Occasionally, I find that it is simpler and quicker to do something myself rather than hire an expert (in this case an electrician) and because I am a generalist this is often what I do. For example the ancient air circulation fan that was in the telco closet of the firm I support simply died. Without this fan there is no true air circulation in the small closet that hosts the main PBX phone switch. I ordered an industrial blower instead of a fan simply because of the small space the fan has to fit. The blower moves a much larger volume of air per minute compared to a slightly larger fan.

So here’s what the sysadmin had to do to complete this Information Technology related project:

1. Research and purchase the replacement parts (purchasing dept.)
2. Cut a piece of wood to serve as a mount for the blower (facilities dept.)
3. Purchase the mounting hardware and electrical cord (facilities dept.)
4. Connect the AC cord to the blower unit safely and maintaining the ground (facilities dept.)
5. Mount the blower to the board and then attach everything to the wall (facilities dept.)
6. Plug in the blower unit to test (IT dept.)

My dad would be proud of the electrical wiring because it was done properly and I maintained the ground connection of the 3-pronged power cord. In fact all of the skills for this project I pretty much learned from my dad (my dad worked for United Air Lines (UAL) for some 36 years as a mechanic before retiring and before that served as an electrician in the US Army).

This is the telco closet with the blower installed near the ceiling in the center. The Tadiran phone switch is the big white thing near the bottom and the iBook serves as the hold music player.

This is a detailed view of the blower mounted on the board now mounted securely to the wall.

A man in a hot air balloon, realizing he was lost, reduced altitude and spotted a woman below.  He descended further and shouted to the lady “Excuse me, can you help me?  I promised a friend would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground.  You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be in IT,” said the balloonist.

“Actually I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct but I’ve no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I’m still lost.  Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all.  If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going.  You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air.  You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems.  The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my f***ing  fault.”

- Anon (another internet joke with no identifiable source)

OK, first things first, what is metadata? For that we turn to everyone’s favorite authority Wikipedia:

Metadata (meta data, meta-data, or sometimes metainformation) is “data about data”, of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe an individual datum, or content item, or a collection of data including multiple content items and hierarchical levels, for example a database schema.

For most small businesses I expect they have no idea what metadata is so the small business owner may assume they don’t need to know (“I don’t know what it is so I must not be using it“). Do you ever provide an electronic copy of a Microsoft Word document to a customer or client? If you answered yes then you have exchanged metadata with your customers or clients. Sounds a little like a one night stand doesn’t it?

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I don’t have any “free” time these days but I was staring at my terminal window and started chuckling when I saw the output displayed in one of the windows. So here it is. Enjoy!

System going down IMMEDIATELY

In the office I manage we use a couple of different solutions regarding scanning so briefly here are the nuts and bolts:

Fujitsu 4120/5120 Scanners with ScanTango software. The scanners are very reliable and we run 100-300 pages through them each day 5 days a week (they are rated for 1K pages/day). The ScanTango software allows you to create scanning defaults so that users can just click a shortcut on the their Desktop, Dock or wherever that executes a specific type of scan (i.e. single sided, grayscale, 200dpi, save to network share). It also allows scripts to call up these same readymade workflows. What makes ScanTango work so well with FM Pro is that it is scriptable using Applescript. Patch Cards are what really make any attempt at document scanning and management automation possible. In our case documents are stored on a network share and linked to FM Pro records. The scanning process breaks down to the following:

1. From FM Pro click a button that says “scan for this client”, the button runs a script that manages the following (this is actually a mix of Filemaker scripting and applescripting).
2. The user is asked what type of scan they have (double-sided, single-sided, B&W, color, etc.)
3. Based on the user input one of the readymade scanning workflows is selected
4. As each document is scanned the user is asked to name the files before they are saved*
5. The script in FM Pro has already inserted a variable into the ScanTango workflow that has told it where to save the documents*

The solution we have implemented requires knowledge of Filemaker scripting and Applescript to create if you are in an all Mac environment. I think this could be replicated in a Windows environment using the software supplied with the Fujitsu scanner. In the Mac environment you’ll need to pick a scanner model based on what is supported by ScanTango. From the user’s point-of-view this is all magic. FYI The ScanTango team has always been quick to respond to my questions or problems. Disclosure: I used to work for Fujitsu so I am little biased towards their scanners although my real-world experience has backed up this bias.

In the near-future we plan on moving all of our documents to an intranet/extranet wiki so that clients can access their documents using an extranet interface (or I may ditch this idea and create an all Filemaker solution). This will require re-thinking the whole scanning workflow but it won’t require purchasing any new hardware or software. My limited testing so far indicates that things will be simplified on the Filemaker side by doing this and a little more complicated on the applescript side. Actually I’m not sure I will need the applescript component in this new environment as ScanTango can handle all the variables using pre-printed patch cards.

Additionally to add to our capability I am integrating our office copier/scanners so that they to can scan directly to the network share (or future wiki). We have several Konica-Minolta BizHub units which are good for scanning 50+ page documents as well as odd-sized documents and currently they scan to email. This means the user has to manually name the file and select it’s destination. By adding on some eCopy units to each BizHub they will be able to automatically save files to the appropriate network location and the user will only have make a few selections from the eCopy interface as well and enter some meta data (key words or tags).

* as things stand now the user still ends up selecting a sub-folder where the documents are actually saved. Using the patch cards correctly will allow us to bypass this step as well as automatically naming the documents (but this is not fully implemented yet in our environment).

Now that Apple and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have made it official that the iPhone will now be pushed as both a consumer and business gadget I felt it is a good time to report on my experiences using the iPhone.

I picked up my iPhone the first day they were sold. In fact I was number five in line at the downtown Portland Apple Store. My iPhone was purchased for me by the firm I support as a business tool. I also purchased phones for the two senior partners and my Support Specialist so that at this point the firm has 8 users with iPhones in addition to Blackberrys, RAZRs, and basic Nokia phones. The bottom line is that I deal first hand with many of these phones plus their problems as well as issues with the providers (T-mobile and AT&T).

Reliability

My iPhone has been absolutely reliable for 8 months. My previous smart phone was actually 3 different phones during the course of 13 months. I used a Palm Treo 650 for 3 months then it died. It was replaced with another brand new unit which worked fine for another 6 months until I dropped it. So I got another replacement which worked for about 2 months then it died. At this point I charged up the previous Treo, the one that was dropped and for whatever reason it was now working again. It looked like it was falling apart but it worked fine for the next few months until I purchased the iPhone. My iPhone has now been dropped 3 times, twice on asphalt and once on carpet. It has the dents and scratches to prove it. Each time a simple restart restored the iPhone to working condition. Because the iPhones case is a mix of metal, glass, and plastic I feel this is why it survived these drops while the all plastic Treo would crack and break apart.

Features:

The firm is heavily dependent on Email and viewing PDFs both of which the iPhone works well with.

Note that the Treo’s built-in Email program worked OK but not very well so I purchased ChatterEmail which worked really well. If you have a Palm Smartphone and rely on Email then spend the money to get ChatterEmail. The iPhone’s email capabilities worked perfectly right out of the box. I get three IMAP accounts on my iPhone and they all sync up well with both over wi-fi or the AT&T Edge network. My only complaint is that so far the iPhone only allows Email to be sent from a single account, I really need to be able to choose an account when sending.

Because the iPhone is such a media and graphics centric smartphone viewing PDFs on the device is fantastic. Well, as fantastic as it can get on a small screen device when compared to a computer with a nice display. Viewing PDFs on the Treo simply sucked. Moving around the document was a tricky combination of moving around with the stylus and tapping on various buttons. On the iPhone of course I use gestures directly on the display without the need for on screen buttons which in any case would take up valuable on-screen real estate.

Apple also included viewers for Microsoft Word and Excel documents so you can review those too. This is where there is a significant advantage for a Windows Mobile smartphone is that it can edit these documents and not just view them.

Productivity:

How does the iPhone help me in my role as a Systems Administrator? I installed a Filemaker server plug-in that allows me to administer the firm’s Filemaker server just as I do from my other computers. I can connect to the Help Desk ticketing system which is completely web based and review as well as act on tickets.

What I Don’t Like About the iPhone:

The wi-fi security capabilities were limited so I actually had to lower the enterprise class security I had set up to allow the iPhones to connect. The VPN seems to work but it doesn’t work as well as the one on the Treo or a Blackberry. It seems to disconnect at random intervals or not connect when it should be able to. Maintaining a reliable backup of my iPhone has been a chore as Apple did not execute this well. Backups are created and restored through iTunes but they are totally hidden. They also don’t include everything on the iPhone which makes them nearly useless. This has become a job for third-party software but Apple needs to address this issue.

Final Thoughts:

The Treo never impressed me as a phone or an internet device but it did work really well when used to manage my schedule, notes, and email (although not with the default software as I used ChatterEmail). Using the small physical or onscreen buttons of the Palm was always frustrating. It never got any easier. I can remember when I used to write directly on the Palm screen and that worked really well. Trying to type using those ridiculously small keys always drove me mad.