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The more wonderful than you can believe it!

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:50:15 -0400

The more Wonderful than you can believe it!

A lifetime ago, I spent a long time working in the bicycle industry. Every month, one of the trade magazines would come through with a large advertisement for a Chinese component supplier, with the tagline above. I always chuckeld at the phrase that was obviously the product of a non-native English speaker.

However, more recently I was reminded of a similar gulf in communication between those of us who live in the world of tech, and the rest of the world that only visits when you take a wrong turn somewhere, or your 'vehicle' breaks down. It's always a dual challenge when things break that you don't understand. Much like the driver who's trying to communicate with the mechanic, our clients are trying desparately to help us understand what they're up against, so that we can efficiently fix it.

By the same token, we regularly feel like we're teasing the information out of our client, descriptive word by descriptive word, until we've gathered enough pieces of the puzzle that the picture begins to emerge. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth, slow and painful. Other times it's like walking through a tornado, looking for a particular leaf in the windstorm of the client's description, wrapped up in their angst at the fact that the issue is preventing them from doing their important work.

One of the things that we've always put up on top of the priority scale at rbTech is communications. We need to be able to effectively communicate both with our clients (the reason we exist), and internally as well. That's one of the reasons we're the 'anti-nerds' here - we're damn fine techs and network engineers, but we're also excellent communicators, because if we can't figure out what you're trying to tell us, and more importantly communicate what we're going to do about it back to you, clearly and effectively, then everybody loses.

Nearly 2 decades later, the 'lost in translation' quote above may well have the last laugh - I still remember the company that visited that horribly mutilated string of pidgin english every month for so many years (at least I think I do): The Cheng Shin bicycle company. Apparently bad english can translate to good marketing! Who knew?!

[1] Apparently quite a few - Think Different? Got Milk? Less Doors? Gotta Getta Gund?

[2] The only link to the phrase I could immediately find: S&M Bikes

rbTech is raising the bar for I.T. services!

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:38:55 -0400

So, here it is, the nerdy announcement you’ve all been on the edge of your seats for!

As many of you know already we’ve always believed in investing heavily in our tools and infrastructure here, so that we continue to provide excellent service and a great value. After a long and careful evaluation, we’ve deployed an incredibly powerful new tool, called an RMM system. RMM stands for Remote Monitoring and Management, and what it means is that we can now provide proactive monitoring and remote resolution of most server, firewall, and workstation issues, from one central console here at our NOC (network operations center). The new system is set up to manage servers, workstations, firewalls, mobile devices, switches, printers and other networking infrastructure.

We’re not aware of any other I.T. service company in the area that has an RMM system in place, and only one or two of our competitors in the Burlington area have them.

What does this mean for you? First, it means that our issue resolution times will be shorter, because we’ll be able (with your permission of course) to log into your system and help you out without needing to schedule an onsite visit. By spending less of our days looking out our windshield from behind the driver’s seats of our cars, we’ll literally have more hours in the day to dedicate to providing direct support to our customers. In addition, we’ll be using less fossil fuels to propel our carcasses around the state, and thereby reducing our carbon footprint both as a company and as individuals.

Second, because our automated systems can actively monitor your system performance and notify us as soon as something goes over threshold, we’ll typically know about an issue before you do and often before it causes an impact on your network. This keeps us your systems running more smoothly, keeps you and your staff working more productively, and keeps us from spending our days zooming around the countryside putting out one fire after another (a wildly inefficient way to do things!). Imagine: A world where we’ve logged in to your network and fixed the issue, before you knew about it, and before it impacted your ability to get things done!

Wait, does this mean we won’t see you guys? We really like the face to face service we receive!
Don’t worry, we’ll still be making the rounds like we always do. We value the ‘face time’ as much as you do!

We’ll be talking about this a lot in the next few weeks, as we ‘on-board’ with the new systems, and go through our internal training on how to use this incredibly powerful tool that we’ve invested in. If you have questions of any sort, please don’t hesitate to call, email, semaphore, smoke signal, or stop by!

GoDaddy sites go down

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:50:31 -0400

‎@GoDaddy is experiencing a major DNS outage today [1]. Many websites are down because they rely on GoDaddy's nameservers (our site included). We're monitoring the situation closely as you can imagine.

[1] http://mashable.com/2012/09/10/godaddy-down/

Open House – “Revenge on Technology Day”

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:10:29 -0400

rbTechnologies is celebrating our fifteenth year in business!

So, as much as we love what we do every day, we understand that not everyone is perhaps quite as enamored with technology and computers as we are. In fact, many of you have gone so far as to say that you really don’t like technology much at all.

As a company, we strive to not take ourselves too seriously, despite the critical nature of the systems we support. And so we thought we’d have a bit of entertainment at the expense of the technology that challenges and occasionally infuriates us all. We think a little “Revenge on Technology” would be appropriate.

So we’ve decided to have a little fun and we’re throwing an Open House, complete with munchies and burgers. We invite you to bring all your old electronic junk for our Good Point Recycling collection arrangement. If there’s a piece of computer gear that has really gotten under your skin, we’ll have a booth set up where you can take out your frustrations with a BFH (Big Flippin’ Hammer), and show that technology who’s really the boss! We will also have our new partner, Office Systems of VT (OSV) here to meet you and introduce rbTech’s new printer/copier partnership with them.

So come on out to 1970 VT Route 14 South in East Montpelier on September 21 from 2:00-5:00 and help us celebrate 15 great years in business with our first “Revenge On Technology” day!

Welcome to our newest crew member!

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:49:55 -0400

A huge welcome to Tom, the newest member of the rbTech team! We're super psyched to have you aboard, and will be bringing Tom along as we make our rounds over the next few weeks to introduce him to all of you. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by and introduce yourself anytime!

Thoughts on Apple's new maps

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:55:09 -0400

Interesting writeup on the latest in the ongoing skirmish between Apple and Google. Apple has discontinued using Google Maps in their iPhone and iPad devices, in favor of their newly acquired Poly9 Maps competitor. This Gizmodo post has an interesting analysis of the two services side by side. Based on this, and my own experience using both iPhones and Android devices, I have to say I'm firmly in the Android camp, especially with Google's impending purchase of Motorola Mobility. And while I am still personally distrustful of Google's ongoing beneficence and their 'fingers in every pie' business model, today, for me, the benefits still far outweigh the risk.

Thoughts on the LinkedIn data breach

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:41:13 -0400

6.5 million email addresses and passwords. That's the number that was referenced in LinkedIn's blog post announcing the breach. Let that number run around in your head for just a moment. To put it into perspective, 6.5 million is roughly 10 times the population of Vermont in it's entirety.

Many of our clients have questioned my comparatively low enthusiasm for all things 'cloud'. I often make a joke about having 'control issues' and thus wanting my clients to have their systems on premises, with offsite backups and disaster recovery plans in place. But the reality is much more complex than some pop-psych catch phrase. I tend to come from a place of distrust in large installations, in no small part due to how many of them I've worked on that are poorly architected and secured. There's a constant tension between following best practice and cost containment, and experiences like yesterdays *massive* data breach underscore one of my more fundamental hangups when it comes to trusting the cloud; that cost containment often wins out.

Yesterdays breach, just the latest of several, shows again that the cloud is no less susceptible to attack or data loss than any other system out there. In fact, it could be argued that due to the potential payoff for successfully compromising a cloud based service, they are inherently less secure. It also underscores the blind trust that some are so willing to put in companies that have large presence, without asking the fundamental, essential questions about how their services are configured and secured. By contrast, on premises or self-hosted systems are much more under your control. The issues you face are somewhat more definable, and the risks facing your network are typically less targeted and more automated. When the attacks are automated, they're easier to block and defend against. And targeted attacks against a small business, by 'hackers' with any real skills are nearly non-existent.

We continue to watch cloud services carefully, and adopt some (our backup solution for example has a Cloud component). But before we recommend any product or service, we get their engineers on the phone and ask picky questions to the occasional annoyance of their sales staff before we even test the systems here.

An Arcade game? Really?!

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:08:12 -0400

So, you may be asking yourself what's all this about this arcade cabinet that we've been working on? We're going to be at the #VTExpo Vermont Chamber of Commerce Business Expo at the Sheraton Burlington next Wednesday and Thursday, May 22-23rd, and we thought that bringing an arcade game would be nerdy and cool. But we didn't just go get an arcade game and bring it to the show, oh no...

Instead, we got an old Crystal Castles arcade game, and proceeded to completely gut it, replace all it's internals with current locally built components (thanks, Logic Supply!), built a new control panel and rebuild all the controllers, painted it, stickered, and loaded it up with Linux. Just because we can.

So, we'll be at the expo with this kick-ass toy. But, in keeping with our mission to do good work, and do our part to make the world a better place, we'll be there with a purpose. We'll be there collecting funds for our friends at the #VTNetwork Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. Every quarter put in the machine will be donated, and matched by rbTech, to support the great work they do there.

So come up to #BTV and check us out, play a couple games of Tuxracer, and hang with the coolest bunch of nerds anywhere!

In addition to the game, we'll have a full complement of hardware including the amazing Intel MFSYSv2 small business blade server with us to show off. We hope to see you there!

Come see us at the VTExpo!

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:18:48 -0400

Come see rbTech at the Vermont Chamber Business and Industry Expo at the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center in Burlington! We're gearing up for our booth at the Vt Business Expo in Burlington on May 23rd and 24th! We'll be there in force, showing off awesome gear like the Intel MFSYSv2. We're also going to be there with our awesome Open Source, Linux based Arcade machine running TuxRacer and collecting donations for the VT Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and supporting the amazing and important work they do throughout the state.

We have free passes to the Expo for anyone who would like to go, please give us a call for details! We hope to see you all there!

Rubin & the rbTech team

MIT Green Building Tetris hack

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:43:31 -0400

Today's bit of nerdy goodness... you have to love MIT! They've built a controller that runs the lights in the building, and in real time can be used to play a game of Tetris. Way cool, and way to go MIT! Check out the official page here...

Why are my favorite websites down today?

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:09:10 -0500

You've probably noticed that a number of high profile websites are offline today. Wikipedia, Craigslist, WordPress, Reddit, The Mozilla Foundation and others elected to take their enormously popular websites offline for up to 24 hours, and replace their front pages with information about this horrible legislation. Google has put the doodle on the right up as their homepage logo today as their contribution to the day of action.

We have vehemently opposed SOPA, PIPA, and the Senate version of the bill, ProtectIP (which Vermont's Senator Patrick Leahy not only supports, but is a sponsor of) from their introduction. We are no fans of stealing Intellectual Property or creative works. We don't condone the illegal use of someone else's work in any fashion. However I am a firm believer in the rule of law, and even more importantly the tenets of Due Process.

Legislation such as SOPA and ProtectIP unnecessarily short circuit the due process that we all have a responsibility to protect. Because while there are sites that exist primarily to steal or redistribute illegally obtained work, there's absolutely no need to short circuit the process of having law enforcement go before a judge, to get an injunction or a warrant. The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, these are financial crimes, and they real impact is limited to stealing money. No one is getting hurt. There's no 'ticking time bomb'. No one's life, or livelihood, or liberty is at stake, or at risk if the offending site isn't taken down immediately. It's theft. Of money. And while that's a serious crime, it's certainly not one that should drive legislation that chips away at all of our 5th and 14th amendment rights to due process. And it most certainly doesn't justify the guilty-until-proven innocent stance that the legislation takes.

And the unintended consequence of this law is that the site owners, hosting operators and even ISPs that serve websites can potentially be held liable, or taken offline, if someone downstream of them is determined to be hosting 'finringing content'. For small operators and ISPs, this is an especially difficult position to be in - it effectively puts them in the position of being judge, jury and executioner of their customers, so that they themselves don't get shut down. Unfair? I certainly think so.

In the most amazingly hypocritical statement I've seen in a while, Chris Dodd, the former US Senator from Connecticut and current Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the organization that is the driving force behind the legislation, issued this statement blasting the blackout as a "stunt" to "punish elected and adminstration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals". In a statement laden with face-palm worthy irony, he says

"It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests."

Um, what? "rely on their information"? But this legislation has the genuine potential to allow law enforcement, with a simple judicial order (no trial, no due process), to take sites like Wikipedia, Scribd, YouTube, and any other site that shares user submitted information, down. Offline. With (and here's my favorite part of the law) *no legal recourse* if they're taken down wrongly. That's right - if your site is taken down wrongly, and you fight and win, you *can't sue for damages*. Whoops, says law enforcement and the accuser. We were wrong. Our bad, we're sorry. The reality is that the"stunt" is in fact a scary illustration of what the Internet will look likeshould this steaming pile of legalese be allowed to pass.

So today, get out there (even if it's just on the 'net, or the parts of it that are working today) and educate yourself on this legislation, and regardless of where you come down on the issue, get involved!

-Rubin

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16612628

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/sopa-protests-black-out-top-websites/2012/01/18/gIQA7TQs7P_gallery.html

http://blogs.csoonline.com/1902/chris_dodds_strange_response_to_sopa_pipa_protests

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16608314

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41911.pdf

rbTech announces partnership with Zimbra

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:33:13 -0400

The rbTech team is excited to announce our partnership with VMWare's Zimbra collaboration suite. In following with our long committment to giving our clients a wide variety of best-of-breed technology choices, we've done a long and thorough evaluation of the Groupware suites available, and after our exhaustive testing, are very pleased to announce that the Zimbra Collaboration Suite is our top pick for companies that desire the stability, security and flexibility of running Linux on their servers, while providing full Outlook functionality to their users.

If you would like to learn more, please contact us today and we'll gladly set up a demonstration for you!

Rubin & the rbTech team

Growing again?!

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 22:26:00 -0400

It's true, we're growing again! We've added a Service manager and 2 full time technicians to our roster, so that we can continue to provide the fantastic support you're all used to, bringing our full time staff up to 6 people. We are happy to welcome Steve, Jessica and Kyle to the rbTech family!

rbTech is growing again!

Wed, 05 May 2010 15:44:00 -0400

rbTechnologies, LLC is pleased to announce the addition of a new member of our technical team, and our move in to our new headquarters in East Montpelier!

Chad Avery, founder of Montpelier Open Source, has joined the staff of rbTechnologies as our newest full time Information Technology consultant. Chad brings over 10 years of professional computer experience to the organization, and we are very pleased to welcome him as our 'new guy'! Chad's addition brings our total technical staff to 4 full time employees, with nearly 60 years of combined professional Information Technology experience!

rbTechnologies is now in its new location at 1970 Vt Route 14 South. The building served briefly as the hangar for the East Montpelier Airport and most recently housed Arthur Whitcomb/ Twin City Masonry. The purchase was completed in January, and renovations took about a month to complete as the space was re-fitted for its new role. This larger space offers much needed office, meeting, and storage room for the growing rbTech staff.

rbTechnologies, LLC is Central Vermont's premier provider of business computer network consulting. Founded in 1997, rbTechnologies is built on the principles of honesty, cost effectiveness, and social responsibility. We bring enterprise technologies to small and mid-sized businesses at an affordable price and do so while supporting the area's non-profit organizations through our 'Socially Responsible Computing' initiative.

We feel very fortunate to be enjoying steady growth in these economically tumultuous times, and we offer our humble thanks to our many loyal customers and clients, for without you we wouldn't be here!

Moving day!

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:01:00 -0500

It's official! We're moving! We have a purchase and sales agreement, and are closing on our new building on January 11th! The new space is at 1970 Route 14 South in East Montpelier (literally around the corner from the existing office), and we're all SUPER excited! Renovations start the day we close and we hope they'll take 2-4 weeks, and then we'll be announcing an open house/ office warming! Thanks to all of our customers for helping to make this growth in a down economy possible, we are truly grateful for your continued support, and we know that the new space will allow us to work better and more efficiently for you!

Fall update

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:16:00 -0500

Summer has turned into fall, and we're still up to our ears in projects! We're doing some really exciting things for a local school, and have polished our firewall code into a thing of beauty. We've beein installing new gear all over the state, and are looking forward to a busy winter season!

As many of you know, the office expansion has experienced a delay of game as we shift our approach away from expanding our current space to purchasing a neighboring commercial property. The new purchase is moving along, albeit slowly, as the legal gears do their things. We are *super* excited to move in to the new space, so stay tuned for updates!

Last, we have put the finishing touches on our new maintenance contracts. We're confident that our new offerings are affordable and attractive, and look forward to talking with you all about them in more detail!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Rubin & the rbTech team

A busy summer at rbTech

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:53:00 -0400

If you haven't seen a lot of the rbTech staff lately, it's likely because we're buckling down in preparation for our annual session of drinking from the firehose, also known as August. For whatever reason, August seems to be the month of choice for our clients to take on large I.T projects. Of course, when our Clients take on large I.T. projects, it invariably means that *we* take them on! We're staying abreast of the tsunami and will continue to do so of course, delivering on our ongoing commitment to responsible, proactive information systems management. We hope you are all having a great summer as well!

rbTechnologies takes on e-waste

Mon, 18 May 2009 10:38:00 -0400

As part of our ongoing commitment to environmental responsibility and keeping harmful electronics waste out of our landfills, rbTechnologies has partnered with Good Point Recycling to become an official e-waste collection point.

What this means is that we work directly with the e-waste recycling facility to do proper metals reclamation and hazardous materials mitigation in the equipment that we take in as part of our e-waste program.

For every new system or component we sell, we offer free recycling of the old item (i.e. Servers, PCs, monitors, hard drives and any other electronic components). In addition, if you have a closet full of old junk, let us pick it up for you! We'll reuse the items that we can by turning them into functioning equipment for a local non-profit, and responsibly e-cycle the rest.

rbTech helps you Untangle your network

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:19:00 -0400

rbTechnologies is a well established partner with Untangle, one of the worlds leading Spam and Web content filtering system. By deploying Untangle on our client sites (and our own), rbTechnologies keeps our clients in the driver's seat and in control of the traffic flowing through their networks.

See more about this impressive product at their website: http://untangle.com

rbTech goes VOIP

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:57:00 -0400

rbTechnologies is very pleased to announce a significant upgrade to our customer service and Information Technology support systems!

Many of you have expressed your dissatisfaction with the answering service that we were using, and after numerous attempts to update the call flow and get the operators to follow a script that was succinct and effective without being , we decided to change our approach and invest in a proper phone system. It took a while to implement as we set up the menus, recorded prompts, tested, tested, and tested some more, and then waited, oh so patiently, for the phone lines to be ported to our new SIP trunks from SimpleSignal. And now, it's official! Our brand new Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone system is live and running our office phones!

What does this mean for you? Well, first of all we want you to know that we hate being banished to Voicemail Hell just as much as you do, so if you call the office when we're there it means you'll get a very brief welcome message and then we'll answer the phone just like we've always done.

However, the real beauty of the system is revealed when we're not here to answer your call: If we don't answer the phone you'll get a fully interactive menu. The Interactive Voice Response accomplishes several goals:

Reachability: Dial us by name and get our individual extension or voice mail

Rubin: Extension 101

Steve: Extension 102

Keith: Extension 103

Chad: Extension 104

Jessica: Extension 105

Kyle: Extension 106

Issue reporting: You can open a new support incident, right from the phone menu

The phone system will open a ticket with your contact info in our Support Tracker queue management system, and report to us that a new issue has been opened.

Emergency Support: Report a computer or network emergency

If you use this option the phone system will open a new ticket in our Support Tracker Ticketing system, and that in turn will begin an increasingly obnoxious escalation procedure that pages us each in turn, sends emails and SMS messages to us and generally is able to track us down no matter where we are. It will annoy us relentlessly until your ticket is opened in the SupportTracker and you are contacted.

Communications: In addition, we now have in-house conferencing and call transfer and a whole host of other standard and not so standard PBX features.

Availability: The phone system is active 24 hours/day, 365 days a year (the same hours that we cover our pagers and phones for emergencies).

Last but not least, our new phone system allows us to carry on multiple simultaneous phone calls (we previously only had 2 phone lines). Looking to the future, the phone system supports up to 50 extensions, so (we hope) it will serve us for a long time to come!

We hope that you will find these upgrades to be positive and helpful. We welcome (and request) your feedback on the new system be it positive or negative; we are here to provide you with the best possible support for your Information Technology systems, and we always appreciate your honest feedback.