Speaker 0 | 00:09.723
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds today, truly revealing my well-organized self. We are talking with Mr. Steve Porter. I would like to say that you’re of the old school, and I mean that in all positive ways possible. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. But I cannot seem to find any of my notes that I ever took. So there you go. It probably happened when my desktop mysteriously disappeared and people have been hounding me for not having daily backups. So I lost about, I don’t know, 15 days worth of… work on my desktop. Don’t ask me how a desktop just mysteriously disappears and then you can’t find it. Can’t do any sort of, I don’t know, data recovery, advanced methods, but it just mysteriously disappeared. Ever had that happen?
Speaker 1 | 01:10.666
No, I can’t say that that one in particular. I do have, particularly on some of my staff machines, shared icons disappear. Which is virtually impossible since it’s the same icon shared for everyone.
Speaker 0 | 01:30.127
Yeah, I think it had something to do with that. I think it had something to do with like a weird, it’s, you know, I had a MacBook. I’m a little bit of an Apple guy, but I think it had something to do with like my iCloud, some sort of mismatch. And, you know, it wasn’t syncing with iCloud and then it synced back up and it synced, you know, all the stuff that was from 15 days prior. So it just. made everything disappear. I don’t know anyone out there listening to the show, please. If you, um, if you know the answer to this, let me know. It’s gone now. Anyway, it’s already formatted the hard drive on the old computer by a new one. So it’ll be, it’ll be worthless now, but, um, tell me a little bit about what you do. Um, why, you know, why at all I would ever call you old school, but let’s, let’s go back to old school it and, you know, what do you do right now? Um, you know, what, what’s the day job?
Speaker 1 | 02:23.624
Currently, I am the IT department. Other duties as required. The only four words that matter in any job description. But for a small geotechnical engineering firm out here in Tempe, Arizona, basically what that means is we have people that go out and play in the dirt. And I say that because… Anytime you’re going to build anything, some of the checkboxes in the permit system are, have you checked soil density? Do you know the, can you prove the composition of the concrete and asphalt, the grout, that type of thing? Yep. And that’s the type of service that we provide. So, short term is, we play in the dirt.
Speaker 0 | 03:20.290
So, stuff that requires, you know. I would assume requires a bit of technology, but something that we’ve been doing for a long time. So I would imagine that, you know, the technology being used has maybe changed over the years and data entry and how we track that data, I would assume makes a difference.
Speaker 1 | 03:42.685
Absolutely. We continue to evolve. At one time when the company started about 20 years ago, it was just literally techs in the field making their observations and jotting down notes in a notebook, bringing them back, and the company had a room full of people doing data entry into Excel. That evolved into tablets or laptops that the techs would take into the field. We’re currently using Android tablets to capture that data. which of course means remote access back into our services from wherever they happen to be.
Speaker 0 | 04:33.627
How was the, this is good because I would call it construction only because I used to work in the dirt a little bit myself for Comcast back in the day when Comcast was just kind of this new name. My buddy and I decided to take a job for the summer while we were in college, and that job consisted of digging trenches by hand and gluing conduit together. And I remember the very first time I saw… Fiber, actually, because we were doing coax, 500, 750, big coax cables, coax cables bigger around than your thumb. And we dug holes in the dirt and it was called construction. And you work in the dirt and you deal with construction of some sort. And it’s a world that still is. Is it safe to say it’s still a man’s world in construction a little bit? Is that too chauvinistic? Am I allowed to say that these days?
Speaker 1 | 05:36.271
Realistically, yes, because of the physical nature of the work.
Speaker 0 | 05:42.696
When I say that, I mean the colorful language that people like to use. I mean, I just, yeah, I think I mean the language and the actions and the… the culture of the work environment. I don’t know if that’s the type of work environment that you deal with, but I would imagine when you moved from paper to tablets, that could have been an interesting battle.
Speaker 1 | 06:07.395
Well, you know, I have to say that I’m not out in the field. I imagine the techs that are out in the field do deal with a lot of that, but we actually maintain pretty good professional standards, at least internally, that Language is civilized. Gestures are civilized.
Speaker 0 | 06:30.103
I wasn’t suggesting that it wasn’t anything other, but I’m just saying, you know, sometimes I deal with a lot of trucking companies and, you know, we’ve got we got to move to some new digital technology. And you’ve got, I don’t know, a bunch of truckers and I’m not stereotyping truckers at all. I’ve just heard that there’s certain industries that are a little bit more challenging than others. That’s all.
Speaker 1 | 06:51.220
Well, I’ve got to tell you, over the years I’ve worked. I’ve worked with the legal industry. I’ve done B2B and B2C commerce. I’ve been around the golf industry. I mean, at the end of the day, the zeros and ones really don’t care what it is that they represent. But change is hard for everybody. I don’t care what the industry is. I had a sales person in… I had a salesperson in the legal industry that would rather hire a personal assistant and send them to the training rather than learn how to use the software to keep the ERM system activated for them. And of course, their logic was they could make more money selling than they could keeping notes. But true.
Speaker 0 | 07:52.039
Oh,
Speaker 1 | 07:52.179
so I’ve seen I’ve seen people that leave jobs over change. So, you know, change is always hard.
Speaker 0 | 08:05.382
I’m taking notes because there is a there is a very profound there is a very, very profound statement here. It hasn’t come to mind yet. But yes, people hate people hate change. Right. But they and they. I’m thinking for some reason what popped into my head was a bunch of sales guys hating the deal-killing department or the sales-killing department. We used to call them, I think they’re called sales engineers. Anyways, the golf thing intrigued me.
Speaker 1 | 08:39.955
People that tell the truth to the client? Yes, like,
Speaker 0 | 08:44.479
I exist because, well, why do we even need the sales rep then?
Speaker 1 | 08:49.722
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 08:51.499
Why don’t we just have the sales engineer? Why don’t we just, you know, we can eliminate a whole other group of people. Hopefully that maybe that’ll garden or some gardener. The golf thing intrigues me. What do you do with the golf?
Speaker 1 | 09:07.884
We ran. I was the first technical hire for a company that was doing a complete online portal for. everything necessary to run a green grass golf facility. So you could supply everything from your clubhouse to your kitchen, including food to your pro shop.
Speaker 0 | 09:32.553
Fertilizer?
Speaker 1 | 09:33.753
Maintenance department. We aggregated vendors and put it all together and made that available to the golf industry.
Speaker 0 | 09:43.937
Sounds like what I do for IT guys.
Speaker 1 | 09:46.538
Yeah. Golf, though, is very much an old boy network.
Speaker 0 | 09:53.562
Yeah, you’d think so.
Speaker 1 | 09:55.143
Well, the golf pros don’t want to deal with something that will save them money or save the club money. When, in fact, they have a rep come in and will slip them a half dozen shirts personally or a new set of clubs or like that.
Speaker 0 | 10:14.420
It’s like the pharmaceutical company used to be. Yeah. The old school pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 1 | 10:18.442
Uh-huh. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 0 | 10:20.783
there’s a bit of that going on.
Speaker 1 | 10:22.643
I just happen to have experience with golf and it was a great idea.
Speaker 0 | 10:27.986
But sounds like one of the main reasons why I quit the corporate world. There’s a ton of that. There’s a ton of the, I call it the good old boys network. There’s a ton of the good old boys network going on. Back to the dirt. We moved to tablets. Change is always hard, but even more profound. I don’t want to say, it’s not non-biased. Change is non-biased. It’s like change is not, I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 11:00.040
Well, there is an inherent change in an inherent bias and change in that, you know,
Speaker 0 | 11:09.002
conflaginist,
Speaker 1 | 11:10.222
it’s not traditionally an industry of people that did not grow up wanting to be computer users. And so to make them move from non-technology to technology in general is a bias. and it could be considered an age bias, it could be an education gap. I mean, there are any number of things that it could be looked at. But, you know, change is inherent in any industry, and you’re going to find that everywhere, that there will be a segment of the people that feel that they are being loaded up and picked on simply because the systems are changing. but from this perspective we’re always trying to uh figure out how to optimize our processes and technology is a big driver in that so uh change is inevitable it’s going to happen uh you know in i.t um i heard a speaker several years ago from um Caltech, that was talking about the concept of the IT decade. And his reference was that for change in general society, everything that happens over the course of a year, improvements in automobiles, electronics, all of that, take the changes that happen in a decade. And for IT, that compresses down to about three years. Now, since that was several years ago, I imagine that it’s now down to about 18 months. Things are changing dramatically all the time. And if we can find a better mousetrap, a better way to conduct the process, we are going to implement that because at the end of the day, business exists to make money. And… If we can help save money, improve processes, streamline operations, we are going to implement those changes. And there are going to be some people that complain that, you know, we never did it this way before. No, we didn’t.
Speaker 0 | 13:46.307
You just flooded my mind. One, the… concept of IT in a decade being done in three years and now being more of 18 months brings up so many problems for numerous things, at least from a vendor management standpoint. And I say that because most people are signing two and three year agreements with a lot of their providers and vendors. This is just my own personal kind of expertise. I’m always telling people, why are you signing up for something that’s going to be three years long? Because if you don’t have to, if you don’t have to, if there’s another way to do it, because think of what’s going to happen in three years. And even if there is some flexibility in whatever this agreement this is, the software as a service agreement, whether it be your internet carrier, whether it be, I don’t know, you know, one and a half racks in this data center, whatever, whatever the heck it is. Once you sign up for three years, if you need to upgrade halfway between, or you need to change, you need to be more flexible. If that company allows that flexibility, then they’re going to hold you to the fire from it, which then hurts the business side, which you just mentioned, the profitability, the savings side. So, because they’ve already got you, you’re already, it’s like, you’re already chained up, you know? Vice versa, if you can’t leave, then you’ve put your business in a situation that can’t be flexible and that can hurt profitability. Well, it can hurt growth. And then if you just say, well, screw it, we’ll just buy out of this contract, then you’re wasting more money. I just think it’s something that needs to change in the industry, which is how vendors do business. They need to do business in a way that is more… Uh, people don’t like the cliche, you know, I don’t know. Some people love the cliche, some people don’t, you know, more of a partnership type of agreement where people are working together. But things that made me, the things that made me thought of is I walked into a place, uh, very not too long ago and, um, you know, they’re paying, I don’t know, maybe 40,000 in MPLS bills, you know, like. Basically glorified on-net VPN connections that are 1.5 and 3 megs in speed. The entire organization, which is maybe, you know, thousands of end users on Lotus Notes. And a brand new Avaya upgrade. And I’m just thinking to myself, what? Like we were thinking of moving to a hosted exchange. Like, what were you guys thinking? Like Lotus Notes. I just, I guess I get it. But that to me says that there’s something really going on there. There’s like a very old, you know what it says to me? It says good old boys network.
Speaker 1 | 16:52.663
Well, what it tells me is that nobody’s really doing any long-term strategic planning. Because if you’ve got an idea of where you’re going to take the technology stack, and truly understand all the dependencies, the first thing that you’re going to address is bandwidth. Because if you’re going to start using hosted services, cloud services, whatever that may be, enhanced communications, it all runs on the pipe.
Speaker 0 | 17:29.659
And 1.5 megs is not going to cut it.
Speaker 1 | 17:32.640
Yeah, if you don’t have the pipe, nothing else is going to work. And so it goes back to instead of doing now, I understand that every now and then that 20 year old PBX craps up, you’ve got to have something. But, you know, if you don’t have the foundation for it, you’re not going to have a long term viable solution. And that’s really, I think. Particularly prepared in the S&V space. I think it’s just short term thinking about how do I fix the immediate problem and not how do I address the long term growth?
Speaker 0 | 18:17.418
Yeah, we call that reacting versus responding.
Speaker 1 | 18:22.639
Sure.
Speaker 0 | 18:22.959
It’s like the doctor just, you know, just amputate versus, well, what could we have done to maybe prevent diabetes to begin with?
Speaker 1 | 18:32.902
Well, it’s a fix. where you amputate from sometimes i would suggest from the neck up but oh my gosh um so
Speaker 0 | 18:50.858
that’s interesting it you know anyways uh it is is changing at such a pace right now um in your opinion how do you create a culture of change Can it even be done? Does it need to be done?
Speaker 1 | 19:07.793
It can be done. It needs to be done. And really, my running joke is my true job is behavior modification. When it comes to end users, I need to get them to buy into what we’re trying to accomplish. Generally, in a new position, that starts at security. And it’s training them that just because that nice Nigerian prince sent you an email.
Speaker 0 | 19:42.038
I miss that guy. I still get him every now and then.
Speaker 1 | 19:44.759
He wants to give you money.
Speaker 0 | 19:46.620
Yeah. So-and-so died. They left me $32 million, but it’s just got to be filtered through here. And if you just help me do this, you’ll get 10% right away. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 19:58.805
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 19:59.485
It must still work. It’s still working. That same email is going out.
Speaker 1 | 20:04.087
anyways you know it um it’s a good story actually years ago in the days before email uh I actually received the, you remember the thin little lightweight international airmail envelopes?
Speaker 0 | 20:24.375
No.
Speaker 1 | 20:25.716
Okay. Well, I’m old.
Speaker 0 | 20:26.936
Hold on. I’m Googling this. Keep going. International. Lightweight. International. International.
Speaker 1 | 20:33.760
International coastal mail. You used to be able to get additional lightweight, very thin, lightweight paper. Uh-huh. just to save on additional postage costs.
Speaker 0 | 20:47.707
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 20:49.048
But I actually received a letter from Nigeria from a…
Speaker 0 | 20:56.331
Oh, the vintage airman. Is this the one with like the blue and the red stripes around the outside? Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 21:04.494
From an assistant oil minister.
Speaker 0 | 21:07.395
Nice.
Speaker 1 | 21:08.336
Offering me an opportunity to help him embezzle.
Speaker 0 | 21:15.027
Hey, at least he’s being truthful. You know what I mean? You’re like, wait a second.
Speaker 1 | 21:17.909
Well, he didn’t go so far as to say embezzle, but he had a client that disappeared, that there were some unused funds in a slush fund somewhere. And he had access to it and he needed to get it out of the country. And if I was to be so kind as to help him, he would certainly split the proceeds with me. But I actually received the hard copy.
Speaker 0 | 21:43.626
Nice. You still have it?
Speaker 1 | 21:46.587
Somewhere.
Speaker 0 | 21:47.507
I need a picture of that.
Speaker 1 | 21:48.888
That would be great. Yeah, it’s…
Speaker 0 | 21:51.089
There’s something to be said about mail. We got to go back. We’re going backwards. We’re a little bit of regression here. I know that if I want to get someone’s attention, I need to send them a handwritten piece of mail. No one gets that.
Speaker 1 | 22:02.613
Yeah. Well, you know, we’re swamped by emails. You’ve got your corporate account. You’ve got at least one personal account.
Speaker 0 | 22:12.778
I’ve got way too many. I’m actually talking about a lot. I’ve got to consolidate. I’ve got way too many.
Speaker 1 | 22:18.040
You get to the point that you’ve got four to five hundred messages a day to filter through.
Speaker 0 | 22:23.342
I had a I had a paid conversation with one of with with Tony Robbins, like top, top salesman of all times. And it was just like. I can’t remember why I was talking to him. It was something back when I first started, when I was first starting out on my own and had left the corporate world. And it was like some sort of coaching conversation of some sort. And I can vividly remember, you know, a good, I don’t know, 15 minutes, good 15, 20 minutes was just on, Phil, I’ve got a gun to your head. This is his way of making decisions. And I think it’s very… It’s very, very helpful. So here’s the tip. I’ll give you guys the, you know, for the 30 minutes of the 200 bucks I spent for 30 minutes, here’s what came out of that conversation. Phil, there’s a gun to your head right now. You’ve got five seconds. You need to choose which email you’re going to use forever. Five, four, three, two, one. Phil Howard, you know, phil at philhowardtelecom.com. Great. Delete all the others. That was it. The whole is like, I got this problem. I’ve got all these email accounts. Everything’s filtering. It’s a crazy mess. I’ve got to consolidate all these calendars. You’ve got to do all this. I’ve got invites coming from here, podcasts coming in here, this coming from here. And it’s a real, you know, optimization operations can be a real problem for a startup guy once they actually start to grow and become something. Because now you’ve got, you know, every bootstrap system that you’ve used over the last four years.
Speaker 1 | 23:59.462
And the problem with that is it’s going to take you three solid days to set up the rules once you consolidate them to get everything to segment out into the appropriate directories so that you can at least categorize them.
Speaker 0 | 24:15.335
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 24:15.815
And you’re still getting 500 mails a day. It doesn’t seem to be the primary problem.
Speaker 0 | 24:22.541
Yes. Multiply that by, I don’t know, how many end users do you have? 50?
Speaker 1 | 24:27.445
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 24:28.334
Yeah, so multiply that by 50 and now we’ve got your job.
Speaker 1 | 24:33.198
And I used to work for a living. I took a 5K.
Speaker 0 | 24:40.824
That was crazy. Excellent, excellent. So anyways, back to the culture of change. I love Sears and Toys R Us as the example of a culture of non-change because they’re done.
Speaker 1 | 24:54.695
Very true.
Speaker 0 | 24:56.597
What? So we start with security. Don’t click on that. Don’t, as tempting as it is to read the Nigerian email, don’t do it. And everyone gets caught. Even the best of people get caught sometimes.
Speaker 1 | 25:09.786
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 25:10.707
I remember physically telling someone, do not. Do not accept that PayPal payment for your BMW $800 stereo that you just sold on Craigslist. Do not accept the PayPal. It’s not real. The money is not there. What did the person do? Basically copied a perfect HTML version of a PayPal account received. right uh emailed it to the person it was probably like pay with two y’s paypal.com something like that right sure showing that the money had been received into their bank account and what do you think this person that i told do not believe them did they sent them the 800 bmw car stereo and three days later realized that no the money had not been received into their ebay account So even the best of people, even after you tell them, they know, they’re like, I know I’m in technology. I can’t, but like, look, the money’s here. I received it. They got it. So it happens. All right. So we start with security. Don’t click on this. Don’t do this. Look at URLs. I’m assuming.
Speaker 1 | 26:36.116
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 26:37.076
How do you get people to care? So part of the culture of change is there must be some way of getting them to actually care. That’s the biggest thing.
Speaker 1 | 26:46.534
Sometimes there’s a stick involved. You know, I use a carrot because when I send out the emails warning people of what’s going on, I go to enough shows, or at least I did until this past year, that I’ve always got a box full of stuff that has value to somebody. But how many water bottles do I need? I mean, even nice insulated water bottles, you know, so or I’ll win a raffle of something. And yeah, I will bury a paragraph occasionally in an email that says respond by use this secret code in the subject line.
Speaker 0 | 27:36.038
I’m smart.
Speaker 1 | 27:37.279
And you are entered to win some fabulous prize.
Speaker 0 | 27:42.641
That’s great.
Speaker 1 | 27:44.302
And then a couple days later, when I send out the we have a winner message, it’s someone that said, I didn’t know about the contest.
Speaker 0 | 27:55.012
Nice.
Speaker 1 | 27:55.873
And I will point out the unopened mail in their inbox, the one that was all about security that they didn’t bother to read. Yes. That goes back to behavior modification. First and foremost, you have to get them to read the emails from IT.
Speaker 0 | 28:15.003
Yeah. So if we just talked about how hard it was, we just got done talking about how hard it is to get someone to read an email to begin with.
Speaker 1 | 28:23.445
Well, yeah. But again, there are ways that.
Speaker 0 | 28:28.447
I love that.
Speaker 1 | 28:31.088
This cost me nothing. Larger organizations where HR has gift cards and. movie tickets and that kind of thing that they’re always willing to give to employees. Talk to your HR department, see what they’ve got.
Speaker 0 | 28:47.860
I’m willing to sponsor something like this. I’m just going to ask for the money from somebody else, but I’m willing to sponsor something like this.
Speaker 1 | 28:54.122
It doesn’t matter where the money comes from. Like I say, I can’t tell you how many water bottles, t-shirts, backpacks.
Speaker 0 | 29:03.384
Vonage is working really hard to get back on the phone early next week. Not that we don’t already. Not that I don’t already, we have a big relationship with every company out there. So anyone listening to the show, this is maybe the good, I’m supposed to do these advertisement breaks now. So I’ve got to do this. Anyone listening to the show, Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, if you’ve made it this far, we must have done something right. Please, please go to iTunes. It’s got to be Apple iTunes because somehow they rule the podcast world and who makes it into the top. 100 technology podcasts. Scroll to the search for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, scroll to the bottom and give us an honest review. That’s all I want. All I want is an honest review. With that being said, the show is funded, completely funded by hundreds of providers. But it wouldn’t be much for me to go to Vonage and say, yes, I’ll get on the phone with you, but guess what? We’re doing a sponsored IT giveaway where IT directors need stuff, cool stuff, just to give away to end users for reading their emails. What do you got? What do you think? What should we give away? There’s got to be something fun that I can send out, like a package of stuff to people. I’m doing something cool. I’m done with the golf balls, done with the golf tees. I’m sending out nerd glasses and pocket protectors to at least IT directors that says, ask me technology questions. I think that would be good on like Zoom calls and stuff. But yeah, okay, insulated water bottles. There’s got to be something cool. Like, you know, what about darn tough socks? You ever had a pair of darn tough socks? They have a lifetime guarantee. It’s amazing. Anyhow, how about we do this? Steve. What’s your favorite thing? If you had to pick like, you know, you know, stuff that I can give out legally. OK, you know, I can’t give out, you know, you know, stuff that’s, you know, 18 years or younger people are allowed to have. What’s what is a group of your favorite things?
Speaker 1 | 31:10.473
Well, I tell you, the biggest things that have been popular with my end users over the years. Uh, backpacks are always good because everybody can, if they don’t need it themselves, I’ve got a kid, uh, they’ve got a nephew, a niece, somebody can use, Hey, and I’m talking, you know, a nice backpack.
Speaker 0 | 31:34.013
Um, and not something with like a big, well, I’m not going to name the provider logo on the back, but yeah. Backpacks. Gotcha.
Speaker 1 | 31:40.235
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 31:41.636
Um, okay, go ahead. Um, maybe camouflage.
Speaker 1 | 31:46.057
I had radio controlled stuff.
Speaker 0 | 31:48.574
No, that’s even cooler. Yeah. Drones. How about drones?
Speaker 1 | 31:53.835
Yeah. Drones can be fun until somebody loses an eye.
Speaker 0 | 31:59.397
Or the police department. They fly it over the police department and don’t know that there’s some kind of air space. Okay. Radio-controlled cars. Gotcha. Well, something. Boats or something.
Speaker 1 | 32:12.380
Bluetooth speakers are good.
Speaker 0 | 32:18.938
But we need to do a show just on swag. Best swag. Well,
Speaker 1 | 32:23.662
and and, you know, it again, everything that I give away has come from vendors. Yeah. I either of them has just just as the trade show. Thanks for stopping by. Yeah. Yeah. Chargers are good. Card chargers, contact chargers, charger cables are always good.
Speaker 0 | 32:56.531
Yes. Cables. Always breaking them.
Speaker 1 | 33:03.094
And, you know, all this stuff is logoed. I had a vendor at one organization. I had just deployed a couple hundred laptops, and I had them give me. A couple hundred of the small laptop, they were still wired mice. Their option was they were going to have to ship them back to corporate or let me take them home in my truck. You know, again, it’s every marketing department has something.
Speaker 0 | 33:42.859
But what external SSD drives?
Speaker 1 | 33:48.527
That’s cool. Yeah, but I’ve done such a good job of warning people about plugging that stuff in. And just an off story.
Speaker 0 | 33:57.111
Headsets? What about headsets now? I wonder about headsets.
Speaker 1 | 34:00.133
Headsets would be good.
Speaker 0 | 34:01.714
That’s expensive, but it’s a possibility.
Speaker 1 | 34:04.055
Well, not necessarily. I mean, if you do wired headsets.
Speaker 0 | 34:07.697
Well, do like one or two. I’ll have my girl over at headsets.com or something. We’ll do something like that. That’d be cool. It’s definitely needed.
Speaker 1 | 34:16.206
Going back to the flash drives, the SSDs, I actually received one from a security vendor, not to be named.
Speaker 0 | 34:28.516
Oh,
Speaker 1 | 34:28.836
gosh. That was full of their marketing material.
Speaker 0 | 34:33.139
Yeah, that’s what they do. It’s like the thumb drive, the old thumb drive deal.
Speaker 1 | 34:36.242
As soon as I plugged it in, the same security vendor software on my laptop said, Hey, this thing’s infected.
Speaker 0 | 34:50.176
See how good we work? That was on purpose. Hey, Steve. Yeah. Don’t you see how good we work? See, Steve? See? Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 35:00.062
Sure.
Speaker 0 | 35:01.663
That’s what we’re like.
Speaker 1 | 35:02.824
I’m not to say that I’m old, but going back to…
Speaker 0 | 35:06.306
That’s back to…
Speaker 1 | 35:07.887
Old computer shows.
Speaker 0 | 35:09.448
We have a winner.
Speaker 1 | 35:11.990
Going to old computer shows where everybody’s passing out five and a quarter inch. uh floppies with software samples yeah yeah and you go by the one vendor who’s got refrigerator magnets nice yeah nice and they wonder if millennials even know what we’re talking about yeah when i pointed out to them that you know everybody’s going to take this magnet and throw it in the bag with all of their floppy disks what do you think’s going to happen that’s actually pretty genius uh yes for the refrigerator vendor because uh they just they just singled themselves out as the only person left yeah yeah or the one responsible for destroying all that stuff you really wanted to look at well
Speaker 0 | 36:06.869
i would hope the computer guy would know not to throw the magnet in the bag with uh that’s great everyone has that story i don’t mean to pick on the millennials they were definitely alive during floppy disk time i just like picking on them because I don’t know, it creates polarity. Without conflict,
Speaker 1 | 36:25.760
what would we solve?
Speaker 0 | 36:32.404
This is a lot of fun. Okay, so magnets in bags erasing discs. Everyone has that story of, I, you know, to me it’s like a nightmare in like sixth grade. where I just, I was not a good student. I’ll be honest with you. I procrastinated. I’d rather play video games. Mom just let me kill myself and save the game. And no, I’m not, you know, I just, that was me. And everyone has that nightmare of, you know, I just finished my paper. I pulled out one disc. I put in, you know, I pulled out Word, whatever it was that had to load on a disc or I don’t even remember what the word processing program was, but you had to Put in a boot disk to load the computer. Then you had to put in a disk to load the word processing program. Then you had to put in a disk to save your paper. And then because you had all your other papers saved on it, you had to put in another disk to save the other half of that paper. And then you had to print it. And by mistake, you then put a magnet on top of the disk and goodbye. That’s like a recurring nightmare. The other recurring nightmare is I’m back in high school and I’m showing up for exams and I never showed up for that class the entire semester. And I just found out that I was in that class and I have to show up to the exam and the teachers look at me like, oh, Mr. Howard, so you decided to join us. Anyways, I don’t know what it has to do with IT. Maybe it has a lot to do with IT and how someone like myself gets into this business. So a lot of great stuff, such a lot of great stuff. Um, change is not prejudiced. Um, I’m in the business of behavior modification, um, hiding secret codes in emails and giving giveaways. Um, I think another one is use other people’s money. That’s a common one. You know, we don’t hear that in it a lot, but it directors, you are not using other people’s Monday money, especially when it comes to negotiation. I’ll just throw this tip out there too. There are marketing departments out there that if you just say, Hey, you know, I’m willing to get on and do a video testimonial. If you guys do all this stuff, right. But, um, you know, I need a little bit of something for that. And because we’re not in, um, healthcare and pharmaceuticals and there’s no, uh, you know, guidelines anymore and people are still bribing stuff with stuff and it’s a good old boys network. You can probably get something like that done. I’m not saying that that’s the right thing to do, but for your business and getting the best deal possible, it probably is. Uh, any other great tips and tricks that you have?
Speaker 1 | 39:10.685
My only suggestion to everyone in IT in particular is find a way to stay sane. I mean, I use humor. It may not have come across today, but I enjoy laughing at myself and at others.
Speaker 0 | 39:32.083
Humor, laugh at others, make fun of others.
Speaker 1 | 39:34.825
It’s not that I don’t take the work seriously. Uh, because I do. I mean, if you were to see me, I used to have hair. Yeah. Um, this stuff will drive you absolutely insane if you let it.
Speaker 0 | 39:52.249
What’s the lowest point you’ve experienced?
Speaker 1 | 39:54.570
The, the number of nights that you wake up at two 30 or three o’clock in the morning with the epiphany of how you’re going to solve this particular issue. Um, They do happen. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 40:11.441
that sucks.
Speaker 1 | 40:13.165
But one of the things that I’ve found is, you know, I know that you like surfing in the snow. It’s a great release. It’s a great way to take your mind off of everything else. Personally, you know, living in Arizona, I can go for a walk 365 days of the year. I will take some music because it’s really not intrusive and a good cigar and go for a walk and just think through everything that’s going on and then let it go.
Speaker 0 | 40:49.288
and the answers and the answers will come but you know not only does it help with my physical health it helps with my mental health um you’ve got to keep everything in perspective um yeah i think on a bigger picture story at the end of the day um what’s it really going to matter five years from now whatever you’re worrying about at this moment and i had a tough year going through with my mom died in january and i moved to help take care of her that’s kind of why i moved up near the ocean because um my parents house was there and people ask me you know how covid and how’s the year going i’m gonna be honest with you the this year has been probably one of the toughest years or it’s been a really interesting very hard year and it has nothing to do with covid it has nothing to do with crazy riots and whether you love trump or don’t love trump and whether you’re going to burn some building down and it has nothing to do with being afraid of any of that has nothing to do with with any of that whatsoever and When I look back and I think about it, you know, it doesn’t matter. Like a lot of people are thinking like, Oh, I don’t have time with this. I don’t have time to go maybe, you know, see my dad tonight. I don’t have time to go see my mom tonight. Um, but I just, you know, just gave up on a lot of stuff and just said, screw it. I don’t care. Cause it’s more important than, um, I’m with my parents or I’m with my kids right now or my health. Right. It’s, um, you know, uh, one of my, uh, favorite mentors of all time is Zig Ziglar. And he said, you know, I’m so busy. I don’t have time not to exercise, um, and stuff like that. It’s, uh, at the, at the end of, uh, at the end of time, uh, you know, some of these things aren’t going to matter as much. So, uh, but you do need to make sure the systems are running. Other people disagree. I’ve got plenty of it guys out there to say no. Um, You can take your vacation. I want it to be enjoyable for you. But, you know, you’re in charge of the systems. They can’t go down.
Speaker 1 | 42:46.909
And that’s true. And, you know, with the technology that we’ve got today, the leash is much shorter than it used to be. There’s no place that I’ve ever vacationed that I couldn’t be reached by phone, that I didn’t have a laptop with me, that I can remote in. And there are a lot of times that… I’ve worked for organizations that thought that they were going to let me enjoy my vacation. And a brief ISP outage, they brought in an outside contractor, someone that they’d worked with in the past. And when I got back, I had to completely rewire my closet because they didn’t bother to troubleshoot. They just started pulling wires. And suddenly it came back up and they said, oh, I fixed it.
Speaker 0 | 43:36.326
Just for an ISP outage.
Speaker 1 | 43:37.967
Oh. Well, again,
Speaker 0 | 43:40.524
it’s called aggregation and redundancy, please.
Speaker 1 | 43:43.806
It goes back to logical thinking of take the time to understand your systems and work it systematically. I mean, if you’ve got an outage, people can’t get to the Internet. Okay, do you have access to internal resources? You eliminated everything now from the… routers down. Now, can you go to the router and plug directly in and assign a static IP address to a machine? Can you get to the internet that way?
Speaker 0 | 44:23.386
Just to simply is just unplug the internet and plug it into your laptop at the router, the iAd or whatever you want to call it. But yeah, and you know, that’s a good point that we don’t even have time to cover, which is just How do you, as an IT director, make yourself replaceable? Not make yourself irreplaceable, make yourself replaceable. Because, yeah, if we did die in a car crash or something happened suddenly, would the company be completely out of business and not know what the heck’s going on? You know what I mean? That’s the value, I think, of a good IT director as well, is that they cross-train, they share knowledge. Yeah, someone should know that. You know, there’s a lot to be said there.
Speaker 1 | 45:10.592
Current documentation goes a long ways, but that has to include basic troubleshooting, traffic flow. Yeah, because assuming anyone that comes in understands the basis of just how to analyze where the problem exists. Those are people that I’m not knocking formal education. It’s a stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 0 | 45:44.003
I am.
Speaker 1 | 45:44.923
People that come directly out with a degree and come in and believe that they know. everything about everything.
Speaker 0 | 45:52.790
I am the exact opposite of that to the point where it’s so bad that I’ve had my son say in an organization, you know, I’m just going to drop out of school and do what dad does because who cares about this stuff anyways? They’re just brainwashing us with all this history. And like, I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe. Hold on, hold on. I did not say that. I did not say that. Education’s important. The right education and experience even more so. Uh, cause yeah, I think most people would agree with that. You know, I left college with a PhD or a master’s degree or this, this, this, and that. And, and, you know, when you get into the real world and you start working on systems, that’s, uh, that’s when I really learned something.
Speaker 1 | 46:29.759
Um, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 46:32.921
No. Then you go back and start making fun of your teachers that were so, you know, strict on you and you’re like, oh, you know, the right, he’s a teacher because he couldn’t make it in the real world.
Speaker 1 | 46:40.646
A good education, a good education will, will first and foremost, teach you to think.
Speaker 0 | 46:46.570
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 46:47.391
To analyze. And to question why.
Speaker 0 | 46:52.350
Yes. And to decipher, back to your very first point, starting with security and the ability to write and read good emails.
Speaker 1 | 47:02.359
Oh, yeah. But, you know, the one truth of IT is there’s no right or wrong way to do anything. There are multiple paths to the solution. A lot of it’s going to be dependent upon. what your long-term outcome needs to be, what kind of budget you’ve got, what kind of tool set you’ve got. So.
Speaker 0 | 47:28.298
I would have to disagree, but agree. I’m disagreeing, but agreeing. I know what you mean. Well,
Speaker 1 | 47:33.201
I understand. I mean, you get from A to B. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 47:38.204
In other words, it’s the best, the right way is the best way for your unique organization. Absolutely. And your group of end users and your culture and what drives and what. what jives right with your culture. That’s the right way. But there’s definitely wrong ways. There is definitely wrong ways.
Speaker 1 | 47:57.876
Well, if you get there, ultimately, you can say you can get there. Now, I can say I’ve walked into organizations where I know my predecessor had a killer home network. And that’s exactly what they built for that organization. doesn’t have enterprise capacity, but it was a killer home network. I get that. And it got them from A to B. So, yes, it’s going back to the culture of the organization at the time. So I can’t say that it was wrong because it kind of functioned most of the time. You know, A to B is… There’s layers.
Speaker 0 | 48:45.383
In other words, there’s levels. there’s layers and there’s levels to this thing.
Speaker 1 | 48:50.467
Well, it is complex. You know, if it was easy, everyone could do it. And unfortunately for the ones that do it well, they make it look easy enough that there are a lot of people that think they could do it too.
Speaker 0 | 49:07.124
Yeah, no. Yes. This, I would ask you what your one piece of advice is to everyone out there listening, but you’ve already given us so much. I’ll still give you the opportunity. Is there anything else out there that you could think of for other IT directors growing up in the field? Maybe even the more youthful, not that you’re completely not youthful, but the more youthful ones that haven’t gotten bald like you or me yet, or have at least some sort of receding hairline, what would your piece of advice be?
Speaker 1 | 49:38.787
Look at everything. Pay attention to science. Pay attention to art. Pay attention to history. History will repeat itself. But if you’re fortunate enough to have a staff, make it a point to discuss, spend five to 10 minutes every meeting discussing something totally off the wall. Because it keeps people active. The one thing about IT is you need to continue to work. And those… The true solutions that you are going to find, the innovative solutions are going to be when you hear something and you start thinking about it and realize that if you could tweak this about 15 degrees, you solve an internal problem that no one else recognizes and that there is a viable solution. But if you are not… working on a 360-degree vision of what’s going on in the world, some of these things are going to pass you by. And so stay curious, stay informed, read for the sake of reading. It doesn’t all have to be technical material, you know, just a good lightweight novel that will take you out of your mindset for a particular length of time. You know, I try and read about 30 minutes a day of things that have nothing to do with technology. And yet sometimes an author will slide some technology in that I’ll go, yeah, that’s interesting.
Speaker 0 | 51:33.469
But I put the elements of style next to the toilet. Not that I want to give you guys any, you know, particular visualizations here, but, you know, I banged through the elements of style and, you know, I don’t know, weak. And that’s probably the best book on writing of all times. Yeah. Just to consolidate and write clear and to develop points in a very standard, straightforward, outside of your perspective way, from the point of view of the person reading it. That really blew my mind. Solve problems in relation to the 360 view, 360… view of the world.
Speaker 1 | 52:18.431
Yeah. Stay well rounded.
Speaker 0 | 52:20.972
Yeah. Thank you so much for being on the show. Truly a pleasure. Very, very fun. And I really am. I’m walking away with we have a winner.
Speaker 1 | 52:36.362
I will expect my water bottle momentarily.
Speaker 0 | 52:40.504
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
