mozy on over

I've been struggling for a long time to routinely and successfully back up my home computer. I've got 9 gigs of MP3s and thousands of pictures, as well as videos and documents - the usual. I've tried backing up to DVDs & external hard drives, but that takes way too much time and requires me to be involved - not to mention that I have to lug the DVDs and hard drive to work in case my house burns down. I've tried manually copying the files to an FTP server on my web server, but I worry about encryption, and again I have to be involved. Inevitably I forget to back stuff up for a month and then my hard drive crashes (yes, it happened a couple months ago).

I've been looking for a solution that is web based, so when the house blows up I've still got my data. It also needs to be automatic. It needs to allow me to select exactly what I want to back up in what directories, and then when I change the contents of those directories, it backs up accordingly. Oh, and it needs to be cheap. I'm sure there's options out there, but until this weekend I hadn't seen any.

Enter Mozy.

I ran across this site the other day and I've now been testing their product for a few days. So far it meets all my criteria. You download a little app that runs in your system tray. You tell it what types of files in what directories to backup, and then it backs up those files to its servers using your broadband connection. I have it set so it backs up automatically in the background when my computer is idle for 20 minutes. Currently I'm telling it to backup a specific folder in My Pictures. Whenever I add more pictures in that folder, Mozy backs them up.

Mozy gives you 2 gigs of space for free - you just have to agree to fill out a survey and receive a weekly ad newsletter. This is a great way for me to test the product. I've had bad experiences with other online storage (cough cough, streamload, cough), so I wouldn't pay for their service unless I knew it was going to work.

If you need more space you can get up to 20 gigs for $39.95 a year - their most expensive plan. That's very reasonable.

I've had Mozy working on my 1.9 gigs of pictures for the last few days, and I've admittely run into several issues. First things first - Mozy is still in beta, so bugs are to be expected. I had several connection errors this weekend, and at one point I couldn't log in to my account because it said I didn't exist. However, to Mozy's credit the backup picked up right where it left off each time it encountered a problem. I'm not forced to start from the beginning.

Finally this morning I had a successful backup. Granted, it took a couple days to upload almost 2 gigs of data, but I'm using a tiny DSL connection. Once the initial upload is complete, it's just incremental from there.

I need to make sure that I can successfully restore the files, and Mozy needs to make sure they work the bugs out soon. I'd be willing to pay for their service if they can assure me a stable product.

Head count vs. people count

Every weekend at CLC we take attendance. In each of our 4 services, you sign your name on a "Connection Pad" to let us know you were here and that information is then manually entered into Shelby. Naturally, not everyone in service actually signs in, either because they come in late, the connection pad is never passed, etc. To get a complete head count, our ushers count everyone each service and, as I recently learned, that data is manually entered into a spreadsheet - yes, a spreadsheet, not Shelby.
Both sets of data are very important to CLC. We need to know who attends when in order to effectively keep up with individuals (people count), and we also need to be able to keep track of how many people total are attending (head count). The problem is, those 2 sets of data are handled very differently. If we want to look at an individual's attendance record, we can easily get that from Shelby. However, when I recently asked how we could view the total weekend attendance patterns for the last year, I learned it was not that simple. As it stands now, a staff member would have to sort through her weekly reports that she prepares in Excel and prints out and stores in a 3 ring binder. Archaic, to say the least.
I was very surprised to learn that we were not using Shelby to keep track of head count, but I thought is was just because no one knew how. It seems like such a basic function, so I was sure Shelby could handle it. I made it a point to look into this when I had the opportunity to speak with a sales rep from Shelby, and I was really surprised to learn that there was no such function. I wonder what other Shelby churches do??
I know what Fellowship One churches do. I had an excellent conversation with Jeff from F1 (thanks for the time Jeff!) and I learned that F1 definitely provides for this situation. Add another item to my list.

A big step . . . finally

Starting next week, CLC will be able to accept online credit cards or electronic checks for event registration payments through our website. This is a big step in the right direction for us, although it's definitely long overdue.

We've been using ServiceU Corporation's product EventU now for several months for facilities management and our web calendar. More on our experiences in upcoming posts.

If you want to accept registration payments in EventU, you need the add-on TransactU. I finally got approval to add it to our system last week. It took a few days to set up a merchant account to process credit cards and e-checks. Within a week of getting the approval, I'm already prepared to train our staff and launch this on the website. Because we do so many different types of events and payment structures, I was a little worried that we'd run into issues. Now that I've been working in the new system, I know it will be able to handle anything we can throw at it.

I've actually been quite impressed with TransactU. It's a great product - setting it up is simple, it's easy to customize, and most importantly the end user's experience is excellent. In addition, ServiceU provides great support for their products. I've had to call and email them several times this week with questions, and they are always available and helpful. Admittedly, I'm pretty tough to impress, but so far they've done it.

We used EMS for several years in an attempt to get a handle on our event and facilities management, but room and resource requests for events were still done using a paper form. That form had to be processed manually and compared to the EMS database. If the request was rejected, the form would go back to the requestor and they would have to figure out a different meeting time/place. In addition, if the event required AV support or food services, there was a whole other set of forms and procedures. Once the event was finally approved, it was manually entered into EMS. Then, every approved event had to be individually entered into our website calendar so it would be displayed publicly. The entire process was extremely inefficient, required a full-time position to manage it and included lots of room for errors.

The staff at CLC is now effectively using internet-based EventU for every event request. It's taken us a while to get to this point, but it's not because there was anything wrong with EventU. In fact, I can't say enough good things about the product. We had everything set up and working in a few weeks. It's just always difficult to introduce change into a process that's been in place for years. Some people accept change better than others, and I think others fear it.

I can elaborate later, but the product has more than proven itself. Our facilities/room requests, website calendar and event registrations are now online, simplified and easily accessible.

Goodbye PDA - Hello Smartphone

Slashdot The Future of the PDA
I know people have been talking about the death of the PDA for quite a while. Sony's been out of the market for a while, and there are less and less options out there for a stand alone PDA. I finally dumped the Toshiba e355 Pocket PC this weekend for a T-Mobile SDA. Finally, I've got my phone, PDA & digital camera in one device. I can now say I really love this thing, although it's taken me several days to get there. I owe it only to my ignorance, but figuring out the Bluetooth connection for ActiveSync was a pain in the butt.
Now that everything's syncing and surfing, I'm really impressed - WiFi, Bluetooth, digital camera, etc etc etc, and it's smaller than my old flip phone. It feels rock solid, the battery life is great and the call quality has been excellent. My only complaint is the cramped keyboard layout. I understand they had to pack it all in to a tiny form factor. But I would prefer losing the dedicated Media Player buttons, which I never use, in favor of less dainty navigation & number keys. That being said, it's a tiny negative that I'm already getting used to.

IT could be drafted into Boot Camp

This is an interesting article about adopting Macs in the workplace. We've got half a dozen Macs at CLC, and I support them when I can but I sub out level two support to a Mac consultant who's gone to CLC for years.

PC on a Mac has been around for years in the form of Virtual PC. Of course anyone who's tried to use it everyday at work knows you'd rather have a separate PC. But Boot Camp will allow you to run both Mac & Windows natively on the Intel Mac. However, rebooting every time you want to switch your OS isn't the most practical thing.

I've got to hand it to Apple, though. There are countless PC users who have thought about switching to a Mac, but they were tied to their PC-only apps. Now, with a free download from Apple, they have removed the biggest barrier those PC users faced. Personally I'd love to upgrade my home dual G5 to an Intel Mac.

I wonder how many requests from CLC staff I'm going to get now for the Intel Macs.

Macworld: News: Computerworld: IT could be drafted into Boot Camp

Shelby upgrade

Since I have been in my position at CLC, we have outgrown the current server environment. Basically what I inherited was a single 900 MHz processor NT4 server. On that server was our Shelby database and MS Exchange 5.5, as well as all file and print services, and it was the domain controller. I've got over 50 client machines, so needless to say we were long overdue for an upgrade.

We recently upgraded the domain to Windows 2003 Server on 2 new dual-processor Dell servers. One box is now dedicated to MS Exchange 2003, which has been running successfully for a couple months. The other has been patiently waiting for me to move Shelby to it. We finally scheduled for the IT Department and the Finance Director to get together last Wednesday night to make it happen. We kicked out all the users at 3pm (they were notified a week in advance). I had already installed SQL 2000 and Shelby with a blank db on the new server, so the process was pretty straight forward. We made a backup of the db from the NT4 box, then transferred and restored that backup to the new installation. After we verified that was successful, we installed Mailrom. The entire server side of the project went very quickly. Of course, I planned and researched this entire process over and over again, so I was very confident. Plus I performed this migration during Shelby's support business hours, so I knew they were there if I needed them.

On a side note, Shelby's support hours are M-F only - kind of odd for a company who is in business for churches. What happens when we start using their Check In program and we run into a problem at 10am Sunday morning?

The only glitch I ran into was during the installation of Shelby on the new server. It turns out that SQL must be installed using the default instance. When I installed SQL, I named the instance "Shelby" in an attempt to keep things neat & organized (a bad habit I have). However, after a couple minutes of troublshooting w/ a Shelby tech, we discovered the problem. A quick reinstall of SQL with the default instance and we were back in business.

Anyway, the server side of things went smoothly, but the client side was another story. I spoke to several Shelby techs over the last couple weeks, and I got several different stories. One said I had to uninstall and reinstall Shelby on every one of my 55 clients. Another said all I had to do was repoint the user's shortcuts to the new server (I liked that tech's answer much better than the first). Finally a third tech (who said she had "been there 6 years longer than any other tech, so trust me.") assured me that a complete reinstall was necessary.

So the process was: run the uninstaller, uninstall Mailroom if present, reboot, run the installer, install Mailroom if necessary, reboot again, then test. That process, times about 55. It took 2 of us about 4 hours to complete the client upgrades. I was a bit worried, even though everything tested out okay, because I had an offsite seminar the next morning and wouldn't be back until after lunch. I was afraid I'd return to our finance department pulling their hair out and the support staff cursing my name.

I left Andrew in charge, and I had my hand on my cell phone during the entire seminar Thursday morning. Fortunately I never got a call, and almost no one at CLC even noticed our hard work. After all that is my goal, although it can be very unrewarding because no one notices a lot of what I do unless something breaks.

All in all it was a good experience - just very time consuming. I am, however, adding this to my list of things that would be better if we were using a hosted Church Management solution (read Fellowship One) - show up one morning, log on to the website, see the upgraded software and know that I didn't have to do a thing.

two steps back

I gave it a chance, but it was too much for me to deal with right now. IE7 beta was just too problematic for me. It repeatedly froze up, among other things. I gave it a good shot - I contributed to the forums and tried to stick with it. I just cannot afford for IE to be unstable right now, because my web CMS required it (unfortunately) - otherwise I'd stick with Firefox while I tried IE7. The one good thing about IE7 is that it uninstalled great and IE6 was ready and waiting underneath. Anyone having a better experience than me?