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Using Asana (and Trello) with Chrome and Scrum to manage life in the time of COVID-19
If you are spending a lot of you day at home, then staying organized is not easy, here are some simple tips: On your Mac, turn on Announce Time. Then set it for every half an hour. That corresponds nicely to the Story Points that you use for a Scrum. If you are using Asana,…
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Figuring out when your DNS changes have propagated
Many times, you want make a DNS change, they tell you it will take 24 hours for that to propagate, but how do you know when it really happens. You can run a ping from your machine, but there’s a better tool. What’s My DNS does a check of various DNS servers around the world.…
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Review of WordPress Themes for Business
OK, we finished the review of some themes for a personal blog with scrolling content. That is quite different than something that is meant to be a front facing page for a small business or a new product. There are lots of themes that try to do this basic layout and most are paid themes,…
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iPhone Garmin Connect Loses Sync with 520 Plus
Ok, getting the Garmin 520 Plus to work with an Iphone was a chore. But if, the iPhone deletes the Garmin Connect automatically then you lose the connection and have to start all over. I worked on this before thanks to Brad, but the procedure actually worked. To review, if the Garmin Connect fails then…
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Marketing in time of crisis
Had a great conversation with Yohai, Micah, Rebecca and Tim over a Zoom cocktail party yesterday. The conversation rolled around to how does one talk about oneself and ones company in difficult times. While it’s tempting just to stop all marketing as no one is going to buy things. And organic traffic is way down…
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Gmail not activated for Gsuite because of high load
Ok file this in the department of strange things. With so many people working from home Gsuite is just jammed. In bringing up a new Gsuite account (for yet another company), I ended up in a strange loop. I would login to gmail and it would say “This account does not have Mail activated” and…
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How to wish some well at Passover
Well, I learned how to say this last year, but in Hebrew its: chag Pesach kasher vesame’ach. Indianapolis Star, 7 April 2020 I’ve no idea how to actually pronounce this, but phonetically it’s “CHAG PEH-sach kah-SHER ve-sah-MAY-ach” Google Translate
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What can a startup or small business do to stay alive in the Covid catastrophe
Ok hat tip to Tom, Rick, Will and Keith for inspiring this post. But if you are a small business what can you do. FWIW I’ve never run a small business so I don’t know much about that, but I have worked with startups (and even been in one), but here are some great words…
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Running Secure Zoom Meetings 1, 2 and 3
Everyone is now worried about Zoom security and how to make sure that you are really running end-to-end encrypted and there is no possibility for anyone to see what you are talking about. Zoom included. First of all, Zoom is inherently secure if used well, you just make sure that you use the actual Zoom…
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Zoom video backgrounds are back!
They removed it for a while. You can access this on a Mac or PC by going to Preferences > Video > Background. But where do you get footage that looks good? Well, Pexel to the rescue. While Unsplash does photos only, Pexel also does royalty-free video, so that’s a great way to do this.…
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Zoom Security and Privacy Problems, Fixes and Response and a Lesson in PR
Well, Zoom has exploded in usage and has just been hammered in the last week culminating in bans. There have been countless stories about Zoombombing where kids and conferences have been inundated. Not to mention privacy problems and security holes. And most importantly, it’s not been if Zoom is a truly evil company bent on…
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The ultimate Covid-19 Home Office
OK, I’ve gone from spending an hour in my home working to nine Zoom calls on Friday and then working until 10PM on various projects (Covid response, helping companies survive, investment funds, etc.). So suddenly having the right home office setup has become really important. So help the economy and order some stuff, but here…
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Gaming and Gaming Builds in Covid-19 Era of 2020
Well there is so much to write about here. In this Covid crisis, gaming at home is on the rise. Most sites are reporting a 50% increase in traffic. Certainly it does seem like virtual reality might very well finally find its niche as people look for escape from their daily apartment life. So what…
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Tips for Aliases in GSuite
Ok, this is a confusing topic because there are two distinct things you could mean by this. The first is if you want rich@foo.com to actually go to rich.tong@foo.com. And the second is if you want hr@foo.com to actually go to a group of people in the company like rich@foo.com and tony@foo.com. The confusing thing…
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Docusign Billing Strangeness You need to Call them
For such a cool and modern company, you can sure run into some strange troubles. For instance, we just started a new account and tied it to a Paypal account (and even got a nice first year discount thanks to Silicon Valley Bank), but then the troubles began. The bill happened, but for some reason,…
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Monitor advice for photography
Well, I’m no expert on this, I have many expert friends: 1. If you want the very highest quality, then NEC really makes the best monitors. So there are specific monitors like the BenQ PhotoVue. Because they are much more managed in terms of colors so $1K to $5k are not crazy. 2. If you are…
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Using Asana (and Trello) for a Startup
Well if you are working in a startup, it feel like things start to get out of control, there are a bunch of decent free choices. I’ve used Trello for years and it is a good way to have Kanban cards and is a nice overview of the projects. Also it is free and sharing…
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Bootstrap Multisite WordPress on AWS Lightsail
I wrote one on how to do this with Digital Ocean Multisite WordPress, but if you are on AWS, then you have some different options for Lightsail which is the easiest option. The instructions are really confusing, but basically, you use the Lightsail instructions to get it running and to get Route53 configured and then…
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Getting serious about 3D Printing guides
We have two 3D printers from five years ago and they were definitely cranky but showed the potential. Back then it was really at the start, we backed two Kickstarter projects and ended up with two Delta printers. The first was just a mass of piece parts without any instructions. Alex was incredible and assembled…
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What’s all this about HSA, FSA and HDHP
Ugh, this is so confusing all these acronyms. I’m far from an insurance expert and this is definitely, definitely not advice. It is more like stuff that is collected from a bunch of websites and is a bit of a decoder ring for us: Flexible Spending Account (FSA) Flexible Spending Account lets you fill up…
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Beware how you plug in power supplies into your PC motherboard especially PCIe vs CPU 8-pins
Ok, I promised myself I would not build more computers. There is no need. Yet in 2020 I’ve built two and am working on a third. Some important notes. When things don’t power up. Here’s how to figure it out. I was working on building a new PC for Dave and got him a new…
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Financial Analysis and great websites
Well with all the market turmoil, it’s more than important to do the right financial analysis. If you don’t want to pay a lot for it, what are some of the great resources: MarketWatch. I’ve found that they have some great information particularly the quarterly financial data and pretty free. YCharts. The main benefit is…
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Adding a registered or trademark symbol to WordPress sites
Well if you smart, you have gone to the government and registered your company name as a trademark, but you have to defend your mark and make sure that it is used. It is a little tricky to figure out how to do this, so here’s what to do in WordPress: While you can figure…
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More Drinks for Work from Home
I must be getting a little crazy. I’m keep thinking about the cocktail that I’ll have this afternoon. Wow that’s great: Empress 1908. This is a cool gin that changes color when it hits tonic. Pretty neat. Made in Victoria Canada inspired by the Empress Hotel. Pretty cool. $37 from Drizly. Patron Anejo Tequila. This…
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At home workout training tools
Well my indoor bike trainer is on the way but what are the tools for exercising if you are at home and don’t have a beautiful home gym? Well first of all a lot of people are going outside. Just be aware of three things. This virus does live on metal and even cardboard. And…
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Threadripper Overclocking Guide 2020
OK, Brian has been trying to get his small home computer running. OK, nothing is small when you have a Threadripper, but still. Anyway, the guide to overclocking actually hasn’t changed much in the last 10 years literally. But for a Threadripper running on an ASUS ROG Strix TRX-40e and a Silverstone 1500W Power supply,…
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Google Sheets Tips and Tricks
Well I barely use spreadsheets anymore and when I do they are all Google Sheets because the collaboration works so much better. As an old 1-2-3 and then Excel junky (Excel rules still!), there are so many things that are just a little bit different, but if you are creating models, here are some tips…
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Connecting an Silicon Valley Bank account to Paypal
Well if you don’t have a company debit card, then one easy way to make regular payments is via Paypal. Here is how you can do it: Login to your SVB Account and create a Direct Connect PIN. You use this PIN to connect SVB to a variety of financial services like Paypal and Expensify.…
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Contribute your computer to understanding Corona virus
You can use either Folding@home or Rosetta@home to do this. It’s not completely clear how to do this so some instructions: Folding@home. It works best is you have a computer with a GPU. It is doing simulations while you are sleeping in a huge network. The client isn’t in `scoop` as far as I can…