 So I haven't done a vlog update in a little while and I thought I would do this so today is 31 days of This guy Wow. Yeah, so I figured Marv and it's kind of impromptu This is not scripted because those are the only way vlogs are done properly It's also a thing that Tom really likes to do. Yeah, don't script anything I was gonna ambush him when he walked in the door, but I didn't quite have the camera set up I was gonna have him walk in the back door just set him down now speak to the camera That it's very early. I haven't had coffee yet So but what we want to do is share with you what has Marvin learned in 30 days Besides what we've shared with you such as the plunger thing you learn that yes And and I have used it on more than one occasion so far oddly enough Yeah, and the only prompting he said so far is me saying we're gonna shoot a video about what you've learned in 30 days Come sit over here So it's still a little bit ambushing, but I didn't have to set the camera up and put a light and you know Yeah, so I've had some time to try to think about all the all the things that I've learned and put a positive spin on them No, that won't be hard to do it all I I've loved every minute of being here so far That's a good start. Yeah, so yeah, what I guess what I've learned It's it's a lot of fun working here. I don't think anybody who's watched the videos would doubt that the everybody here is great and I mean, that's the personal side of it But just even like business side of it is just I've learned a lot about small business. I spent I Spent all of my career up to this point in academia, which is a very different world Not the real world is it? No, not at all. I'm not at all so meeting all these business people and You know learning that everybody has their own story and how we fit within their story is It's been challenging, but it's been a great challenge and I've really I've loved it so far and Marvis also learned that Large corporate companies sometimes have their head up their butt in special ways Like you know when they show up without the cable to run the cable that we're there to help them run and they meet Us there, but don't have the cable Marvis like how does this occur? Yeah, that was told Yeah, that was that was that was a foreign kind of a foreign concept to me Because in academia like they they like to do everything in-house so there may be a Department completely devoted to taking cables to where they need to be and that is that person's job And when no cables need to go anywhere that dude has nothing to do Yep So yeah, just things like that just sort of how I guess things can get overlooked When you're in a big corporation and you have all these things to worry about You know, you're not thinking about you're just thinking about we need to the cable needs to be run So we're not thinking about oh, yeah the cable needs to get there if we're gonna run it And I think I at least around here, you know, it's our job to manage those things and do those things So I'm happy to report and to say here that doesn't happen too often. We know what we need We often know what other people need Before they do yeah, so we can take care of that So learning kind of to juggle all that stuff too has been a good thing for me to learn Yeah, so it's been a lot of fun. He's now taking a lot of the burden of paperwork off of me and a lot of the burden of paperwork I might add I Haven't seen Tom push a single piece of paper since I've been here But I got a stack of it on my desk. It's also partly because we're paperless So yeah, that's that's one of our little things as we do a lot of that and that's actually something I want to I'm gonna cover hopefully soon is other IT people I see them doing different ways of document management and things like that and we have our Own ways that we do it and I want to encourage people to do it. You know, we focus on security focus on comprehensive document management and focus on a Storing things in a very sane manner. I guess would be a good way to put it We actually I was on the video the other day that was also live and one of my clients who is here with me on that live Video as I was on his show show he hosts on Facebook live But he liked that because he came from the corporate world where document management mattered a lot Which was the Ford Q1 and ISO world for manufacturing, but we I know that's where I was before in corporate So those document management methodologies those processes. You don't find them a lot in IT IT people start out of I'm really technically savvy. I'm really good at fixing computers and then turns into that and Marvis You know, we've indoctrated him into our document management process and he likes it too because I imagine documents are at least somewhat organized in academia, too They try to be yeah, they they tend to be and the in the actual academic side of it Yes But I would say there's room for improvement there. Oh, always. Yeah, yeah little sis is perfect It's the best we have today, but it never means that we've stopped progressing towards something better That's how I like to look at and I actually I wonder sometimes if that isn't something that keeps Companies from adopting a good document management or changing their document management program. They're afraid to change it exactly They they they think like oh well this company does it this way. We should do it that way It might that might not be the best way for you We we just kind of started switching here over to a new kind of document management system Within the last couple of days That I think is gonna work well for us. Just yeah, it might not be something that would work for another company though, right? And in part of the reason we're able to be a little bit more agile one We're not that big of a company with only a few people But the other side of it too is we use everything on open source software Which is a topic I'm gonna get to in a second here But a lot of that means Marvis like hey, can we add this feature and I'm like sure can we add this? I'm not the best programmer and most of my programming turns into a game of what did Thomas spell a variable? Holy crap where's this bracket go and why does everything not work anymore? But you know in a matter of hours I was able to modify our systems because we have all the code to them and add the features we wanted for document management and Basically, it's like a conversation system. We added so we're expanding how we do that and you know It's almost things but the topic of open source comes in because we've converted Marv over to Linux And how much Linux has used before 30 days? I had a Ubuntu disk that I would use if there were Files that were unrecoverable on a Windows machine. So I would pop that in Recover the recover the files and then and then image it back to another one So I had really that was that was it. That was all I had And now I'm my machine is a Linux machine. I'm learning About it every single day and I love it so far. Yeah, so we've brought him over to the Linux side So he's now actually full-time using it and reading business and work on it and sending out quotes and doing all the things that the job function entails and you know because we run everything in here and open source software It's been you know, we were here to answer questions for him But it's one of those intimidating things people are afraid to use but we're like we use it every day here You know our computers are open source the stack I run in the back that runs on a point-of-sale system runs our docket management Everything's open source stack and then the desktops we use our all open source and we're able you know people say oh I should use the software that my clients use and I'm like why why would I want to torture myself like that? Trust me. I fixed Windows problems every single day We had a crazy active directory problem with a server the other day We had another problem with another Windows server or SQL server decided not to start those are issues We fix every day I have plenty of hands-on experience day in and day out fixing Windows because reality is my very little very very little My job is fixing any Linux problems all of my job is fixing our support problems We have windows and all the tools we have you know We're picky about the tools we choose because they work in open source So it means I can use those tools to administer closed-source machines such as windows You know and the screen connect is one of our remote support tools no problem the whole Control panel MSP software use it's all web interface our whole point sales system web interface So it's the the platform that you run it on is really irrelevant And then everything else is just putting some quotes together which any document You know can do to put together a proposal leave your office works just as good as Microsoft office for that But it half the price and fewer of the problems So Marvin is a no problem adopting over to it once you tell them which softwares to use You can switch over to Linux and go wow this isn't hard, but we don't run QuickBooks So I will throw that out there for a lot of small businesses in Washington Can I switch to Linux which I get a lot of them I see what is the software choose and if they say I run QuickBooks like I'm sorry If you love QuickBooks and a lot of people do I'm not a fan of it But we support it we fix it all day with QuickBooks accounts for it as some percentage of the problems that we fix for our clients Because it's also based on a they're not the best programming I think so Outside of that most things if you have a web-based application you can probably switch over to Linux You can get rid of a lot of the problems and get started and I'll also can throw a link to video of getting started with Linux I have a video tutorial what it's like to get started and get loaded with it very good video I've actually I go back to it a few times. I've gone back to it a few times. Yeah Oh, and before you watch that video read the comments. I have not comments the updated description of video I use a couple words wrong and you're never is wrong is when you're wrong on the internet That's a true so people share with how wrong I am About a couple things I'm fine with that. I actually they were correct. I was wrong I interposed a couple words and I said a couple things like oh they released this every year And I meant to say every two but I said every year So so I could called out for saying it wrong and I did I have an errata at the bottom That's the correction of things I said no problems with that but it doesn't really affect the whole video It's it's it's people who are tech savvy love to be super correct And they should be and I should be more diligent and read from a script versus, you know, my head, which is sometimes accurate Thankfully when Tom said I would get paid every week. It was not every two weeks Yeah, so he was correct on that one and so that has been no problem. Yes But we just want to share an update vlog update, you know Marvin's using Linux So there's a change Marvin is adopted to our ways of how we do things and I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. He's drinking the Kool-Aid And eating some of the hot sauce. Oh that is that you know what that is the probably the biggest thing I've learned is how to eat really good food I mean, obviously you can look at me and see that I don't have a problem eating food But we have some really good food here So this is probably only going to expand but you know Steve also likes to go to the gym So maybe I'll hit the gym with him a couple times after eating his beef stew. Yes You can get like a beef cake after. Yeah Oh Also, our goal every day is to try to find something funny enough to have Marvin lose comp lose composure That's and it happens often enough. I'll tell you what there's some funnies. There's some funnies Yep, so that's it's been fun and Like I said, just wanted to give a vlog update as always also I wanted some thoughts on You know, I always like feedback feel free to leave some comments send me messages I love when people email me because I have my podcast Which you get emails from and I'm as my build-up subscribers on this channel I'm trying to figure out, you know, the channel I had someone say they're right that the channels kind of scattered as I cover a lot Topics, but really that's what I do. I do a lot of different things We as a company do a lot of different things sometimes we're fixing retail computers Which is not so exciting a lot of our day job is fixing quick books problems and fixing printer support Nothing I can really make a video about food is fun So I'm always encouraged, you know when people I clearly one of the popular topics is all any of the videos I do on firewalls, which I plan to do more of those. I did some videos on Being secure keeping your IP address private those seem to be getting popular But if you have said, you know, I'm always looking for different suggestions Someone said a couple of them that I'm not sure how to address which was how to Show how we do a new computer and I'm like just not a lot You know, there's not a lot we do with that But either way keep the comments coming that's what helps drive a narrative so we can figure out What I'm supposed to be doing because it's a lot. Honestly, I just guess a lot I'm like, hey, I'm doing this topic or when we do it for a client like hey I need this firewall setup with dual failover. I end up doing a dual failover video I see PF sense as a new box coming out I go review the new box because we like PF sense. So keep the comments coming and So you want to see as of right now? We're coming up on about 3,000 subscribers on our YouTube So I want to do a giveaway But I don't know what to give away because I cover so many topics Maybe I should give away the firewall But of course I said I'll give away the red firewall Also, my review of the firewall is not very good So I don't know if this is the best giveaway, but I don't know what to do with it either I can't really return it But if you have an idea for a giveaway what I should give away I don't mind giving away something and I'm excited about having 3,000 subscribers and but yeah Encourage you know, just encourage me to do more by sending comments and likes or all that fun stuff So this is going on Facebook But if you're not watching us on Facebook and you're watching us on YouTube Like and subscribe for more content and also suggest what the more content should be the buttons down Yeah, somewhere's a button. Yeah, we definitely give us ideas because then that's less work We have to do oh, yeah, and then we give you exactly what you want It's a sympatical relationship we have here folks Oh, and I also I did my video on where all my money went on my YouTube channel Come on yeah worth every penny a summary of that video if you don't want to watch it Is I spent all my money on people People are what drives a tech business so the But if you want more business topics tell me kind of if there's like a general business thing You want to know about how my business operates? I will more than happy to share any of that with you or how I've managed to stay business this long Because if I talk about it, I'll figure it out at the same time I think it's because of honesty integrity, but there might be more to the story than that I'm sure that's those are parts of it certain. So if you're still with us. Thanks for listening and see you next time. See you