There's a Method to My Madness

Sometimes when you call a help desk (any one-not just the one I work at), you might not understand why they do things the way they do. I thought I would write up a little post explaining the method to our seeming madness.

1. We might not recognize your voice. So we have to ask you to identify yourself and give enough personal information to verify you are who you say you are. We're not trying to annoy you, but protect your account from being modified by someone who isn't you.
2. We use the scientific method. Always. So what may seem like a bunch of hooey to you isn't just hoops to occupy your time. We need to eliminate all possibilities to get down to the real solution to your problem.
3. We prefer to teach you how to fish rather than give you a fish. We sleep, take showers, go to visit family just like you do. So we have to teach you; it's our moral obligation to advance your skills. If we just do it for you, we are doing you a disservice (unless it's a one-time thing, then it's no big deal). 
4.  We know that we are not the moneymakers in our organization. We are a support team for the moneymakers in our company. We know that. If we say that we can't help you and refer you to another company it's because we can't change passwords on a server we  don't have access to or some other really good reason. A general practitioner always refers out to specialists and sometimes we have to refer out to a vendor of a program because they are the specialists for that program.
5. We like nice people. It's human nature to like nice people. The nicer you are, the more we want to help you! 
6. We might not have your contact number. It's always best to leave it twice speaking clearly and slowly. If your tendency is to want to buzz through your phone number, please remember that someone is writing it down. First and last name is preferred. "This is Kathy; please call me back." probably isn't going to get a phone call back.
7. We're really busy. If we offer to send you the written instructions instead of tell you over the phone how to do something, it's because we want to save time and company dollar. We have already documented the procedure thoroughly so we don't want to waste time when there are so many things that need to be done. 

Hope this helps explain why we do things the way we do.

A Cure or 2 For You Hoggish Ways

Ok, admit it! You have a problem. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Ask yourself are you an email hog. You'll know you are an email hog if the phrase "oh my God" comes out of your technician's mouth when they look at your email problem. Email quota messages from your email provider are another sign that you have a problem hanging onto too much email. If you start making excuses for having too many emails then you already know you have a problem.

Cure 1(only for current Outlook users): Archive. Past 2 gb an Outlook PST goes on strike. They said they resolved this issue with 2003, but not fully. http://janetperkins.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/outlook-email-archiving/
Cure 2: Download Thunderbird. http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/download/ Thunderbird is published by the same folks that give you Firefox.  Your limit for storage in Thunderbird is 4GB per folder. So it's basically limited by how much hard drive space you have free on that drive. Did I mention Thunderbird is free? You can import Outlook, Outlook Express, CSV, TAB, TXT, and LDIF contacts into Thunderbird. You should be sold on it by now, but just in case you aren't: Thunderbird crashes way less than Outlook. Personally, I've never seen Thunderbird crash.

So email junkies or hoggies whichever you consider yourself, my Rx is above. Stay email healthy!

Don't CC Yourself...Write Someone Else!

CC'ing yourself dates back to the days when email first became popular. Before that was the typewriter and you always kept a printed copy of the letters you sent. Then when emailing came into popular use, people still wanted a copy of that important communication so they started CC'ing themselves.

Nowadays, it's bad form to CC yourself. Why? Because it mimics a spammer tactic. It's possible to raise red flags with your email provider's spam filter by CC'ing yourself. The spam filter looks at the CC and tries to determine if the account has been taken over by a spammer.Some spam filters are smarter than others and some will put you on a permanent iggy if you CC yourself  because it will see your emails as UCE (unsolicited commercial emails). Once you've been blacklisted, it takes work, time and sometimes money to get off.

CC stands for Courtesy Copy and the need to CC yourself has passed out of existence. Every time you send an email you have a copy in your sent mail folder. So if you CC yourself, you will have two copies of the email, thus increasing the size of your email box.

Using Personal Email for Business is Risky Behavior

• What if your email gets deleted/lost? What recourse do you have? Will a free email provider restore it? The answer to all those is: you are in hot water! You can't hold a free email provider legally responsible for losing your email because you agreed to the risk when you signed up for the free email.
• What is your email account gets hacked? Sometimes free emails have the ability to recover a hacked account from an alternate email address, but not always! And you have to specify that alternate account or you are in hot water again! If your email gets hacked and bad things are done with your email, you don't have an emergency number to call to get your account discontinued right away.
• What if your email provider discontinues service? It's so bad for your business if this happens. The major emails have been around for awhile, but you never know what the future holds. A business merger could mean the end of your free email.
• What support do you have with free email? None. Ok this point alone should be the end of your using free email for business.

I always encourage people to use their business email for business. A safe alternative is using your own domain email. Forwarding business email to a free email doesn't make business sense and is risky at best.

On a Shoestring Budget and Need Software?

If you need it free (and legal, of course), then general public license (GPL) software is for you. No budget for software? GPL software is for you. It's free and open source so it can be added to and shared.

• Probably the most famous GPL program is Open Office. Intended to be a substitute for Microsoft Office, Open Office is a completely free suite of applications Open Office isn't a total replacement, but many people find all the features they need in Open Office. You can download it from http://download.openoffice.org/.
• GIMP Photo Editor is a pretty powerful image-editing tool. It has more palettes of tools than most users ever want to learn. Download it from http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
• If the version of Microsoft Office that you have doesn't have Outlook bundled with it, then give Thunderbird a try. I use it for one of my email accounts and am happy with it. It's quite a bit different than Outlook, but the learning curve is short. Download it from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
• If you don't want to register a media player, then VLC is for you. Because of the multi-lingual thing I have going on I need to be able to open practically anything from any country. So far I haven't found anything it won't open. Download VLC from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
• I have to be honest, I have zero use for a desktop publisher, but I've installed Scribus before and it looks like a half-way decent replacement for Publisher. Download Scribus from http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus

I hope you try at least one of these programs and come to love them like I do! I'm not sure if it's love for them or dislike for their competition, but I'm always willing to try something new from the open source GPL world. The price is right.  Enjoy your day.