Weekend Work - Satuday, June 14

I had only one confirmed appointment at the office this weekend, but I figured I would have a few drop-in clients as well. I arrived bright and early and it didn't take long for the office to get crowded.

A customer stopped in with his Sony Vaio notebook. He travels quite a bit and was having some trouble getting his Verizon 'air card' to work when he was on the road. It would disconnect him after several seconds. He was also having trouble with his internal wireless not connecting to his router at home or when he is using the hotel wireless when he is on the road.

I have seen this issue before with some Dell systems, so I figured it needed a driver update. That fixed them, in the past, so it would probably fix his as well.

His Vaio was running Vista Home Basic and didn't have SP1 installed so I downloaded it and left it on the desktop so he could install it later. Since it takes about an hour to install, I didn't think he would want to hang out while that occurred.

An additional issue he was having was the need to update his mail client settings, as his satellite ISP had recently made a change to their mail servers. As I spoke with him, I found out he was using two accounts, one on WildBlue (a satellite internet provider) and one on BrazosNet (a local dial up ISP based out of Olney). He wanted to be able to send mail from either account, from anywhere he was connected.

I explained about SMTP authentication and how spammers used to 'relay rape' ISPs who didn't enforce some type of anti-spammer measures. Therefore, unless you either physically connected to your ISPs network or they allowed SMTP AUTH, sending mail from 'any network connection', such as a hotel or the Verizon 'air card' would be impossible.

I checked WildBlue and sure enough they supported SMTP AUTH (and SSL), so I configured his client appropriately. BrazosNet, on the other hand, has no support info on their site except a phone number. I called them, on his behalf, and reached someone in support. I asked about SMTP AUTH and was greeted with several seconds of 'dead air'.

Realizing the support tech had no clue, I simplified my request.

'If I am a Brazos customer, can I send mail if I am not on your network?', I asked.

'You can use webmail', the tech said.

'So, that's my only option?', I inquired.

'Yes', he said.

'That's pretty archaic', I said and hung up.

I explained the issue to the customer, he understood the limitations of dealing with a small company like Brazos and knew he would have to use webmail if he was off their network and wanted to send mail from his BrazosNet address.

I proceeded to update his drivers and Windows Vista with all available updates (except SP1), rebooted and then connected to the Verizon wireless card for about 20 minutes without disconnecting.

As I was wrapping things up, I pointed out the wireless switch on the side of the notebook and asked if he knew about it. He didn't, so the source of his wireless issues at home might have been that the radio was getting turned on (and off) as he slipped the notebook in and out of the bag.

Having wrapped up his issues and explaining in detail why mail wouldn't work when he wasn't 'on network' he seemed very happy with my work.

'I have had this at the Geek Squad three times and no one has ever explained things like you have,' he said. 'You have yourself a new customer.'

A few minutes later a gentleman stopped by to discuss moving from dial up to DSL. He had ordered the service and AT&T sent the self-install kit, which he had proceeded to install on Monday (and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to hear him tell the sad support story). It was now Saturday and he still could not receive or send mail through AT&T on his DSL connection.

After talking with him, it seems he had been on several tech support calls, eventually getting to a level three technician who remotely connected to his PC, but could not make Outlook Express send or receive email after several hours. He figured he had logged more than 12 hours of support with AT&T at this time and he was still unable to send or receive email using Outlook Express.

While we are discussing his issue, one of the local car wash owner's stopped by looking for a fuse. This is the second time this year someone has stopped by looking for a fuse. Unfortunately I didn't have one.

He has been to all of the auto parts places, so I sent him to Tractor Supply, that's the only place I could think of that might have one on a Saturday.

Back to the DSL/Outlook Express issue, having the confidence that no one was better than me when it comes to Windows issues, I told him I could fix it, probably in less than an hour. He was just about ready to go back to dial up, he said, he was so frustrated with AT&T's support staff. He left, saying he would think about bringing it by, probably tomorrow.

After he left, things calmed just a bit before one of my new-found friends stopped by to discuss a business venture I am helping him with. He has some ideas to make some money using the Internet and has commissioned me to develop the web pages for him.

He dropped off the ad copy and I told him I would work on it and send him an email when it was ready.

No sooner than he had left when a customer came by to drop off her notebook. She said the PC had a message on the screen telling her she needed to scan for spyware, a pretty strong indication the machine was already infected with some type of malware.

I tackled the infected notebook quickly, cleaning off several spyware variants and a few viruses. I handle some many of these on weekends that I can usually clean off a really infected one in about an hour or so, depending on the speed of the system. If the machine is really slow, it has taken several hours to clean it up.

I contacted the owner and she was pleased it was ready, as she had just drove by the office a few minutes ago and would be here in 'a minute'.

She arrived before I could even finish cleaning the outside of the case as well as I like to. I was just finishing getting it all tidied up and back in the carrying case when she walked in.

I gave her the bill and she promptly wrote out a check and said she would be dropping her desktop off soon. It will not turn on. It has lights, but nothing happens. I proposed it might be something simple like a loose memory chip, CPU or maybe a bad video card, but without seeing it, I was merely speculating.