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In a society where busy & activity & noise & public is normal, progress is made in the quiet.

I’m currently working at two speeds:

1) See an opportunity and act on it.

2) See an opportunity and plan it. Research it. Consult on it. Amass a jumble of thoughts. Discard some. Sharpen the focus. Document the challenges, the approaches and the solutions.

As someone driven by the satisfaction of less items in my Inbox, less things on my to do list, speed 1 is so much more satisfying. But I’m enjoying the details of speed 2. The digging in. Respecting bigger things enough to give them more of my time.

If I was living the entrepreneurial dream, this article may have started off differently.

We only have one customer who is not a business.

They are the sweetest elderly couple and they?ve called us for years.

Today I had one of their computers in because it was blue screening. It?s a custom built machine that originally had Windows 7 on it but has since been upgraded to Windows?8 and then Windows 10. With an SSD hard drive, it usually runs pretty well .. until the?day it got itself stuck in a reboot loop.

This week a few of my interests have collided – Microsoft Australia’s annual Partner Conference, ProBlogger’s annual conference and Xero’s Xerocon South conference.

As much as I hate to be missing out on the announcements and tech goodness from Microsoft, or the hugely engaging ProBlogger fun, Xerocon South won me over for a few reasons.

It’s in my city (yay for my own bed). It’s the first time they’ve had a combined Australia + New Zealand conference. And I’ve been talking lately to a few Cloud-friendly accountants and bookkeepers. Yes, I’m going to hang out with the financial crowd. Wish me luck!

What is it about going away that makes the world throw a dozen deadlines at you at once??🙂

Now the main ones have been tackled, it?s time to get my thoughts published regarding Interop 2016, which I had the pleasure of speaking at.

It?s always scary speaking at a conference that you?ve never attended before, as you don?t know if your content will hit the mark. I?m pleased to report that there was a great mix of topics at this event ? from higher level ?what?s the future?? discussions to deep dive technical sessions.

If you haven?t noticed, I?m a little bit of a social media addict. My twitter feed is mostly full of technical IT people, some journalists and a bit of emergency management (earthquakes etc). My Facebook is a lot more private and includes the in-laws and my sister?s family, both overseas.

I noticed that I didn?t belong to a?technical community on Facebook. My group memberships relate to my?neighbourhood, blogging etc, but nothing technical.

The internet is such a part of our daily lives that it’s hard to imagine being totally disconnected, unless that’s the whole point of your travel plans. We’re so used to transferring money online and sharing our photos. But if you’re using the Internet overseas, here are some essential tips to help protect your identity.

Before you go:

Check your account security details.  Some online services (like email accounts) will get worried if you start accessing them from a different country and may even suspend your account. Before you leave, log in and check your account details to ensure that any security information is accurate, should you need to prove that you really are you. This includes checking any secondary email addresses and security questions. Do you still have that old hotmail account and do you remember your first pet’s name?

Disclaimer: I am a New Zealand citizen who has adopted Queensland as my new home, started a family here and a business. This does not make me an expert on Australian history. (Actually�it�s really expensive & almost impossible for me to�get citizenship here).

Ever written a controversial blog post that makes you want to disable the comments and your social media accounts, in preparation for the backlash that may come? This is the one for me. Deep breath, here goes.

Do you know the saying about builder�s houses? It refers to tradies that are so busy repairing other people�s places that their own home has a few things that need attention, but they never make the time to fix. IT people have the same issue with their own computers. I�d been putting up with a problem in Quickbooks Pro 2012-2013 for some time and finally decided to research it.

When my bookkeeper reconciled the accounts & wanted to print the reports, Quickbooks would hang. Same symptom if I tried to save an invoice as a PDF (using the inbuilt QB feature, not a third party PDF printer). My computer is running Windows 7 64-bit.

Just a quick heads up on this one. I was sent a LinkedIn connect request by someone from a state-level sporting organisation who had a title of Finance Manager. We had a Group in common, so I accepted.

This was quickly followed by a message from him, stating that he was interested in our IT services. I was a bit surprised as he was in a different state, but the main alarm bell ringer was the slightly poor English phrasing. He made a point of telling me that NSW is in Australia. Would you seriously do that to someone you connect to who is in Queensland?