When I first took the plunge with WordPress, it was to create a blog that aligned with our website. The website has now moved to a WordPress platform and has it’s own blog component. I also found myself rambling about other stuff and tech stuff that was very techy.

So, I’ve finally made the split. Off the Scuff becomes my new personal blog for all the things that aren’t small business related, so I can rant on without it being under the company name. It’s not going to be the prettiest blog you’ve ever seen (I’m a writer, not a graphic designer), but it will feel more like ‘me’.

Today I upgraded my laptop to Windows 8.1 Pro. By �upgrade� I actually mean backed up, formatted & installed Windows cleanly. It went surprisingly well and was pretty fast. The only Microsoft glitch I had were some updated that failed to install until after I rebooted, then away they went (though they gave me no indication that a restart was needed).

I�d been running QuickBooks Pro 2012/2013, so it was time to install the new version � Reckon Accounts Pro 2013. And this is where I went around in circles.
The product is supported on Windows 8, but the installation failed with �Error 1920. Service QuickBooks Database manager Service (QBCFMonitorService) failed to start.� The installation would then roll back.
This kb was hopeless:http://www.quicken.com.au/kb/issue_view.asp?ID=4906
And another kb was hopeless that told me to delete a bunch of folders (that hadn�t been created) and try it again. It mentioned that my installation was having trouble connecting to the company database file, which made no sense seeing as I�d pick the stand-alone client option (as our company file is on our file server, no my laptop).

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?

Windows XP laptop with a DVD writer not working � can�t see or play CDs or DVDs, not even appearing as a drive letter.

Device manager shows the drive with an exclamation mark and the error:
�Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. To fix this problem you should uninstall and then reinstall the hardware device. (Code 19)�

The troubleshooter suggest uninstalling & reinstalling the device, which gives exactly the same error. Updating drivers & windows etc didn�t help. It was hard to find any information on this message that actually related to the registry.

We�re heading into that time of year again in Queensland, where the conditions become perfect for severe weather events. Being sub-tropical, the heat of spring brings moist air currents, electrical storms, cyclones & flooding. While 2013-2014 is not expected to bring the heavy deluges of rain seen previously (eg Nov 2011), we�re still bracing for impressive electrical storms & their damaging winds plus the possibility of cyclones in the north of the state. I won�t go into the weather patterns that produce these, other than to say we are in a �neutral� phase (neither La Nina or El Nino).

It�s not like me to rush out a blog post. I don�t leap to my keyboard everytime something in the media has people crying out against it. But today I just felt so compelled to write about TitStare.

At TechCrunch�s �Disrupt� event in San Fransisco, audience members were presented with the TitStare app by two guys from Sydney, and another app called Circle Shake by a guy in Adelaide where he pretends to jerk off. Part of that audience was a 9 year old girl. Part of that audience was female. Part of that audience was self-respecting men who couldn�t believe what they were seeing. And yeah, it was a little bit funny, but totally inappropriate for a professional industry event.

We have AVG 2013 successfully running on a number of client�s servers and our own servers, with no problems. However one particular client with SBS 2003 experiences intermittent email problems which always co-incide with an update to AVG.

Symptoms include: Users saying they haven�t received any emails recently or their recipients haven�t received emails that they sent, failed SMTP test on mxtoolbox.com (indicating the Exchange server is not accepting messages for delivery).

Wow. That’s a big question that I’ve never asked myself before. It’s never been important like being at the top of a list of priorities, or even at the top of the ‘important/urgent’ quadrant of a to-do list. But it’s important to my heart, to the part of me that always has writing as the answer to the question ‘what do you really want to be doing right now’.

The comfort of keyboard clicks & screen focus soothes my soul. My writing has always been a natural outpouring of my thoughts and never a chore. Well, mostly never, unless you count struggling through sections of an unknown subject section in a tender document and even then we made it into the top 2 out of 35. Word count has always been a guiding constraint and never an impossible mountain to climb.