Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

There, I said it! “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”….

It has been a long week here at Homeland Secure IT, with everyone tied up on a job almost constantly! Server deployment started today. Four computers sold and to be installed for one client, and another computer sold and going in on Monday… Not to mention a 1 TB RAID array installed in an existing server (Yes, another Dell with limited resources) and all the data moved. Interviews with potential employees, visits from new clients and contacts, and multiple computers with malware.

Never a dull moment here! Thank God for Greg and Scott! Now, who will be the next to join our team? Don’t be shy.. Let us know if you think you might be a fit for us! I have an earlier blog entry outlining what we are looking for.

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Free Microsoft T-Shirt

Homeland Secure IT, LLC has sponsored a couple Microsoft events where we showcased Microsoft products such as Microsoft Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 (due out later this year), and Windows 7. Because Microsoft can actually be pretty cool and we partner with them, they gave us some neat promotional products to give away at these events. Unfortunately (for us), we did not fill every seat, but fortunately for you, it left us with a couple items and we want to give them away.

To the first 3 people who leave a response to this posting and are capable of driving by our office at 104 Mauldin Rd, Suite E in Greenville, SC, we will give a Microsoft T-Shirt, size is XL I believe. We might even have a pen or pad left over and throw that in as well. So, click on the comment button and tell us who you are and we will hook you up!

Google High Speed Fiber Internet Still THE Hot Topic in Greenville

If you are from the Greenville / Upstate area you would have to be living as a Quaker to not know about all that is going on with the effort to bring Google Fiber here. Heck, even Quakers probably are aware of the community effort to catch the eye of Google. It is not just localized either. Greenville is showing up in discussions on blogs all over the world, and in online and print publications you will find mentions of this grass roots effort. Just a few moments ago, we received word that a Time Magazine writer confirmed there will be an article published about Google On Main.

To give you an idea how things happen here… It was mentioned to Fairway Outdoor Advertising that another city had put up some billboards… Within minutes, Fairway Outdoor (@FairwayOutdoor on Twitter) had programmed two of their digital billboards on two very major streets to support the Google On Main / We Are Feeling Lucky movement! People are meeting with the Mayor and City officials, the news media like Amy Wood (@TVAmy) are in touch with what is happening. And those who were involved in last Saturday’s Google On Main event are getting recognition by the community as well. My wife @PamelaHoyt and I have received phone calls, text messages, emails, tweets and facebook messages saying “HEY! I saw you on TV”. 

And in some of the most surprising events, those who are active on social networking sites are being contacted by supporters of other city’s initiatives and told how we don’t stand a chance, etc! hahah All I can say to them is, Greenville wishes you the best of luck! This is all in fun, though we are serious about wanting it for our area. We want to keep it positive!

If you want to get involved, please sign our petition at www.wearefeelinglucky.comand join the various social networking discussions taking place on Facebook, Twitter, and an interesting one, the Google Wave forum that has been setup… A link to that can be found at the www.wearefeelinglucky.com website. If you would like an invite to Google Wave, please contact me and I will invite you.

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Why was the Google On Main / #GoogleOnMain event important to Greenville & the Upstate?

Amy Wood of WSPA TV was asking what the Google On Main event meant to us… In thinking about what Google On Main meant to me, it meant a chance to join with friends and strangers alike in a *community* effort to catch the eye of Google… And I believe we did just that!

Seriously though… To see thousands of people come together and achieve a common goal was a good thing for our 17 year old daughter to see. We made this a family affair, taking my wife, daughter & a friend with us to the event.

I believe it is a true testimony to what Greenville, SC as a community is capable of. Where else would you find a group of great minds who would dedicate their time to unselfishly plan & organize such an event, a city “machine” who is receptive to said event that would throw open the doors to allow it to occur, businesses who would support the event, volunteers who would help with the staging, media who would get so involved, and thousands of people, young and old who took time out of their weekend to do something for Greenville?

And what about why Google Fiber is important to the Greenville area? That’s simple – Because if Greenville can come together to accomplish so much with so little time and resources, imagine what Greenville will accomplish with mind-boggling bandwidth! What strides will be made in medical, industrial, educational & the arts thanks to a fat pipeline? Give us the chance to find out and you will not be let down!

One thing is for sure… Should Google select another city, it will not be because Greenville has sat idly by!

Google On Main Was A Total Success!

Last night my wife Pamela, daughter Megan and her friend Christina attended Google On Main along with hundreds of others and formed the letters that spelled out “Google” while swinging LED glow sticks over our heads and posing for photos and videos as a helicopter and plane flew over. What a blast!

What does it all mean? It means that the community of Greenville depends on high-speed internet, and feel strongly that if Google were to roll out their ULTRA-High-Speed Fiber Internet to the Greenville, SC area, it would help us to thrive…

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30832021&op=1&o=all&view=all&subj=350492394591&aid=-1&oid=350492394591&id=1569863676 for one of the first overhead shots….   My wife and I were in the big G, while our daughter Megan and her friend Christina were in the red “o”.

Here’s a video of the staging area and some of the setup… Taken with a Flip Mino Ultra HD, which www.HomelandSecureIT.com will be giving away soon. Well not that one, but a brand new one! (See the other blog post about that).

Here’s the video from above….  Thanks to Bobby Rettew this:

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We were chosen as a “Most Viral” winner in the Cisco “Heroes of the Human Network” campaign thanks to you!!!!

That’s right… Our entry into the Cisco “Heroes of the Human Network” campaign was determined to be one of the most viral and we will be receiving a Flip Mino Ultra HD Camera!

While not 10,000 dollars in pure Cisco awesomeness that the grand prize winner will receive, it is certainly much better than nothing at all. In fact, the Flip Mino Ultra HD Camera is an uber-cool tool. If you have not checked one out, I suggest you do so. How do I know? Because my wifey bought one for me as a Christmas gift and those who have seen my annoying YouTube.com channel have witnessed the results of that. (Blame her okay, not me!).

Of course this has created an interesting situation. The other people who work with me at Homeland Secure IT want the camera for themselves, but, how do you split a camera in two and share it between two great guys? Not really possible. Welllllll, anything is possible, I do have a hacksaw, but I just don’t think that is what they are wanting… Two equal sized pieces of non-functional and until recently, very cool camera.

The solution? How about this… Since we won this camera as a result of the campaign held on BrickFish where tons of our friends and followers so selfishly clicked and voted for us and reposted, etc, I believe the best option is to give it away! I’m not exactly sure how, but once we have it in our hot little hands, I think I will post a link on http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com to let people sign up for our spam email newsletter over a 30 day period, and at the end of that period, let a little script randomly pick a number that relates to one person who subscribed.  I think that is the best option.

If you have other ideas, I would love to hear from you, so shoot me an email or click on the comment line above…

Thank you again for your support of Homeland Secure IT!!!!

Google High Speed Fiber Coming To Greenville SC

Okay, the title is deceiving, as Google has not picked where they are going yet… However, we here in the Upstate are hoping that Google will select Greenville, SC as their test bed for 1 Gig of fiber awesomeness!

This Saturday, many people are planning on meeting downtown in Greenville in an effort to make everyone in the world aware that Google is welcome in our wonderful community. The event is limited to 2000 participants, but don’t let that stop you from turning out. The more the merrier as they say.  More information can be found here: http://www.wearefeelinglucky.com/

To anyone from Google who happened to Google and find this posting using whatever search keywords, whether #GoogleOnMain or #LuckyGVL or who knows what… Let me tell you why I believe Google should select Greenville…  Greenville SC is already a technology center for the state and the region. So much is going on in the way of technology, from automotive research and development to cutting edge medical products and proceedures. Bringing lightning fast connectivity will cause a mass influx of businesses, and with those businesses will come jobs, and money to an area that was dramatically impacted by the loss of the textile industry to other countries. I believe Greenville has so much to offer the world, and a huge pipe will allow us to share what we have!  Thanks for your consideration!!!!

Thinking about Google Apps for your business?

Homeland Secure IT, LLC can assist you with a move to (or from) Google Apps. We are a reseller of Google Apps and can help determine if using an “in the cloud” solution is right for you.

Some interesting news is that Google has made it (somewhat) easy to migrate from your current Microsoft Exchange system to their hosted solution. You can read more about that at InformationWeek http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223900148

Some issues we are seeing are total mail blackouts due to internet connectivity interruptions, if this is a concern for you, then a hosted email solution is probably not going to work out for you, but give us a call and we will examine your needs and go over the pros and cons with you.

On the other hand, if you want to use a Microsoft Exchange server to host your own mail, we can assist with that too.

Business Continuity Plan – Power Protection

In our own continued effort to maintain a business continuity plan at Homeland Secure IT, LLC, we are now looking into a generator system. Currently, in the event of a power outage, we have uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) from APC that will keep our main servers and desktops online, however, we will be in the dark.

These UPS (UPSes? UPSii?) devices will keep us going anywhere from 60 minutes to as little as 15 minutes, depending upon the load on the machines they are powering. In most cases, you need only a few minutes to save your work when you are working with a desktop computer, but what about our mail server, our VoIP phone system? If those are offline, we may miss out on the opportunity to assist our customers.

Power outages generally are resolved quickly, but what if one were not? That is where a stand-by generator system would come in. In the event of a power outage, our UPS would take over and after a minute or two, a stand-by generator would engage and power the entire facility, including recharging the UPS until the power was restored.  In our case, the generator will be powered by clean burning natural gas and can run continuously for days at a time. While expensive, these generators are a worth-while investment.

If you would like information about how a stand-by generator can help with your own business continuity plan, please contact us.

Resizing Operating System Partitions Because Dell Shipped a Server With Only 12GB For The OS

I’m just ranting here, but why oh why would Dell sell servers to people with only 12GB for the OS? Sure, if it is deployed with ONLY the OS on that partition, and programs are placed elsewhere, you have a very usable system for many years… But, when the server is sold with 12GB for the OS, and a pre-installed OS is on it, say Server 2003 R2, after all the MS updates and patches, it’s taking up 6-7GB all by itself, and you KNOW that someone installed A/V on that partition which is taking up a couple GB, of course logs are on it too… And BEWS, etc…   You’re talking about a 3 year old server that now has no room on it and requires changing the partition sizes around….

I’m sorry, 12GB is just not large enough… Why not 20? 20 might have been okay.  Okay, I’m done…   No more whining… (today)