An aging community we are

[GCC Consulting]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: filepro-list-bounces+gccconsulting=comcast.net at lists.celestial.com
>
[mailto:filepro-list-bounces+gccconsulting=comcast.net at lists.celestial.com]
On
> Behalf Of Kenneth Brody
> Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 12:11 PM
> To: mschw at athenet.net
> Cc: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
> Subject: Re: An aging community we are
> 
> Mike Schwartz wrote:
> [...]
> >      I learned early on how scary it is having several big, strong
> > millwrights threaten you with severe bodily harm if they didn't get
their
> > paychecks on time.
> [...]
> 
> You have the wrong clients.  :-)
> 
> Laura has had more than one (non-filePro-related) client call Friday
morning
> that their "it's been slowly dieing for months, but we didn't do anything
> about it" payroll computer finally died.  They have no problem paying the
> "emergency, drop everything else and come over right now and fix it"
rates.
>   It seems that not being able to run payroll was a good motivator.  There
> have also been several clients who paid the "pick it up Friday evening and
> get it back to us before we open Monday morning" rate for their systems.
> 

Had a large dental office client, hardware only, call me on Thursday
afternoon that their serve was acting funny.  What was funny, the admin
tried to log in and the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work.

Drove over with a new keyboard and mouse - 5 minutes from my house.  The
keyboard and mouse had been pulled out, don’t ask, and then plugged back in
without turning off the server.  The connections went.  I told them to call
the people they had a hardware maintenance contract with to come out and
repair/replace the server.   They advised me that then next day's schedule
for 5 dentists were on the computer and they needed it up and running.

I called a friend of mine who builds custom servers and asked if he had
enough parts to build me a server over nigh and the regen it.  He had parts
and was able to delay delivering a server to one of his clients by a few
days.

Pulled the server out at 5PM and drove to Brooklyn about an hours drive.  We
put together a new machine with the hard drives from the old server and
prayed.  This was a Windows server which we were bringing up in a totally
different box.  We were not  sure if the machine would boot with many wrong
drivers.  We got it up, deleted the old drivers and installed new ones.  I
delivered the box back the next morning at 7AM. Installed it had them up and
running by 8AM when the office opened.

Total bill, $5,000.  The new server $1,500.00, that was cheap as this was 10
years ago. The balance was my fee for this "emergency".  They paid the bill
in a very timely manner.  The sad part, the primary partner had laser
surgery on his eyes and lost much of his sight.  The office closed after
that.


Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting
rkreiss at gccconsulting.net