My computer crashed. My business is run from that computer. My clients never knew what happened. Oh no! Not another lecture about doing backups, please! No, not a lecture, but I will relay the story and you may take from it whatever you want…

My computer problems started when a client said they were not able to fax to me. I run a payroll service and clients fax a one page form with employee’s hours and my Apple Mac Mini is setup to send and receive faxes over the (one) phone line I have. So when I went to my office, the computer was half way shut down and had to be restarted. Odd, I thought, but a few days later it did it again. Now, I knew it was not a power outage because the Mini is also set to automatically re-start itself if it loses power and it’s also hooked up to a UPS (battery backup). 

Then, when using it to work, applications started “unexpectedly quitting”. A little at first, then more frequently. By the time crash day came, I knew I had problems. Let me tell you about my setup. As I’ve said the computer is an Apple Mac Mini. I have next to it an external hard drive hooked up by Firewire and Apple’s Time Machine software constantly backs up automatically to the external HD without me having to do a thing. Sweet.

On “crash day” as I call it, which was half way through my payroll work, everything was crashing, every application, frequently. So all I did was manage to copy the data files for my payroll program and my accounting program ( I keep my own books and also for other businesses) to a jump drive and to the desktop where I could drag whole folders down to the mail icon in the dock and email them to myself. I also saved them to the Documents folder of my Dot-Mac account- the online service by Apple.  I managed to do that before it became totally useless. I wanted multiple redundancy.

You see, the Time Machine backup would do me no good in this instance unless I restored the entire backup to another computer. Normally, you are able to “go back in time” and retrieve a lost or deleted file in Time Machine, assuming your computer works. But now my entire computer was crashed. I have a newer  MacBook laptop and an older Mac Mini with an older OS and is nearly full. So, restoring to the older Mini was not an option and I didn’t want to replace everything that was already on the laptop. It was easier to get the data files via jump drive or by email attachments then it was to hook up the external hard drive to the laptop.  

So then I went into the repair and restore phase of this ordeal. First order of business was to call Apple support as the Mini was still under warranty. They were very good at walking through the steps, which I won’t go into all that but in the end they concluded the hard drive was toast. I took it in to be repaired after they had me wipe off the hard drive contents completly and try to restore the OS, which didn’t work either. (It turned out not to be the hard drive at all but the RAM that was shot) 

Anyway, phase two was that I had to continue in business, especially mine, people kind-of get used to being paid, so I had a payroll business to run. At first I just restored those critical payroll software data files to my laptop which already had the same application programs, hooked up the printer and was able to finish that week’s payrolls. I knew there was a reason I had not sold my old Mac Mini on eBay. I then hooked it up and began the process of setting it up to do payrolls for the next week. It had an older OS version, I had not used it in a long time so the printer driver needed to be installed (newer printer) and everything had to be ready to go by Monday. The latest payroll software had to be installed and updated on the old computer.

Well, it all worked. I figured this was a good exercise anyway since now I would have a fully functioning spare Mini to run my business with. I set it up to receive faxes and I was back in business! Another helpful thing about the .Mac online account, I use it to store my email, instead of having email reside on my computer. So, no matter what machine I use, I can go back and retrieve an email and all my email is in the same place, accessible from the main computer in my office, from the laptop anywhere else, or even from my iPhone.  Instead of faxing, some clients email me hours on an Excel spreadsheet they send me. I prefer that because I can then import hours into the payroll program.

After the computer was repaired with new RAM, the really cool part- I fired up the blank hard drive with the OS startup disc, went to the Utilities menu, clicked on “restore from backup”, and restored the ENTIRE computer from the external hard drive that had the Time Machine backup on it to it’s exact state on crash day. You see, only that one, main computer had my iPhoto library of pictures, my iTunes library of music and podcasts. Every now and then you should burn photos and purchased music to DVD’s. Then I restored the data files from my work in the meantime, and that was it!

The most important thing to me is that my clients never knew what happened. I now have a fully functioning spare, I love Time Machine, and I have added the step of carrying in my pocket a little Lexar jump drive and back up all critical data files to it every day. If this should happen again, I will be even better prepared, I will shoot for 5 minutes to be back in business…

I’m called a switcher, the name for the growing number of us who switched from PC’s to Macs. I’ve used PC’s since the early days, in fact, I was “into” computers before there were PC’s. My first computer was a Texas Instruments which hooked to the TV, that was 1981. Yikes, 27 years ago! I owned the IBM PC, the first real PC, then an IBM PC Jr., then IBM clones, then Toshiba laptops. I loved Microsoft right up through DOS 5.0. After that, Microsoft annoyed me, because they just heaped a Windows shell on top of the old DOS core, (kind of like those pictures you see of some bicycle rider in China with all his junk stacked up just behind the seat—you wonder how the whole thing stays upright.) and evolving into loathing because of how it wasted gobs of my time.

I began to forgive Bill somewhat with XP, but they still made what should have been very simple tasks, very difficult. For instance, when I popped a DVD into the brand new “media” machine at work, it did not have the slightest clue what to do and suggested that I spend the next couple of hours downloading drivers to access this foreign object had I dared to shove in it. Media machine my ass.

My first Apple was an iPod. This devise worked flawlessly. It looked nice and felt nice. It actually played music just like it was supposed to do. When one buys a broom, one sort of expects it to be able to sweep the floor. I was impressed with the iTunes software which ran well on the PC. It worked elegantly without having to fiddle with it at all. I just had to try a Mac. (they call this the “halo” effect)

I studied Apple at length online and learned that they were not plagued by viruses. The same company that made the hardware also made the software so they said it all worked together smoothly. We’ll, I had to see. I got the Mac Mini, it was a cheap way to see if they lived up to their hype. I won’t say it was instant because there was a bit of a learning curve (they should have switcher training videos) to get through but after a few days it began to dawn on me that the hype is actually understated. Summing up the Apple hardware and software computing experience in three words…it just works.

More than that, it does things exactly as you would think it should. No hassle. No drivers. Nothing to configure. One thing I’ve learned though. You can’t explain this to Windows sufferers, who  cling to their oppressor, (I think they call that the Stockholm syndrome) it’s like opening the jail cell door but they stubbornly refuse to leave! They think you’re being preachy when you try to convince them. I’m too busy getting real work done and having a blast to go around casting pearls. If someone really wants a better computer, they’re going to have to get off their whiney ass like I did and look for it. They will find Apple. Then, maybe I’ll drop them an article from right inside our iChat video conference. Very cool. 

It’s Monday. You gather up the timecards from the rack and toss them aside. What a pain! Let’s face it, calculating a bunch of timecards is not up there with our favorite things to do every week! Relax, I’ll show you the simplest system I have ever found. 

First comes the hardest change. Military time. I hear you groaning out there but trust me, you’ll learn to love it. Military time is based on the 24 hours of a day, a “regular” clock spins twice around the same 12 hour face, and forces us to specify either “AM” or “PM” all the time so people know what we’re talking about. The AM time in military time works exactly the same. The part that is different is the after-noon time; the fact that 1:00 PM is now called 13.0 (pronounced thirteen hundred, or thirteen, point-zero).

You will need to either get a new time clock if yours is mechanical or have re-programmed the one you have if it’s electronic, to punch out military time. Cost? Please don’t get all “cheap-skate” on me here! How much time are you wasting now? How many errors do you have to go back and correct? How much does that cost? It’s time to simplify your life! There’s one more thing.

The next change simplifies further by using the decimal system for the fractions of an hour. Instead of the exact time in minutes, which are of coarse, 1/60th of an hour, and  makes figuring the time-elapsed very confusing, make your time clock use 10^th’s of an hour instead. The clock will round down to the nearest tenth of an hour. A tenth of an hour is 6 minutes, so 0.1 equals 6 minutes, 0.2 (or two-tenths) equals 12 minutes, 0.5 is 30 minutes or a half hour, and so forth. Examples: 7:00 AM becomes 7.0,  10:18 AM becomes 10.3,  3:30 PM becomes 15.5,  5:07 PM becomes 17.1,  8:46 PM becomes 20.7. Since all you need to remember is that each 10^th equals 6 minutes, you will know that 9.9 must be 6 minutes before 10 and 9.8 must be about 12 minutes before 10. It’s easier for you when everything is expressed in tenths (6 minute increments).      

Pitfall: It is a very common mistake for people to confuse the minutes with tenths when they attempt to convert in their head, manually. This is why you should get a time clock and let it do the work! People think 9:45 AM, and convert that to 9.45. Wrong! 0.45 is a little less than a half an hour. The correct answer is 9.75, or three-fourths of an hour.

Now we get to the good part that makes your life a breeze. To figure time, all you have to do is subtract the little number from the big number. If someone worked 7:36 AM until 3:30 PM with ½ hour for lunch, you are doing this; 15.5 – 7.6 = 7.9, then deduct lunch,    -0.5 = 7.4. You see? It become almost effortless and it also becomes error-free.

Introducing the Crash Course in Excel. This is a just released, 23 page booklet in hard copy form for $12.95 and e-book for $7.95. I wrote this for anyone who works with spreadsheets who wants to become a power-user in their office. It is the repository of 15 years of daily tips and tricks I have gathered. It is full of the things people always ask how to do in Excel. For your copy email me and You’ll soon be the most knowledgeable person in your office. It’s short because it has only the things most people want to know, and none of the fluff found in other, longer books, which repeat themselves and state the obvious, and re-hash things you already know. This is boiled-down, useful stuff. If you only pick up 2 or 3 tips, it will be well worth the price. It makes a handy desk reference, or just get the e-book version and keep it your little secret. You will soon be dazzling the boss with your spreadsheet acumen. Email today to bruce@vcpayroll.com for your copy.