Questions You Should Answer in a Project Proposal

Over the past year I have had to create more and more project proposals instead of just going crazy and buying things as I want to (Probably a good idea). As I have become hopefully better with each passing proposal I wanted to share a list of questions I try to answer in a project proposal helping me to better sell the project to management. I don't use them all, and each project results in the use of different questions and answers but this is a good place to start, maybe you will find your own questions as well when you create your own proposal.

1. Who will benefit from the project
2. Why are we doing this
3. What is our end goal
4. When could it be done
5. What are the steps of the project
6. What is the cost
7. What is the potential savings
8. What is wrong with the current system
9. Who will we purchase from
10. Why will we purchase from said vendors/people
11. Who will install this
12. Who is the project leader
13. What will it look like when its finished
14. What are the tasks of the project, and the timeline they will be finished in
15. What is the long term cost of the project
16. What is the goal of the project (Much like the question Why are we doing this)
17. How long will the end result last
18. Does it scale up easily

Office 365 Lync 2013 - Unable to Upload a Profile Image

I encountered this issue few weeks back and found it to be very perplexing, especially since the upgrade to O365 2013. Users who tried to change their profile picture in Lync 2013 or Exchange Online were greeted with a message that told them they did not have permissions to do so, even global admins got the error. After joining a community forum as well as starting a service request through the support portal I was able to get a resolution to the issue.

Turns out the upgrade has a few bugs (who knew) and that Microsoft has a hotfix they can apply if your service is showing a permission issue like mine. Ill include the link to the forum below so you can add to it and get your issue resolved as well.

Microsoft did get this resolved and fairly quick too. Good luck!



Community Link

UPS Shorts Out and Kills Nortel Phone System PSU

I had the strangest bit of luck a week ago regarding our 4 APC units (Smart UPS 1500 for reference) that supply backup power to our server closet. I walked in that morning for an unrelated event and see a bright red light shining at me telling me that a one of the UPS's (#4 in particular) needed a battery change. I figured sure, I will replace it tonight at 9pm and move on with my simple life.

That evening a simple battery change resulted in the same issue again when I fired back up the UPS unit, a glowing red change battery light. At this point our telephone and internet had been down for long enough that I decided to replace the UPS entirely so I could get those items back up again. Not thinking about anything else I replace the UPS, plug in the power cables for a 2nd time and let everything take it time to come back up. The good news was that due to redundancy in our ISCSI network backbone and dual PSU's in our servers and SAN storage no data was lost, damaged or stopped working internally during this time.

30 minutes later however, the telephone system had still failed to come up and multiple telephones gave off a creepy Silent Hill like static warning me of coming danger. I decided then something had happened and gave our phone vendor a call, he was not optimistic and prepared for a long night with me at work. In the end (1am at this point) we were able to keep our programming by replacing the 300$ power supply and get her back up and running, but we were still perplexed as to how 1 system behind a UPS, attached to a surge protector went bad out of 12 items plugged into the unit.

Here it is a week later and the "Bad" UPS has functioned fine during tests with both its original battery and the one I tried to replace it with. I surely won't place this into production, but I would love to know what happened last week and any way I could prevent it from happening again.

1. Make sure the UPS is unplugged and all items are also unplugged before removing the battery

2. Replace the battery and power on the unit before plugging in any items to the back

3. After 15 minute run time plug in items one at a time so as to not create a large power draw if items are booting up.


Hopefully changing my steps a bit will help me, and you if this happens in your IT world.

Adding Facebook Like Button to Blogger Blog

Ill try to make this a quick and helpful write-up. By default Blogger will let you easily add in a Google+ widget to your site, but no easy way to add in one for Facebook. There are a few add-ons out there but this covers just adding a Facebook "Like" button, skipping the extra flair (I've never used Digg anyway).

1. First head over to Facebook HERE

2. Configure the Like button to your personal preference

3. Click Grab Code

4. Copy the Javascript SDK and head over to your Blogger Admin portal

5. Find Templates and click on it
























6. Click on EDIT HTML

Right after the line that says

  <body expr:class='&quot;loading&quot; + data:blog.mobileClass'>

Enter in the SDK code

7. Now go grab the DIV code from the Facebook page

8. In the HTML find the spot you want it to appear at (mine is just under the Google + button on the side)

(The google plus one widget should be available to jump to if you have it implemented)

9. Add your code right before the end the widgets code

End of widget code : </b:includable>

  </b:widget>

10. Click Save

Should you have a dream job?

I have pondered this a lot lately and have decided that yes, you should.

Making progress toward something is human nature, accomplishments as just as important as your goals for without them you would never have an accomplishment. I believe having a Dream Job set, no matter how unrealistic it is, it helps your state of mind on a day to day basis.

Don't get me wrong though, I do love my job. This place is amazing to work at, and tough as nails to really push me to do my best. A dream job though is always something to hope for, to keep on your mind. For me, I pick working as a Network Systems Admin for Ducati in Italy. Will it ever happen? Probably not, but just like being a kid and saying "when I grow up" it lets me dream and focus more on the work it would take to get there. Maybe it's about time I learned some Italian?

An Outlook Quirk

I discovered a slight bug recently when designing a new signature for our company that I would never had caught in a million years of troubleshooting and is testament to how hard it is to make a perfect application/design.

After setting up tables, images, fighting outlooks lack of support for certain layouts in versions previous to 2013 I thought I had done it all. I checked, printed, sent and printed some more and everything was in great shape. Then I roll out to my first beta group, and man did something so strange happen.

Our CEO has multiple monitors and as such small print can definitely be hard to see way out in the corners, so he has increased the OS rendering 125%. I've seen people do this before, but I have never seen it effect Outlook like it has now. He runs 2013, and every time he sends an email out with the new signature 2 of the 4 images increase in size by 25%. We have compared them to the others, and can not find anything different. It's amazing but so frustrating at the same time. I have yet to find a solution to this issue other than changing the screen back to 100%, but there has to be something that's different....right?

Well after a few hours of prodding I was able to figure it out. The issue seems to only happen when the image has Inline Word Wrapping turned on. Setting it to Top/Bottom seems to fix the image blowup for good.

Laziness of Computer Repair Shops

After years of hard work and honestly I get the pleasure of looking over friends and family's computer to make sure they are in tip top shape when the owners believe otherwise.

This week I was approached by a friend and handed a machine that was a friend of a friends etc. They stated that the user took the machine to a repair shop and was told it was a mainboard issue, the user didn't want to spend the money and had asked around to see if anyone could take a second look. I responded to my friend with a "Sure ill be glad to" and was off to my work bench.

I worked on the toshiba laptop for 5 maybe 10 minutes doing basic testing and was able to conclude in that amount of time that the mainboard was fine, in fact the only fault part on the laptop was the hard drive. Bad hard drives can definitely cause a no POST situation and sure enough this was one of those times.

Then after my excitement of finding the issue started to wain I realized that the company that looked over this the first time was either lying or missed a basic part of computer troubleshooting. I really do not see how any company could stay in business after such a poor performance. Honesty and common sense should be a standard of any company, and small businesses are not omitted to that.

Rule of thumb, always get a second opinion from someone you can trust. Hopefully in the future that will be more businesses and less individuals.

Windows 8.0 Review

After using Windows 8.0 for 2 months (this would be my second try at using this OS) I have come to somewhat of a conclusion about the state of the OS and its potential as well as drawbacks. My wife has also acquired a Windows 8.0 laptop (Dell brand) and her discussions and opinions on it have made me rethink many things as I have to face the coming of deploying it to users once Windows 7 becomes extinct.

I will focus on 5 items to make this post short, sweet and hopefully information.

1. Start Button - A lot can be said of this. I installed Classic Shell day 1 of trying this system out again and there hasn't been 1 time when I have said to myself, yes I would love to have a hot corner back to get to my programs. In fact I use it much like I did in windows 7 and before. The missing start menu is still an issue of frustration for my wife (whom will get Classic Start installed as soon as I get the chance). Why this was missing and waiting to 8.1 I will never know, and by then neither of us will care.

2. Start Screen - No, just no. The whole thing is confusing and I am in the IT field. For my wife it's even worse. There are times I can't even help her, I end up opening some random application and then constantly switching to it via another hot corner. It's a mess. Since Classic Start I have only ventured into the Start Screen when I get curious about an app, in fact I haven't really used any apps since then. When the computer is setup I could be able to pick Laptop or Tablet experience and have it optimized for my use.

3. Speed - Windows 8.0 is fast, there is no denying that. My wifes new Dell is not a power machine by any means but the speed at which Windows 8 runs vs Windows 7 is blinding. I love how a restart can take less than a minute. Startup time is even less. Keep this, at all costs.

4. Apps - Poor selection and the fact that on a laptop if I want netflix I can just bring up a web browser to do it negates any reason for the app store in the first place let alone the App like start screen. Are my apps taking up processing power and ram? Probably. Is it a lot? Probably not. But if I never get into it, id like that extra 5% please, especially on a budget machine.

5. Program compatibility - Great! In fact I have only come across 1 program that wouldn't run in Windows 8 due to a missing driver. Being able to run to old programs without the need for a virtual machine is a great thing.

Would I deploy it to my users? - Sure, If I had to. You could bet yourself that I would install Classic Shell and disable most Windows 8 features though. And my users are on their own signing up for a Live ID to purchase things if they really want into the App Store.

Blog design changes

After quite some time not updating this blog I come back to find that Google has messed it up big time. Really sorry for anyone who visited during this time. I have fixed a few issues and will really work on making this site more professional and easier to navigate.

 - Justin

iPhone 5C and 5S Release Feedback

After watching the keynote today i've decided that Apple makes cool things, but doesn't know how to price the "Cheap" model as such....450$ for the iPhone 4S? Really? iPhone 5c starting at 550$? 650$ for the iphone 5s? If a market is in the early stages of moving to no contract, and the rest of the world is no contract....wouldn't it make more sense to build a cheaper phone thats actually cheap?

Compared side by side the Nexus 4 = iPhone 4s, when I bought my Nexus 4 it was 100$ less, now its 200$ as they finish off their supply before the Nexus 5 comes out. 2 completely different marketing strategies (contract vs non) and I somehow think that if you release 2 phones you could easily cover both markets no?

On the plus side, I do like the fingerprint reader concept and a 64bit phone OS makes me happy and could cause some change at Google for better performance..

P.S. - This comment was more about marketing/pricing than an android vs apple fight. In comparison much of the android market has the same problem, the good thing there is some of it doesn't...and the some that doesn't is still more than apples limited selection of 0 cheap phones.

In fact, i'm just generally pissed about how much cell phone makers screw everyone over on price.

There, I said it. This market needs to change, and that can only happen when people stop paying out the bum for contract phones and expensive no contract phones.

Money talks people, find a cheap smartphone and wait out the storm.