Hi all,

So finally i am at the last stage of finalising and starting a IT consultancy company, with some investment from a partner.

I am currently compiling a list of must have tools that i need to start supporting my clients. Planning to start 2016 with the new one!

I know this has been discussed several times, but would like to see an updated response:

I am currently planning to use:

Freshbooks- using this as a free plan now, as i was doing some freelancing. This helps me to achieve invoicing, estimates, time tracking. I will move to the paid option on Freshbooks.

Remote support: Super confused about what to use for . Currently a single tech agent (myself), and requirements would be installed agent supporting retainers and on the go support using probably a link to download the agent, install temp, support and remove for others. Screenconnect seems to be an option, but i would like to hear feedbacks. For now, i don't want a self hosted one as i nee to manage that, i would rather use that time to support clients!
Teamviewer business edition is another one i like, its one time fee and supports pretty much all devices.

Helpdesk/ticketing: For now I am thinking to use Freshbooks for this too, but open for new ideas.

I would also like to have a sales pipeline/projection tool, a web based one rather than on excel as an added bonus. Can't afford/or doesnt really need a full CRM system at the point i believe.

Did i miss anything else?

http://lifehacker.com/wego-is-a-customizable-weather-client-for-the-terminal-1706328847

Seems like a very good evening!

Finding more and more interesting things. This looks very promising and mostly a game changer. Need to test this soon.
http://www.sysdig.org/

Thousands of Hacked Home Routers are Attacking WordPress Sites

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/04/home-routers-attacking-wordpress

Check your home router
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/04/check-your-router/

Extensive research on dog breeds, finally would be getting a dog!

For a small apartment, the best choice I could see is a boston terrier. @scottalanmiller I believe you have a BT. And when I posted a request to find one on FB pets group in Dubai, all the suggestions was to adopt one. Contacting all adoption camps and might be visiting one weekend to see their puppies. Excited!

Anyone doing this, as in audit a current setup and advise on the health status of the servers, be it be Exchange server/SharePoint/Active Directory?

I assume the starting point would be Best Practice Analyzer? Any other tools that can give a nice report after the audit.

I was asked by the guy to connect a wifi access point replacing the old device, came in thinking that it won't take more than 30 mnts. The real job only took few minutes, but spent 4 hours fixing the stupid cabling job done by the previous vendor! My god, that was horrible, one of them is this cable, and from the main internet line, the old vendor took RJ45 connector and then split the cable in two to by using 2 more jacks and then connected 2 switches!

Can't believe how people do this kind of jobs and survive the market.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-install-glances-monitoring-tool/#Sysadmin

Had pneumonia, admitted to the hospital for three days, non stop medication and iv and now back at home. God that was painful. Have 5 more days complete rest, but doesn't seems like I can't be out without internet more than this. Hello ML!

Got a call yesterday from a friend, asking for help to cleanup her infected laptop. Haven't seen such infected machine in a while, lots of ads, popups, unable to open browsers, installed some japanese/chinese versions of CPU monitoring tools, fake antivirus, you name it!

Took 3 hours, used malwarebytes, but the scan got closed after some time, restarts the machine, then used my webroot setup, transferred through screenconnect and installed. While preparing the av after install, webroot detected threats and asked me to do a cleanup. As and when webroot cleans up the threats, machine restarted and i started the scan again. (There was some process that was stopping the Av to do the cleanup) Used Rkill and terminated suspecious process. Did another scan, this time all got cleaned and webroot asked for a restart to finish the cleanup. Restarted one last time, did one more scan all clean. Reset all browsers to defaults and also used Shortcut cleaner to take out all custom browser settings made by the threats. So far all looks ok, and client will be getting her own webroot home license on Sunday when she is back to work.rned

http://alifeofproductivity.com/resolutions/

https://vimeo.com/83364072

http://builtwith.com/?https%3A%2F%2Fblogs.office.com%2F

https://auraframes.com

https://vimeo.com/179060970

I believe most of ML users are fans of screenconnect for remote support, spiceworks cloud could be a minimal version of ticketing. What do you use now for inventory? Is it still spiceworks or something else now? Looking for a solution for a friend who wants to have helpdesk outside the office to avoid downtime due to any issues in the local setup. He needs to support a remote office. but he wants to keep the inventory local may be use spiceworks. Not sure if there are option to connect between the cloud helpdesk and locally installed spiceworks.

An interesting approach against spam mails!

https://www.stavros.io/posts/spamnesty-waste-spammers-time/

We are moving out of our parent company ad (eg: ab.com) and setting up a new AD (eg:cd.com). Need to take out one OU that has our users (around 225) and migrate to the new AD. Along with that from the parent file server, only our company data (around 2TB) needs to be moved to a new file server retaining the permission and structure (but on the destination, map it to new users. The username format stays same. [email protected] to [email protected] as an example).

I guess ADMT can be used for AD migration, but not very sure what would be the correct approach for file server migration with ACL mapping.

Recently read about a tool called Infection Monkey which is an open source breach and attack simulation (BAS) platform that allows organizations to discover security gaps and fix them.

Github link : https://github.com/guardicore/monkey

Anyone used this? Planning to test this on my lab this weekend

I am checking flights now to see if we can fly from Dubai. Prices seems to be ok there, but considering that i am starting on my own early next year, not sure what will be the situation by Sept 2016 but keeping an eye on the prices and see if we can make it, really want to attend and meet you all amazing people.

Today's price is 7178 United Arab Emirates Dirham = 1954.29 US Dollar for 2

Not sure about the visa though! If I come with my wife, by the time we attend Mangocon, hope she can go around and see places too!

This is huge!

https://www.ifixit.com/android

Happy Birthday @scottalanmiller

Haven't seen anyone posted yet, obviously due to the time zone difference I guess.

So whats your plan for today?