Thanksgiving - What Has It Become?

We went through the routine last week. The wife decided who would bring what and got agreement from the kids. We welcomed the out-of-town contingent (our former daughter in law, her husband, THEIR daughter and OUR grandkids). Some of our guests (mainly our kids and their families) came early. Others got here barely in time to eat.

Some ate and then helped clean up. Others ate and then dropped into comfortable seating in the family room to watch football. Others ate and left!

But it was still fun -- and one of those rare occasions when the entire family sits at table for a meal and when the entire family eats a meal over a single grace being prayed.

The kitchen table was cleared after the meal and all the girls gathered round -- advertisements in one hand and lists in the other. It was now time to decide about "Black Friday".

But things changed this year -- it was no longer "Black Friday" but "Black Thanksgiving". Store doors did not open at 5AM as in past years. Some store doors were open even as they pined about who was going to buy what.

The mass of female flesh piled into the van at 10:45 Thanksgiving evening just to wait in line at their first target -- yes, Target was their first stop. And they were gung ho until they approached collapse for lack of sleep at a little before noon on Friday.

I went to bed shortly after they left, adding a few sentences to my nightly prayer -- praying that the insane would regain a little sense and that they would have fun during their foolish frivolity.

Those of us -- especially Bobby, Ben and me -- who stayed at home arose the next more to the wafting aroma of fresh brewed coffee. After a couple of cups each, we dressed and went to a local eatery for Western Omelettes, hash browns (with onions), sliced tomatos, biscuits and buttered toast. Then we went home and awaited the return of the girls -- sore feet, tired eyes, frayed tempers et al.

They will never admit the reality of the situation. During all this, I kept thinking that Thanksgiving has lost its real meaning. It has morphed into Black Friday Eve. What a shame!

Christmas Is Coming

Are you like me -- salivating over some of the new "necessities" that didn't exist last year. Are you leaving hints around the house? Does every other sentence end with "...you know I could do that with a ..."?

The iPad is the one that's piqued my imagination this year. My mind says "...you can't live another day without one of those"; and the logical side of my brain says "...if you had one what would you do with it".

The left and right sides of my brain wage war for a while, with the arguement ending with "...I sure would love to have one of those...".

What's my assessment of the iPad? One side of my brain argues it's the best thing since sliced bread -- something you'll continuously use. The other side responds that I'll get it, use it for a week and then relegate it to the stack of devices I've gotten every year for the last "n" years.

My granddaughter got an iPod Touch for her birthday earlier this month. She spent the weekend with us this past weekend and I spent more than a little bit of time with the iPod in my hands. My reaction to the device was that it's a great device that can almost replace a computer. It's great for sending and receiving email, accessing the Internet and playing games. It's powerful and fast.

Another reality -- it's too darned small or my eyes are too darned bad! The other thing that bothered me was that it has WiFi but can't send and receive notes or access the Internet unless you're in a hotspot. Kudos to my Blackberry.

The iPad solves the major size problem -- it's big enough to read and can be used as a book reader. But which makes more sense for a lightweight device -- the iPad or a Netbook? That's a full function computer, excepting the excellent book reader component, that's been shrunk in size to the point where the keyboard can be cumbersome. It's also considerably less expensive than the iPad.

This is only one of the "toys". I heard this morning that there are going to be some really good prices on devices this year -- like WalMart having a 32" flat screen TV for $200.00. And it's not a Black Friday special where each store has exactly .6 devices on sale.

I'm learning to keep my wishlist realistic and then to analyze whether my "want" is a kneejerk reaction or for a device that I'll really find useful for more than a week!

Happy Birthday To US Marines

November 10th is the 235th birthday of the US Marines. Join me on this special day in wishing these brave men and women a happy birthday. Be sure to thank them for their service and their willingness to put themselves in harm's way in order that we may be free.

I extend a "special birthday wish" to Taylor, our grandson and all of the men and women in the current class. He's about half way through basic training at Paris Island -- preparing himself to continue the brave tradition of the Marines. He'll make himself (and all of us) proud because of his career choice at this point in his life.

Happy Birthday Marines!


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Special / Important Day

Today is the eve of what I truly believe will likely be the most important day of 2010 -- the eve of our nation's mid-term election.

I remind you of something my father repeatedly told me -- "Son, if you don't vote you have no right to bitch about the results." Nothing he ever told me was more truthful than that simple statement.

My dad contended that voting is neither a right nor a priviledge. He saw it as a responsibility -- and I agree with him.

Years ago, I went to vote in a presidential election and found the line to be over 1 mile long -- that's right one mile, 5,280 feet long. I was tempted; but I did it. And after the fact I was proud.

I also remember two other things. I was reminded of this only in one of last night's newscasts -- the margin of Jimmy Carter's victory was less than ONE VOTE PER PRECINCT. Another from an acquaintance a good many years ago. He felt terrible afterwards because of what happened. He decided to drop out of line figuring that he represented only ONE VOTE. He really felt bad after election results were in and he found that his candidate lost by ONE VOTE!

Times Never Change -- Watch This

Times never change -- as demonstrated by Johnny Carson.

An Historic Moment

My policy is to reserve religious and political discussions for the dinner table and, even then, to limit the discussions to a very small audience.

If you know me, it's likely that you know my religious and political affiliation and alliance(s). Whether you know me or not, I am via this post violating my own position -- I'm taking a moment to say how important I think the mid-term election is to the future of this country.

From my perspective, selection for this mid-term are easy! We have had two years of radical agenda and "constitution trampling," and it's time for changes in Washington.

My dad had a priceless philosophy -- vote or you have no rigth to bitch about the outcome of the election. I'm leaving that quote with you -- go to the polls on Tuesday and vote.

A Moment To Ponder

A friend passed the following link to me in an email earlier today. My first reaction was to delete the message; but I clicked the link and viewed the resulting video. And I was so glad that I decided to take a minute to see what my friend apparently thought was important enough to pass on to me.

I was deeply moved by what I saw; and I hope that you will be too.

I'd like you to do 2 things for me. I'd like you to click the link and view the video and then send me an email to let me know if it moved you as much as it did me.

Click Here To View Video

Click Here to Send an Email To Let Me Know What You Think

Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late ! !

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees... I don't feel threatened.. I don't feel discriminated against.. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu ... If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina).. Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.. And we said okay..

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,

Ben S

JFSI Welcomes New Client

JFSI is proud to welcome Auto Choice Select, LLC as a recent client. Auto Choice specializes in providing high quality used vehicles to people living in the Triad of North Carolina.

Their web site AutoChoiceSelectLLC.com is in development and will be available soon.

Mark Stafford, the dealership's General Manager will be proud to show you any of the cars on the lot. He'll also show you a high quality -- manufactured by Holiday Rambler -- motor home. If you're in the market for a motor home, this is a "must see"

HP Image Zone Software

We have found that HP's Image Zone software neither installs nor works under Windows 7. Users of this program that intend to migrate to Windows 7 should find an alternative before upgrading or purchasing a new machine with the new O/S.

2010 Census Warning

WARNING: 2010 Census Cautions from the Better Business Bureau

Be Cautious About Giving Info to Census Workers by Susan Johnson

With the U.S. Census process beginning, the Better Business Bureau
(BBB) advises people to be cooperative, but cautious, so as not to become a victim of fraud or identity theft. The first phase of the 2010 U.S. Census is under way as workers have begun verifying the addresses of households across the country. Eventually, more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers will count every person in the United States and will gather information about every person living at each address including name, age, gender, race, and other relevant data.

The big question is - how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice:

• If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag, and a confidentiality notice. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions. However, you should never invite anyone you don't know into your home.
  
• 
  Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information.
  

Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census.

REMEMBER, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ASK, YOU REALLY ONLY NEED TO TELL THEM HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE AT YOUR ADDRESS.

While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION.

The Census Bureau will not ask for Social Security, bank account, or credit card numbers, nor will employees solicit donations. Any one asking for that information is NOT with the Census Bureau.

THE CENSUS BUREAU HAS DECIDED NOT TO WORK WITH ACORN ON GATHERING THIS INFORMATION.. No Acorn worker should approach you saying he/she is with the Census Bureau.

Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail, or in person at home. However, the
Census Bureau will not contact you by Email, so be on the lookout for Email scams impersonating the Census.

Never click on a link or open any attachments in an Email that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Language Issue?

Are you viewing a web site in a language you do not read? Microsoft comes to the rescue with Internet Explorer Version 8. And it's simple as pie to solve these complex problems.

Let's walk through a scenario where you are viewing a web site in English and would like to see it in Chinese.

• First, open the web site (e.g., http://jfairsystems.com)
• Second, navigate to the page you want to translate
• Right click and select Translate With Live Search
• Choose the target language

That's all there is to it!

MS To Drop MS Office Accounting Product Offerings

Come November 16th, Microsoft will discontinue sales of all items on the Office Accounting product lineup. The Redmond company is giving customers little advance notice on its plans to shut down Microsoft Office Accounting, but the fact is that the move involves the distribution of the product. Existing customers will continue to enjoy support from Microsoft for their products.

"Microsoft Office Accounting will no longer be distributed after November 16, 2009," reads the message welcoming visitors on the online area reserved for Accounting on the Office Online website. "We would like to thank the many dedicated users and partners who have been enthusiastic supporters of Office Accounting over the years."

The software giant started sending out notifications to customers informing of the imminent discontinuation of sales and distribution of the Microsoft Office Accounting product. The company revealed that Microsoft Office Accounting customers both in the UK and North America would be impacted. Starting with mid-November, Office Accounting Express, Office Accounting Standard, Office Accounting Professional, Office Accounting Professional Plus, Office Accounting 3-user and Small Business Accounting will no longer be available for purchase on either side of the Atlantic.

"After evaluating the product over the past few years we have determined that other Microsoft offerings such as free templates in the Office system used with Excel and the Dynamics product are able to meet our customers' needs. The Office Small Business web site has links to free templates for small businesses, such as invoices, expenses, time sheets, budgets and more and Microsoft's Small Business Center is also a great resource for small businesses," a Microsoft spokesperson told Mary Jo Foley.

Microsoft revealed that it would continue to offer support for Office Accounting customers, even though new purchases would no longer be possible. According to the Redmond company, Office Accounting products will benefit from five years of mainstream support followed by another five years of extended support.

Tip for visutally impaired or doc with small fonts

As I get older I occasionally run into something that's displayed in a font too small for me to read and with no easy way to enlarge the font. Windows has an answer for my situation and one that may significantly extend the time that visually impaired people can use their PC. That answer is the magnifier utility.Magnifier has been around for a long time -- but it's rarely discussed and most people don't even know it's there. It's available from the Accessories menu under XP. Under Vista, I start it by typing magnifier on the Start Search box and under Windows 7 it's displayed on the start menu.Magnifier is a great little tool. It opens a sizeable "frame" at the top of your screen and allows you to control the magnification from 2x to 16x.Try it if you're even in this situation or ever have one of those "senior moments" when you simply need a little help seeing something.

An Unbelievable But True Weekend

The story I'm about to tell is 100% true. It sounds absolutely unbelievable -- so unbelievable that though I say it's 100%, I'm sure you'll have doubts. With everything I'm discussing in this story, I've considered changing my name from John to Job.

Here goes....

I had a doctor's appointment on Thursday before Labor Day. I assumed beforehand that it would be 15 minutes -- go in and get weighed, have vitals taken, have the doctor listen to my heart and then to McDonalds for breakfast. I didn't consider the fact that I would leave 2 hours later with an appointment to be admitted to the hospital the next day for another cardiac cath.

The cath was about as uneventful as it could be; though the doctor decided I needed to stay at least overnight for some "additional tests".

My wife picked me up on Friday. We were on our way home when I received the first call that put a negative imprint on the holiday weekend. It seems that a friend of ours was spending the holiday weekend riding horses near the Virginia - Tennessee line. His horse was spooked by dogs; he was thrown off; he was transported to the local hospital and was in a coma.

That was bad enough; but at 12:15 on Labor Day morning, I received a call from my sister's middle daughter. All three of my sister's girls were visiting for the long weekend because their dad had quadruple bypass surgery less than 2 weeks before. My sister had fed the oldest daughter's three month old son and was rocking him to sleep when the baby cried out and died in her arms. As paramedics worked on the baby, my sister had a near fatal heart attack.

That obviously put a real damper on the holiday -- and that was certainly more than enough to make this story completely surreal; but it's not over.

At 11 o'clock that morning I received yet another telephone call. The senior minister of the church I served during the near decade we spent in Washington had suddenly died of a heart attack. Jerry was the brother I did not have during the years in DC; so his death was traumatic.

But the story is still not over. A follow-up doctor's visit indicated that the etiology of the pains I have been having in my legs and extremities is in my lower back; so surgery is likely to correct that near term.

See what I meant. We're stretching the belief that God never gives one more than can be tolerated.

Company Identity

I often see nice business cards that include email addresses that read:

username@msn.com or username@yahoo.com or username@bellsouth.net ....

The list of options goes on and on; but you get my drift. To make things worse, I SOMETIMES see cards that contain the address of a legitimate web site with one of the email addresses I mentioned above.

I'm convinced that an established and consistent company image is one of the most important (and, incidentally least expensive) things a company can do. Keeping your company name in front of the public is an essential element of doing business.

Of course, we recommend that almost all companies have a domain name that represents that company's name and, if possible, some representation of what the company does. In most instances, we recommend that a web site be incorporated into the overall marketing strategy.

Whether or not there's a web site, we recommend that companies have name centric email addresses (e.g., username@companydomainname.com) and NEVER -- absolutely NEVER have business email hosted at AOL with email addresses of username@AOL.com.

Talk to us at JFSI for more information about how we can help you with these efforts.

A disturbing reality

I've been following with great interest news reports that project that for the next two years recipients of Social Security Benefits will see no Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA).

The same articles articulate in great detail the fact that medical expenses, typically the largest expense imposed on seniors, and Medicare and Medigap premiums are likely to rise sharply. Since these premium amounts are typically deducted from the recipient's monthly check, the net effect is that for the first time in over three decades, the amount received montly will GO DOWN.

Let's see if the birds on the hill who sit on chambers of our legislature take a commensurate cut.

Windows 7 Test Results

We have been doing some pretty extensive testing of Windows 7 since Microsoft released the "production" version to the partners web portal.

We have several test scenarios that I'll describe here.

Scenario 1. Microsoft has said that hardware minimums required for W7 are a 1+ gigahertz processor and 1 gig of memory. We tried to "stretch" that envelope; so we installed W7 Professional on a DELL 4300 with a 1.5 gigahertz processor and 512 MB of memory. We were, quite frankly, suprised that it would even install; but it did and it's running at least as well as XP on the same machine. Of course, we'd NEVER have tried to load Vista on that platform.

We expected to run into problems with the network adapter and the video card. Then we realized that we had long ago replaced the NIC that shipped with the machine with a Netgear adapter that W7 recognized right away and had no problems with.

We had to go to the NVIDIA web site and download video drivers in order to get an acceptable video presentation.

We've run a fair number of programs, including the Office 7 suite and GoToMeeting on the box and so far so good.

Scenario 2. Install W7 Professional on an XP based HP Notebook. The drill was essentailly the same as with the DELL except that the laptop had plenty of memory and is performing better. The install did NOT recognize the Intel Wireless; and getting it installed and configured was a reasonably difficult chore; but once we got over that hump things look OK.

Scenario 3. Install on a new clean machine with an AMD Dual Core processor and 4MB memory. Everything went swimmingly.

Problems...... We had to DOWNLOAD the two versions of W7. It took two tries to get a successful download of W7 Professional and the copy of Ultra downlaoded with errors and will not install. This is a MAJOR problem because of the size of the product and the time it takes to download even on our Time Warner Road Runner Turbo connection.

Email Alternative We Give An A+

Had someone suggested even a few months ago that I would be writing this post, I would have said they were crazy and recommended a thorough mental evaluation. That was back during the days when a product not produced by Microsoft was unheard of in our repetoire of products.

JFSI has from day one run Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange. We liked it so much that we never even considered alternatives; and many of our clients are prety much in the same boat.

Don't get me wrong -- Exchange is a great product. For medium to large sized companies it still has no equal.

A few months ago, a friend and I were talking about the concepts of "Software as a Service (SaaS)". You've undoubtedly heard about it and the whole idea behind "cloud computing".

During this conversation, my friend mentioned that they were evaluating Google's suite of applications called "Google Apps".

The conversation intrigued me to the point where I started doing some research; and that research led me to beta test the product in our environment. To make this long story endless, we liked what we saw so much that we dumped Exchange for Google Apps.

You ask -- WHY?

• We were initally concerned that Google Apps' email was nothing more than GMail. While it has a lot of the characteristics of GMail, it's different; it's secure; it's reliable; it's fast; it's avaialble from any computer with an Internect connection and I like it better than Outlook Web Access (OWA).
• JFSI is in business to support small to medium sized companies -- not medium to large to mega sized ones. An Exchange environment can be very expensive.
• We were initally concerned that we'd lose the ability to access our mail through our much loved, tried and true Outlook client; but that concern was short lived because Outlook works fine with the applications
• We LOVE the fact that multiple users can simultaneously work on the same document, see changes each user makes and know that the application is doing document versioning and keeping track of who does what
• We LOVE the fact that the applications seamlessly synch with our Blackberrys through the air, eliminating the need to tether them to a PC in the office or spend the money to install Blackberry Enterprise Server software
• We LOVE the price -- $50.00 per user per year for a 25GB storage space
• During the last month, we've caught one message in our spam folder that should have been in our Inbox
• While we have not done a lot with it yet, the Intranet services included in the applications seems to rival those provided by SharePoint Services.

Send me an email or give me a call if you'd like more information about our experiences.

BING - The New Search Engine on the Block

Live search is evolving -- and there is FINALLY an alternative to Google's search engine.

Microsoft recently introduced their "next generation" search engine. We were one of the early adopters and beta testers and we became very fond of Bing's capabilities and features.

What we call a "sidebar" is one feature we really like. Hovering over a vertical line to the right of a search result will cause a "snip" of the text of the page in question to be displayed. What's more significant is that this works with both HTML and scripted pages.

We also like the fact that the left side of your search results page contains yet another sidebar -- this time with a history of previous searches.

We strongly suggest that you give Bing a try. It's available at http://bing.com. It's FREE, it's evolving. We believe that though it's got a long way to go from a marketshare point of view that it's got a lot of potential.