After getting involved with social media personally, before I got involved with it professionally, I discovered I had relatives that I never knew existed.  Well, let me qualify that a bit.  I knew they existed.  They were sort of on the periphery of my awareness, first-second-third cousins of my father. But I never really thought about them much because when I was a kid my father didn’t interact with them. I don’t know why he didn’t interact with them.  I suppose for the same reasons that I don’t interact much with my 19 first cousins.  Your lives take you in different directions.

As I’ve been discovering these different Telofskis I’ve been doing a bit of a family tree on them.  Based on what my father told me over the years, and based on what I’ve been able to pick up from other sources, I’ve found that I have first-cousins-once-removed on Facebook, as well as second-cousins-once- removed on Twitter and Facebook as well. I’ve found it amusing that some of the first-cousins-once-removed are younger than the second-cousins-once- removed.  Figure that out.  Maybe that’s the way it should be?  Dunno.  You geneologists out there would have to chime in.

Anyway, meeting them online has sort of been like a family reunion.  “Sort of” because I’ve never actually met them in the first place.  There never was a “union” so there really can’t be a reunion; although it feels like one.  I think the surprise of finding others with such a unique last name has also been a surprise for them.  My nieces and nephews on Facebook have been finding these second-cousins-once- removed also (although I suppose for them the second-cousins-once- removed are really third-cousins, but nobody’s really sure).  And when they found those other unidentified Telofskis who apparently have the nerve to share our last name (just kidding, folks) they’ve asked me, “Who are all these Telofskis?”  They’d ask their own father, my brother, but he has announced he has no interest in Facebook, claiming “I don’t need any friends,” although he probably has more real-world friends than most people I know.  When they ask about the unknown Telofskis, their surprise is somewhat like finding others living on your own deserted island.  Like on the show Lost.  Well, not quite, but go with it.  Or like finding chocolate on the moon. Or like waking up one day finding you really have six fingers on each hand and that idea about five fingers was some misguided vision foisted upon you by uninformed persons.  Well, enough of the metaphors, but if you think of a better one let me know.

When thinking about these other Americans who have the same last name as I, and there aren’t many of us, I think about the guy who brought to the United States that name which defies spelling over the phone.  (Yes, that’s T – E – L – O – F, as in Frank, – S, as in Sam, – K – I . If I

Continue reading Social Media . . . Reuniting Families, Well, Sort Of.

Recently I was having trouble with the RSS feed on this blog. Who knows why? It’s just one of those things that happen without an obvious cause. And it’s one of those things that seem to right themselves without an explanation. That’s what happened here.

The other day the RSS feed for this blog wasn’t validating. I tried a few tricks to correct the problem, but no dice. So, with some reluctance, I called Network Solutions, my web service provider. Calling them is usually a pain in the neck. Oh, they’re very nice. But usually not very helpful.

After a fairly short wait, thankfully, I got through to Chris who was going to troubleshoot my problem. When I explained the problem he told me something like, “Well, the blog runs through WordPress, which we don’t support. So, I’m afraid that I can’t be of much help.” Yeah, I know that.

But this blog, Telofski.com, runs via WordPress on the Network Solutions server! I’m not running my own server, nor do I use a local copy of WordPress. Everything is running through Network Solutions.

If Network Solutions is offering a service, a WordPress blog in this case, and they charge me for that service, why don’t they support the service? What they are doing now is analogous to an auto dealer refusing to service a car battery because it wasn’t made by the car manufacturer.

Well, luckily and inexplicably, while I was waiting on hold I was pressing revalidation buttons trying to get the RSS feed to validate and just as Chris came on the line, the feed validated. My guess is it was something very technical and complex at Network Solutions like some technician sitting on the wrong button as he was eating his lunch. And then just as Chris came on the line, oooops, the tech finished lunch and got up. Problem solved. No thanks to Network Solutions assistance. And I’ve written about Network Solutions before and their less than satisfactory service.

My suggestion? Network Solutions change your name to Network Insolutions.

Recently I took a long weekend with my wife. We went to Charleston. The one in South Carolina, not West Virginia.

I hadn’t been to Charleston in quite a while. When I was a young pup practically out of college, the company I worked for then sent me to Charleston to open up a new district for them. I was tasked with setting up operations and hiring management staff. I almost hired myself for the manager’s job in Charleston, but for a variety of reasons, I didn’t. Shucks. It would’ve been a great life but, alas, had I stayed I probably would have never met my wife and that would have made life in paradise that much less sweet.

Rich at the College of Charleston graduation.

Upon my recent return I fell in love with the place all over again. This time I had the best of both worlds, my wife was with me. She’s been around the world literally twice, but she had never been to Charleston. She agreed with my feelings about the place. I’ve traveled to a lot of great places in the U.S. Hawaii, Alaska, California, Florida, Chicago (yes, Chicago is great). Coronado, CA was spectacular. But I’m afraid Coronado that you’ve been bumped by Charleston.

But relative to this blog and social media is that the people in Charleston are social, very social. And they use the original social medium; they chat with you.

My wife and I were walking along the seawall at the city’s battery area, a nice park at the foot of the peninsula on which Charleston sits. There were several guys there fishing. Poles leaning on the seawall railing, lines extended into the bay, hoping for dinner. Now, I say dinner because these guys didn’t appear to be the kind of folks who do this for sport. No, these guys appeared to fish for a living. Their living. But to a one, they each greeted us as we walked by and one even wished my wife “Happy Mother’s Day.” (It was the Friday before Mother’s Day.) I’ve got a life size picture of folks in New Jersey doing this, he states sarcastically. No, the only greeting I got when I returned to New Jersey was some panhandler at EWR asked me for $20 bucks to get his car out of impound. C’mon. I’ve heard that one before.

This wasn’t a singular occurrence either. There were others that were similar.

So, my point is that if you can just think of social media, especially using social media in business, as a conversation starter, like those guys fishing on the seawall, then life could be a lot sweeter.

Except for that panhandler at EWR.

One of the PCs in our office has been having some problems for quite a while, so I decided to bite the bullet and call for help.  I called Geek Squad because I thought they knew what they were doing.  Not so much.

Cutting to the chase, the computer in question, which is the one on which I typed this post, is still having problems.  In fact, while typing this post Firefox crashed and lost several minutes of work.  Hang on a moment.  Let me save so I don’t lose more in case Firefox crashes again.

OK.  File saved.  Now it’s on autosave.

When Geek Squad showed up at my office for the appointment on Monday, April 13, 2009, I explained the PC’s recent behavior to the agent.  After several minutes of trying to explain the problems I wasn’t hopeful.  I still had a few more things to explain, but at that point he seemed checked-out and wanting to sit at the machine to do that voodoo.  So I let him.

After about an hour and a half of diagnosis, he couldn’t find “anything wrong with it.”  Curious.  If nothing was wrong with it, why would I call Geek Squad in the first place and why were we getting the following errors?

Security package not updating correctly.
Firefox crashing about, oh, eight times per day.
Irregular recognition of external hard drives.
OSA.exe error notices.
PC crashing periodically upon Outlook booting.
Generic host process for Win32 services on start-up, periodically.
Periodic notices at start-up that Windows had recovered from a serious error. (Yes. No kidding.  I think the most serious error was to buy a Windows machine in the first place.)
Periodic file checking notices in Outlook due to a file not closing last time Outlook in use.

Interesting that with all those problems he couldn’t find “anything wrong.”  So, instead of the $300 I was quoted when I called in for the appointment, the agent charged only $139 for their “Quick Fix Service.”  He went happily on his way.

But I wasn’t happy.

For days after the visit, the machine kept making the same errors, and new ones were added to its dastardly repertoire.

Upon shut-down, blue screen errors occurred saying there was a memory management problem.
Windows would not update automatically.
Software installation was disabled.
Outlook archive folders MIA.

I looked at the Geek Squad Service Agreement for information about warranty and here’s what it says:

Item 4 – Labor Warranty: Geek Squad guarantees services provided to you at your home or business for 30 days; however, for repairs necessitated by a virus or spyware, the 30-day warranty is valid only if the antivirus and antispyware protection for your product is installed or updated during repair or before you access the internet again.  If there is a problem with the service provided to you at the Geek Squad store and if you notify us at 1800 GeekSquad (1-800-433-5778) within the 30-day time period, Geek Squad will work to remedy your original problem quickly and at no cost.

So I called them.  Two service reps told me that the “Quick Fix Service”

Continue reading Geek Squad Not as Geeky as Expected, or as Good

Part of the goal behind using social media is making friends, not enemies.  It’s easy to make enemies; it’s more difficult to make friends.  Who said that?  I’m sure it was said before me, at least I hope it was.

Last week I became involved in a LinkedIn group conversation that started to go a little hairy, but fortunately didn’t get out of control, as these things sometimes can.  If you’ll read the conversation, which starts here, you’ll see that things got heated relatively quickly.  And you’ll also see that some of the comments made weren’t appreciated by some individuals in the group.  I’d have to say that, at first, I was one of them.

Reading through, you’ll see that I was “snarked” with a comment about a $15 economics textbook.  Now, I could have gone off the deep end over that one, because on the face it appears to be quite a smack.  But I thought twice before “speaking” once.  I imagined that commenter and I in a face-to-face conversation; and I also imagined him making that comment with a smile on his face and a lilt in his voice.  Nuances indicating that the comment was a just a friendly jibe, not meant to insult or demean.

Nuance is lost, or at least misplace, in social media.  Funny huh?  Since part of social media’s intent is about making friends.  Emoticons can’t carry all the weight that nuance has for centuries, nay millennia.  So when we mix it up on the social web, we must be aware of that and choose our words carefully, and read over, at least once, what we’ve just written before pushing the Send button.  When reading it over, if what you’ve written seems like it could be misconstrued in terms of the emotions, then write about the emotion that you wish to convey.  Put it in words instead of leaving it up to the roulette wheel of interpretation.  Say what you mean, yes.  But on the social web we must also say what we imply.

Seems like a lot of effort?  Well, yeah.  It is.  But then making friends isn’t always easy.  Oh, and speaking of making friends?  That commenter that jibed me about the economics book?  Shortly thereafter we spoke on the phone, he initiated the conversation by the way.  And since then I feel like a found a new friend.

Amazing ain’t it?

We reported to Network Solutions, our web and blog service provider, on Friday, March 14 that our blogs were loading slowly.