PC MIRACLES, INC.

March 2009

PC Miracles Connection Issue 26

What’s Good Luck Happens

Inside When Preparedness Meets Opportunity
As luck would have it, Smart Sally and owner of the largest manufacturing company
Lucky Larry were born minutes apart on St. in the state and a victim of identity theft,
Patrick’s Day in Luck, WI to first generation found with great embarrassment that his
Irish immigrants. In a hurry to meet his fate, credit card was canceled. Seizing the
Protect Yourself Larry burst forth without warning, causing opportunity, Lucky Larry paid for the man’s
And Your Dr. Lecher (busy eyeing Nurse Nancy’s groceries and was rewarded with a massive
Company With numerous notables) to fumble the catch. contract from not only John’s company but all
Orderly Oscar, thinking of Sunday’s game- of John’s business associates.
An Email
winning touchdown, dove across the room Both Lucky Larry and Smart Sally
Disclaimer and caught Larry inches before a potentially understood that the data used and generated
See Page 3 fatal floor impact. Everyone applauded and in their businesses was their most important
Oscar, resisting the temptation to spike the asset. They both bought good computers
Meet Our 1st baby, did a quick end-zone dance and servers, and paid someone to
Winner in Our 15 and gently laid Larry in his set them up and connect them to
mother’s arms. Smiling at her each other and the Internet. Lucky
Years of Thanks
newborn, she named him Lucky Larry used his neighbor’s son who
Celebration - Larry. was a wiz with computers and
Longest Standing Next door, Sally was taking a worked for peanuts. The
Client more cautious approach. Moments network seemed to work well with the
Story On Page 2 before she emerged, the lights went out and occasional lock ups and blue screens of
the backup generator failed to kick in. death that everyone has come to expect from
Seeing the room was pitch black, she Microsoft products. Lucky Larry felt lucky
stopped her delivery and alerted the doctor indeed as his employees never had to restart
to her pending arrival with adorable baby their computers more than once a day and
Win a 2GB noises, which helped him locate and coordinated their coffee breaks with the
Flash Drive expertly deliver her. The lights came back restarts, the loading of programs and the
See How On Page 4 on, and her mom declared to the astonished printing of documents. He noticed during
onlookers that she was naming her Smart the last few months that the number and
Sally. length of breaks were increasing, but it was
Lucky Larry skated through college as a better than having them sit and stare at the
party animal while Smart Sally studied hard “please wait…” message on the computer
and entered the business world with straight screen. He put a big screen TV in the break
A’s. They opened accounting firms next room, which helped his employees relieve
door to each other with Smart Sally growing their frustrations by watching Oprah and Dr.
her business through good marketing and Phil. This proved to Lucky Larry to be a
sound business practices. Lucky Larry found great investment.
fortune at the grocery store where John, the Continued on page 2
Page 2 Continued From Page 1
Smart Sally took a different approach. She
contracted with a respected IT consulting company
that handled her installation and provided her with
managed services to keep the network running like
new. Overhearing Lucky Larry bragging about how
little he paid for the installation and upkeep of his
network, Smart Sally wondered if she was spending
her money wisely. It had been a year since the
computer network was installed and she had never
experienced a lock up or needed to restart her
computers or servers. She wasn’t sure what the blue
screen of death was because she had never seen one.
It puzzled her during power outages that shouts and
curses could be heard coming from Lucky Larry’s
office while her employees calmly continued to work.
Though her employees didn’t know much about
Oprah or Dr. Phil, they seemed happy with their job
and the tools she had provided that made their jobs
stress free. She was proud of how productive her
employees were and how quickly they completed
their assignments. Her network worked as good as
new, and her employees could easily handle more
work if she only had more clients.
That night luck proved to be a fickle lady. As they
slept, fire raged through the buildings where Lucky
Larry and Smart Sally had their offices. Nothing was
left standing but a solitary staircase to nowhere.
Larry, Sally and their employees, all with tears in
their eyes, stared in disbelief at the devastation.
What were they going to do? What were their clients
going to do? Today was payday; W2’s and 1099’s
were due next week. All the clients’ records were up
in smoke, as were the computers, servers and the
precious data they contained.
Lucky Larry called his neighbor’s son at college
Meet Our Longest Standing Client in our 15 Years of Thanks Celebration!
Gumro & Associates is our March winner for “Longest Standing Client” in our “15 Years of
Thanks” celebration. Gumro & Associates, an award-winning strategic consulting and logistics
management company, has been a client of PC Miracles for 12 years. PC Miracles has handled
their needs locally, across the country and internationally and during this time they’ve moved
their headquarters three times. Jim Gumro and Dan, founder and president of PC Miracles,
have become friends over the years. Gumro & Assoc. is currently using our Effort Free IT
Platinum service to manage their Headquarters and Datacenter server infrastructure. Gumro &
Associates is delighted with the great service PC Miracles gives them and we will make sure
that continues for another 12 years.
(Pictured, Jim Gumro with his clock award & plaque commemorating his company being featured on the front cover of a logistics trade magazine)
PC Miracles
seeking advice. What he heard chilled him to the
bone. The wiz kid had trained an employee, which
Larry fired two months ago, to exchange a tape each
day with one from a pile of tapes on top of the server.
Larry felt a migraine coming on. His luck had finally
run out. He called his clients and explained that the
fire and subsequent loss of their data wasn’t his fault.
Larry heard words he’d never heard before coming
across the phone and was told to expect a call from
their lawyers.
Smart Sally prayed for better news as she called
her IT consultant. What they told her sounded too
good to be true. They had been doing an off site
backup each night and all her data was safe and
ready to be restored. What’s more they offered to
arrange overnight delivery of a server and
workstations. By using disk images stored off site
they could quickly configure the new machines and
have her company back up and running within 48
hours. They also offered to fax her insurance
company detailed descriptions and replacement cost
of all the equipment destroyed. Sally called her
clients to advise them that there would be a slight
delay, but they would have payroll processed within
48 hours and the W2’s and 1099’s would go out on
schedule despite the devastating fire. Sally received
a call later that day from Lucky Larry’s unlucky clients
who heard she was already back in business. They
transferred their accounts to her immediately. Smart
Sally couldn’t believe how lucky she was.
Are you a Lucky Larry? Call us before March 31st,
tell us you want to become a Smart Sally and we will
perform a FREE 27-Point Problem Prevention Audit
and design an action plan to make your network
healthy and keep it that way! (248) 620-2201
 Page 3

Outlook E-Mail Signatures Beware The

Protect You From Lawsuits Ides of March
Do you hate typing your name and contact information at If you believe in lucky numbers
the end of each e-mail you create? Would you like to include and dangerous days, remember
legal disclaimers to help protect you and your company? Then that the Ides of March are upon us.
use an Outlook “signature” to automate the insertion of this in- —————
formation. It was the 15th of
Here’s how… On the Tools menu, click Options. Then March on the Roman
click the Mail Format tab. Then click the Signatures button. calendar when Julius
Click the New button and give your signature a name when Caesar was
prompted and click Next. Type the text you assassinated in 44
would like to have ap- pear at the end of each email B.C. There were also
in the box and click Fin- ished. That’s all there is to Ides on the 15th of
it. Be sure the name of the signature you just cre- May, July, and October, but for
ated appears in the box ti- tled Signature For New hundreds of years after Caesar's
Messages: and Signa- ture For Replies and death, Romans avoided going into
Forwards: and click the OK but- business, getting married, or
ton. You can test the signature by entering any other venture on
creating a new email message. The signature you created March 15. It became associated
should automatically appear at the end of your email message. with disaster.
—————
Once you have successfully created this basic e-mail sig-
About nine percent of Americans
nature, you can experiment with adding company logos, color
are still superstitious about days
and custom fonts to the signature. For more MS Office features,
like Friday the 13th. Statistics
go to http://office.microsoft.com. For more on email disclaim-
show that businesses lose money
ers, go to http://www.emaildisclaimers.com.
on that day.
Here is a template for a disclaimer message. Be sure to
—————
have your lawyer approve your disclaimer prior to use.
Continental Airlines uses the
DISCLAIMER: This e-mail message and any attachments are number eight when advertising in
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is China, which is thought to be a
addressed and may contain information which is proprietary, lucky number.
privileged, confidential or otherwise legally exempt from disclo-
sure. If you are not the named addressee, you are not authorized
to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this message or any part “The only sure thing
of it. If you have received this message in error, please notify Your
about luck is that it
Name at Your Company immediately (by replying to this message
or by sending an email to Your Email or by calling Your Phone will change.”
Number) and permanently delete this message and any attach- Bret Harte, American Writer
ments. Thank you.
 Services We Offer:
• Effort-Free IT Managed Services
PC Miracles, Inc.
• Authorized Dell™ Partner
9207 Andersonville Rd
Clarkston, MI 48346 • General Network Repair and Troubleshooting
www.pcmiracles.com • Network Design & Implementation
info@pcmiracles.com
• Disaster Recovery
• Virus Protection & Removal
Phone: 248-620-2201
Fax: 248-484-7128 • Network Security
• E-mail & Internet Solutions
Supporting Business Systems • Wireless Networking
Since 1994 • Spam Filtering
• Storage Solutions

Monthly Contest I’d Love To Hear

May the luck of the Irish be with you!
In celebration of our new Monthly Contest we are giving away a
2GB USB Flash drive to the lucky winner. Submit your answers at
our website www.pcmiracles.com/contest or by email to
info@pcmiracles.com. Check your answers in next month’s
issue.
Our rules are simple:
♦ One winner each month.
♦ One entry per person each month.
♦ Contest closes on the last day of the month.
♦ Entries are judged by correctness, date and time received.
♦ Include your name and phone number, the question number
and the answer letter. For example, 1a, 2b, 3c, 4d.
From YOU!
Is there an article you would like to comment
on? Is there a topic you want me to research?
Have a funny story or a resource you want to
share with the other subscribers? Send it to
me! We are always looking for new and useful
content to add to the PC Miracles Connection.
Dan Izydorek
Call: 248-620-2201
Go Online: www.pcmiracles.com
E-mail Dan: info@pcmiracles.com

Midnights and Noons

1. "Round About Midnight" is widely recognized as one of the
greatest jazz albums of all time. The album was released in
1957 by what jazz trumpeter? a-Miles Davis, b-Johnny Parker,
c-Neal Hefti, d-Arturo Sandoval.
2. Which U.S. state is nicknamed "Land of the Midnight Sun"? a-
Hawaii, b-Montana, c-Maine, d-Alaska.
3. Who played Amy, the new Quaker wife of Marshall Will
Kane, in the 1952 movie western High Noon? a-Jean
Simmons, b-Grace Kelly, c-Barbara Rush, d-Janet Leigh.
4. Midnight blue has been an official Crayola color since 1958.
Prior to 1958, the same color went by what other name? a-
Persian blue, b-Prussian blue, c-Powder blue, d-Columbia
blue.