Life is Short

Have you ever wondered how nonprofit organizations, NGOs, and small businesses obtain computer / IT technical support? Yes? I have too. You see, I believe that many small nonprofit organizations and businesses have very lousy IT support, and don’t know where to begin in increasing its quality. While I do not (yet) have hard statistics, I believe that many of these organizations can, and are willing to, better utilize technology in their offices and in achieving their mission.

Before I wrote another blog post that I published recently, I was planning on writing a more general post about an idea that I have been spending a considerable amount of time on over the past 2-3 months, although this idea has been brewing in my mind for over a year and a half.

I recently sent the following letter to some 200+ recipients, most of whom do NOT work for any nonprofit organization, but who I was hoping would be able to help me spread the word that I designed a survey and was looking for nonprofit organizations & NGOs to fill it out:

I value the work of nonprofit organizations such as yours and would appreciate your insight related to your technology needs. My name is David White, and I am the founder and sole proprietor of Smooth Stone Services, which provides IT services including consulting and web hosting solutions to individuals and small businesses.

For over a year, I have been considering launching Smooth Stone Services into an organization that will provide affordable information technology services to any organization in the world doing community development. Areas of service could include IT consulting, server administration, web hosting solutions, office computer maintenance, and much more. My idea is to provide a combination of these services with professional attention to detail and understanding based on my experience with both IT and community development concerns.

As I launch this venture, I ask myself whether another technical support organization is needed. I believe that my vision is unique by laying a groundwork for very close interaction with churches and NGOs in order to best address their technology needs. I also believe that the technology used in the international community development sector is not as supported as well as it should be.

As I complete my business plan, I have designed a brief survey that I am hoping you will take a minute or two to complete. Your results are completely confidential, and your help will be greatly appreciated. If you know of other NGOs or churches anywhere in the world who might be willing to take this survey, I would appreciate your passing it on to them. The link to the survey is: http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/survey.php.

If you do not represent an NGO or church, please do not fill out the survey. Instead, if you do know anyone who meets this criteria, please forward this email to them.

Recently, I have been working hard to network with people and to obtain advice from those who have experience in what I am trying to do. For various reasons, I am strongly considering to begin launching Smooth Stone Services into full time operations in June of this year and to find a part time job until I am able to have enough clients in order to keep me busy.

If you are in Boston, and you think that you know of a nonprofit organization or small business that could use my help, why don’t you tell them about me? I would greatly appreciate the reference. You can also contact me at Smooth Stone Services with any suggestions or recommendations.

A couple weeks ago, I met with a SCORE adviser, and plan to meet with him again soon. I have also been writing a business plan for over a year, and recently have been work on a Cash Flow Projection and have been putting together a budget into multiple Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

I also obtained my MA Driver’s License recently – so I am an official, legal Massachusetts resident! Now, let’s hope that I am able to either find a job, find a part time job, or successfully launch a business in June.

I would appreciate any prayer, advice, networking connections, referrals, or other words of encouragement that you may be able to give as I continue to pray and think about this enormous venture. My heart, and my long term goal is to see Smooth Stone Services working internationally and for me to personally be involved in and working within small communities in developing countries. I want to help the poor help themselves, and I believe that I can do this by providing quality technology services to nonprofit organizations and NGOs throughout the world.

This short article will describe why and how, when you open an attachment in Microsoft Word, you need to click on “SAVE AS” and not “SAVE” when you save it for the first time

You and/or your friends are working on a Microsoft Word Document, you email it to yourself, and then you open the attachment. You click on “Save,” so surely the changes that you make to the file are safe, right?

WRONG!!!

If you click on File->Save after opening it as an E-mail attachment, and then close the document, the file will be completely lost. When you open the e-mail attachment, Microsoft Word creates a temporary file in which the file is downloaded onto your computer so that you can read the document. Your file is NOT “re-created” on your computer in a safe place, because Microsoft Word assumes that you are just reading the file – since you have opened it from an email attachment.

The second you close the document, any changes that you have made are lost, regardless of any changes you may have “saved.”

So instead of clicking on “File->Save” the first time you want to save some changes to a document that you have opened from an E-mail attachment, you need to click “File->SAVE AS”!!! This will then ask you where you want to create a permanent file, and where to save it on your computer. After clicking “File->Save As” once, THEN, on subsequent changes that you make, you can click “File->Save” or hit the Control Key with the letter S as a shortcut (CTL+S, in Microsoft Word using Windows will save your files. It’s a neat short-cut trick. If you want to be sure, however, just go to File-Save).

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