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Welcome to the FCS Newsletter, Summer Edition 2018
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We're half-way through summer already and fortunately, the forest fires aren't as bad as they were around the province last year. I have only worn my bandana a few times so far, rather than darn near living in it.
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"Summersaults!"
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Unfortunately, my own lot in life took a turn for the worse at the beginning June, and only now am I trying to pull out of it now. I broke my collarbone June 11th, had surgery to get a plate with 6 screws put in a couple days later, and the rest of this time has been recuperation at home. Not an easy situation by any means. Each time I've thought I could be doing more, I've ended up back on my "ramp" to rest my left shoulder blade. I just had my second followup with the doctor and can finally start driving again and working on strength training to the affected shoulder. This means I can start making usual stops hopefully, and the occasional onsite client visit again. I'll be contacting some of you individually about that as you haven't heard from me in almost 2 months
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Stop in and Say Hi!
On the note of communication, a long distance friend gave me a smartphone they no longer use, so the business number now has a phone attached to it instead of just text messaging. It is a Vancouver number, as that was the closest area code the free service could give me, but I've tried a couple calls on it from the new-to-me phone, and quality was good in two wifi zones. This is a wifi phone, meaning I won't get calls or texts when not in wifi zones, just as a heads up. I am trying to get it onto shaw go wifi with the connection I have at home, but have run into a background glitch that I'm waiting to iron out. Once that's done, more zones will open up where I'll be able to send and receive phone calls.
If you aren't familiar with the texting number, please visit the website: http://www.fa-ct.com again. Because of the many site improvements made, including the ability to maintain a "paper trail" via the site's ticketing system, I strongly encourage everyone to start using the website more often to purchase techsupport and stay in touch. A loyalty program now joins the referral program that you can read up on while you are there as well. A quick recap from the spring newsletter on site improvements:
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1) You can purchase time blocks to always have techsupport available whether you have the funds at the moment you need it or not. Just purchase your desired number of blocks ahead of time and those will be billed against whenever invoices are sent out to you. See past newsletters for instructions on adding a password to your existing account. The email address you receive my invoices at is the username on your account already. It just needs a password and you're good to go. (Purchases can now be paid for using bitcoin if you know anyone wanting to do their online purchases in this fashion)
2) You can now use the on-site ticket system to keep all your issue-related emails in one place without fear of accidentally deleting anything you may want to revisit. Start a ticket using the time block ID and order #, and you'll automatically be moved to a screen upon completion of the ticket where you can request a day and time for me to deal with your requested servicing. I've tested the workflow and this system works great!
3) The FCS referral program has grown up a bit! FCS now has a loyalty program called "Rewardicals" where you will earn reward tokens for every dollar you spend on time blocks at the FCS website. Rewardicals can be redeemed for online shopping gift certificates, redeemed to donate to your favourite global charity, purchase BTC if you are wanting to delve into that space, buy silver, and more on the way.
4) Get the new "temporary" phone number for FCS I may test out a couple other free wifi phone services, so this number may change, but for now, it is the current business number for calls and texts.
5) Read past newsletters
6) Read blog entries written by FCS.
7) Visit other recommended small-shop businesses online where you can purchase computer-related accessories and earn Rewardicals from them as well.
One small note: If you encounter an "internal error", that is a hosting glitch in the system. Refresh your page after a couple moments and carry on. The site will load. The hosting antivirus thinks a legitimate wordpress file is a virus for some reason, so the false positive occasionally causes brief fatal errors.
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Who You Gonna Call!?! FCS!
There aren't any imperative notifications in the tech world at this time that I am aware of. That's actually a good thing the way my body and mind have been over the past almost 8 weeks. I've had to do far more resting than I appreciate and even after just one bout of driving early this morning, I was glad to be back resting on my "ramp". Driving will get easier as muscles and bones heal. I think I did more damage to the shoulderblade than anyone realized, and may have cracked ribs in one zone as well. So healing is taking awhile and impacting how I do things.
To those clients who were expecting things over the past two weeks in particular, I apologize for those tasks being pushed back. I will revisit them for the month of August. I tried to do way too much in that two week period and it negatively impacted productivity in general.
If you want details as to what happened to put me in this fix, reply to this email and I'll fill you in. Otherwise, I will be making continued efforts to be active when I can and try to get back to normal as quickly as possible. I'm hoping to be fully functional by the end of August, but we'll see. Efforts have to stop backfiring on me first.
So consider this particular newsletter an update on where your poor tech has been and why she's been so silent. I do need more work, but I need to be able to handle it as well. At the moment, the easiest way to try to fit things in is while resting against that silly "ramp". In other words, work I can do from home on a borrowed laptop. I am at my computer desk right now seeing how long I can last here before having to return to the couch where my "ramp" is set up. The cracked rib section is already hinting I need to go to the couch, so I'll get this newsletter sent off before doing that.
Take care of yourself this summer, and do visit the website to grab the business number for texting and calling now.
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