Kathy Ivens here --

I put this page together for both your convenience and mine. I greatly appreciate (and often enjoy!) hearing from all of you but unfortunately at this point I get so many reader letters each day that if I answer all of them I won't make my writing deadlines, which is how I earn my living. Also, I occasionally try to find time to have a life.

So, I've stolen an idea from another writer, who put together a Frequently Asked Questions page, in the hope that many of you can get quicker answers to your questions, and I've added advice on how to pose a question that I can understand and respond to more quickly.

This isn't intended to keep you from e-mailing me -- you're always welcome to, and I promise that until the volume becomes completely unmanageable I will read every single one of them! I just ask that you understand my time constraints.

How best can I study for an MCSE or other certification?

I'm really not the best person to ask. I personally don't attach much value to an MCSE because it's a vendor-controlled certification. No one accredits or monitors Microsoft's certification process, and I'm only joking a little when I wonder aloud if Microsoft's certification group isn't an arm of their Marketing department. I have a lot of respect for certification generally, but until Windows certification processes are run by disinterested third parties, the way accounting, medical, and other professional certifications are run, I choose to look at these certificates with disdain.

The books and articles I write are intended to help you understand features, perform tasks, and troubleshoot your enterprise. Within the contents, you'll find plenty of information that you'll encounter in certification tests, but the books aren't written or organized for that purpose.

Unfortunately, employers use this faulty paradigm to make it easier to interview and hire candidates (and many of them are not getting the level of experience and professionalism in new employees that they think they are, which is the price they pay for their laziness and naiveté). So, if you need to pass a certification test, look to the books, articles, and newsletters specifically targeted for that goal.

Can you send me a copy of some article that you wrote?

I'm afraid I can't supply reprints of my articles, as I do not own the copyright or the distribution rights on those articles -- typically the magazine publisher does. Please contact them.

Will you write a white paper on [fill in the blank] for us?

Sure, provided I have time. I've written quite a few corporate manuals, most of them for accounting and networking procedures. Many companies think it's a good idea to build the company protocols and rules into accounting instructions, and they also like department-specific manuals (e.g. one for Accounts Payable, one for Accounts Receivable, and so on). My rate is US$3/word.

Can I excerpt [some text from a book or article] in our [software, book, newsletter]?

It depends. If it's my free newsletter -- the one you signed up for at www.cpa911.com -- then you may excerpt the newsletter, so long as you attribute the excerpt as follows: "The previous material was excerpted from Newsletter Issue [fill in the date]; and for a free subscription, visit www.cpa911.com. This material is copyright [newsletter year] CPA911 Publishing, LLC".

If you're referring to one of my books, or to an article that I've written for a magazine, then please contact the publisher -- I can't grant reprint or excerpt rights, as I don't retain the copyright.

What's that, the FAQs didn't answer your question? Well, then, e-mail me with the question and I'll get to it as quickly as I can! But permit me to beg you to consider a few things when e-mailing me. And I apologize if I sound curmudgeonly in some of these suggestions, that's not my intention -- I'm just trying to set up a situation in which it's possible to respond to you.

Consulting via E-mail is Dangerous

Don't ask general consulting questions, such as "how do I set up my Windows 2000 Network for failover", or "how do I add [insert feature here] to user logons". General, broad-based questions are impossible to answer unless I'm on-site and can see all the features, functions, and configuration options installed on your system. If I use the information you provide in your message, it's a certainty that there's additional information I don't have, and that information could negatively impact any solution I suggest. I suggest that instead of asking me broad questions, you hire a good consultant. I no longer do on-site consulting, and I don't want to return to that business via e-mail.

First, Try The Basics

Before mailing me, please be sure that you've got all the latest software. For books on Windows, Office, etc., make sure you've installed hotfixes and service packs. Take a minute and check Microsoft's on-line Knowledge Base, a great source of oddball problems and solutions. For questions on accounting procedures, make sure you've checked with your accountant before you configure the way transactions will post. That's better than asking me how to handle your general ledger.

Please Think Out Your Question

Be sure your question is posed in a logically organized manner - state the problem, then the current setup. Collect the facts -- and your thoughts -- and clearly lay out the problem.

Please Don't Send Attachments

For security reasons, I don't open document attachments from folks that I don't know. So I won't read attached documents. Additionally, many people send me bitmaps of dialog boxes with error messages -- please don't. You see, I'm often traveling and there are times that a slow modem connection is the best I can do... so waiting twenty minutes for a bitmap to download that just contains two sentences (which could have been retyped or cut and pasted) can be very annoying.

Please Avoid Fancy Formatting

Wallpaper on HTML messages, fancy or large fonts, embedded graphics, or other formatting "cuteness" is another item that can severely slow down an email download when I'm in a bandwidth-challenged area. And, they're a pain to read. Plain text emails are best.

Please Use Standard Spelling And Grammar

Sometimes letters read something like this:
"...hi,i had just bought ur book on w2k ... I didnt see how 2 setup clusterz. I need step-by-step instuctions on this 4 one I need. Thx..."

Okay, call me cranky, but the reader's lack of standard grammar, spelling, inter-word spacing and silly abbreviations has two effects. First, it takes me considerably longer to read and understand. That example was short for example's sake, but I've received 500-word tomes encrypted in this fashion, and it can honestly take me ten minutes to puzzle them out. Second, this leads me to surmise that this reader has not organized his question well: if he can't take three more minutes to format the question in a readable form before sending it to me, then it's awfully likely that he's also not done his basic technical homework before writing me either. And certainly it's not unreasonable for anyone -- myself included -- to feel at least a bit insulted by someone saying, "I know you're helping readers out for free, but that doesn't stop me from wasting your time."

Along those lines, I've always found e-mails like the following pretty funny (if they weren't serious -- the italics are mine):
"Hi Kathy, just bought your book -- looks great! I haven't had time to read it yet, but I had a question about networking printers..."
Sigh.

I Don't Respond To "Urgent" Messages nor Receipt Requests

I know what it's like to be stuck on a problem with that helpless feeling of "this stupid thing SHOULD work... why doesn't it?", so if I can help, then I'm glad to. But messages marked "urgent" irritate me; it seems that the writer is saying, "I know you get 100 reader letters a day, but mine is REALLY IMPORTANT." Hey, they're ALL important.

It's the same thing with the "read receipt request". I'm offering free advice and I'll either respond to a message, or not, based on my time constraints. I never never let my e-mail software send a receipt.

Please Keep The Message Brief

Over the years, I've found that I do the best thinking and the best troubleshooting by writing down what's wrong, what tests I've done, and what I've eliminated so far. That usually takes a page or two -- a disorganized page or two. Then I re-read what I've got and boil it down: more concise is better.

That applies not only to how I ask myself for help, it also applies to how I ask others for help. One writer I know once said to me, "if I have to press Page Down to see your signature, then I probably won't bother." While that's not a hard-and-fast rule in my case, it's true that the shorter the question, the quicker the answer, in general.

I'm Afraid I Only Speak/Read English

'nuff said

Here's Where To E-mail Me

Depending on the subject matter, you can write me at the magazine (kivens@windowsitpro.com), or for accounting book issues, at kivens@cpa911.com. I look forward to hearing from you -- thanks for reading!