About
: Contact info, areas of expertise, business philosophy.
Articles
: Articles, Essays, Rants/Raves, and "On-The-Soapbox"
Tech Info
: Primarily How-To documents.
Downloads
: Get various Cosmic creations. These are mostly Perl scripts and FileMaker Databases.
Links
: Pointers to other resources on the web that might be useful.

About Cosmic Consulting

Cosmic Consulting is a sole-proprietorship computer consulting business operated by me, Tom Hays. Cosmic Consulting has been serving the Winchester, VA area since 1999 with custom-tailored and cost-effective service. Cosmic is often called in on cases when the off-the-shelf solutions are inadequate and the client feels that there must be a way for the computer to make the task easier. Cosmic Consulting can help you make the computers work for you and not the other way around.

Contact Info

"Tom Hays" <trhays@cosmicconsulting.com>.

Voice: 1 (540) 888-0008
FAX:   1 (540) 888-9971

I do not maintain a store front but if you would like to send me something by postal mail, I can be reached at:

Tom Hays, Cosmic Consulting
447 Whitacre Road
Gore, VA 22637-2144

Standard Services

FileMaker Pro

I develop both large and small FileMaker Pro databases for customers. I troubleshoot and maintain existing FileMaker Pro solutions as well as develop new ones from scratch. I can support versions of FileMaker from 3 through 7 including onsite training of database users or maintainers.

Some existing FileMaker projects are available through this web site.

Network Security

I value computer security very highly. I encourage everyone else to be responsible computer users and responsible users of the Internet. Part of being a responsible user is ensuring that your networked computers are reasonably secure not just to safeguard your own information but so that your systems aren't used as tools by third-parties to harass or attack others. The main threat today is the easy spread of viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Like many medical diseases, these computer maladies are very preventable with reasonable and prudent measures. Toward that goal, I provide professional services to help normal computer users achieve reasonable security and to help more careful users achieve high security.

Locate Access Vunlerabilities

If your computer is connected to a network, it is likely that you are vulnerable to automated attacks from other computers ("worms" i.e., network auto-propagating virus). By doing a Port Scan on your computer, Cosmic Consulting can locate all of the specific points of vulnerability to external attacks. You can then choose to turn off unneeded "services" to close off those ports and make your computer immune to that type of attack.

This concept of Ports is the high-tech equivalent of having ten phone lines with ten different phone numbers ringing the phone in your home. Ten is an arbitrary number, your computer has thousands available. Your computer usually has lots of network ports open by default and automatically "answer's" all of them. Assume you only need one listed phone number to receive calls and that is the number you give out to all your contacts. The other numbers are used only by scam artists or pranksters who call you while you are sleeping. Once you find out that you have ten lines to call instead of one (via a port scan) you can knowingly choose to unplug the unused ones or simply silence the ringers so nobody will answer them. Harassing phone calls on the other nine phones are instantly avoided. For your computer, "calls" on the other lines can be more than just annoyances. By exploiting bugs in your computer software, in the worst case, they can allow other people to gain complete control of your computer to erase your files, spread the worm to other computers, or to launch attacks on third parties.

Traffic Analysis to Detect Infected Computers

This service is going to be available soon.

In order to detect if one of your computers is already infected with a network worm, Cosmic can do an analysis of the network traffic coming from that computer. This analysis is to catch that computer "red-handed" trying to infect other computers. This is the high-tech equivalent to looking at the itemized long distance bill and seeing if there are any suspicious calls listed.

Wireless

It is quite unfortunate that wireless networks (e.g., Wi-Fi, 802.11b/802.11g, Airport) from most vendors are insecure by default. It takes work to make them secure. Are you secure?

Cosmic can do an audit of your wireless network to evaluate how secure you are compared to how secure you should be. Are you letting anybody have free access to your network? Are you letting anybody share your Internet connection? Can anybody eavesdrop on your network traffic? Has somebody set up a wireless access point in your network without your knowledge or permission? Cosmic can answer all of these questions and show you what you need to do to configure your wireless network more securely.

Website Evaluation

Is your website professionally done? Does it follow web standards? Is it bloated so that it downloads slowly? Does it follow Accessibility Guidlines? Does it work for well for all your range of potential site visitors using different versions of computer software, connection speeds, and even different Internet-aware devices such as PDA's and cell phones? Does it use techniques that make it easier to find in a search engine like Google?

If you can't answer these questions for yourself, have Cosmic do an evaluation of your website. Your webmaster might be doing an excellent job and you can gain confidence and a better understanding of the quality of the work. Or your webmaster might need to be told of the various areas in need of improvement. A poor website drives away business. Don't be in the dark.

Webmaster Services

Cosmic Consulting can create, maintain, and revise your website. With skills more weighted toward the technical side and less in the design side, Cosmic is ready to make your vision of a website into a reality using advanced standard web technologies including raw HTML coding, CSS, Perl CGI, and JavaScript.

If you have an existing site but your in-house webmaster is in over his/her head technically, let Cosmic help by providing the technical expertise while your webmaster handles the design aspects. If desired, Cosmic can train your webmaster to handle these techical challenges.

Multimedia Services

Transfer of VHS or Camcorder to DVD

Do you have an in-house training video or video of a special event on VHS video cassete or camcorder footage and would like the convenience of having it on DVD? Cosmic Consulting can transfer your material to DVD including chapter markers for easy navigation. If your material needs to be edited, Cosmic can do that too including scene transitions and titles.

Make QuickTime movies of your video material

Whether it is to put on the web or to place on a CD-ROM, Cosmic Consulting can transfer your video project to convenient and portable QuickTime movie files. VHS tape, video cam, or DVD format can all be converted to this format readable almost anywhere.

Macintosh OS Support and Training

Cosmic Consulting can help you configure your Macintosh computer (OS 8/9/X) and network, and also train you on using it and its programs. With experience using Macintosh systems since 1988 and UN*X based systems (Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, DEC ULTRIX OS/F, LINUX) since 1991, Cosmic Consulting is at home in the BSD UNIX aspects of MacOS X.

Specializing in Open Source/Non-Proprietary solutions

In today's computing world, many people find themselves stuck using expensive software continually requiring expensive upgrades. In many cases there is an alternative to being caught in this cycle of spending and frustration with the software bugs.

Software following the Open Source distribution model is usually higher quality than closed source software. Very often, the software is available to use free of charge since the author makes money by selling documentation or support. In many cases the software is developed by a collaboration of experts from around the globe with the sole intent of providing the best software to the community as a labor of love. Their reward is the esteem of their peers and the knowledge that their software is the best solution out there. There are many examples of the success of this development model including Apache, Linux, and Mozilla.

When appropriate, I recommend the stable, Open Source solutions to software problems to break the cycle of costly upgrades. Usually the solutions I implement make use of free software allowing the customer to connect to the most cost effective solutions. I frown on consultants that only recommend expensive proprietary solutions due to their inability to "think outside the box."