I’ve been using Carbonite to backup my desktop for the past few weeks. While Daniel got it going okay, we have encountered two problems:

1. I’m on Vista, and since installing it I’ve started getting the blue screen of death. I did not want to attribute that to Carbonite, but when I went to look at some of my backup files, it happened again. Pretty sure it’s Carbonite.
2. When I asked Daniel if we should stick with them, he said “no.” Pretty definitive. When I asked why he said, “I’ve sent two questions to their support team and have not received any replies.” Those questions were sent over three weeks ago.

It’s funny, but I bet if Daniel had got a reply to his questions, we would not have canceled our account. I will give them this, they sent me to a pretty good customer survey when I canceled. I filled it out. That was a good experience.

Can anyone recommend a remote file backup service? Preferably one that is Vista-safe?

“Honest” Ed Mirvish, the most prolific Toronto entrepreneur of our time, died this morning. He was 92 years old.

Mirvish is probably best known as the proprietor of “Honest Ed’s,” the Bloor Street retail emporium. For anybody who’s ever visited or lived in Toronto, the kitschy discount store recalls a simpler, more innocent era. Many local residents have fond memories of the outlet, whose facade is littered with blinking lights and cheesy slogans.

But while most entrepreneurs would have been satisfied with sitting back and reaping the profits of their business, Mirvish was a different sort of man. He made his mark on Toronto through a history of giving back to the community.

When the landmark Royal Alexandra Theatre on King Street West was slated for demolition in 1963, Mirvish bought and restored the property. He then proceeded to purchase several nearby buildings, converting them into a series of unique restaurants (all named after himself) to draw people back to the area. Today the restaurants exist only as memories, but the revitalized theatre district remains a roaring success.

Mirvish is also credited with saving the Old Vic in London, England from demolition in the 1980s, for which he was honoured as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. (He was also a Member of the Order of Canada.) And in the 1990s the Mirvish family constructed the Princess of Wales Theatre, a block down the street from the Royal Alexandra, and took over the daily operation of the Pantages Theatre (now the Canon) as well.

To this day, Mirvish Productions continues to bring Toronto several musicals and shows each year through the three historic venues.

For a frugal man with humble beginnings, Mirvish was famously generous. He threw himself enormous birthday parties outside his store each year, providing free food and entertainment for everybody who came to celebrate. And each Christmas Honest Ed’s gave away thousands of free turkeys, brightening the holiday seasons of countless families over the years.

As a successful entrepreneur who endeared himself to the people of Toronto, Mirvish is truly the ultimate role model for every small business. Somehow, some way, he found a way to be both cheap and generous, both reserved and extravagant, both shameless and poised. He was a remarkable man of impeccable character, and his signature will forever remain on this city.

Thanks, Ed, for showing everybody how it’s done. Yours is a tough act to follow, but we’ll certainly try our best.

My name is Sarah Pullman. I’m a freelance project manager, web writer, community build… and yoga teacher, to name just a few of my hats. I’m also a happy FreshBooks user.

For a couple of years (why, why didn’t anyone tell me it could be so much easier!) I did all my time tracking and invoicing using a painful system of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, saved on my hard drive. The discomfort of using Microsoft Office tools was made worse by the inefficiency of my system—not to mention the total lack of style. Not having any design chops, I never did bother to make my Word invoice template look pretty.

But that all changed about six weeks ago, when I discovered FreshBooks.

The first thing I did was to create an invoice for work I had already done. It took about 2 minutes, I emailed it away to the client, it looked marvelous, and I was hooked.

The next week, I decided to try out their timesheet function. How glorious! It does everything I was doing in Excel, only it does it way better. You enter the client, you enter the project, you enter the task. You enter your hours. Then later, you generate an invoice based on those hours. Of course!

A few weeks later, things got even better still, when I decided to play with the little stopwatch feature. It’s pretty basic, really — you enter what project and task you’re working on, and you hit “start”. You can pause, or you can stop, and then you can send those hours automatically to your timesheet. Now, this stopwatch won’t do you much good if you’re working offline (airplanes, non-wifi cafes, at the cottage, whatever), but other than that, all good.

I’d never actually worked with a stopwatch or timer before. And this may be obvious to people who *have* used such a thing befo… but I felt like it seriously enhanced my focus. I am rather too prone to succumbing to distractions, and to flipping around from task to task while I’m working — even though I know that it’s an inefficient way to work, most of the time. With the timer running, I felt an obligation to actually just stick to the task at hand, and I stayed with it until it was finished (save a phone call that I decided to take, and I just hit “pause” for that).

All this to say that I really like FreshBooks, and I think that you should consider giving them a whirl. As a bonus, an independent contractor with 3 or fewer current clients can get away with using the free service. But their service can also be used by businesses with needs much more complex than mine, and I’m sure it would make life easier for many small businesses. As I said — local Toronto company, great people, responsive to customer needs, and a very useful service. Happy Time Tracking!

We’ve been hiring for a while, and about a month ago Levi and I headed out to lunch with a candidate who arrived about half an hour early for his interview. The candidate was Aaron Adams.

The truth is we’d been looking forward to this interview on account of Aaron’s outstanding cover letter. After lunch we returned to the office, told Aaron we’d probably be in touch with him in about two weeks as we continue to interview. Once Aaron stepped out of the office I turned to Levi and said, “Do you want to hire that guy?” Levi’s reply: “Hell yeah!”, followed by confessions that he almost broke down during lunch and offered him a job. I admitted the same.

Levi and I just knew we had to have this guy on our team. We called Aaron’s cell as he was walking away from the office and asked him if he’d like the job. He said yes. We told him to come back to the office to grab a contract with the caveat that we would follow up on some of his references. He started on Monday and the rest is history.

For the record I’ve never hired anyone like that before. We’re slow to hire because we hire for fit, but sometimes you just know… I guess you can chalk it up to a Blink moment for both Levi and I, and about a month in I have to say our instincts were spot-on. Aaron showed up on day one and started answering the phone. We did not expect him to be ready for that, but he taught himself the product over the weekend and we were flabbergasted by how well he learned our product and how deeply he understands both our customers and their needs.

If you call us these days you will likely speak with Aaron as he is managing our front line customer support. He was very involved with the phpBB community a few years back and he brings a strong sense of community to the role. Please give us a call or shoot us an email and join me in welcoming Aaron to the team.

FreshBooks was founded by me and Joe in January 2003. We built the service in our spare time over the the course of about 14 months while holding down our day jobs. Those days were so exciting - they were some of the most inspired, impassioned and tumultuous days of my life.

Yesterday I spoke with an entrepreneur who is living those kind of days himself. He is seeking financing for his web app. In speaking with him I was reminded of those days…So many ideas, so many directions we could take things and so many directions things could go. I still feel this way, but I’ve learned some lessons that make the ride smoother.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned (for my mental health if nothing else) is to ask myself, “Is this really a problem?” when an issue pops into my head. If you possess an entrepreneur’s mind, or you are part visionary, it’s really easy to envision problems that are coming down the road. This is important and it’s a strength…except when you are just getting started. When you are getting started you don’t have any problems. You think you do, but you just don’t.

I remember spending time and energy trying to mitigate problems of scale when building the first version of FreshBooks. I spent a lot of energy on “What ifs?” That was a mistake. Instead my whole focus should have been getting the product to look and work wonderfully, building a team and growing a group of people to use my product once it was released.

As time goes on it’s important to spend more and more of your time managing potential risks, but I still ask myself, “Is this really a problem?” My role has changed - and so it should - so that one of my key functions now is to foresee risks and prepare for them. Even if no action is taken today we have an understanding of what the risks are, their timelines and their scope. I’ve learned that if we just keep our heads down and keep doing what we are doing well, things will take care of themselves, but as you grow there is less and less of an excuse to work in a vacuum.

So, for anyone who is moonlighting and building a business - or just getting a business off the ground - don’t spend energy on the what ifs. Focus all your energy on what you can control and keep your feet moving…it’s a wonderful period in an entrepreneur’s life and it should be enjoyed as such.

As you may or may not know, FreshBooks is a Canadian company. As a result, we all tend to enjoy our Canadian holidays. Yesterday was the grandaddy of them all, Canada Day.

Today (Monday), the office is closed. We will respond to all emails and phone calls as soon as we can on Tuesday morning. See you then, and Happy Canada Day!