This one’s for the small-business owners among us.

Remember the old joke about the farmer who was straining to get his mule to move?

A neighbor comes over with a 2-by-4 and says, ``You have to be nice to a mule _ just watch."

He then proceeds to clobber the mule in the head with the board, takes the lead, and gently walks off with the mule in tow.

The farmer says, ``I thought you said you had to be nice.’’

The neighbor replies, ``Well, you do, but you have to get their attention first.’’

Sometimes, as we mules pull the cart known as life, it takes a clobbering for us to begin paying the proper attention.

Try not to be like the mule.

Technology has gradually ingrained itself everywhere, including your business, and that makes it easy to take for granted.

If I had a dollar for every time some piece of technology has failed, and then heard a remark like, ``you don’t realize how much you depend on it until it’s gone," I would be a significantly more-wealthy geek.

It’s bad enough when you have a localized, transient problem, for example when the fax machine dies. I’ve seen more than one salesperson’s jaw drop when told that the fax line isn’t working. ``Well, how are we going to get faxes, then?’’ is a normal response. The answer: You’re not.

If a such a simple malfunction can cause a major disruption in your business, think about what a fix you’d be in if you have a major problem.

A couple examples should be enough to get you thinking.

Let’s say you run a busy business and you have a computerized point-of-sale system. For my non-business readers, that’s a computerized cash register system. You have a half-dozen computer cash registers connected to a server, which keeps track of everything. Things go ka-chunking on wonderfully for a couple years.

Then, one day that server goes up in smoke. It can happen.

Now you have several dozen customers lined up ready to pay for their purchases. There’s not an old-fashioned cash register in sight.

What do you do next?

Lose business and money, that’s what.

Unless you’ve thought about it ahead of time.

You could have put in a backup server at some point. Or kept a couple of the dinosaur stand-alone registers around in the back room, and dragged them out to save the day.

Onward. Business example No. 2.

The business is higher-tech. It has a website that customers use to get information, and make purchases. There are a number of computers throughout the place for many different uses. The owner is busy enough with all the other parts of the business, and doesn’t have a lot of computer expertise, so he hires a person to ``do their computer stuff."

The trouble is, the owner doesn’t know much about ``computer stuff," and places a lot of trust in his designated geek.

One day, the geek goes. Could be for a better job. Could have been because he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. At any rate, no more resident geek.

After a couple days, you realize nobody else knows how to update prices on the website.

Two days later, half the office computers come down with a virus. The rest are either intolerably slow or simply won’t start up at all.

In desperation you bring in a new geek to begin sorting things out, and realize nobody knows the administrative passwords, or even what background programs need to run to keep your outfit going.

You learn a new term: acid-reflux.

Now, both of these sample situations could have been planned for, at least, if not avoided.

But that would have required some forethought. That’s what you need, if you’re not going to be a mule.

The moral of the story is: Pay attention to the technology that makes your business work. Learn about it, and think about it. Think about what would happen if it breaks. Plan for when that happens. Acquaint yourself with those who you trust with your important technology. Make sure those you trust with maintaining your business processes are worthy of that trust.

In other words, don’t wait for a whack with that 2-by-4 to begin paying attention.

Bruce Endries is former systems manager at The Daily Star. He can be reached by e-mail at techgp@dailystarmail.com.