Jun 12

Upgrading MySql

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Apparently the last time I set up MySql I did it using some cheap (like crappy) installer. It didn’t include any of the extension dlls. I’ve now decided it is much less of a headache to simply download the zip file and do the configuration myself. A link to the instructions I followed. Worked great when I did so.

Installing PHP.

The path used for PHP is just an example, you can choose another if you want.

  • Extract the archive in C:\PHP (Rename it if necessary)
  • Rename C:\PHP\php.ini-recommended to C:\PHP\PHP.INI

Configure the Session directory

  • Open C:\PHP\PHP.INI

Make sure you remove the initial semicolons!

  • Find
;session.save_path = "/tmp"

replace it with

session.save_path = "C:\WINDOWS\TEMP"
  • Find
; **You CAN safely turn this off for IIS, in fact, you MUST.**
; cgi.force_redirect = 1

replace it with

; **You CAN safely turn this off for IIS, in fact, you MUST.**
cgi.force_redirect = 0

Configure PHP extensions

  • Find
; Directory in which the loadable extensions (modules) reside.
extension_dir = "./"

replace it with

; Directory in which the loadable extensions (modules) reside.
extension_dir = "C:\PHP\EXT"

If you can’t find “extension_dir” in your C:\PHP\PHP.INI file, add it to the bottom of the file.

MySQL extension

As Gallery 2 uses a database to store it’s metadata, you need to enable database support in PHP. This guide uses MySQL, but the procedure would be similar for Postgres or Oracle.

  • Find
;extension=php_mysql.dll

replace it with

extension=php_mysql.dll

Gettext extension

  • In order to make the localization of g2 (multi-language) work you need the gettext extension of php. This can be enabled in php.ini. G2 does hint you for that. However gettext is a little strange extension.
  • Find
;extension=php_gettext.dll

replace it with

extension=php_gettext.dll

But now comes the crux. php_gettext.dll is depending on \php-install-dir\dll\iconv.dll All other extensions work flawlessly for me. But gettext.dll required me to put iconv.dll into a dir that is included in the searchpath. E.g. /windows/system32 I then overreacted and copied all dll’s to that /system32 dir. The manual of php 4 tells you to copy the dll’s to the /php-install-dir/ but that only works if you add manually the php dir into the path statement of windows.

GD2 extension

Find the extension in your php.ini and remove the # in front of the line ;extension=php_gd2.dll

  • Find
;extension=php_gd2.dll

replace it with

extension=php_gd2.dll

....

Make PHP available to IIS

Set the system path to include C:\PHP

  • Click on My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables
  • Scroll down the System Variables (bottom window) and doubeclick on the PATH variable
  • Add the following to the end (make sure you add the initial semicolin)
;C:\PHP
  • Click OK

Make PHP.INI available to PHP

  • While you still have the Environment variables window open click new
  • In the Variable Name field enter
PHPRC
  • Set the Variable Value to
C:\PHP

This will make PHP.INI available to PHP (We will verify this later)

Configuring IIS

You have a choice of whether to setup PHP to use the ISAPI extension, CGI executable, or using FastCGI. The ISAPI extension is not fully stable, and the CGI executable’s performance is very poor because after every request the php-cgi.exe executable is unloaded. So if the php-cgi.exe executable is always loaded into memory then that would greatly increase the performance. There are two ways of doing this.
1. Spend $500 for Zend’s own WinEnabler [2]
2. Setup the free FastCGI program that does the same thing as WinEnabler

The recommended way of running PHP on IIS is using FastCGI. Below you will find instructions on how to setup PHP using ISAPI but if your site is going to serve lots of pages, you will probably want to go with FastCGI.

Add the PHP ISAPI extension to IIS Web Service Extensions

  • Click on Start -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
  • Expand the local computer in the left pane
  • Click on “Web Service Extensions” in the left pane
  • In the right pane, click the blue underlined text, “Add a new Web service extension…”
  • Enter “PHP5 ISAPI” as the “Extension name”
  • Click the “Add…” button and browse to the php5isapi.dll file in your C:\PHP install directory
  • Click Open -> OK
  • Check the “Set extension status to Allowed” checkbox and click “OK”

Adding the PHP parsing to your IIS website

Note: You can add this either on the top-level Web Sites or to individual web sites beneath it. If you add it to the top-level web sites node in the left pane, it applies to all websites on the IIS instance. You can also choose to only install it on specific websites beneath the top-level node, in that case it will only apply to that site. The procedure for adding is the same for both scopes.

Be careful when applying this to the top-level node, as it will override settings defined in the individual websites beneath it.

  • In the left pane, expand Web Sites
  • Right Click the website you want to configure, and select properties
  • Open the Home Directory tab
  • Click Configuration
  • Then go to the Mappings tab
  • Click Add…
  • Enter the full path to php5isapi.dll in the “Executable” textbox or click the Browse button to browse your way to it. If you have followed the path recommendations in this guide, the fill path should be C:\PHP\php5isapi.dll
  • Enter .php in the Extension textbox
  • Select Limit to, enter GET,POST,HEAD
  • Click OK and verify that .PHP is now included in the Application extensions listbox
  • Click OK

This configures IIS to understand what to do with files ending with .php

Adding scripting permissions

  • While still having the Web Site Properties dialog box open, click Home Directory
  • Make sure that “Execute permissions” dropdown is set to “Scripts only”.
  • Click OK
Jun 12

Eventum software

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I recently set up a issue tracking software called Eventum. Boy was it FUN! The 3 minute install took me about 4 1/2 hours. I had to upgrade mySql (actually I chose to when I started to get an unexpected error during the install – turns out my install was missing some dlls). That upgrade was a real pain in the butt… until it I got it right. It only took about 10 minutes once I figured out exactly what to do. Then Eventum only took about 10 minutes from that point. Here’s a gotcha in eventum though. The source of this information is here. I just removed that setting and POOF… everything worked.

From: Date: April 26 2007 11:41am
Subject: SUCCESS!! Eventum 2.0.1 Installation on WinXP/SP2+Apache-2.2.4+PHP-5.2.1+MySQL-5.0.37-nt community edition
List-Archive: http://lists2.mysql.com/eventum-users/3965
Message-Id: <4847DBE579D78B4A9C610E2EA77B463413BED730@inblrk999msx.in002.siemens.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hi all,

A Million Thanks to Gaetano Giunta for providing the "breakthrough" =
tip!!

I feel the Eventum Wiki needs to be updated with the following info =
ASAP!!

1. The SQL Mode should NOT have "STRICT_TRANS_TABLE".  This is set by =
default.
   I changed it through the MySQL Administrator GUI and restarted the =
MySQL
   Service.  The "SQL Mode" setting is under "Advanced" tab for "Startup
   Variables", in the MySQL Administrator GUI.

2. PHP should have the "Gettext" extension enabled in addition to the =
"GD"
   and "MySQL", without which, although the Setup goes through fine, we
   would still get a blank page while trying to do the first login.

Now, I am able run both 1.7.1 and 2.0.1 on my laptop!!

Thanks and rgds,
Watson
Jun 10

Success and Motivation (4 of 8)

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The quoted text below was copied directly from BlogMaverick.com with the permission of Mark Cuban. The source link is http://blogmaverick.com/2004/05/25/success-and-motivation-p4/.

You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business. I used to tell myself that it was ok to make little mistakes, just don’t make the big ones. I would continuously search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, 3 bucks for a magazine, 20 bucks for a book. One good idea that lead to a customer or solution and it paid for itself many times over. Some of the ideas i read were good, some not. In doing all the reading I learned a valuable lesson.

Everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it.

I remember going into customers or talking to people in the industry and tossing out tidbits about software or hardware. Features that worked, bugs in the software. All things I had read. I expected the ongoing response of “Oh yeah, I read that too in such-and-such.” That’s not what happened. They hadn’t read it then, and they haven’t started reading yet.

Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage. Sure, there were folks that worked hard at picking up every bit of information that they could, but we were few and far between. To this day, I feel like if I put in enough time consuming all the information available, particularly with the net making it so readily available, I can get an advantage in any technology business. Of course my wife hates that I read more than 3 hours almost every day, but it gives me a level of comfort and confidence in my businesses. AT MicroSolutions it gave me a huge advantage. A guy with little computer background could compete with far more experienced guys just because I put in the time to learn all I could.

I learned from magazines and books, but I also learned from watching what some of the up and coming technology companies of the day were doing. Its funny how the companies that I thought were brilliant then, are still racking it up today.

Every week a company called PCs Limited used to take a full-page ad in a weekly trade magazine called PC Week. The ad would feature PC peripherals that the company would sell. Hard Drives. Memory. Floppy Drives. Graphics Cards. Whatever could be added to a PC was there. What made the ad so special was that each and every week the prices got lower. If a drive was 2,000 dollars last week, it was $ 1940 this week. For the first time in any industry that I knew of, we were seeing vendors pass on price savings to customers.

The PC Limited ads became the “market price” for peripherals. I looked for the ad every week. In fact, I became a customer. I was in Dallas. They were in Austin.

I remember driving down to pick up some hard drives that I was going to put into my customers PCs. I had no idea up to that point, but it turns out that they had just moved from the owner’s dorm room into a little office/warehouse space. I was so impressed by this young kid (I was a wise old 25 at the time), that I actually wrote a letter thanking him for the great job he was doing, and…I’m embarassed to say now, I told him that if he kept up what he was doing he was destined for far bigger and better things.

I kept on doing business with PCs Limited, and Michael Dell kept on doing what he was doing. I dont think he really needed my encouragement, but i have since told him that I thought his weekly full page ads with ever declining prices, changed the PC industry and were the first of many genius moves on his part.

Michael wasn’t the only smart one in those days.

One of the PC industry’s annual rituals was the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas. Every November, it was the only 3 days I knew I would get away and get a break from the office. It was work during the day. Visiting all the new technology booths. Trying to get better pricing from vendors. Trying to find out where the best parties were. If you could believe it, back in those days, the number one party was the Microsoft party. I sold some Microsoft products, so I could get in.

One particular year, I was on my way to having a memorable night. I had met some very, very attractive women (I swear they were). Got them some tickets to come with me to the big party. All is good. I’m having fun. They are having fun. Then we see him. Bill G. As in Bill Gates dancing up a storm. I’m a Bill Gates fan, so I wont describe his dancing, but he was definitely having fun.

At that point in time, Microsoft had gone public and Bill Gates was Bill Gates. If you were in the business you knew him or knew of him. The girls I was with were in the business. Long story short, I went to the bar to get some drinks for all us, I come back, they aren’t there. Come to find out the next day, Bill stole my girls. As I would learn later in life, money does make you extremely handsome. :)

Bill G also taught me a few things about business. Put aside how he killed IBM at their own game by licensing PC DOS to anyone that wanted it. What MicroSoft did to knock Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect off their thrones was literally business at its best.

At that point in time, software was expensive. WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 both sold for $495 and their publishers were proud of that fact. In order to be able to sell Lotus 1-2-3, you had to go to special training to become authorized. How crazy does that sound now going to a special class to be able to sell a spreadsheet. WordPerfect wasn’t quite as bad, but they had their own idiosyncrasies as well. Meanwhile, Microsoft was on the outside looking in. Excel, Word, Powerpoint were all far down the list of top sellers until lightning struck.

Microsoft decided to go against industry protocol and package those 3 programs as a suite and offer them as an upgrade to competitors’ products for the low, low price of 99 dollars. Of course you needed to have and use Windows for it to work, but in a time when people were buying new PCs with every dramatic increase in power and decrease in price, it was a natural move for us at MicroSolutions to sell the bundle. It made the effective price of the PC and software together far, far lower. We loved it. It also taught me several big lessons.

Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service. How can they put you out of business? Is it price? Is it service? Is it ease of use? No product is perfect and if there are good competitors in your market, they will figure out how to abuse you. It’s always better if you are honest with yourself and anticipate where the problems will come from.

The 2nd lesson is to always run your business like you are going to be competing with Microsoft. They may not be your direct competitor. They may be a vendor. They may be a direct competitor and a vendor. Whatever they may be to your business, if you are in the technology business, you have to anticipate that you will in some way have to compete with Microsoft at some point. I ask myself every week what I would do if they entered any of my businesses. If you are ready to compete with Microsoft, you are ready to compete with anyone else.

Watching the best taught me how to run my businesses. Along the way I taught myself a few things those come next blog.

Jun 09

Tennessee Conceal and Carry in Restaurants

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Late last week the Tennessee legislature passed a law that will allow those with a carry permit to bring their weapons into restaurants that serve alcohol. Previously, this was against the law. There are some caveats though. The person carrying is not allowed to drink any alcohol at all (that is definitely reasonable). As always, signs posted by the restaurant owners can be used to prevent the legal carrying of weapons onto the property (those signs still won’t prevent illegal weapons though).

At the current point and time I’m glad that the law has been modified. I live in Bartlett, close to Memphis, and Memphis is a high crime area. I carry everywhere I go. I occasionally like to go out and eat with my wife and kids. Previously, I had to take some pretty big chances.

I could:

(1) Take my firearm in to the restaurant and hope it wasn’t spotted. If I was it could cost me a hefty fine or possibly the loss of my firearm and my permit.

(2) Leave my firearm in my car and pray that it was not broken in to while I was inside

(3) Leave my firearm at home

(4) Skip eating out altogether

Option (1) kept my family and I safe for the entire dining experience. Option (1) and (3) kept the gun from being stolen. Option (2) kept us safe while we were in the car, but not going between the car and the restaraunt (the most likely time to get robbed, etc) and it also put the gun itself at risk.

With these things in mind I am very pleased with the updated law. I know I will eat out more knowing I won’t have to leave my firearm that I almost always carry in my car. I don’t shop at stores where signs are posted that firearms are not allowed and I have no intentions of eating at such an establishment either. I know others feel equally strong in the opposite direction on this subject and all I can say is that as a responsible carry permit holder I strongly believe I am in the right on this one.

I read this comment the other day and thought it was about as true as it gets:

“… and yes if you sat next to me and my kids in McDonalds in the playground area, you were within 10 feet of a gun and never knew it. truthfully that was as safe as you and your kids could be without a police officer at the next table over.”

Jun 08

Success and Motivation (3 of 8)

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The quoted text below was copied directly from BlogMaverick.com with the permission of Mark Cuban.

This isn’t quite a continuation of part 1, but I happened to stumble across an interview I did last year for Young Money Magazine that covers a lot of the things that I probably would have included in part 2. :)

YOUNG MONEY TALKS TO CUBAN: During an exclusive interview with YOUNG MONEY, billionaire Mark Cuban shared his thoughts on using the fear of failure as a motivator, beating the competition, and why investing in the stock market may not be such a good idea.

YM: What is the key to recognizing a profitable business opportunity?

CUBAN: Knowing the industry very well. Most people think it’s all about the idea. It’s not. EVERYONE has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in an industry, then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea.

YM: What personal characteristics should a person possess in order to become a successful entrepreneur?

CUBAN: Willingness to learn, to be able to focus, to absorb information, and to always realize that business is a 24 x 7 job where someone is always out there to kick your ass.

YM: Did you set career goals for yourself while you were in college? If so, what were they?

CUBAN: To retire by the age of 35 was my goal. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get there though. I knew I would end up owning my own business someday, so I figured my challenge was to learn as much as anyone about every and all businesses. [I believed] that every job I took was really me getting paid to learn about a new industry. I spent as much time as I could, learning and reading everything about business I could get my hands on. I used to go into the library for hours and hours reading business books and magazines.

YM: Do you consider yourself an innovator? Why?

CUBAN: No. I don’t really have new ideas, but I manage to combine information in ways most people hadn’t considered. They aren’t new ideas, it’s just that most people don’t do their homework about their businesses and industry, so there is usually a place to sneak in and do something a little different. You just have to make sure what you want to do can sustain a business and make it profitable rather than be a niche that can be crushed [by the competition].

YM: What advice would you give young adults just struggling to move up in the business world?

CUBAN: There are no shortcuts. You have to work hard, and try to put yourself in a position where if luck strikes, you can see the opportunity and take advantage of it. I would also say it’s hard not to fool yourself. Everyone tells you how they are going to be”special,” but few do the work to get there. Do the work.

YM: What types of opportunities would you pursue if you were starting over today? CUBAN: I just started a business called HDNet. There never is one area that has a door open to everyone. Try to find an area with something you love to do and do it. It’s a lot easier to work hard and prepare when you love what you are doing. YM: What would you tell entrepreneur hopefuls who are afraid of failing?

CUBAN: It’s good [for them]. I’m always afraid of failing. It’s great motivation to work harder.

YM: What is the most important piece of advice you could offer someone who’s just starting a business?

CUBAN: Do your homework and know your business better than anyone. Otherwise, someone who knows more and works harder will kick your ass.

YM: Did you have to sacrifice your personal life in order to become a business success?

CUBAN: Sure, ask about five of my former girlfriends that question… I went seven years without a vacation. (from the time I got fired from a job, and started MicroSolutions) I didn’t even read a fiction book in that time. I was pretty focused.

YM: Do you have any general saving and investing advice for young people?

CUBAN: Put it in the bank. The idiots that tell you to put your money in the market because eventually it will go up need to tell you that because they are trying to sell you something. The stock market is probably the worst investment vehicle out there. If you won’t put your money in the bank, NEVER put your money in something where you don’t have an information advantage. Why invest your money in something because a broker told you to? If the broker had a clue, he/she wouldn’t be a broker, they would be on a beach somewhere.

Jun 07

Success and Motivation (2 of 8)

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The quoted text below was copied directly from BlogMaverick.com with the permission of Mark Cuban. The source link is http://blogmaverick.com/2004/04/25/success-and-motivation-part-2/.

So my career in Dallas begins. I’m a software salesperson with Your Business Software in Dallas. $18k per year. The first retail software store in Dallas.

I have to sweep the floor and be there to open the store, but that’s not a bad thing. When I tell my future ex-girlfriends that I sell software and am in the computer biz, I’m not going to mention the sweeping the floor part. Plus, I had to wear a suit to work, and the 2-fer madness specials looked good at happy hour after work. Better yet, the store didn’t open till 9:30am, which meant if I had a fun night, I had at least a little time to sleep.

I bet right about now you are questioning where my focus was? Where was my commitment to being the future owner of the Dallas Mavericks? Please. I was stoked I had a good job. I was stoked it was in an industry that could turn into a career. At 24, I was just as stoked that the office was close to where the best happy hours were and that I might finally have more than 20 bucks to spend for a night on the town.

Since I’m talking about partying, I do have to say that my friends and I were very efficient in that area. Beyond living off bar food and happy hours, we literally would agree that none of us would bring more than 20 bucks for a weekend night out. This way we all could pace each other. At least that was the way it was supposed to work, and it did until we figured out the key to having a great night out on the cheap. They key was buying a bottle of cheap, cheap champagne. I can’t even spell the name, but it was a full bottle, and it cost 12 bucks. Tear the label off and as far as anyone knew it was Dom. Each of us would grab one, and sip on it all night. It was far cheaper than buying beers or mixed drinks all night, and we never had to buy a drink for a girl, we just gave them some champagne! Of course the next day was hell, but since when was I responsible enough to care about a hangover…

But I digress. Back to business. As fired up as I was about the job, I was scared. Why? Because I have never worked with an IBM PC in my life. Not a single time, and I’m going to be selling software for it. So what do I do? I do what everyone does: I rationalize. I tell myself that the people walking in the door know as little as I do, so if I just started doing what I told my boss I would do, read the manuals, I would be ahead of the curve. That’s what I did. Every night I would take home a different software manual, and I would read them. Of course the reading was captivating. Peachtree, PFS, DBase, Lotus, Accpac… I couldn’t put them down. Every night I would read some after getting home, no matter how late.

Of course it was easy on the weekends. After drinking that cheap champagne, I wasn’t getting out of bed till about 9pm, so I had tons of time to lie on the floor and read. It worked. Turns out not a lot of people ever bothered to RTFM (read the frickin’ manual), so people started really thinking I knew my stuff. As more people came in, because I knew all the different software packages we offered, I could offer honest comparisons and customers respected that.

Within about 6 months, I was building a clientele and because I had also spent time on the store’s computers learning how to install, configure and run the software, I started having customers ask me to install the software at their offices. That meant I got to charge for consulting help: 25 bucks an hour that I split with the store. That turned into a couple hundred extra bucks per month and growing. I was raking it in, enough that I could move from the Hotel (that was what we called our apartment) where the 6 of us lived, into a 3 bedroom apartment across the street, where instead of 6 of us, there were only 3. Finally, my own bedroom!

I was earning consulting fees. I was getting referrals. I was on the phone cold calling companies to get new business. I even worked out a deal with a local consultant who paid me referral fees, which lead to getting a $1500 check. It was the first time in my adult life that I was able to have more than 1k dollars in the bank.

That was a special moment believe or not, and what did I do to celebrate? Nope…I didn’t buy better champagne. I had these old ratty towels that had holes in them and could stand on their own in the corner, they were so nasty I needed a shower from drying off after a shower…I went out and bought 6 of the fluffiest, plushest towels I could find. I was moving on up in the world. I had the towels. Life was good. Business was good and getting better for me. I was building my customer base, really starting to understand all the technology, and really establishing myself as someone who understood the software. More importantly no, most importantly I realized that I loved working with PCs. I had never done it before. I didn’t know if this was going to be a job that worked for me, or that I would even like and it turns out I was lucky. I loved what I was doing. I was rolling so well, I was even partying less… during the week.

Then one day, about 9 months into my career as a salesperson/consultant, I had a prospect ask if I could come to his office to close a deal. 9am. No problem to me. Problem to my boss, Michael Humecki. Michael didn’t want me to go. I had to open the store. That was my job. We were a retail store, not an outbound sales company. It sounded stupid to me back then too, particularly since I had gone on outbound calls during the day before. I guess he thought I was at lunch.

Decision time. It’s always the little decisions that have the biggest impact. We all have to make that “make or break” call to follow orders or do what you know is right. I followed my first instinct: close the sale. I guess I could have rescheduled the appointment, but I rationalized that you never turn your back on a closed deal. So I called one of my coworkers to come in and open up, and closed the deal. Next day I came in check in hand from a new customer and Michael fired me.

Fired. Not the first time it’s happened, but it reinforced what I already knew; I’m a terrible employee. I just had to face facts and move on. So rather than getting back on that “how the hell am I going to find a job” train, the
only right thing to do was to start my own company.

My first act of business? Pile into my buddy’s 1982 Celica, nicknamed Celly, and drive to galveston to party. Of course we stayed in only the best $19.95 a night, plug the hairdryer in the wall and the circuit blows, motel.
Nothing but the best as I prepared for my journey into entrepreneurial territory again. I couldsay I was preocuppied with how to get my new business off the ground. That while my friends got drunk, did stupid tourist
tricks and ate at greasy spoons,I sat by the pool on the 1 chaise lounge chair with rust on the clean side and wrote up my businessplan.I didn’t.I got just as drunk and ate the same disgusting food. Then we faced the
road trip terror that everyone knows exists, but refuses to admit, the ride home. It wasn’t until we pulled up to the apartment that it hit me. No job. No money. No way to pay the bills. But I had nice towels.

Fortunately the hangover didn’t last too long, and I realized I had to get off my ass and make something happen.

First day, first task, come up with a name. This was the start of the microcomputer revolution, and I wanted a name that said what the company was going to do, which was sell personal computers and software and help companies and individuals install them. I was going to offer microcomputer solutions. So after struggling with different names for about 30 minutes, I chose MicroSolutions Inc.

Now came the hard part. I had to call all the people I had done business with at my last company, and let them know that I had been shitcanned and ask them if they would come do business with me at MicroSolutions. I got the expected questions. NoI didn’t have an office. NoI didn’t have a phone yet other than my home phone. Yes it was just me. No I didn’t have any investors. The only question I dreaded was whether I had a computer to work with. I didn’t. Fortunately, no one asked.

I made a lot of calls, and got some decent response. We love you Mark, we want to give you a chance. A lot of lets stay in touch. I got two real bites. One from a company called Architectual Lighting and the other from a company called Hytec Data Systems.

Architectual Lighting was looking for a time and billing accounting system to allow them to track the work with clients. I don’t remember the name of the software package I told them about, I think it was Peachtree Accounting, but after going out to meet with them it came down to this. I offered to refund 100 pct of their money if the software didn’t work for them, and I wouldn’t charge them for my time for installing and helping them. In return, they would put up the 500 bucks it would take for me to buy the software from the publisher, and I could use them as a reference. This was my “no money down” approach to start a business. They said yes. I had a business.

My 2nd call Hytec Data, was run by Martin Woodall. I met with Martin at the S&D Oyster House on a beautiful June day, and I remember sitting there and him telling me, “I graduated in Computer Science from West Virginia
University. I have 50k in the bank and I drive a brand new Cadillac. I know technology better than you. We can work together”. I had a customer, and now with Martin’s help, I had some hope. Hytec Data sold multi user systems.  The old kind that used dumb terminals. He bundled it with accounting software and he and a contractor named Kevin, would make modifications to the Cobol source code. They were the hardcore geeks that could help me when I needed it. I was still just 10 months from my first introduction to PCs, and had zero clue about multi user systems. If I came across prospects that could use their system and software, I would get referrals. That was good.

Even better was Martin’s offer of office space. He and Kevin shared office space with the distributor of the computer systems he sold. They had this one office, that when the CEO of the distributors son wasn’t using it to
study his spanish, I could use it to make calls, and keep my folders and paperwork. Still no computer, but hey,I had an office and phone. I was bonafide…

At some point I’m going to have to go back and look at my appointment books that I kept from those days to remind myself of who my 2nd, 3rd and on from there customers were. They were small companies that I got to know very well. People that took me under their wing and trusted me, not because I was the most knowledgeable about computers, but because they knew I would do whatever it took to get the job done. People trusted me with keys to their offices. They would find me there when they got in in the morning and I was there when they left. I made 15,000 dollars that
first year. I loved every minute of it.

As time went on, my customer base grew. I got my friend and former roommate Scott Susens to help with deliveries. Scott was working as a waiter at a steakhouse at the time. I remember asking him over and over, would you please help me out. I have a customer that had bought a bunch of Epson dot matrix printers from me, and I had to sell Scott on how it wouldn’t be hard to learn how to hook a parallel cable to a pc and printer, and how learning all of this would be a career move compared to working at the steakhouse. Unfortunately, I couldn’t pay him as much as the steakhouse. My good fortune was that Scott worked nights and weekends and decided to take some time in the afternoons to help me out. Not long after that, he was working fulltime installing PCs, learning whatever he had to figure out before an install.

Martin also began to play a larger and larger role. His company was growing, and he was watching my company grow. I would get the PC based stuff, he would get the accounting system stuff. It was a nice split. The better part of the relationship was based on Martin being the most anal retentive personi had ever met in my life. While I covered my mistakes by throwing time and effort at the problem, Martin was so detail oriented, he had to make sure things were perfect so problems could never happen. We could drive each other crazy. He would give me incredible amounts of shit about how sloppy I was. I would give him the same amount back because he was so anal he was missing huge opportunities. We complemented each other perfectly. It would only be a matter of time before we both knew we had to be partners and work together instead of separately.

That first year in business was incredible. I remember sitting in that little office till 10pm and then still being so pumped up, I would drive over to the gym I belonged to and run 5 to 10 miles on the treadmill going through
that day, and the next in my head.Other days I would get so involved with learning a new piece of software that I would forget to eat and look up at the clock thinking it was 6 or 7pm and see that it was 1am or 2am. Time
would fly by.

It’s crazy the things that you remember. I remember when my accounts receivable got up to 15k and telling all my friends. I remember reading the PC DOS manual (I really did), and being proud that I could figure out how to set up startup menus for my customers. I remember going to every single retail store in town, BusinessLand, NYNEX, ComputerLand, CompuShop, all those companies that are long gone, and introducing myself to every salesperson to try to  get leads. I would call every single big computer company that did anything at all with small businesses, IBM, Wang, Dec, Xerox, Data General, DataPoint (remember them?), setting meetings, asking to come to their offices since I couldn’t afford to take them to lunch. I didn’t need a lot of customers, but my business grew and grew. Not too fast, but fast enough that by the time MicroSolutions had been in business about 2 years, I had 85k dollars in the bank, a receptionist/secretary, Scott helping me out, and a 4 room office that I moved into along with Martin and Hytec Data Systems.

Then I learned a very valuable lesson. Martin had done a great job of setting up our accounting software and systems. I got monthly P&L statements. I got weekly journals of everything coming in and everything going out,
payables and receivables. We had a very conservative process where Martin would check the payables, authorize them and then use the software to cut the checks. I would then go through the list, sign the checks and give them to Renee our secretary/receptionist to put in the envelope and mail to our vendors.

One day, Martin comes back from Republic Bank, where we had our account. He had just gone through the drive through and one of the tellers who he would see every day dropping of our deposits asked him to wait a second. She comes back and shows him a check that had the payee of a vendor, WHITED OUT and Renee Hardy, our secretary’s name typed over it. Turns out that in the course of a single week, our secretary had pulled this same trick on 83k of our 85k in the bank. As Martin delived the news, I obviously was pissed. I was pissed at Renee, I was pissed at the bank, I was pissed at myself for letting it happen. I remember going to the bank with copies of the checks, and the manager of the bank basically laughing me out of his office telling me that I “didn’t have a pot to piss in”. That I could sue him, or whatever I wanted, but I was out the money.

I got back to the office, told Martin what happened at the bank, and then I realized what I had to do about all of this. I had to go back to work. That what was done, was done. That worrying about revenge, getting pissed at the
bank, all those “I’m going to get even and kick your ass thoughts”were basically just a waste of energy. No one was going to cover my obligations but me. I had to get my ass back to work, and do so quickly. That’s exactly what I did.

Jun 06

Success and Motivation (1 of 8)

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The quoted text below was copied directly from BlogMaverick.com with the permission of Mark Cuban. The source link is http://blogmaverick.com/2004/04/23/success-and-motivation-part-1/.

I did it too. I drove by big houses and would wonder who lived there. What did they do for a living? How did they make their money? Someday, I would tell myself, I would live in a house like that. Every weekend I would do it.

I read books about successful people. In fact, I read every book or magazine I could get my hands on. I would tell myself 1 good idea would pay for the book and could make the difference between me making it or not.

I worked jobs I didn’t like. I worked jobs I loved, but had no chance of being a career. I worked jobs that barely paid the rent. I had so many jobs my parents wondered if I would be stable. Most of them aren’t on my resume anymore because I was there so short a time or they were so stupid I was embarrassed. You don’t want to write about selling powdered milk or selling franchises for TV repair shops. In every job, I would justify it in my mind whether I loved it or hated it that I was getting paid to learn and every experience would be of value when I figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up.

If I ever grew up, I hoped to run my own business some day. It’s exactly what I told myself every day. In reality, I had as much doubt as confidence. I was just hoping the confidence would win over the doubt and it would all work out for the best.

I remember being 24 years old, living in Dallas in a 3-bedroom apartment with 5 other friends. This wasn’t a really nice place we all kicked in to move up for. This place has since been torn down. Probably condemned. I didn’t have my own bedroom. I slept on the couch or floor depending on what time I got home. I had no closet. Instead I had a pile that everyone knew was mine. My car had the usual hole in the floorboard, a ‘77 FIAT X19 that burned a quart of oil that I couldn’t afford every week.

To make matters worse, because I was living on happy hour food, and the 2 beers cover charge, I was gaining weight like a pig. My confidence wasn’t at an all time high. I was having fun. Don’t get me wrong. I truly was having a blast. Great friends, great city, great energy, pretty girls. Ok, the pretty girls had no interest in my fat and growing ass at the time, but that’s another story….

I was motivated to do something I loved. I just wasn’t sure what it was. I made a list of all the different jobs I would love to do. (I still have it.) The problem was that I wasn’t qualified for any of them. But I needed to pay the bills.

I finally got a job working as a bartender at a club. A start, but it wasn’t a career. I had to keep on looking during the day.

About a week later I answered a want ad out of the newspaper for someone to sell PC Software at the first software retail store in Dallas. The ad was actually placed by an employment agency. The fee was to be paid by the company, so I gave it a shot.

I put on my interview face, and of course my interview suit, which just happened to be one of my 2 polyester suits that I had bought for the grand total of 99 dollars. Thank god for 2-fer, 2-fer, 2-fer madness at the local mens clothing store. Grey Pinstripe. Blue Pinstripe. Didn’t matter if it rained, those drops just rolled down the back of those suits. I could crumple them. They bounced right back. Polyester, the miracle fabric.

I wish I could say the blue suit and my interview skills impressed the employment agency enough to set up the interview with the software store. In reality, not many had applied for the job and the agency wanted the fee so they would have sent anyone over to interview. I didn’t care.

I pulled out the grey for my interview at Your Business Software. I was fired up. It was my shot to get into the computer business, one of the industries I had put on my list!

I remember the interview well. Michael Humecki the Prez, and Doug (don’t remember his last name), his partner double-teamed me. Michael did most of the talking to start. He asked me if I had used PC software before. My total PC experience at the time was on the long forgotten TI/99A that had cost me 79 dollars. I used it to try to teach myself Basic while recovering from hangovers and sleeping on the floor while my roommates were at work. They weren’t impressed.

I was trying to pull out every interview trick I knew. I went through the spiel about how I was a good salesperson, you know the part of the interview where you are basically begging for a job, using code phrases like “I care about the customer”, “I promise to work really, really hard” and “I will do whatever it takes to be successful”. Unfortunately, I was getting that “well if no one else applies for the job, maybe” look from Michael.

Finally, Doug spoke up. He asked me. “What do you do if a customer has a question about a software package and you don’t know the answer?” All of the possible answers raced through my mind. I had to ask myself if this was the “honesty test question” you know where they want to see if you will admit to things you don’t know. Is this some trick technology question and there is an answer everyone but me knows? After who knows how long, I blurted out that “I would look it up in the manual and find the answer for them.” Ding, ding, ding…Doug just loved this answer.

Michael wasn’t as convinced, but he then asked me the question I was dying to hear: “Would you not go back to the employment agency at all, so when we hire you we don’t have to pay the fee?” I was in.

What does all this mean? Nothing yet. It was just fun to tell. You have to wait till part 2, if you care, and if there is a part two. Right now, it’s much more important that I go play with my daughter.

Jun 06

Intro to eight part Success and Motivation series

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Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a blog called blogmaverick. He tends to post business related content with an “eye to the future” kind of feel. I like reading them and you can tell he is a sharp guy as you read. My favorite posts, by far, were a recent set focused on his own past. They discuss where he was (his stature in life economically) when he got started, what his motivations were and how he ultimately won. As someone who runs a small (very small – I still have my day job ) business and who continues to try to get over the hump these were a great read.

I contacted Mr. Cuban to get permission to repost my favorite eight items. He agreed. So prepare to be motivated (or if nothing else to get a peek into the mind of a self-made billionaire). This will be an eight part series. I hope you enjoy.

Jun 05

Some Wishful thinking explained

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According to this article (http://www.physorg.com/news158928941.html) quantum theory
may explain some cases of “wishful thinking”.

(PhysOrg.com) — Humans don’t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply “wishful thinking.” This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple  explanation for human decision-making – and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall.
Consider the following scenerio. You are playing a game. In this game you are given
the following things:
Only A or B can happen.
You can respond to any event with either X or Y.
If you KNOW A happens – the response with the highest probability of gain is X
If you KNOW B happens – the response with the highest probability of gain is X
Why in the world would you ever not do X? It seems you always should, right? Well,
what if I told you that X is really kind of a shady thing to do? It’s still the best
thing for you to do to come out on top, but it’s kind of “wrong”.
Here’s another scenerio…
“If you were asked to gamble in a game in which you had a 50/50 chance
to win $200 or lose $100, would you play?
In one study, participants were told that they
had just played this game, and then were asked to choose whether to try the same gamble
again. One-third of the participants were told that they had won the first game, one-third
were told they had lost the first game, and the remaining one-third did not know the outcome of their first game. Most of the participants in the first two scenarios chose to play
again (69% and 59%, respectively), while most of the participants in the third scenario
chose not to (only 36% played again). These results violate the “sure thing principle,” which
says that if you prefer choice A in two complementary known states (e.g., known winning
and known losing), then you should also prefer choice A when the state is unknown. So why
do people choose differently when confronted with an unknown state?
A different type of problem… Prisoners delimma.
“In their study, the scientists compared two models, one based on Markovian classical probability
theory and the other based on quantum probability theory. They modeled a game based on
the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which is similar to the gambling game. Here, participants were asked if they wanted to cooperate with or defect from an imaginary partner. Overall, each partner would receive larger pay-outs if they defected, making defecting the rational choice. However, if both partners cooperated, they would each receive a higher pay-out than if both defected. Similar to the results from the gambling games, studies have shown that participants who were told that their partner had defected or cooperated on the first round usually chose to defect on the second round (84% and 66%, respectively). But participants who did not know their partner’s previous decision were more likely to cooperate than the others (only 55% defected). It seems as if these individuals were trying to give their partners the benefit of the doubt, at the expense of making the rational choice.”
What does it mean?

I personally, think it should be called “benefit of the doubt thinking” rather than wishful thinking. The article describes how in the “unknown” the other side is viewed as a mirror of themselves. Read the article for a better, deeper explanation. It’s worth the read if you are interested in that sort of thing.

May 30

Robots in War (2)

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This is another article I read recently about robots in wars. It is more philosophical in nature so keep that in mind as you read. Please consult the full text of the article for more. I really like the anecdotes about the swiss army accidentally invading Liechtenstein and how a British Army Platoon accidentally invaded a Spanish beach. Would these problems be eliminated with a Robot army? See the article for an answer.

I will be trying to dig up the paper itself (Araro’s “How Just Could a Robot War Be?”) and will also be doing some research into exactly what defines a “Just War”. I’ll post my findings at a later date.

I’ve included two long excerpts from the article below. Enjoy, and please consult the original article as it is quite well done.

In a fascinating paper entitled “How Just Could a Robot War Be?”, philosopher Peter Asaro of Rutgers University explores a number of robot war scenarios.

Asaro imagines a situation in which a nation is taken over by robots — a sort of revolution or civil war. Would a third party nation have a just cause for interceding to prevent this?

Asaro concludes that the use of autonomous technologies such as robot soldiers is neither “completely morally acceptable nor completely morally unacceptable” according to the just war theory formulated by Michael Walzer.

Just war theory defines the principles underlying most of the international laws regulating warfare, including the Geneva and Hague Conventions. Walzer’s classic book Just and Unjust Wars was a standard text at the West Point Military Academy for many years, although it was recently removed from the required reading list.

Asaro asserts that robotic technology, like all military force, could be just or unjust, depending on the situation.

h+: We’re using semi-autonomous robots now in Iraq and, of course, we’ve been using smart bombs for some time now. What is the tipping point – at what point does a war become a “robot war”?

PETER ASARO: There are many kinds of technologies being used already by the U.S. military, and I think it is quite easy to see the U.S. military as being a technological system. I wouldn’t call it robotic yet, though, as I think there is something important about having a “human-in-the-loop,” even if the military is trying to train soldiers to behave “robotically” and follow orders without question.

I think there is always a chance that a soldier will question a bad order, even if they are trained not to, and there is a lot of pressure on them to obey.

Ron Arkin is a roboticist at Georgia Tech who has designed an architecture for lethal robots that allows them to question their orders. He thinks we can actually make robots super-moral, and thereby reduce civilian casualties and war crimes.

I think Ron has made a good start on the kinds of technological design that might make this possible. The real technical and practical challenges are in properly identifying soldiers and civilians.

The criteria for doing this are obscure, and humans often make mistakes because information is ambiguous, incomplete, and uncertain. A robot and its computer might be able to do what is optimal in such a situation, but that might not be much better than what humans can do.

More importantly, human soldiers have the capacity to understand complex social situations, even if they often make mistakes because of a lack of cultural understanding.

I think we are a long way from achieving this with a computer, which at best will be using simplified models and making numerous potentially hazardous assumptions about the people they are deciding whether or not to kill.

Also, while it would surely be better if no soldiers were killed, having the technological ability to fight a war without casualties would certainly make it easier to wage unjust and imperial wars. This is not the only constraint, but it is probably the strongest one in domestic U.S. politics of the past 40 years or so.

By the way, I see robots primarily as a way to reduce the number of soldiers needed to fight a war. I don’t see them improving the capabilities of the military, but rather just automating them. The military hold an ideal vision of itself as operating like a well-oiled machine, so it seems that it can be rationalized and automated and roboticized. The reality is that the [human] military is a complex socio-technical system, and the social structure does a lot of hidden work in regulating the system and making it work well. Eliminating it altogether holds a lot of hidden dangers.

…

…

h+: You talk about the notion that robots could have moral agency – – even superior moral agency –- to human soldiers. What military would build such a soldier? Wouldn’t such a solider be likely to start overruling the military commanders on policy decisions?

PA: I think there are varying degrees of moral agency, ranging from amoral agents to fully autonomous moral agents. Our current robots are between these extremes, though they definitely have the potential to improve.

I think we are now starting to see robots that are capable of taking morally significant actions, and we’re beginning to see the design of systems that choose these actions based on moral reasoning. In this sense, they are moral, but not really autonomous because they are not coming up with the morality themselves… or for themselves.

They are a long way from being Kantian moral agents –- like some humans –- who are asserting and engaging their moral autonomy through their moral deliberations and choices. [Philosopher Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative” is the standard of rationality from which moral requirements are derived.]

We might be able to design robotic soldiers that could be more ethical than human soldiers.

Robots might be better at distinguishing civilians from combatants; or at choosing targets with lower risk of collateral damage, or understanding the implications of their actions. Or they might even be programmed with cultural or linguistic knowledge that is impractical to train every human soldier to understand.

Ron Arkin thinks we can design machines like this. He also thinks that because robots can be programmed to be more inclined to self-sacrifice, they will also be able to avoid making overly hasty decisions without enough information. Ron also designed architecture for robots to override their orders when they see them as being in conflict with humanitarian laws or the rules of engagement. I think this is possible in principle, but only if we really invest time and effort into ensuring that robots really do act this way. So the question is how to get the military to do this.

It does seem like a hard sell to convince the military to build robots that might disobey orders. But they actually do tell soldiers to disobey illegal orders. The problem is that there are usually strong social and psychological pressures on soldiers to obey their commanders, so they usually carry them out anyway. The laws of war generally only hold commanders responsible for war crimes for this reason. For a killing in war to truly be just, then the one doing the killing must actually be on the just side in the war. In other words, the combatants do not have equal liability to be killed in war. For a robot to be really sure that any act of killing is just, it would first have to be sure that it was fighting for a just cause. It would have to question the nature of the war it is fighting in and it would need to understand international politics and so forth.

The robots would need to be more knowledgeable than most of the high school graduates who currently get recruited into the military. As long as the war is just and the orders are legal, then the robot would obey, otherwise it wouldn’t. I don’t think we are likely to see this capability in robots any time soon.

I do think that human soldiers are very concerned about morality and ethics, as they bear most of the moral burdens of war. They are worried about the public reaction as well, and want to be sure that there are systems in place to prevent tragic events that will outrage the public. It’s not impossible to try to control robot soldiers in this way. What we need is both the political will, and the technological design innovation to come together and shape a new set of international arms control agreements that ensures that all lethal robots will be required to have these types of ethical control systems.

Of course, there are also issues of proliferation, verification and enforcement for any such arms control strategy. There is also the problem of generating the political will for these controls. I think that robotic armies probably have the potential to change the geo-political balance of power in ways far more dramatic than nuclear arms.

We will have to come up with some very innovative strategies to contain and control them. I believe that it is very important that we are not naive about what the implications of developing robotic soldiers will mean for civil society.