Young David

My nonrelated friend, Simon Young, just twittered “Friday! Just worked out how many hours I’ve worked this week, about to tell the boss where to go. Damn, I am the boss.”

I was listening to an interview on the Startup Studio podcast a couple of days ago, and the featured entrepreneur made the distinction that working for your self is not a job, it’s a lifestyle, a different way of living, with higher highs, and potentially lower lows.

I’m in complete agreement. I work harder now than I ever did while employed. I’m far happier, and far more satisfied. Not because my previous boss was a jerk (not often, anyway..), or because I’m making so much money (not yet, exactly..), but because I’m doing what I love.

Last night I was up until 1am, writing a custom SugarCRM script to import leads from a web sign-up form, into a random target list, and dealing with outstanding email requests. It was challenging and fun. On MSN, I saw two entrepreneurial friends online with me, one who runs a web development business, and one who’s an Apple consultant. Both told me that, like myself, they prefer to work late into the night, because they are not interrupted, are more productive, and have a permanent backlog of work to complete. I know Simon (above) also recently did a couple of “wee-hours” sessions, editing video and writing copy.

Why do we do it? Why do we abuse ourselves, working harder that it is legal to work your employees? Because we do what we love (most of the time), we believe in our company’s future, and we think our bosses are worth it. (and incredibly sexy!)

After 3 hours of sweating, crawling under desks, and fiddling, I’m typing this entry from the Mike’s Kitchen in Northgate, where the new Funky Penguin Hotspot is now up and running. (Credit card payments are not exactly working yet, but I can fix that on the back-end)

It’s really exciting.. this is our first  commercial deployment, and it was a big rush to get it ready before month-end weekend.

What I learned in this process:

• DD-WRT takes a long time to re-initialize everything after a small change.
• If you enter bogus chillispot config details, DD-WRT won’t warn you, but chilli won’t start.
• Don’t assume anything about the site’s network topography, and bring lots of spare cables!

I don’t completely get how ChilliSpot, DNS, and DNSMasq work together. My /etc/resolv.conf file on the DD-WRT box reflects its own IP as a nameserver. If I try to use that IP in chilli, however, no juice. So I have to use my parent DNS server in chilli’s config, and then it seems to work. A bit counter-intuitive, in my mind, because I don’t necessarily want my hotspot users to know my parent DNS IP. (It gives away the topology of the local LAN).

I’m going to have to contact a chilli expert to explain this one to me – maybe I’ve missed something

Hi folks,

I’m a Business Warrior. Rather than explaining exactly what that is, pop over to the site and take a look. Use my links, and I’ll get the credit if you decide to sign up!

My favorite feature of Business Warriors is the forum – it’s active, dynamic, and friendly, and in itself is worth the monthly membership fee.

There is a post somewhere on the forums (running on VBulletin) on how to subscribe to the latest forum posts using the RSS feed. This is all very well, but this feed subscribes you to the latest 20 posts in all forums combined. A busy forum can easily have more than 20 topics between daily checks, and I like to read all the topics in a given category together, rather than have them all jumbled up.

So I thought to myself.. I wonder if I can subscribe to just ONE forum at a time, using the RSS feed…

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As of the 1st April 2007, I’m no longer a one-man show, I’m an… employer

Charlene Vos started on 2 April 2007, officially titled “Account Manager”. Charlene’s responsibilities range from tech support, to sales, to administration.
She even has her own blog! (Charlene’s Corner)

It’s now been 3 hectic weeks of training, systems-building (it’s not as easy to let things slip through the cracks when you do it properly the first time, I’m learning), and laying-of-groundwork, and it’s been…
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Dave Cheong has an interesting article on his blog, entitled “18 Ways to Stay Focused at Work“. My wife and I were just discussing working to music this evening – normally, I work in silence, and I find myself easily distracted. Perhaps the right music will help me to stay focused – tomorrow I’m going to try it

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Felix Dennis, publishing tycoon, has written a guide to becoming a multi-millionaire. All you need is thick skin, cunning – and a work ethic. I am convinced that fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment to amassing wealth. Trust me on this. Consider carefully this shortlist of what it will take…

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As mentioned in an earlier post, working from home is becoming a bit difficult, especially as I move towards employing more staff. I’m meeting the managing agent of an office block 5km from home this morning – hopefully we’ll progress towarsd a deal for office space starting from 1 September 2006.

Thanks to the generous help I received from Margie Lagerwall, owner of MGL Accounting Services, I am now sufficiently trained to manage my books using Quickbooks. Margie is a Quickbooks wizard, and she showed me loads of time-saving tricks, as well as drilled some of the basics into me.

Nikki and I joked about Margie’s future blog : http://when.cashflowsucks.co.za