Category Archives: concepts

Understanding the divide

blogs, Bootstrap, Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Government, Inspiration, The World

The natural drive of people is different but can generally put into two categories.  There are some people who are driven to survive and others who are driven to succeed.  When it comes to life there are two vastly different attitudes that exist.  It is based on what you want out of life.  Do you want to be someone who wants to reach for the stars, make your dreams happen and take risks to do it, or are you the second type the ones that want to survive, have a happy life that you can enjoy.  This fundamental difference in attitude creates our great debate of how society should be structured.   Countless movies and books have been made about this subject.

In most of the world the survive mentality has taken hold.  People work to just earn enough so that they can live.  People want to be taken care of, they want to have a “fair” society, they work, and give a large amount of their earnings to the government, in exchange the system gives them guaranteed housing, food, health care, and leisure.   For people who lack ambition this is the dream society.  And of course, billions of people on this planet love the idea.  But then there are other people.  Men and women of who have a dream to be better than the norm, to make an impact on the world.  They want to build an empire and make it or fail on their own merit.  They want the government to stay out of their way. 

America was created by the dreamers and the ambitious, the people who came to America did so because of the promise that it offered.  Even though the ambitious are in the minority of the world population, they were the vast majority in the USA.  That is how we became exceptional, that is how we became the most successful nation in the history of the world.  This is how we became great.  The idea of a great America was not the idea it was great for everyone, but the idea that it is great for the ambitious, the dreamers, the empire builders.   And that has been taken away from us, little by little over the last 100 or so years.   But the seed that was sown into our great nation is being strangled.  American attracted the best, the boldest of the world.  Our nation was built on the idea that anyone here could rise above where they were born and build their Empire.  This is why New York is called the Empire state, it was the place to go to have the ultimate freedom and connections to be successful, and if anywhere has fallen the most it must be New York. 

The idea of empire is in jeopardy from the other group.  The millions who came here, not due to ambition, but by the desire to survive.  Some were forced to come long ago, others came from the poverty of the world not looking to build something but just because anything was better than where they were from.  The largest part of those who don’t go after ambition are the children who grew up in this prosperity, who had everything handed to them, who were told that everything they did was great.  They want a country that takes care of them.  It is sad now that for most ambition and the dreams of empire no longer exist.  They simply want to live a life where everything is given to them.  Then at the same time they see the rich, and the successful and they form tons of envy, they want that handed to them also, they talk of wealth inequality or injustice of every type.  They think life should be fair, but for them they are already well better off than the average human on this planet.  They have no idea how it is to live in India, or Africa, and how most people on the earth fight every day to survive, and yet we have a generation that is unhappy they can’t earn $15 an hour for almost no contribution to society, they are unhappy that they can’t have a nice car, a nice phone and still live in a nice house without working a decent job. 

Then we have an election, it is a very stark difference, on one side we have the people who believe in American exceptionalism and the idea that America should be a great place to build your empire.  Many people believe in this even they are personally too timid to ever do it for themselves, but they want the option to be there, for them or their kids.  On the other side we have the people who think that America should be a place that gives everyone what they need, no matter their contribution to society, that we need to be a fair and just society, where the rich pay for those who just want to live a life of leisure, they want a living wage enforced by the government and they want all of their creature comforts paid for and guaranteed no matter what they contribute to society.    It is a stark difference, and the way things are going we need to pray for the future of our nation. 

Income Inequality in America

Business, concepts, Government, Inspiration, Money, Politics, The World

Recently there has been a lot of talk about income inequality in America.  There is some notion out there that it is ‘unfair’ for someone to make a lot of money.  The thing is that there are million of people working hard each day to get rich.  A few million people are entrepreneurs, people who take a risk and start a business, they hire people, come up with new ideas and in the mean time risk everything, and many of them fail, the best ones get up again and try again.  Many of them work for years without getting paid more than the people who work for them, some work a whole year and make nothing.  The stress about the business, the sales, the clients, and mostly about helping out the employees.  Why do they do all of this?  They do this because they have a dream, the dream to building something that will last, something they can give to their kids, and the dream of being rich.

So they work for decades and finally they are successful, they have a system that works and they are making good money, and they are now rich, making more money than any of their employees will earn in their lifetime.  These are the people that the pundits are calling the problem now, they took the risks and made the hard choices to put themselves in that position, and people look down on them for it.   It is a sad day in America where prosperity is a bad thing.

The main problem is that very few are educated now on how the economy works.  America is a great country, there still is a lot of opportunity here.  Someone can start with nothing, not even knowledge and learn in a short time how to do something useful for the economy, they can then work hard, and smart  and become successful in a short span of time.  I love to see how people come from other nations, nations where there is not much opportunity, and it is hard to get ahead, they come here and work hard, work smart and in a few years they are better off than most Americans.  And most Americans resent them for it, sad.

I think that a lot of this comes from the lack of education most Americans have about how the world really works.  Americans for the most part do not travel out side of the US.  In fact only 36% of Americans own a valid passport, and only 6% of Americans, on average, leave North America per year.  It is estimated that only 20% of Americans have ever left North America, and about a third of them did it while in the military.  Once you see how the world works, your understanding of how good things are here in America really changes.

The Philippines is a below average nation in wealth, with a per capita GDP of just about $3,000.  The average American makes more in 3 weeks than someone from the Philippines does in a year.  But they still need to spend on food and housing and many other things.  But no one there has an attitude of this being unfair, and that they should be given something for free.  That is a very American attitude.  They are thankful for what they have, they are happy for the most part, and everyone helps each other out.  If someone is in need the family and community helps them.  When they travel abroad, they come to work, because they know how they can make as much in a day here, as they do in a month there, they work hard, live simply and for that reason they usually have great success in the US and other nations.  If you earn $1000 a month there you are upper middle class.  People look at the wealthy there as something to aspire to become, not something to be taken down.

2015-08-23 10.50.40The attitude there is so much different and better than in the US.  In the US people feel entitled to free stuff, we are raising an entire generation who feel that if they don’t want to work they should have free health care, free food, free housing and free spending money just because they live here.  They feel that if they should bother working that they should make $15 per hour at least.  They have not yet seen the reality of the world.  Most Americans feel they need tons of money because they must have a $500 smart phone, with unlimited data, and they must have a nice big TV along with a big cable bill and of course, the most expensive of all they must have a car.  In almost all of the world a car is a luxury only the most wealthy have.   In most nations car ownership is under 15% of the population.  In our entitled society even the most poor among us feel that they need a car, and of course they should not pay for it.

I am a fair guy, I think that if you really can’t work that you still should be taken care of, I feel that the primary job of this should be done by charity, and that the successful among us should support such charity, but this is being done by the government, and we are forced, with threat of violence to support it, so we have become a less giving society.  I think that widows and orphans should be taken care of, given food and housing.  I think that the really disabled should be also taken care of.  In none of these cases should they be given money that they can spend on anything, but given vouchers for housing or food.  We need to redefine what a disability is, right now anyone with even a minor problem can be called disabled and get free money.  The vast majority of ‘disabled’ people could easily hold a job.  In fact many people who are getting free money from the government do hold jobs, they just work under the table, that is why the number of people working under the table or 1099 is now almost 1/3rd of the workforce, they want to work, but don’t want to mess up their free government money.  We have really gotten ourselves into a huge mess.  The problem is that about 1/3rd of the population is dependent on this system now.

We need to start to see things as they really are.  When you take money from someone who earns it without having the use of it and give it to someone who has it without earning it you are a thief.  You are teaching them both the wrong lesson, you are teaching the earner that they will be punished for doing well, most do it anyway because they still get to keep most of what they earn, but there is talk to make it more and more progressive of a tax if you earn more.  You are teaching the receiver that they can use the government to get them free stuff, that there is no need to better themselves and to work hard, that things will be handed to them.  This also puts the government in a morally wrong position, a position of being the thief, true everyone loves robin hood but he was still a thief.  This is on a much more massive scale.

I have no problem with a well run government to provide for the common defence, to build roads, and provide a good education, safe places to live and places to gather such as parks.  I even think that the wealthy enjoy such things more than others, and use such things to prosper themselves so they can pay a bit more.  I don’t think that there should be loopholes, the government should not use the tax policy to tell people what to do and what not to do.  But most of all I don’t think that they government should be taking money from one group and giving it to others as a wealth transfer.  Did you know that only 34% of our federal budget is spent to actually run the government, all the rest is used to move money around from one group to another.  Now to me that is what I call Unfair.  Some CEO who worked hard his whole life and makes a huge amount of money is ok by my, he worked hard to get there, he is likely providing much more in value than he costs or why would he be there.  But taking his money and transferring it is totally unfair.  Most people who are in favor of such transfers are usually the recipients of these transfers, or they hope to be.

I am sure that many will argue with this essay, they simply see the world differently than I do.  They usually have never owned a small business, have never traveled overseas, or they simply were raised with a different mindset.  People can rework stats and %’s to make almost any argument, all of my stats came from the most common official sources.

Let me close with a story I heard, if you have a bed to sleep in, a toilet that flushes, and a fridge to store your food you are in the richest 23% of the world population, if you have a computer or smartphone, now you are in the richest 17% and if you have a vehicle you now are in the richest 8% of the world population.  There are 6.4 billion people in the world, so 64 million people would make up the top 1%….of those 64 million people over 40 million of them live in the US.  If you live at the poverty line in the US, you are still in the top 5% of the world population.  If you live at half the poverty line in the US you are still richer than over 85% of the people on this planet.  So stop wining, and take advantage of the opportunity this nation provides, literally billions of people would do almost anything to be in your shoes.

2014 Arizona Technology Council Gubernatorial Debate wrap-up.

Arizona, Business, concepts, Government, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

Today I had the pleasure of attending the 2014 Arizona Technology Council Gubernatorial Debate.  It also was a business mixer for the first little part.  It turned out to be a fun and informative event. 2014-07-09 16.30.45

During the event they had a large screen were people could tweet about the event and they would show all the tweets live and the candidates could read the live feedback during the event.  I was active on the tweet stream, look up hashtag #aztcgovs to see what was said.

There were a few surprises, the first and most shocking surprise was that Doug Ducey canceled at the last minute, many people there wanted to see what he had to say but he was a no show, a lot of people mentioned it on the twitter roll. The next thing that surprised everyone was how friendly the candidates were to each other, it was mentioned a few times that they all had deep respect for each other.  GOP heavys Joe Hobbs and Wes Harris were both there working the room for Frank Riggs.  There were also a group of folks trying to get the word out on Diane Douglas and how she is against common core, I agree with Diane on this issue, and was glad to see them there.

Education was one of the main topics of the night. All four of the Republicans were against common core. Scott Smith said that we needed to raise the bar, higher better teachers and challenge students, a lofty goal but no way on how to do it. Ken Bennett said that we needed to focus on the lowest 5% of schools each year and bring them to average and that if we did that for 4 years we would be one of the top states in the United States.  He also said we should allocate the funds for teachers separately from other district funds so that they get paid directly and get paid more. When asked about school connectivity most of them did not seem educated on the issue and just said that it was needed.  Only Christine Jones seemed to know that 150M was already given for this task and that this amount of money is more than enough to connect every school in the state that was not connected.  It is just that the government bureaucrats don’t have a clue how to do it so all of the money goes wasted.  Multiple GOP candidates said that we need to copy what is working in our best schools and push it out to all schools. Fred DuVal says that we need to throw much more money at the problem of lack of education, and that Common Core is the solution we have been looking for so that our kids can compete in a global marketplace.  I can’t see how dumbing down our schools will help us compete globally, and if money was the answer to educational problems then we would have no more problems. We waste way too much money, and more money just leads to more waste. Fred DuVal ended his talk about education talking about Khan Academy, but he had all of his facts wrong, he said that Salman Khan founded it for his kids, but he has no kids, he founded for his cousin, he also said he sold it to Bill Gates, also wrong, Bill Gates donated $1Million (Pocket change for him, but still a good thing.)  Google has donated at least double that amount.  Fred if you want to use something as an example then get your basic facts straight.

Next they talked about the small business climate. Ken Bennett talked about how we need to remove the personal property tax on businesses, this is a tax that most states don’t have but kills many businesses here in AZ.  It is where you need to pay taxes each year on the equipment that your business owns, such as servers or computers, or machines that make stuff.  This tax is one of the main reasons that many manufacturers choose not to locate here. Removing this law is vital, and Ken Bennett was the only one that addressed it.  Christine Jones talked about all the different rules that small businesses need to address at different levels of government and how it must be streamlined, that businesses need to focus on what they do to make money not dealing with the government, this is something I have said all along.  She also said she will be like Rick Perry of Texas and make it her job to personally call on large businesses to get them to move here.  Scott Smith focused on his history in Mesa of attracting Apple and helping turn around the williams airport and other things.  Frank Riggs says he will personally chair the Arizona Commerce Authority and that will be his prime focus.  He also said that the government is not in the job of choosing winners and losers and he would be against it making grants or loans to businesses and would be against angel investor tax breaks or any rules to make it easier for Venture Capitalists to do business here.   Christine Jones and Ken Bennett both pointed out how these tax breaks and easier rules have generated many times more money for the state than if we did not have them and that they would be in favor of renewal.  Fred DuVal said these grants and tax breaks need to be expanded.  He also said that we should embrace Common Core.

When asked about the EPA and Fed overreach all 5 of them were against it, Scott Smith was strong on how bad the EPA is and that shutting down NGS will replace a small air pollution problem with a Major water pollution problem, because NGS gets us fresh water.  He also said that they simply don’t understand how dusty Arizona is.  He has even gone the the EPA in person in Washington to talk about this.  Ken Bennett segwayed this into other forms of Fed overreach such as his case with them about ID at the Polls.  Fred DuVal waffled a bit, saying that some of EPA things are bad but some are good and that we need to embrace a Cap and Trade system.

The final question was about Arizona’s image in the rest of the nation.  Fred DuVal was quick to pounce on how awful it was, he focused on the 1062 problem.  The others had good ideas how to make it even better, and how to reduce taxes to bring more businesses.  One of them, I forget which one, said that we are in the new a lot because we are a thought leader on a lot of these issues and that others look to us to follow us.  I liked that idea.

Final Wrap Up

2014-07-09 16.42.43After attending this event this is my order of who I would vote for from these 5.

1. Christine Jones, she had obvious passion for doing this, she knew the right things to say and was able to point out the quick and easy solution to many problems.  She mentioned how she helped create many of the rules that govern the internet and how she has worked for years making it free. The negative about her is that she has not been in politics and likely will have trouble dealing with bureaucratic minded politicians, because they are just illogical in their actions.  I did love how she ended her closing remarks about going to “ChristineJones.com, proudly regestered for over 10 years with GoDaddy.com”  I liked that.  She did point out that she is the only one that does not owe favors to any political group.  I personally like the lack of government experience, we need fresh ideas, and they need to come from the top.  Before today she was maybe my 4th or 5th pick from the GOP field, she really has improved from the meetings from last year that we both were at.

2. Ken Bennett, he understands the system and how Arizona politics works, probably more than any of them, he did not seem to have as much passion but after 30+ of these events, with many days having 2 or more, I can see why.  He is a small business guy, and understands change and progress. He said all the right things, had researched positions and would be a great leader for our state.  I almost gave him first place, it was only because of Christine’s passion that I did not.

3. Scott Smith, he told a lot of jokes, was really friendly and his experience as mayor of Mesa has given him some executive experience.  He seems like a nice guy.  I don’t know how well he will work in a large organization like the state government.  He did say he will fight the feds about the EPA.

4. Frank Riggs is a very conservative guy, he also seems like he would be very rigid.  He seems like the guy who’s supporters will tear him up if he compromises on the smallest detail, the problem with that is there is no way to get things done with that attitude.  He did have a good point that he served in the Federal government and that experience would help him work with the Feds.  He also introduced the idea of a  Consumption tax, and he said that such a thing would level the playing fields from out of state businesses selling into Arizona, and eliminate the black market.  I have no idea what he means, or how this would work, and how can someone want a new massive tax and still look for Tea Party support, I don’t get it.  On the positive note he was very nice to me and was the only one I was able to talk to for a few minutes.

5. Fred DuVal supports Common Core, Cap and Trade, and spending a ton more money on education, he has spent years working in the Clinton-Gore administration. He mentioned multiple times about how he would work hard to promote marriage equality and pass laws making all sexual orientations equal.  He is likely going to be popular with those in college and those who have been brainwashed by our liberal school system.  He is the only one here that will for sure be on the General Election Ballot, but lucky for us we are such a red state that I doubt he will have much of a chance.

All in all it was a great event, people were cordial to each other, and I was among friends, knowing many of the people there from other Arizona Tech Council events and AZGOP events.

UPDATE:  They just posted the video of the event.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPwZxj8ZP4o

The Opportunity Fund

Bootstrap, Business, Computers, concepts, Credit, Entrepreneurship, How To, Marketing, Money, , , , , , ,

There is so much talk on the internet in the world of personal finance (PF) about having an Emergency Fund. I agree that an Emergency Fund is important; you want to make sure that you have enough cash to take care of a stolen laptop, or your AC going out in the middle of summer. There is a lot of focus on building this up quickly; most PF writers say that this is more important than paying down debt, which I also agree. 

But my opinion, another important thing to create is what I call an Opportunity Fund.  This is a fund of special money that you keep aside for in case a really good opportunity comes up.  Opportunities come up much more than Emergencies, so this is the fund that I focused on first. I felt that this fund was critical to future success so I used many of the tactics that people like Dave Ramsey suggest when you are building your Emergency Fund.  Such tactics include Selling Something, and cutting back on expenses, especially those recurring ones that most people don’t really notice, then finding extra income opportunities.

Most PF writers suggest ways with no investment to work hard and make extra income but with an opportunity fund helping out you can supercharge this and quickly pay down debt, build all of your funds up, and if you are doing really good you may even make a business out of your fund.

So I started building my fund about 5 years ago.  We looked for people who needed to sell items quickly, to pay their bills or because they were moving, I stuck with electronics and computers because I knew the market and knew I could flip the items quickly.  Most people who are selling things are not selling to get the most money, most people sell because they need quick money, or want the item gone.  Almost every week I buy a laptop from a parent who took it away from their disobedient child as punishment for something the child did.  Most of these parents have no urge to get the most for their money, they just want the item gone.

I only use the fund to buy things that I am fairly sure I can flip quickly.  I don’t want to deplete the fund so I make sure I can turn the items over and get my original money back along with a nice profit.  Time is money so the longer I think something will take to sell the lower % of my projected sales price I need to get.  My general goal is to double my money in 30 days.

I often buy things that are on huge sales.  I built up my fund the entire summer and early fall my first year because I knew I could take advantage of Black Friday, so when November hit I made sure I sold as much as I could and made this fund as large as I could, then I spent a few days looking over the ads, and I targeted the things that had the largest amount below normal prices.  Anyone can get things for cheap online, so I made sure that I was buying at a price low enough that even if I sold online I could make a large profit.  On black Friday most people look for things for their house, they buy and hold on to these items until they are worthless, so even if you buy at the lowest price you still lose money financially. So many people focus on the TV’s and such but the real money I have found is in the smaller items, the ones that there are no limits on.  My first black Friday doing this I focused on External Hard Drives, that were selling for 40% of normal price, bought a whole cart of them. I found wireless mice for less than 30% of retail price, got over 100 of them, found 32 GB USB Drives for just $9.95 each, still a good buy today, a few years later.  I also got laser printers for $39 each, 22” Monitors for $89 each and many other good buys that most of the people just did not see. (Quick Tip, I use the site ShopLocal to find the best sales on new items.) I then listed these items on craigslist for more than I paid, also called up people I knew and asked them if they wanted any of these, I offered to come over and set up the items and show them how to use it.  I spent $3000 that y

ear, and less than 30 days later I had the $3000 back into my Opportunity fund, AND I still had about half of the stuff left!  I now do this every year, it is crazy the good deals that these places put out on small items, most of these prices are less than the cost to make the item.

CAM00449

But the real, supercharged creation of money from my Opportunity fund came from used items.  I know a lot about computers, so I offered to buy peoples headache computers off of them.  I have focused on laptops, and I have purchased over 150 laptops each year for the last 5 years in a row from private sellers.  By the time 2011 came about I was doing this so much, and needed more room and space that I opened a computer store.  By that time I had built my fund up to over $10,000 along with $10,000 or so worth of computer parts.  So I used it all to move into a store.  I was able to get a very nice store on a shoestring budget, never stopping buying and selling.  I then quickly moved into buying and selling much larger amounts of items.  I depleted my fund to build the store but worked hard and smart to build it back up.  I was putting all of the profits into building out the store, and getting extra inventory, it took a year to finally have in stock all that I wanted to have, then I started building up the fund quickly, once I had enough I quickly became free of consumer debt, for the first time in my adult life. I bought a car for my wife, bought a work truck for the business, then a new SUV for myself.  I also have build up my opportunity fund again.

SanteFe
The Santa Fe, with my truck in the background.

When a good friend of mine came to me trying to sell some items he needed sold quickly to help him with a fine he needed to pay, I was there able to help.  When others needed to borrow money, I was there to help.  When a deal comes across for 300 monitors at crazy low prices I am able to jump on it. When a computer store goes out of business I have the funds to buy all their inventory for pennies on the dollar. When a banner making company wanted to sell their plotter I bought it, now I can make vinyl letters for people, expanding my business.  When a school auction went up I bought 50 chairs and 100 tables, sold 60 tables on craigslist and more than paid for it all, now I have the rest to use and help organize the store.

I am able now, with the combination of a nice Opportunity fund, a large moving truck, a warehouse, staff, and a store to move $15,000-20,000 worth of stuff per month, with only about 40% going into what we buy stuff for, and 30% going into overhead, the other 30% goes into build up the business, giving money away, helping people and saving up to buy our building.  And yes the business has an emergency fund equal to 3 months of expenses, and so does our household.  We have just meet these goals in the last few months, this will allow us to start to really do good things and help people out.

So I have said all of this to show you how thinking different, and building up a fund to take advantage of Opportunity is so important.  Do it in the area you know about, if you are an expert on cars, then buy and flip cars, if you know about guns, there is great money in that, if you know about antiques, I know people who made fortunes in that, real estate works also if you have enough money, if you don’t have enough you can always use other people’s money.  In 2010 and 2011 I did some large deals, and my Opportunity fund was not large enough, I was not shy at all about borrowing the money, doing the deal and paying back the money.   Doing this allows you to follow your passion, to earn money by doing something that you love to do, and of course you can do it as little or as much as you like.  I am sure 80% of the people who read this would never turn it into a business, most people just aren’t wired for that. But maybe you can use this fund to get out of debt, or buy that house you wanted, or even to build one massive Emergency fund, which you can always borrow from when a really good opportunity comes along.

 

Why do you do what you do?

blogs, Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, how to, Inspiration, ,

Today I have been thinking about WHY I run this business.  Most people spend so much time on how they are going to do things, and What they are going to do.    Today, I wrote this and printed it out and posted it on my office wall, “Focus on Why we do what we do, If you do it for the right reasons What you do and How you do it will fall in line and success will follow.”

When I moved my business to its much bigger location I have only a rough idea of what we would be doing.  I had a few basic ideas of areas where money could be made, because I was already making money in those areas and my old business made money in those areas, but I was open to doing something else.  It turns out that now my most profitable part of my business was something I never did at my old shop.  It now accounts for 60% of sales and over 80% of profits, that is recycling computer products.

Once you know the what the “HOW” is very simple and obvious.  But I am here to talk about the Why….why do I do what I do?  Why am I a business owner and don’t have a job, why do I choose to work with technology?  For me that “WHY?” comes down to a few key things that I believe.

First I loved technology, it is always amazing to find out what is new, and to be able to actually play with it, not just read about it.  By owning a computer store I get the ability to design and build things for clients, forcing me to become an expert many different tech issues.

Next, I must have adventure  I also have found that I don’t like to spend much time on things once I figure them out, and technology is ever changing, allowing me to always be engaged.  For example here are some things I have done in the last month, I took apart a top of the line new Asus ultra-thin laptop to see what was inside, it was amazing how it is more like a Cell phone than a laptop.  I have explored new database ideas for WordPress, and how to import from XLS files to make carts on something that was designed for blogs.  I have had time to play new games. I played a lot with running windows 8 on a big screen TV with wireless keyboard, touchpad.  And the list goes on and on.  Every day is a new adventure, always learning and always teaching.

Next I love to share my passion for tech with others.  Spending time showing someone the new gadget, or the next big thing in the tech world is something that I love.  I also love to help people, to give them tools to make their life and their business better, then I love to see them a few months later and how what I did really changed their life.

Next I love a good deal.  I love to find good deals, I love to share them and I love to give them to others.  It is so fun when I can do something for someone better than they thought it could be done and under the price they thought it could be done in.  The side effect of this is that we have never been highly profitable.  I am always giving people deals and slashing prices.  For me it is often more about the sale than the profit, I have sold many things well below cost to make someone happy.  Recently I have been forced to charge most people a bit more to cover costs.

Those are the reasons I am in the IT industry, but now I think “WHY?” did I do it on my own instead of working for someone else.  Well I really enjoy my freedom, I also highly value spending time with my Family and friends.  I love to be able to sleep in a bit, knowing my shop is taken care of, then spend some time with the kids while they are still kids, and then be able to take them and my wife to work with me.  It is nice to be able to take time off when I need it.  I also like it when people count on me, when I can show someone…”Yes I built that”.

I guess it all comes down to the fact that if you love what you do then it never seems like work.  Most of the time it does not feel like work, it feels like fun.  There are there rare times where I told a client Yes to something I should not have because it is something I don’t like to do or don’t want to learn, and in those cases I have found that subcontracting is a great idea.

So what is your “Why”?  If you are in business, why are you in business, why did you do what you do, and why do you do it the way that you do it.  If you have a job, then why do you work where you work, does it fit in with who you are?  If the main answer to your “WHY?” is money then you will likely never live a very happy or fulfilled life.  Now-a-days there is also a large part of our population that lives off the government, why do you feel entitled to do that?  If you served in the military, or if you are retired after 45 years of work I can see why you would feel that way, but many feel entitled who need neither of these.  Do you feel that you could have somewhere else to serve, to make this world better?

You should work to make the most of your short life here, and doing things with no reason why is one of the easiest ways to waste your life.  Here are some questions that really helped me focus on what is important…Why do you surf the internet so much, do you really need to read Facebook that many times per day, do you really need to watch that TV show, what will you get out of playing that video game.

Watch what you do and see if it lines up with your why.

A Special thanks goes to today’s episode of the Glenn Beck show for getting my thinking about this again.

 

The Hard Drive Bottleneck and how to make it better.

Computers, concepts, How To, Internet, , , , ,

In todays computers everything has gotten so much faster, even hard drives are faster, but not as much as most other things.  SSD is a great solution if you have the money to spend on it and you are willing to deal with small sized prime drives.

I have been noticing recently that after a boot up my HDD is busy 100% of the time for up to an hour, this is a huge amount.  It is not really reading or writing data that much, just checking small things.   For my home computer the bottleneck is the Hard Drive BY FAR.  I only get a 5.9 HDD rating while all of my other stats are in the mid 7 range when I use the Windows Experience Index.

I know that the HDD is the bottleneck in my system and I do have 2 hard drives so first I moved the page file to the G drive.  Also made sure torrent folders were on the G drive.  This makes all of these commonly accessed files not detract from the drive that the OS is on.  Even with this booting up was super slow.  So I cleaned up the startup.  I usually do this once every few months but the problem was still there.   The best tool to clean up the start up is Autoruns, it gives you a list of the various programs and files that are loaded on startup, you uncheck them and they are gone instantly.  Very cool.  After getting rid of many things my system was still slow.  

Many companies like to pass the blame and make their program seem faster by loading their program when you turn on your computer, so when you want to use their program it is already loaded.  I don’t mind this IF I have enough RAM and IF they wait to load until your system is idle.  BUT almost no programs do that so they bog down your system and load tons of data that is not even currently needed.  What is worse is that they all do it at once, and your hard drive is bogged down at 100% for a long time.  I especially hate the programs that check for updates or ask to install updates at boot time.   When your computer takes 5 minutes to load people blame Microsoft, they don’t blame the real programs that are causing it.  A few year ago Microsoft tried to crack down on this activity but it did not take too long for companies to figure it out.    In my years of fixing computers some of the WORST programs that do this are: Any Adobe Product, Java Updater, Most HP software, Most Apple Products (Then Apple shows people how slow windows is).   Then there are other programs that you want to run some time near startup, you just need to watch them.  This includes: Printer Applications (For heavens sake if you get rid of the printer get rid of its software), Side Bar, Messenger Software.  These programs you would want to simply delay by a minute or two so that you are free to use your system sooner.  A good tool for this is LaunchLater.

So I loaded up another awesome free tool called Process Explorer, this tool lets you see what is going on with every program running on your computer.  I added columns for I/O Reads and I/O Writes, these are the ones that show you the number of actions that programs do on your hard drives.  After only having booted up the system 10 minutes before I was shocked that Steam had done 70,000 reads and over 270,000 writes.   This was about 60% of all the reads that my entire system did and about 80% of all of the writes.  It was not doing updates or anything, it just always did this I guess.  I told to not run on startup and then I fully exited the program, and instantly my system was fast again, rebooted and the speed was back.

I did notice that Google Chrome was also doing a lot of reads and writes but only after I loaded it.  The other program doing a lot of reads was Mesh, but this program is awesome and I will be writing a full blog on it in a few days.

If your computer is going slow then follow these steps.   This is the heart of the “Tune-up” that we do at Emerald Computers, we do these many times per week and charge $75 most of the time.  A Tune-up has a few other things in it also, I will save that for later.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold – Wow that was cool.

Business, concepts, Marketing, The World,

I really like the way that Morgan Spurlock thinks. He has created a movie about advertising and product placement, and pays for the movie by going out and getting more product placements than any movie in history. He gets free drinks, free cars, free shoes, free flights, free hotel rooms and millions of dollars given to him to make this movie. It is really awesome as he debates if he really is a sell out, and decided that he is, then he embraces it. If you have not seen this movie, and you are at all interested in advertising or business I would suggest it.

Here is the trailer. httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Ng2P3zxfM

One very interesting concept that I liked from the movie is the idea that Fame and Credibility are linked. “In the world we live in you can not be credible unless you are visible.” This is a very interesting concept. This is why people tout how many followers they have, or max out their friends on facebook.

How to communicate in this modern age.

Business, Computers, concepts, How To, Internet,

There is one major thing that I see so many businesses doing wrong, and that is their failure to communicate correctly. So many companies send out a message but they never ensure that it is received. Then they flip out when you are not aware of their message that they did not properly communicate. When I was in college I learned that communication is defined as this…

Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender’s intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has understood the message of the sender.

The last part is the most important. First you need to make sure that the receiver has received the message and understood it. The problem is that people are flooded with messages. Over 100 billion emails are sent world wide each day. I get 100’s of texts per day, I get a pile of snail mail every day except sunday. Email is the worst though, I get over 1000 per day, but and those are sorted to over 50 different folders, and about 800 or so of them are detected as spam and sent to a spam folder. What makes me really unhappy is when someone emails me once or twice, and then a day or two later calls me and is totally mad me because of their lack of communication. When a message is urgent it is the responsibility of the SENDER and not the RECEIVER to make sure that message is delivered.

Businesses send out urgent notices, bills and much more over email, and they assume they are delivered. My web-host is really bad at this…when they see a problem with my account they email me and then disconnect my account like 10 minutes later, usually because some database locked up or something stupid like that, they don’t bother calling or texting or anything like that. They wait for me to have a customer call me and tell me that it is down, usually after I have lost 100’s of hits and client confidence. It really urks me. Because of facebook and texting many people are using email less for important things and they check it less often. So if you are waiting for an important message to be received please simply pick up the phone and tell them that you sent an important message and if they received it and never assume that they received it until you hear a reply. BTW if you are still in the stone age and use faxes this applies even more to you.

10 simple ways to save money in tough times, #9 Be more energy effecient

Bootstrap, Business, Computers, concepts, How To, Money, , , , , , , , , ,

#9 SAVE ENERGY

There are many ways to save energy and therefore money.  Some do a lot while others are more of a myth.

Time of Use plans

One of the best ways to save a lot of money is to select an energy plan for your house that fits your usage model.  When a utility makes electricity they do it in a few different ways.  Most power comes from what we call BASE power plants.  These are plants that are always on, day, night, 24/7.  Most of these are Coal and Nuclear.  This electricity is cheap and efficient.  Wind and solar energy are not really created under the control of the utility.  A utility tries to have enough base power to provide all the power that their customers need at least 80% of the time.  For the rest they turn to DEMAND power.  This is power that they can either buy or turn on as needed.  Hydroelectric is a great example.  These plants are mostly turned off during the night, but during the top of the demand time they could be at full force.  In addition power generated in cold climates can be sold to warmer clients during the summer and visa versa.

Because of the much higher cost of this DEMAND power electric companys want you to not use it, so they offer programs to encourage you to shift your usage to non peak times, and they also have programs to encourage you to use a more steady amount of power during these peak time.  So it is simple, here is in Arizona I have APS, and I use a program called Combined Advantage.  With this program I pay only 4 cents per kWh from 7pm until noon each day.  But from noon until 7pm on weekdays I pay 6 cents during the winter and 9 cents during the summer.  On top of that I have a demand fee of $13.40 per kW used during the highest 1 hour of usage during peak time.  What this means for me is that I can use almost as much power as I want from 7pm until Noon and pay almost nothing.  I just have to keep my usage down during the peak time.  I have been able to never go above 6kW during my peak hour.  By using this model I used 20% more power than last year but enjoyed bills over 30% LESS.  Last year I was on the 9pm until 9am program, but it had no Demand Charge.  I already had them look into how much it would cost if I was on the normal rate program and it would be over DOUBLE what I am paying now.   So change your plan and cut your power bill in half.

Space Heaters

Here in Arizona it does not get that cold.  We have found that it is not a good idea to heat the entire house.  When you heat with your large central heating system as much as half the heat you create escapes out of the unit itself or through the duct system.  Even if you have a very efficient Gas heater like I do it is still much cheaper to just heat the rooms you need, especially if you are on a time of use electrical plan and only use it during the off peak time.  When we stopped using the central heating system our gas bill went down by over $70 per month while our electric bill for the space heaters was only $10 more than the previous year.

Fans

Fans are another way to save money, a good ceiling fan will make you feel 5 degrees cooler than it actually is.  With a fan an 80 degree room will feel like 75 degrees and that fan costs just pennies a month to run.  Invest in ceiling fans and save money.  Another way to save is to have door and window fans to draw in the outside air during the times of day that it is cooler.

LCD Monitors

I am a computer guy so of course I need to talk about technology a bit.  An LCD monitor is much more efficient than the older CRT monitors, in fact the average 19″ CRT uses over 300W of power, while a LCD uses less than 25W, a HUGE difference.  If used 40 hours a week, at the normal power rates this adds up to about $9 per month per monitor.   With the cost of an LCD being about $120 that means that you would save about enough money in the first year to pay for the new monitor!  So why are you still reading this on an OLD CRT.

While we are talking about saving money with computers, modern computer use MUCH less power than older ones.  The NEW cpus use laptop technology to scale back power usage and use less power and less cooling.  A new computer could be faster while saving as much as $3-5 per month in electricity.  If you are like me and leave it on 24/7 that comes to more like $15-$20 per month.

Vehicle

Your car also uses power, in the form of Gas.  You can do all the normal things like Tune up your car, and keep your tires inflated and you will receive a good 20%+ boost in the amount of mile you can drive.  Of course you can also reduce unnecessary weight in your car, select routes that have fewer left turns but it turns out that one of the best things you can do is to NOT drive a steady speed.  Don’t accelerate too fast, I try to keep my RPMs under 4000 at all times.  It will use much less fuel if you accelerate for a time, then coast for a time, going back and forth, you could increase your MPG by 20% or more by doing this.

There are many more simple ways to save energy, many power companies will help you pay for an Energy Audit.  This is where an expert will come in, usually with a infrared camera, and look for cold or hot spots on your house where you leak energy.  Most energy is spent to heat of cool things so this is a real eyeopener.

Now here is a REAL president!!

concepts, Government, how to, Inspiration, Politics, The World,

This is a new feature of my blog.  As with most people I know, many of my friends forward emails to me.  90% of them are useless but every now and then there is something very interesting in the email.  I don’t like to forward as a general rule, but I will take some of these select emails and post them here, on my blog.  This blog then goes out to my Facebook and many people get to read it.   Here is the first one…

About time we accept this attitude. We’ve had enough damage to this country by “Political Correctness”

America, Canada, all Europe ….. needs a President like this

Nowherei1
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - Australia

During a very recent speech here are some points that PM Kevin Rudd made.


Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation’s mosques.

Quote: ‘IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.’

‘This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, Learn the Language!’

‘Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.’

‘We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.’

‘This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.’

‘If you aren’t happy here then LEAVE. We didn’t force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted..’

Maybe if we circulate this , American citizens will find the backbone to start speaking and voicing the same truths.

Well, let the flames begin!   If you liked this post please use the buttons below to email it or put it on your Facebook also.

About time we accept this attitude. We’ve had enough damage to this country by “Political Correctness”

America, Canada, all Europe ….. needs a President like this

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – Australia

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation’s mosques.

Quote: ‘IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.’

‘This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, Learn the Language!’

‘Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.’

‘We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.’

‘This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.’

‘If you aren’t happy here then LEAVE. We didn’t force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted..’

Maybe if we circulate this , American citizens will find the backbone to start speaking and voicing the same truths.

Share this Post