Business and the Thoughts that Associate it

Here is the first article in a series of many more to come based on "Running a Business Is Not As Easy as it's Made Out to Be!"

Originally when people create businesses they don't just jump out of nowhere and say, I'm making a business today? Well for most of us it's not that easy. In this article I plan to explore the ups and downs of creating a business and breifly touch upon the planning it involves.

So you want to start a business, but don't know where to start. Usually the best place to start is at the local Borders bookstore looking through just about any book you can find about creating a company in the state that you are in. For the most part, these books will lay a lot better groundwork and help tremendously when starting a business. But why do you want to start the business in the first place? That's the question you really need to ask your. Is it that you want to look professional, because your putting a lot of money into side jobs and want the benefits of being a business, or is it just because you want to say you own a business. Regardless of the reason let's look at the amount of time you will be putting into that business. First you have to file paperwork with your local government usually at City Hall stating that you are doing business as (and for the sake of this article I'm going to assume we are talking about a sole proprotiership). This at least in New York State is roughly going to run you about $35-40 last I checked, and this is just the very beginning. Then depending on what type of business this is you need to decide whether or not you have employees, because having employees come with have to pay medicaid, ssi, and many more taxes. So again I'm going to assume it's just yourself for now. Then by apply for your d.b.a you are also olibigating yourself to file quarterly taxes and paying your taxes on your expected income upfront. But do you know what it take to do your taxes as for being a business. I mean a lot of people can do there individual taxes by themself or with the help of TaxAct, Inuit, or insert product name here, but you also want to think about hiring an accountant who knows what he is doing, especially now and days with all the accounting scandals going on, do you really want to be responsible for your taxes. Then after you have that all figured out your ready to go, but wait don't forget what kind of business your in, all the costs you'll end up spending on your business, and even the costs you have to spend just to become or get into the business. And that about wraps up out intial breakthrough in the "Business and the Thoughts that Associate it."

OK, This Isn't the Post I Promised....

Ok, I know that this isn't exactly the post I promised to write next but that post, isn't quite finished yet. So without further ado, I bring to you this post....Ok, enough with the fun and games and on to the content. Well my old 1.67 AMD machine has been with me for quite a while and I figured it's about 5 years old and time for an upgrade. So I went to Newegg to browse around and ended up upgrading from a:

1.67 ghz AMD Athlon XP Processor
512MB of RAM
Geforce FX 5600
A Huge Server Tower (For those that saw it you know what I mean)

to the following system:

2.25 ghz AMD Athlon 64 Bit Processor
1GB of OZC High Performance RAM
Using the Same Geforce FX 5600 (and replace it in the old system with an old ATI Radeon 9600 I had laying around)
And a Desktop Case with Blue Neon Fans and a Front Panel LCD screen to help keep track of the temperature, time, and more.

So there you have it, as for the new machine, it will becoming my primary machine while the old machine will be running Ubuntu as soon as the new machine is all setup and running like I want it. This brings the PC count, to a Windows, Linux, and Mac (PowerPC) Machine, as least for more up-to-date machines. So until next time....and again I'm sorry I didn't get the promised article done yet...it's on it's way.

A Quick Update on Life

Well, not too much has happened lately. I have added Google Adsense to RockyRoad Entertainment's website just for fun. I'm pretty sure that RockyRoad Entertainment won't get a lot of revenue through Google's Adsense program but I guess we will see. In fact I've had this on the RockyRoad Entertainment website for at least a couple of month now, as well as Google Analytics. And suprisingly the site does pretty well for attracting visitors. I was suprised to see the number, which I won't release just yet, as I'm sure if everything that is in the works, works out those number can grow.
As for an update with Cingular Wireless, I have to say I'm still impressed. You see about a week and a half ago my speaker, on my Motorola Razr V3 Black Edition, started cutting out during calls where service was at least 3 bars or more. These places included school, home, and even on the road. So I called up Customer Service and they tried to send some stuff to my phone, and had problem. In fact my phone was so stubborn they said it was one of the most difficult phones they have ever tried to work with. So they had asked me to stop by a Cingular store and have them check the SIM card. Seeing as there is a Cingular store less than two minutes away from school, I stopped by in between classes and told them what the CSR said. They took out the SIM card and continued to put some updated for the phone on it before putting it back in the phone and having me on my way. So I continued to try and use my phone and the problem continued, except that this time the speaker volume liked to go from low to high on it's own and high to low on it's own, usually being very low. Now I know that the Razr's volume is set very low from the factory but this was worse than when I first got the phone. So again I'm on the phone with Customer Service, but this time the contact LockLine, my phones insurance coompany, to issue me a brand new one. So the new phone arrived today and I must say the new one is nice, and feels like it was built better than my old one. So once again I'm satisfied by Cingular and their Customer Support Representatives. The thing I'm not satisfied with them about though is that they told me that, unless I had my phone for my contracts duration, or paid full price, they can't unlock my phone. This is all good and dandy but I can find numerous account on the internet where you have to be with them for three months and they will unlock your phone for free. I mean that would be the right thing to do, especially since if I cancel service within my two year agreement they anally rape my in New York for $240.
Stayed tuned for my next blog post titled - "Running a Business Is Not As Easy as it's Made Out to Be!" Till then so long.

Linksys PAP2-NA

Ok, well back when I ordered ViaTalk Service I was given a free Linksys PAP2 for being a beta tester of the service (basically, all we did was get everything before it launched, we still had to pay for it and all although I got like 2 1/2 months for free for doing it). Anyways when I received the package a while back, I noticed that the box the VoIP adapter came in said Linksys PAP2-NA. And after much research and snooping around I've come to find that ViaTalk, does indeed ship out UNLOCKED PAP2 adapters to it's customers. But wait, don't get your panties in a bunch just yet. These adapter that they ship out are UNLOCKED but they hold the Admin password in which you can get if you pay them $50. Well as I was sitting around tongiht, I decided to see since I no longer have ViaTalk, if I could hack the PAP2 to stop it from having an Admin password. And after searching on the net, found the perfect solution. Originally found here, I'll also list them below:

1. Hook up you PAP2 adapter as you normally would but DO NOT PLUG IT IN TO YOUR NETWORK just yet
2. Unplug the power cord from your cable modem
3. Now plug your PAP2 adapter into your router
4. Pick up the phone it's connected to and dial ****
5. Then dial 73738#
6. When it prompts you for a password use one of the following: 7756112# or 8995523#
7. Press 1 to confirm and the press # to hang up

After you do this you should be able to the WebAdmin portion of your Linksys PAP2 and all of the configurations should be reset to what ViaTalk gets from Cisco. And when you click on the upper right hand link called "Admin Login" you should not be prompted for a password and you should eb able to change any settings you want.

Please note that this was done on a PAP2 with the firmware version: 2.0.12(LS)
DISCLAIMER: This article is for reference only and if followed I take no responsibility for your actions (which include but are not limited to Violation of ToS, Rendering your PAP2 unusable, or any other damages you may cause).

Please note that here are some other useful links to check out:
Yahoo - Linksys PAP2 Group
Voxilla Forum Thread on PAP2-NA Firmware
Linksys Download Page for the PAP2
Sipura - The technology maker Cisco licensed technology from to make the PAP2 before buying them
VoIPSupply.com - Buy everything you need for VoIP

Life, Technology, and College...(Not Particularly in that Order)

For those who don't know, I will be attending my second semester at Erie Community College - North Campus starting on January 23rd, 2006. During my first semester I had no gripes or complaints other than the fact that some of my teachers who will remain unnamed, lacked the knowledge of the course material and was clearly not prepared to teach the class in which they were assigned to teach. But of course, for a community this is understandable. Now going into my second semester I must say the Associates Degree which should have only taken me Two Years to recieve is slipping further away. But wait...It's not due to me failing any classes, especially when I finished the first semester with a 3.44 GPA with nothing below a B. But instead it comes to the fact that all classes rely on classes in which I can't take yet. This is mostly due to me scoring not as good as I should have on the placement test in math last summer but there is more. Then I since I need to fill up credit hours I'm looking into other fields to try to find a suitable minor, since I'm majoring in Computer Science, when I come across TeleCommunications. This would be great or so I thought, but it turns out it was not. First off all the classes are at South Campus, which isn't a problem since I can drive to class, but the problem lays in being they are not offering the Prerequisite to the class I want to take at all this semester. Which is kind of dumb in my opinion, teach the follow-up but not the class before it. So there are some gripes and growing pains about college to start.
Next off Technology. While doing my normal scan through Digg today I ran across this story How Go Daddy Lost A Longtime Customer to A Phisher. The only thing I have to say is that after reading this it really makes me want to have my own dns servers setup here for the company. So fi anyone has any ideas on how to go about with an easy Windows Based DNS server drop me a comment. Other than this I've been doing a lot of work and dealing with life, so that's all I got for now. And in case you didn't know yet, I'll be unavailable for the next couple days as I am taking care of family issues after the recent death of my Grandmother.