Hope my wife didn’t notice that the description read “My Fiancee.” I like the new one much better

Where does this leave the small game developer? As one carrier exec said, “You do the math. If we’re going to carry 100 games, would want to deal with 100 different developers, or only a handful?” (or words to that extent). Of course, I’m not complaining — I managed to get in at the right time, make a decent profit, and then pull out before I spent all my profits trying to keep up with the industry giants — not a practical proposition. So what does this have to do with my blog, and why do I mention it now? Well, since ThroughPut no longer needs the dedicated web server it has (which 2robots.com is piggybacking off of), I no longer need to pay $109/month for it.

Don’t worry, this site isn’t going anywhere. I am just going to move it back to my old coworker’s data center, where it was before I started ThroughPut Inc. Unfortunately, I botched the job of remote-upgrading my server there from Red Hat 7.2 to CentOS 4.2, and managed to completely hose the machine. So, the conversion will have to wait until I can take a trip out to the middle-of-nowhere, Long Island, and re-install the thing in person.

Maybe this weekend.

Unfortunately, it turned out that my new and novel approach had already been patented. I contacted the patent holder, and unfortunately he was not willing to part with it or even participate for anywhere near a reasonable arrangement. Further research into this market will tell you that there are some big players involved — going up against them would take a pretty serious commitment from people with deep pockets. Since electronic voting is not my area of most expertise, and because I don’t have those sorts of pockets, I’ve decided to side-line the electronic voting market, in lieu of my other 2 business ideas. Coincidentally, I have managed to make notable progress in both those other areas, although one more than the other. I’ll post more about those in a bit.

Long story short, you are now viewing this site on its new server. It should be much faster and snappier than before, as it has gone from a Celeron 533 / 320mb RAM to an Athlon 2200 / 1gb RAM. Leave me a comment if you have any problems.

PS: Anyone who is using webmail off my site, you should see a BIG speed increase when looking through large email boxes!

1. There isn’t enough time in the day to work full-time and run a side business. I tried that for the past two years. It sounds good in theory, but your home life suffers, and it wears you out to the point where if you don’t take a sizable vacation from everything every two months or so, you start to go a little crazy.

2. I am spending about 3-3.5 hours a day traveling back and forth from Long Island to Brooklyn. This is clearly a large and unproductive (and non-entertaining) chunk of the day. From the time I wake up (to go to work) to the time I get home is about 12 hours. This is not an ideal lifestyle when I have an option otherwise.

3. The freedom to make large and unilateral decisions in my private business stressed the lack of that ability in my day job. That’s not anything that wouldn’t be the case at any large company — there are policies and procedures, and they are there for a reason. However, a small company has the ability to turn on a dime in either its procedures, infrastructure, or business strategy, and a larger company can’t. As time went on, the difference between the two was getting more frustrating.

4. If not now, then when? I’ve been talking about starting businesses — with viable plans — among my friends for quite a while. I am about to get married. If I don’t take this opportunity now, then when will I have a better chance to do so? I refuse to be forced to tell stories about what I “could have done, but was too afraid.” After all, there is nothing to be afraid of, other than some serious effort.

5. I think I can succeed. I’ve been reading up on some of the myths of start-up businesses. For example, the proverbial “9 out of 10 fail.” It turns out, that this counts all small businesses — the bulk of which is restaurants, deli’s, dry cleaners, etc. And, of the 9 that fail, most are closed voluntarily, not because they bankrupt. I don’t think the chances are so poor as that. Also, my company already has existing sales. These sales have dropped lately because I haven’t had the time to devote to it.

Of course there are all the other reasons one might imagine: “be your own boss,” “work from home,” etc. I think the ones above are the biggest, for me.

I hope this has answered at least some people’s questions. I think it answers mine.

Instead, I’m ready to take the big plunge. I’ve had some side business or another cooking for almost as long as I can remember working. It’s come to the point now where I think I have learned as much as I am going to learn without making a bigger commitment to it. So, I turned in my resignation at work today, and in 2 weeks I will be working for myself full time.

This is totally stressful, of course, more so because my career is really on a roller coaster ride upward. But it is also a sort of a relief. It took a huge effort not to smile as I was informing my boss of my intentions. Despite everything else, this just feels right. I expect that there are some hard financial times ahead — but no more so than I have dealt with in the past, and in fact much better because my fiancee is an accomplished and distinguished worker at her company.

I will be concentrating on two core businesses. Now that I will no longer have to worry about co-workers reading my blog, I can write much more about those here. Not today though. Today I get to rest.

In conjunction with my wedding in 2 months, this is the beginning of a new phase in my life, and I recognize that as being significant. I was looking for a change, and I think that this will be a good one. I look forward to a new beginning

Proposal Writing

New York
New York State Senator
New York State HAVA taskforce
An opinion
Another Opinion

General Info
Wikipedia entry on electronic voting
Electronic Voting Supplier
Internet Voting opinion
State of Gorgea voting FAQ
Washington Technology article
Cost analysis for phone voting

Fraud
Count Every Vote
Voter Fraud
Common Dreams
Electronic Voting Problems

ATM’s
Microsoft’s ATM Background Info

I came across this link today, and I figured I would share it for no particular reason.

I actually have a lot going on which I can’t share on my blog quite yet. It’s keeping me fairly stressed out. On the flip side, my brother is returning from Israel on Sunday morning. We are going to have a 5:00am welcome home party for him — he’s been out of the country for about 6 months.

Of course, my reasons are fairly selfish — I am looking for more crew for my racing team.

Business Name Generator

Product Name Generator

Background

Upon starting my first job out of college, I learned that my first responsibility was to determine a job title for myself. I already had a good idea of what my responsibilities would be, and any title which the management didn’t particularly object to was okay.

I found that this was one of the most difficult things I have had to do in a long while. Of course, working in the computer industry, I decided that the best solution would be to write a program to do it for me. Here you go. Every time you load up this page, it will generate a new, completely random job title. Some time in the future, I may add support for different types of jobs, like cooks, investment bankers, and elevator repairmen. If you’d like to see that, drop me a line.