Agave Mountain

I've been insanely busy lately, but here are a few announcements:

We're Moving.  We are taking advantage of an opportunity to move into a bigger, more comfortable place.

Blogger shutting down FTP Support.  We are currently utilizing the Blogger platform to maintain this blog.  We currently push the blog to our hosting account via FTP.  However, in the near future Blogger will be discontinuing their support of publishing via FTP, forcing us to make a choice between Blogger's "Custom Domains" or WordPress.  Goodbye Blogger, we will miss you.  Links will probably become broken during the transition.

Goodbye ComCast/Xfinity.  Seriously, I still chuckle every time I think of the ComCast customer service agent who tried to talk me into using their phone service but only after: 1) arguing that I didn't really have an outage; 2) telling me to buy a new cable modem from BestBuy; and 3) finally telling me the earliest they could send out a technician was next week.  Goodbye ComCast, you won't be missed. 

And lastly, we are considering consolidating and bringing our web sites back in-house.  We are doing this for a variety of reasons, including security, faster responses to customer issues, and quite frankly we simply aren't happy with the shared hosting we've received from a number of vendors.

In any event, this is shaping up to be a interesting year so far.  Hopefully, it will be better than 2009. 

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments

Happy belated New Year to everyone. 

I sincerely hope everyone had a good year, although I suspect many of you happy to start a new year and leave 2009 behind.

Looking forward, I will soon be announcing the hiring employee #2, new equipment, and our first product launch. 

Additionally, I would like to announce our offices will be closed on the following dates:

Monday, May 31, 2010 - Memorial Day
Monday, July 5, 2010 - Independence Day (Observed)
Monday, September 6, 2010 - Labor Day
Thursday, November 25, 2010 - Thanksgiving
Friday, November 26 - Day after Thanksgiving
Friday, December 24, 2010 - Christmas Eve
Monday, December 27, 2010 - Christmas Day (Observed)

Good luck and best wishes in the New Year!

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments

A spammer is sending spam with forged headers to appear as if the email originated from user accounts at this domain.  

As of three minutes ago, I am receiving bounced messages from a variety of e-mail addresses.  Looking at the bounced e-mail headers, these messages are originating from the following IP address: 122.46.104.49.  That IP address is located in Seoul, Republic of Korea (Powercomm ISP).

Thankfully, the flood of e-mail bounces have stopped. 

If you have received any of these e-mails, they did not originate from our servers, nor did they pass through our e-mail servers.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments

I can honestly say that it is good to be back home, especially after a tortuous eleven hour long-haul economy flight from Tokyo to Chicago.   The end result of my last trip: 16,905 miles, 4 cities, and two new passport stamps.  I now have banked a total of 213,207 frequent flier miles and am on track to earn gold elite status on American Airlines this year (the "hard" way).

This trip, I switched out my T-Mobile SIM for a foreign SIM and left the laptop at home.  For one week, I didn't even check my email and or voicemail.  It was relaxing to say the least.

My iPod saved my sanity.  I assumed that since the Japan Airlines flight segments were in a 747-400, that the video/entertainment system was going to be horrible and it was.  If I had to watch James Bond Quantum of Solace one more times I would poke my eyes out with chopsticks. 

Before I left, I purchased the first season of Stargate SG-1, a rental movie, and a book with the Amazon Kindle application.  I don't know if I would have made it without those distractions. 

Dead tired tired, I crashed early and woke up at 1 am.  I've been up ever since trying working through my inbox, paying bills and responding to emails (I've jumped on the GTD bandwagon).  My shredder has been noisily chewing up the never ending stream of credit card solicitations, and mail. 

I'm now ready to go back to work and will be in very early, a rarity for me. 

• My schedule was changed to include a stopover in Tokyo.  Next time, I'm going avoid a stop over in Tokyo and try to fly straight through.  Tokyo is just too expensive and too difficult to get around in without knowing some Japanese.
• The Hilton Narita (Tokyo) charges 11000 yen (online reservation) for a room.  Wait and reserve at the airport hotel desk, and the price is only 7900 yen.  Free shuttle to/from the airport.  A taxi to the local mall is expensive -- $20 each way. 
• American Airlines Double EQM (Elite Qualifying Miles).  Registration code: DBEQM.  Register and fly between March 18 through July 15, 2009 and elite qualifying miles are doubled.  Considering that I already have racked up 17k EQMs so far this year, this puts me on track to earn Gold elite status on American Airlines this year (without any mileage runs). 
• I bough an iPod tip for my iGo battery charger (consumes AA batteries).  The eleven hour flight required four AA batteries.  This is now part of my essential travel gear.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone is as ready to plunge into 2009 as I am.  Over the holidays I traveled overseas and for the first time in ten years, I relaxed.  Freed from the tyranny of the everyday task list, I read a book, and had time to do some thinking.  As I pondered, I thought about my accomplishments in 2008 and started thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in 2009.

Now, I'm back in the U.S. and have had the opportunity to sleep, I'm ready to get started. 

I'm now clearing out the backlog of voicemail, mail, bills, and tasks.  While I have been checking my email periodically, I haven't been on top of my voicemail.  I will get back to everyone who has left a message in the next few days.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 3:44 AM | Permalink | Comments

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy and safe Labor Day weekend -- the last long weekend that harbingers the end of summer. It is the weekend when most people go to the beach one last time, have a picnic or cook out one last time.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments

I haven't posted anything for a while (I've been very busy). 

Tonight, I had to force myself to concentrate on the side of running a business that almost no one enjoys -- paperwork.  

Perhaps the biggest surprise this year was that QuickBooks miscalculated the Minnesota Unemployment Insurance liability payment.  It was off by $1.  Since QuickBooks Online won't allow you to submit payment through them, it wasn't a big deal.  When you pay at the State's web site, it is correctly calculated.  My accountant didn't sound to concerned.

However, when it came to reconcile the invoices, payments, and bank statements... I had a heck of a time trying to correct the problem (turning the non-posting payment, into a paid liability with an adjustment).  I'm still not 100% sure I corrected the problem.  It is entirely possible that my books won't balance anymore.

On a more exciting note, I am days away from finishing up with the 1U server.  It has taken longer than expected to validate the hardware, install the system services and then secure each an every service.

Up next:

• I briefly thought about moving from Blogger to Wordpress, but Wordpress has had a stream of systemic security issues.  I'm still looking for a Blogger alternative.
• SEO.  My web sites are absolutely broken in terms of SEO best practices.  I will be fixing them as I port them over the new web server.
• Moving my corporate portal from ASP.net to html.  Since I don't modify my corporate web site, I don't see the point of having it automatically generated.  I also need to concentrate on improving the web copy. 
• I will be putting up some postings on how to setup/secure the various services (Apache, PHP, SSH, iptables, etc), later on this week for those interested.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

So far this year, the other airlines have levied charges on checked luggage, increased phone and in person booking fees, increased change fees, added fuel charges, and increased ticket fares.

While most of our clients do not require travel to a client's facilities, we will continue to monitor the situation and will be modifying our travel and billing policies to clearly communicate our airline choices, preferences, and strategies to save our clients money. 

Labels: Announcements, business travel, Consulting

Posted by Joe Turner at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today Agave Mountain, Inc. celebrates it's first anniversary.  I would like to thank everyone who supported us.  Today marks the one year anniversary of the incorporation of Agave Mountain, Inc., and represents thousands of hours of blood, sweat, and tears-- and I find myself one year older and hopefully one year wiser.

One thing I have learned that bootstrapping an mISV by consulting is a difficult thing to accomplish.  I now found that my consulting is successful.  I am now turning work away, and I struggle to to find the time to devote to product development.

Back to the grind.  :)

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

I blogged a while back that I was evaluating various web platforms for a my projects.  Well, tonight I began to seriously evaluate the Wt (pronounced witty) C++/Ajax framework.  I've decided not to use the library for one simple reason -- the licensing terms are cost prohibitive.

I had already floated Wt to a client as a possible alternative (recovery plan) to a massive Java/JSF project that was nearly a year behind schedule.  The leads were receptive to the idea so next on my agenda was to seriously evaluate it, generate some applications and mock up a demo.

First, let me say that Wt it is an awesome idea, and it is great implementation.  It leverages boost::asio (asio was included in boost with version 1.35).  Out of the box, it works with apache, fastcgi, or an extremely lightweight httpd server. 

In a nutshell -- you write your application by cobbling together widgets much in the same way you would write an application in Qt.  The underlying technologies (HTML/XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, Ajax, Forms, DHTML, etc) are abstracted so you concentrate on adding, say a button widget rather than coding up an HTML form that contains a button, and code to handle the post... You simply add a button widget to your container class and the HTML, JavaScript and forms are generated automatically at runtime.

While the examples are somewhat terse, they do showcase the possibilities -- with some effort in developing your own widgets, you could have the coding efficiency of Ruby On Rails with the speed of C++.

The framework is licensed in a dual licensing scheme.  They freely grant you a free GPL license.  However, the commercial license is € 599 per year, per developer.  At current exchange rates that is nearly $1000 per year, per developer.   

I don't mind paying for a license, and I often encourage my clients to purchase products like RedHat or MySQL.  That being said, I simply don't like purchasing licenses that expire, where you are locked in. 

What happens when you develop a 1MLOC application and the dollar continues to fall in relation to the Euro, and they want to raise their prices you are effectively a hostage.

What do you do?  Rewrite/port the application at a tremendous cost?  I've seen companies held hostage by framework providers before and really don't want to be in the position. 

Labels: Announcements, C++, mISV

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:48 AM | Permalink | Comments

It has been a little over three months since I purchased a Mac Pro to be used as my primary development workstation.  Tonight while I was coding, it just completely died.  At first, I thought it was just a power outage, but the lights and everything else stayed on.  I switched plugs and it came up for a few moments before abruptly shutting off again.  Troubleshooting was futile.

It was dead.  I waited several minutes and tried again.  I got the apple boot screen before it shut down.

I called apple technical support the response was a pre-recorded, "... You have called us outside of our normal hours.. try again later."

An hour later, I tried again and it booted. 

I'll be calling Apple support tomorrow to try to figure out how to get it repaired.   It was having problems not waking up from sleep, which I would tolerate.  But there is no way I'm going to tolerate a machine that will just reset at random times.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments

A milestone is one of a series of markers that are placed along a road at regular intervals, to reassure travelers that they are traveling on the proper path and to indicate distance traveled.  Within the framework of project management terms, a milestone has a similar connotation, that you are going in the right direction towards a the completion of a work item, phase, or project. 

It is those small victories that tell us we are moving in the right direction, albeit often slower than we want.  Last month I hit one of those milestones -- I started to pay myself from the company coffers. 

This week I've had to file three returns with the government concerning payroll taxes.  While I would never celebrate paying taxes, it does mean that I've made enough from consulting to start drawing a modest salary and consequently, that means paying Uncle Sam as well as the State of Minnesota their due. 

Timeline:

• Sign first full time client;
• two more months of invoicing to accrue enough in sales to be able to pay myself a modest salary; and finally
• Paying withholding and paying taxes, unemployment insurance, and Minnesota withholding. 

In a nutshell, I am now working for myself full time, and surviving.

Secondly, our corporate application to the iPhone Developer Program has been vetted and ultimately accepted by Apple.  Oddly enough, I had to fax them the articles of incorporation, and business documents to prove that I was a real company.  Then and only then, I received a phone call to tell me that I would receive an email to finish the enrollment. 

• This is our first formal relationship with a vendor/partner.

Lastly, I've decided to reorganize the blog categories.   I've already revamped the blog HTML template and removed the Google ads. 

From now on, I'll be posting in the following primary categories:

• Announcements: corporate announcements and news, press releases, product updates.
• Business of Software: blogs relating to selling, marketing, creating software products.
• Programming: General articles on user interface design, C++, Perl, Python, etc.,
• Business: items of interest for small business owners, freelancers, and self-employed people.
• Consulting: Consulting or Freelancing articles.
• Time Management: items on time management and generally getting stuff done.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments

As I posted some time ago, I decided to take a gamble and use GrandCentral as my publicly listed corporate phone number.  The phone number can be forwarded through to my cell phone, VOIP line, Skype VOIOP number, or a land line with a few clicks on the GrandCentral website.

Today, I decided to generate and add a WebCall button.  It is a nifty idea.  You click on the WebCall button, enter your phone number and name, and the GrandCentral system will call you and either ring my cell phone or dump you off to my voicemail account.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

I'm happy to say that the ink is drying on a purchase order; we have landed our first paying customer. 

To celebrate, I will be working this weekend to upload some new content and tweak the corporate website.

Most notably, I will be modifying our privacy policy to specifically state that we will not sell, rent, or give away customer information, the way Deluxe sold my account information to the sleazy Website Pros telemarketers (a forum discussing website pros here).

In any event, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments

Labels: Announcements

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments