Agave Mountain

Day 5

Early this morning a Comcast technician arrived to diagnose and repair my Internet access problems.  After thirty minutes and three trips to his truck, it appears as if my problems are finally resolved. 

I am now actively using Fogbugz (free for up to two accounts) for project management and to track the project.  I broke everything down I would need to launch the project and entered them as tasks. 

I worked the rest of the day, reading up on a variety of subjects, from installers to credit card processing.  Beyond that I didn't get a whole lot accomplished. 

Day 6

I did some coding and built up a installation package for Mac OS X.  I have a functional user interface prototype.

Day 7

More coding; more reading. 

Day 8

Hi ho. Hi ho.  Off to the doctor I go.

I thought I was done with my cold, but the cough has lingered on for the third week.  My wife prodded me to finally go the doctor (she accused me of having tuberculosis).  After a quick X-ray, it was confirmed that I do not have tuberculosis -- I have pneumonia (I thought only chronically or terminally ill people got pneumonia).

I took the entire day off.

After the Doctor's appointment, my wife and I ended up at the Mall were we found a good deal on a ten piece stainless steel cookware set at Macy's.  It was nearly 70% off after all of the discounts were added.

Labels: ThirtyDayChallenge

Posted by Joe Turner at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments

Day 2

I didn't accomplish much on the second day, primarily due to an Internet outage (which is the reason why I'm posting this late). 

For some reason, Comcast decided to replace all of the wiring in the building.  They drilled a hole through the cement floor and installed new cables and jacks.  A coax cable now snakes around our living room to our TV, attached to a faceplate that will pop off the wall with a slight tug, leaving the cables exposed.

I did the only thing I could -- hammering on my keyboard enough to produce a rough software specification.

Day 3

Still no Internet access.  That means no email, no access to my safari bookshelf, and no Google.  I did some coding and started to put down a schedule. 

I was able to get in touch with  my accountant who offered similar to that of my attorney -- incorporate the business. 

Tonight, no Internet access again.  That means no email, no access to my safari bookshelf, and no Google.  I did some coding and started to put down a schedule. 

Day 4

Earlier in the morning, I had intermittent Internet access before it simply stopped working again.  Comcast is sending a technician tomorrow to investigate (which I reported several days ago). 

As an aside, having used Comcast for broadband in several states over the years, I can honestly say that the service leaves something to be desired.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to get DSL in my current location, otherwise I would switch in a heartbeat.

On the 4th day, I took the advice of my accountant (and attorney) and started the process of incorporating the business.  Although it is almost always better to incorporate in your home state, I chose to incorporate in Delaware, for several reasons.

The process can be done in person, or online in about 10 minutes.  There are many services that will generate and process the paperwork for you.  They all do exactly the same thing; there is no reason to pay more for the service.

A quick survey shows a wide variety of price points, for exactly the same service: 

I also cobbled together a simple application that runs under Mac OS X and an installer.  I am slowly progressing towards my goal.

Labels: ThirtyDayChallenge

Posted by Joe Turner at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments

Today is the first day of my ambitious goal of building a full fledged commercial software product within the scope of a thirty (30) day period. 

If you have any experience with software development schedules, you know how ambitious this is.  When I add the fact that I have a firm 40+ hour commitment to a client, the idea becomes almost insane.   Nutty even.

Before starting the challenge, I've already completed the following tasks:

• Product Idea - done.
• Website domains - purchased.
• Preliminary market research - done.
• Evaluated Qt and other cross platform frameworks (Qt a wonderful product, just not right for my product).
• Platforms to support: OS X, Win XP/Vista, iPhone, Palm* 

Unresolved items

• Incorporate?  Subsidiary?  My attorney advised me to incorporate, as a subsidiary of my existing S Corp for liability reasons?  Should I, or just run it within the same Corp?  Are there any advantages to incorporating as a wholly owned subsidiary or just a C-corp?  I think this business has a shot at becoming big.  Mega-corp big.  Private jet big. 
• Which payment processor?  Should I use a payment processor/reseller who takes a sizeable commission or process the credit cards with my own shopping cart?  Payment processing solutions are taking anywhere from 1.9% - 50% (which seems excessive to me).
• I need to research everything I can about protecting and generating unlock codes.

Accomplishments/Completed Tasks

First of all I have chosen a project code name: Emerald (I'm not ready to reveal my idea just yet).  I tried to come up with a pool of cool, trendy project code words, but failed miserably.  I gave up and settled on gemstones -- something that takes a great deal of sweat and tears to dig from the earth, clean up, and sometimes they can even turn out to be of great value.  Get it?

My first instinct when given an impossibly short deadline is to jump straight into coding.  After all, documentation and design just tend to slow prolific coders, right?  However, years of experience has taught me that this is not the most efficient hammering out an application.

So I threw together some wire frames in Power Point slide deck.  After an hour or so, I showed them to my wife, and I am proud to say she thinks I'm a genius.  I printed out the slides six to a page and then cut them out, and taped them to my lab notebook, with some copious scribbles and I figured out what I wanted to do.

Next, I made the first strategic business decision that would have a long lasting effect on my product.  After evaluating several cross-platform C++ frameworks, I chose to forgo using any of them; I decided to write a native user interface application for Windows and a native user interface for OS X.  I quickly generated a simple hello world project in each, and checked the code into a subversion repository.   

Not bad for a first day. 

I cracked open a beer and am moving on to typing up a functional specification for the software.  The real coding will start tomorrow.

Labels: ThirtyDayChallenge

Posted by Joe Turner at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments

When I first stumbled on a few blog posting ceremoniously declaring the author's Challenge, I shrugged and kept browsing for something more interesting.  It just seemed to gimmicky and faddish.

While the idea of a 30 day challenge isn't new, the idea of applying it to software development certainly is.   Forget the waterfall, or agile methodologies -- you have exactly thirty (30) days to design, craft, code, debug and release a usable software product that your target audience will pay for.  And for good measure add the prospect of bragging rights (or public humiliation) if you succeed (or fail).

Well today, as I look at stacks of time sheets and invoices from consulting, I notice that my product still hasn't shipped. 

I'm in.  30 days to release version 1.0. 

Labels: ThirtyDayChallenge

Posted by Joe Turner at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments