Category: Jake

I’m looking to setup a checking account for my on the side business. It’s a one-man shop (me), and it’s stuff that I do whenever I have free time, so I need something that doesn’t have any monthly fees (as there won’t be a ton of money in the account) and I’d like online access and debit card access. Anybody have any recommendations for banks (the best I could find was through Liberty Bank), or any other tips on how to handle expenses and such for an on-the-side business? I’m basically just trying to keep the stuff out of our personal checking account so it doesn’t screw with things there.

Actually, it’s tomorrow, but I figured I’d let everybody know. I’ll be a whole 27 years old. I’m having a little family-gathering party tomorrow night, playing golf with my dad in the morning, and am just going to chill out as much as possible. In other words, no blogging tomorrow.

If anybody’s feeling giving, the donate page is here, and my PO Box is here. Otherwise, have fun with the pile of BB links.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m shopping around getting quotes for computers and a server. After it’s all said and done, HP is looking like the best deal/service (and the sales rep from them spoke English, which is always an added perk considering the Dell rep didn’t very well). They also have a deal going on until the end of the month that with certain configurations, you can get a free 15″ LCD. One of those configurations is without Microsoft Office, instead with MS Works (which is an ugly little suite for business use), so I need to get some licenses for MS Office Pro or Small Business Edition 2003.

Anybody know where to get them cheap? I need either of those two versions because they come with Publisher as well, which was requested by the folks there for some basic in-house desktop publishing duties. I actually have the CD for the MS Office Pro edition as well as for Publisher 2003, I just need more licenses. So if anybody has four of them to sell/get rid of, by all means e-mail me (and Publisher I probably don’t need four for, probably just two of the Pro/SBE licenses and two Office Basic licenses).

I’m truly convinced that technology is out to get me. I’ve spent more time today than I’d care to admit working on a co-worker’s computer, trying to get it working right. She needed a new cooling fan on her processor, as well as a case fan, and she wanted a new hard drive (because her old one was having fits and was too small). I had all the parts, so she brought it in for me to install everything. Got the new heatsink installed, the new fan, and the new HD, and then ran Ghost to copy the data from one drive to another. Booted it up, and we were good to go. Total time, about 90 minutes.

I should’ve boxed the thing up and handed it to my co-worker right there, but I made the mistake of asking if she needed anything else. She pointed out an error message that was popping up on boot, and after a quick Google search, I found out it was a driver issue, so I downloaded the new driver, installed it, rebooted, and then the computer wouldn’t boot into Windows (this system is running Windows 98, which is another problem entirely). So I booted it into safe mode, tried to uninstall the driver, didn’t see anything in Add/Remove Programs, so I went hunting around in device manager for the culprit. Thought I found it, removed it and set it back to the Windows/Microsoft default driver, and rebooted. Still wouldn’t get into Windows. So I tried booting off a DOS disk, and copying the old data from the old hard drive onto the new hard drive again (which should, in theory, revert everything back to normal, right?). No dice at all. So tomorrow, I’m going to just reinstall Windows and go from there.

What’s even worse? The system is an old Dell, so that should tell me something about my problem from yesterday. Neither HP or Dell have gotten back to me with a solid quote, so I’m still waiting on them.

I’m really starting to get frustrated with technology. Yes, it pays the bills and puts food on the table for my family, but there are times like this where I really just wish I wasn’t good at this sort of thing so I wasn’t always relied upon to fix it. Life would be a lot easier if I was actually good enough at something else to pay the bills.

Update on 5/18: Read the comments. Everything’s up and functional again.

I’m in the process of getting a technology quote together for a new athletic facility they’re building out here in Sunriver, and to save myself time and trouble, I’m just probably going to order through Dell (generally, if I had more time, I might build them all myself, but at this point, it’s going to be cheaper and easier to manage if I buy them all from a single point, and Dell is the cheapest). I’ve heard you can get the best deals on multiple system purchases (I need four desktops and a server) if you call in an order.

Does anybody have somebody there that they’ve dealt with a bunch in the past that’s been easy to work with so I have an extension? Basically, here’s what I need:

Desktops:

-512 Megs of RAM

-Celeron 2400 (at least)

-CD/Floppy

-15″ LCD (might by that at NewEgg.com, as it’s cheaper)

-Windows XP Pro

-Office 2003 Small Business Edition

Server:

-At least a 2.5ghz Celeron

-2x80gig Hard Drives in RAID 1 Config

-Windows 2003 Small Business Server with 5 CAL

-Tape Backup System

Anybody have any ideas on who to deal with? Or just call their number and have at it?

Update at 11:41 Talked to a Dell rep earlier today. She didn’t speak very good English, but after answering a few of her questions, I’m apparently being transferred to a higher-level account rep who can work with my budget a bit. Hopefully he/she will speak better English.

Update on 5/21: HP ended up giving me a great deal, and the sales rep I talked to was American and actually spoke good English. I never even heard back from Dell, so screw ’em — I’m getting an HP.