May, 2007

Nexopia / Work — No Comments
29
May 07

Moving day for Nexopia

First of all a big thanks to Rob Davy over at Cadence Creek Equine Centre for a mention in his blog. Rob is one of my best friends and we both share the entrepreneurial spirit. Rob and his wife Caitlin run a horse boarding and riding lesson facility just east of Edmonton. If you have children looking for lessons please look them up!

Yesterday we spent the better part of 24 hours moving Nexopia headquarters across downtown Edmonton.

We started disassembling desks early in the morning and by around 6PM we were loading them into the big cube van that we rented. It took four loads to move all the junk that we have.

Our new digs are pretty nice, it’s an old building with huge wooden beams and a skylights throughout. Apparently as we left the building at 1:30AM one of us walked through the wrong door to leave and we tripped an alarm. Security paid us a visit today to let us know they were less than impressed.

In other news my business plans are coming to fruition. I received a phone call from the BDC this morning and they let me know that I wasn’t eligible for a loan from them if I was getting one with my normal bank. Apparently my debt to equity ratios would be skewed too far for them to approve it. Don’t worry though I paid a visit to my regular bank again to finalize the loan application and when I was there I maxed my Visa and took a pre-approved loan as a security blanket. I don’t intend to spend either but if need be I technically have access to more money than the business loan I am getting.

All in all today was decent. The extra security money was a pleasant surprise and the move is all finished. Now I need to wrap up these financial statements, negotiate a lease, AND move into an apartment all in the next three days. If this is my last entry then you’ll know all this pressure has killed me.

3rd on Whyte / Entrepreneurship / Work — No Comments
27
May 07

Almost there

Yesterday I met with the current owners of my soon to be Internet cafe. Over coffee we discussed their financial situation and chatted about their history as a company.

I am still crunching numbers but so far I am very confident that everything is legitimate and will work out.

Coming Monday I need to do several registration activities in order to actually operate a business legally. As well I need to negotiate the current lease and I hope to enlist some help from another family friend who is an expert on commercial leases. Also on Monday, Nexopia is moving headquarters a few blocks away so we will be doing a ton of moving.

So does anyone want a job yet?

3rd on Whyte / Entrepreneurship / Work — No Comments
26
May 07

I finally have financing!

As you may have read in my earlier post about purchasing a business I am trying to purchase an Internet Cafe. Today I received confirmation that I would have the purchased financed by one bank. I am still waiting to hear from the BDC about some money that “looked good” initially. Hopefully I get the second round and I’ll be sailing.

The conditions for the offer are off on Thursday and I would potentially take possession as early as June 15th. Tomorrow I’m meeting with the owners to discuss their finances in more detail. Now I have to ask some family friends who are looking for work if they are still available!

I’m still not entirely sure how this will play out with my current job. Ideally I would remain part to semi-full time and we would develop a mutually beneficial relationship. Most of my work can be done remotely and it will be interesting to see the results of attempting that.

On that note I remember how over a year ago we were trying to manage high ranking volunteers who felt that they were part of the management team. In a sense they were because they helped to build and grow the business from day one. Unfortunately reality set in an with all of them having other full-time jobs it was impossible to communicate, collaborate, and make decisions in a clear, timely manner. Then again, none of them were being paid. I plan to do this properly and make sure my time is managed well.

Next in store for Soliciting|Fame… comments!

PS. Google Analytics is pretty awesome. I plugged it into S|F on day one and it’s generating some neat stats.

Blogging — No Comments
25
May 07

Beautiful beautiful URLs

I stayed up late to learn a bit about Apache and how to use mod_rewrite to give me some snazzy new URLs.

Thanks to cor for his tutorial, it definitely helped clarify the Apache mod_rewrite documentation.

Unfortunately I haven’t fully implemented them yet. Hopefully they will be done tonight.

Update 23:52:44 – The permalinks now work, check it out.

Cell Phones / Reviews — No Comments
24
May 07

I want the whole Helio Ocean!

I’ve been aware of Helio for a long time but it wasn’t until recently that I actually wanted a phone from them.

Luckily the last issue of Technology Review that I will receive before my subscription expires had a great article on the trials and tribulations that Helio has gone through. By the way, Technology Review is a great magazine, however it’s a bit too “sciency” and not enough “techy” for my tastes.

Essentially the ocean is a phone with a revolutionary design. It sports a unique three way spring that allows the phone to slide vertically for making phone calls, and horizontally for a full QWERTY keyboard to type with.

A few amazing features include the ultimate inbox:

Ocean’s integrated messaging dashboard includes out-of-the-box built-in access to AOL email and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! email and Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, EarthLink email and Helio Mail. Ocean will also support push mail from Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN Hotmail, as well as Mail for Microsoft Exchange

Also the Google Maps friends locator, and the 2.4 inch screen that rotates based on orientation. If you are playing a video game the device needs to be rotated so that the d-pad is situated on the left hand side like a normal controller. Probably one of the biggest draws is it’s HTML browser.

SlashGear puts it best:

Dual-slide for both number pad and full QWERTY. 3G for screaming downloads. Two-megapixel camera with flash, GPS, full HTML browser, 2.4-inch 260k colour QVGA display, on-board stereo speakers, 200MB of internal memory and microSD for more than 2GB more, USB Mass Storage Mode with PC and Mac compatibility… I’m throwing all this out in one fat chunk because if I were to talk you through it we’d be here all day.

I would ditch my BlackBerry Pearl for this baby in a heartbeat. Now if it was only available in Canada…

← Older Entries
Edmonton Computer Repair