Post Race!

[dday9]

I didn't know about the Shared modifier until now and I find that to be useful.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Thanks for sharing.

[szlamany]

You gotta keep these things private, friend.

[Kika]

I'm new here. Id like to start a new thread. How do I do this?...

[Gruff]

For reals?

This area is comedy central for the forum.

[dday9]

Click on the new thread button on the appropriate forum.

[szlamany]

This is certainly not the appropriate forum for much!

[Shaggy Hiker]

And this thread isn't even a good one for advice, because so many people jump in that anything serious gets scrolled off the page pretty fast....at least when DDay gets bored.

[dday9]

bored?

[dday9]

Who's bored?

[dday9]

I'm board.

[dday9]

Like plank on ed-edd-and eddie

[dday9]

Now I'm whistling the theme song.

[Gruff]

Like plank on ed-edd-and eddie

Whah????

[dday9]

[Gruff]

No Comprende Senor.

[homer13j]

I'm board.

[FunkyDexter]

In the last few years I'm growing increasingly broad.

[FunkyDexter]

My career's doing really well. It's soared.

[FunkyDexter]

I'm moving to Bristol soon and have smoe furniture that won't fit in the new house. It's stored.

[FunkyDexter]

I'm eating a tastey apple. It's cored.

[FunkyDexter]

I've just recieved honours from the queen. I'm Lord.

[FunkyDexter]

I bvelieve RobDog recently bought a new Mustang. It's a Ford.

[FunkyDexter]

I fancy a nice glass of wine. It's poured.

[FunkyDexter]

I disagree with teh logic of those who still use VB6. It's flawed.

[FunkyDexter]

I've run out of energy. I'm floored.

[dday9]

I disagree with teh logic of those who still use VB6. It's flawed.

I swear, if I see another thread on resurrecting VB6 or why VB6 is better than VB.Net or why did MS kill VB6 or ... the list goes on, I'll pull my hair out!

[Shaggy Hiker]

I follow the UserVoice moan thread on bringing back VB6. It's pretty entertaining, but kind of in a bad way.

[dday9]

I'm thinking about learning LISP, what do y'all think?

[FunkyDexter]

That thoundth like a good idea. It'th thertainly a powerful language. I hear it'th macroth are very advanthed.

[Gruff]

Maybe I am from the back woods but, I was under the impression it was only used by Autodesk for their AutoCad product.
Personally I would simply use the embedded VBA instead.

The last five versions or so require you to download and run a free VBA enabler before it can be used.

AutoCad VBA has a large API built in just like Excel.

Theriouthly!

[dclamp]

I want to start an IT consulting business. / Home/Small Business service provider

[Gruff]

The consultant for our company does extremely well for himself. He only handles businesses and mainly server/network installations, support, digital security camera systems and major software roll outs like Semantic AV. When we signed up with him he was a one man show. Today he has a stable of four high tech employees. They charge about $125.00 an hour for a support call. Minimum charge is for 15 minutes.

They do not do PC repair or PC troubleshooting. For that matter I normally don't bother with that either.
If it's hardware I generally replace the entire PC. For software I wipe and reinstall everything.

We use his service frequently and we are not his only customer.

So if you know your stuff I'd say go for it. Could be very lucrative.

[dday9]

I was only kidding about the LISP thing, I read the source code a while back and could not for the life of me understand how that language has outlasted fortran.

[dclamp]

That is very good to hear. That is exactly the types of technology that I am familiar with and would be interested in working with. I have found that "IT Consulting" doesn't really fully cover what I want to do. I am interested in not only consulting for homes or small business, but handling the installation and support of networks, hardware, etc. Security systems, surveillance systems and access control are all something I am familiar with as well and I would like to provide as a service as well.

PC repair and troubleshooting is something that I find myself doing already (as do most tech savvy people). But I am not sure if that is something that I would want to provide as a service. I think I would provide it as a service at the beginning stages of my company to get my foot in the door with some companies. Hopefully I would move on to more business setting with small or medium sized businesses where I could just roll out a new machine instead of having to repair one. That is the strategy that I am familiar with at my work now, no repair is done unless it is a specialty machine; we just request a whole new machine and the hard drive is swapped or imaged.

I am still in the consideration stage of this. I have thought about doing it on and off but never known how to start. I am currently working a full time job, a part time job, and going to school full time. I am going to at least wait until I am finished with school so I have more time dedicated.

Any other advice or suggestions?

[dclamp]

I was only kidding about the LISP thing, I read the source code a while back and could not for the life of me understand how that language has outlasted fortran.

Ugh i just looked at LISP. Why is every single thing encapsulated between parenthesis!?

[Gruff]

That is exactly the types of technology that I am familiar with... Any other advice or suggestions?

My suggestion would be to find a company that provides the high end services and work for them for a time with the express goal of learning how best to run such a business. Learn the costly customer traps you can fall into.

You can have all the technical skill in the world and still fail as a business if you don't learn how to manage the bottom line correctly.

[Shaggy Hiker]

My suggestion would be to learn Ada.

Wait, which subject are we on again?

[SJWhiteley]

...

PC repair and troubleshooting is something that I find myself doing already (as do most tech savvy people). But I am not sure if that is something that I would want to provide as a service. ...

Just wait till you have to deal with other people's computers, where you have no vested interest in the company or the people. It's fun to work on your own computers at your own pace, but when it's someone else piece of junk and they will pay you a few bucks regardless of the time it takes, that's a different story...not fun.

You will always encounter a problem you have never experienced before (like trying to spend 5 hours trying to remove some crappy virus...).

[SJWhiteley]

Oh, I'm thinking of starting a rocket ship consultant company. Customers will come to me and say "Will this fly?" and I'll say "yeah, I think it will", and they will be all like "cool", and I'm all like "yeah", and then they give me money.