Tractor

Not a true drone, but someone got me a Syma S33 Helicopter from Rural King, $25 and after a few minutes of doing some simple mods it flys really well. I looked into the model a bit and it seems its a common aluminum chassis so I could upgrade the motors, boards, etc and I could build a decent flyer out of it. Out of the box its to big to fly in a house and outside its to weak to fly in any wind at all.

The only reason I mention radio ads is because in my market the local conservative talk radio station blasts this computer company on the radio a lot. I looked into the guy a little bit and quickly found he's into tax fraud big time. Like nearly 1 million miss reported over a couple years time. His company is a fly by night, closes and reopens under different names constantly, etc. So I want his problems.

Thanks guys, I also don't know many tech people who aren't actually just good salesman. Thats true in any business, you need sales first or all the tech ability in the world is wasted. Thats why most good techs continue to work for someone else. I do have a wife who's a master at sales, but she works full time and so can't put much time into my business. I'm going to be adding a linkedin site and likely facebook. Your correct B2B is my market and I've been doing this work over 20 years so I know the tech part and I do know how to talk to users on their level at any level. I also understand that I'm not getting involved with doctors offices, I don't want anything to do with them for many reasons especially compliance. My current target markets are lawyers, engineering/architectural firms, service industry companies such as heating/AC, small car dealers. I'm making a little money by doing sub contracted work for other IT companies that have national accounts and need a person to do work in my region. Lots of simple tasks that pay pretty well per hour, but to sustain my company into the future I need my own clients.

Hey guys, I know there's a lot of very talented people here from a wide range of backgrounds. Thats what makes CR so awesome and a major reason I am still around on this site. I moved down to the Myrtle Beach area and have started a technology consulting and IT services type of company here. I do the usual stuff supporting small businesses IT needs from PC's and printers to network and server solutions. Right now I'm just beginning and I'm pretty comfortable tech wise and running the business, but unfortunately I'm just not experienced at sales and being a tech geek, I'm not going to be great at sales even if I learn some skills. Bottom line is I'd like to get a person who could work on the sales side, I'm even willing to make them a partner if they can bring enough to the table besides just cold calling. I'm completely committed to this and completely serious with the hope that this company becomes self supporting and beyond. My next question is advertising. Does anyone have experience with local radio ads? I've done some basic research into cost and its not cost prohibitive as long as it does bring some business in. Does anyone have any data like how many clients might take a look at my business, possibly call me, and any conversion rates? Thanks, Guys

At the zoning office everyone there is past retirement age for sure and hunt and peck typing. I thought I was in the Zootopia scene where they are being waited on by a sloth at the DMV. I finally get to the counter and they have me wait on some guy in the back. He calls me back to his office and he does the hunt and peck thing too. I was so wanting to just do it for them.

My favorite one was the code inspector. The guy literally came out all 5 days of the week and failed the house on something different each day. The last straw was when he failed the electric ground going into the meter box and then the next day failed the ground wire going up the pole 3 inches from it. I called the department director and complained that their guy could have mentioned that the previous day since the wires run together. It passed the next day, LOL.

I've been out of the bad weather for four years and I'm just getting over the feeling that comes in fall that I have to winterize stuff like check antifreeze. I miss Columbus as it's an awesome city as cities go but myrtle beach gives me a lot of that with so much to do even outside the tourist stuff.

Hey, you still here? I'm up in the ghetto off SR 90 towards Longs LOL. Once I tell people where I live I've had several locals say things like "have you seen that area yet or are you just building a house there". Then they proceed to tell me, "thats where black people live". To be honest I've moved a number of times in my life, several times around Ohio and I've never been welcomed by so many nice people anywhere, especially in the "white" communities. Most times I've usually only met one neighbor for a moment and then short interactions here and there. Here I've met the whole neighborhood with hugs and welcomes from people who've lived here 90 years.

So we moved to South Carolina a few years ago. It wasn't until will tried to build a house that I truly found out how different the business world here is. The contractors simply don't care like they do in the North. They have no trouble telling you, "I'll be there tomorrow" every day for several weeks. I was in a situation with a home builder where they used their people so I couldn't just fire them and get new ones or I would have after a couple days of that BS. Tooks us months to get into our house. This wasn't just one contractor, this was every one of the contractors and every one else involved, electric company, sewer and water, the zoning people. Customer service people here are amazing too when calling about this crap. Also everyone you meet here from the North has the same experiences and you don't even have to mention the difference, it will come up in the conversation. "your in the south now" is a sorta northern "in joke". We did find out that if you find a good guy that moved from the north you share his info with everyone. Its great to be among these incompetents when your building a business because any good service is better than they get here.

Finally got moved into a new house. Wife works fulltime, we got two little girls, I'm starting an IT business from the ground up so I work from like 6:30am to around midnight but in between I switch up things and do stuff with the girls. I don't really ever unwind, I just switch modes I guess. LOL if I do ever get to do the unwind thing, its usually watching some Star Trek or hanging out on the beach or in a hot tub.

I know of one person who does, but they are weird. Here in SC amazon collects sales tax.

This, I know guys making a ton working on caterpillars, etc out in the field. But if your still thinking of going out on your own it would be cool to be able to market yourself to the little shops and somehow work for them as a consultant or second level support for tough issues. If your serious I'd definitely set up a business and at least get errors and omissions insurance, its not expensive.

I've looked into it since I have what I thought was a lot of processing power in my server's thats just idling anyway and found that these days CPU's are worthless, GPU's aren't much better and that you need at least dedicated ASIC gear to do anything with mining. It would probably be more profitable to just day trade it like any other currency.

Quest Business Center provides large meeting rooms, catering, etc and they are on Polaris.

Anyone else do contract work from sites like Work Market? I recently quit my 9-5 job and relocated so I decided to try independent contractor work again. I did a little back when you used a recruiter or found work yourself, but now that the internet is here its a little different. I've been doing stuff like Point of sale equipment installations/repairs and running Cat 5 or installing network equipment and servers/workstations. I'm learning to get accepted for assignments still and the pays good, but I'm also starting up an IT services and consulting company and getting my own clients.

Like many I got A+ and Network+ a long time ago +20 years. I still see them as useful and get many potential job offers because I list them on my resume. I'd check though I think now they expire every 3 years which makes them a very expensive cert in the IT world considering there value compared to mid and high level certs. If your interested in IT certs go here http://www.techexams.net/ Very useful site with great people and information. I joined awhile back when I started back into the Microsoft certs. I've taken literally hundreds of industry and manufacturer courses and according to my transcripts I tend to score above average, but that MCSA 2012r2 was really tough to pass and took a lot of study and labbing. I didn't spend much on materials though, maybe $300 including the exam fee.

Get an older layer 3 rack mount switch? I run a couple Cisco 3560's, and a nighthawk AC1900 for wireless. DNS and DHCP are handled by a pair of HP rack servers in a failover configuration. I'm only down when Spectrum is down. Fun aside, any hardware can fail, I get cheap stuff though a lot of it is server grade, but its 10 years old and still plenty powerful for a home geek setup.

If you totally can't get glasses and still want to safely view it you can make a shoe box projector by following these directions. http://www.theskyscrapers.org/build-a-shoebox-eclipse-viewer You could also use just about anything with a tiny hole in it and project the light from the sun onto another surface, the shoe box just provides a very nice all-in-one device. I hope we get the usually sunny SC weather for Monday, we've been having clouds and rain from the tropical storms messing with the normal patterns. I'll be off that day, not sure where I'll end up, but I'll be setting up my telescope and cameras in the 100% zone. Hopefully I'll get some pics to share.

Correct #14 welding glass is safe for long periods. You could look with other lens types but don't stare for minutes.

I have a bunch of server gear that I play with and have been keeping files since the `90's. Mostly I use it to keep up with technology, but I've been thinking of actually setting one up as a media server. Currently I'm running a couple of old HP 24 core rack servers running Win 2012r2 datacenter for AD, DNS, DHCP, and running a bunch of instances virtually through Hyper-V and sometimes some VMware stuff. It all changes constantly as I mess around in Nerd mode.

I'm very close already, gonna travel to a 100% spot.

I hate buying cars from people like you;-) I have to remember to keep my mouth shut about what my plans for it are. They get all emotional when they find out your going to cut it to pieces and use the good stuff for some project, LOL.

Are any of you working in the actual amount of sunlight Ohio gets per year? If so thats pretty cool that you could even break even. Total win for sunny states.

Not a problem Clay, sounds like your house was a full blown two story modular and I'm talking more along the lines of double wide modular that are built along side mobiles here in SC.

I looked into it when I lived near Columbus. Had a very hard time finding land near enough to commute and that still allowed manufactured homes. Lots of property, county, and city restrictions on what can be placed on land these days. That was 2007-2008 Now in 2017 I'm moving to the North Myrtle Beach area and finding the same problem with the added problem of getting financing on manufactured homes. Many banks won't do them so you end up with a much higher rate through a mortgage company. I'm going totally native and getting a doublewide mobile home putting it on some property I bought there. If you do get a modular or mobile go with the smaller mom/pop companies, I talked with Clayton and then went to one and will get the same deal for a huge reduction in total out the door price, like 30%. we are totally changing how we live and are done with the big house, big mortgage trap and are gonna enjoy other things and still have a reasonable place to live. Of course thats a little easier down here in the south where the weather isn't so cold. Personally I would not get a modular unless you just want to spend money. Nothing on them is any different than a mobile and you can actually order any mobile home plan as a modular if you simply want to add $50K to the price tag for them to remove the wheels and increase the roof pitch. Also the modular has an increased setup cost due to renting the huge crane to unload it from the trailer.