Author: Leon

Categories
Business Personal

Eighteen Intelligence

Leon AtkinsonMy life has been quite busy lately. After nearly two years as VP of Engineering for BTS, I left to start a consultancy. It began with a casual comment to a few friends that if they had 2-3 months worth of work for me, I’d consider cutting loose. Mark Celsor has been dealing with a flood of new business in the past quarter and was eager to have me work with Vine Street Interactive. Meanwhile, Jenny Martin asked me if I knew anyone available for Facebook API work. Fortunately–or unfortunately depending on perspective–both of them wanted my help right away. Saying yes to either of them meant saying goodbye to BTS. Saying yes to both of them meant saying goodbye to daylight….well, nearly so.

Since October, I’ve been working two full time gigs while also making preparations for the launch of my new company, Eighteen Intelligence Corporation. For tax reasons, the paperwork won’t be filed until January. California makes all corporations pay a minimum of $800/year in taxes, so it makes sense to start a company early in the year. I’ve been trying to work about 10-12 hours/day 7 days/week for more than a month. I’ve had to take a day off here and there to prove to my family and myself that I still exist. I see light at the end of the tunnel now, as one of the two projects is going into the bug-checking phase and should launch in a couple of weeks.

I hope the other project wraps up mid-December and leaves me a couple of weeks to enjoy the holidays. I expect to available to you help you with projects in January. How can I help you? Thanks for asking! If you’ve worked with me, you know what I’m capable of. (Horrible, isn’t it?) I’m concentrating on building Internet applications, particularly those integrated with Facebook. I’d enjoy helping you start from a requirements specification and see the project all the way through launch. I can help in a CTO-ish way to set up best practices for your team, or I can be a really fast coder who helps you make an insane deadline.Eighteen Intelligence Logo

You can read more blah-blah-blah marketing stuff at the 18int.com Web site. Please contact me about any opportunities for us to work together. Thanks! And since it is the season, I should also thank a few people who’ve helped me out recently. Thanks to the BTS folks for employing me. Thanks to John Szeder for sending leads and projects my way. Thanks to everyone who’s already asked about my availability. Thanks to Kathy Marshall for accounting advice. Thanks to Jenny and Mark for the projects that enabled me to launch this adventure. And of course, thanks to Vicky and Tre and Henry for putting up with me toiling in the basement office.

Categories
Business

The Fractional CTO

Silly pie chart illustrating the idea of a fractional CTO.
Proproportions shown for illustration purposes only. Actual sizes may vary.

One of my favorite things is solving technology problems. Fortunately, I get paid for that. Unfortunately, I’d rather do more of it. Therefore, I’m putting out a call to anyone interested: if you need a fractional CTO, ask me.

My friends introduce me to other entrepreneurs and describe me as a genius. They usually skip the “evil” prefix. It’s true, I’ve been hacking around in the Web space for a long time now, and I have a few tricks to share. I tend to underestimate what I can do, so I defer to their judgment.  What I do know is how much I enjoy helping someone else figure out a tough technical problem. Lately, I’ve been thinking I’m not getting enough of that. I’ve been asking people one-by-one, and now I’m putting the question out to a wider audience. How can I help you?

One recent example is a social games company that needs help profiling their PHP scripts. That’s something I’ve had to do many times over the years. Actually, it was really important when we were coding apps in PHP3. I’ve also been offering advice to a several startups who are trying to get to an alpha version. And I’ve been helping my friend John Villarreal juice up his media business.

So I’ve landed on this concept of the fractional CTO. If you could use the services of a CTO for a day or two a month, please let me know. I’m happy to help.

Categories
Personal

Car Damaged, Repaired

In June, I was rear-ended on my way home from work. I’d been doing the Martinez-to-Berkeley commute via I-80 for seven years, so I was probably due for some teenager to run into me. Neither of us was hurt. I was stopped and she wasn’t looking. Since I pay for collision insurance, I knew I’d only be out a grand, max. As it turns out, her insurer agreed that it was 100% her fault and agreed to pay my deductible. The damage was north of five grand. It took a month, but I got my car back, and I cannot tell that it’s been in the shop.

State Farm Insurance
Image via Wikipedia

A curious thing happened the week I got it back. I got a letter from my insurance company, State Farm, telling me that I was more than 51% responsible. They had already paid for the repairs, so it didn’t make a lot of sense. I complained and the next Monday they got back to me and apologized for the mistake. My agent, Mark Woodard, called me to let me know and he followed up with the adjusters. A few days later, I got an apology in the mail. Also, this weekend I got another letter telling me they’d checked in to make sure I got the check from the other insurance company to cover my deductible.

So, all’s well that ends well. I just wanted to note publicly that while it was annoying to get the mistake letter, everything else about the service I got was great. The repairs were done by Haw’s Auto Body in Concord. They weren’t fast, but they were clearly working hard to get the best parts.

Categories
Personal

Back up your phone’s contacts easily with Ubuntu and Bluetooth

I’m preparing to hand down my LG Lotus to my wife, who has coveted it since I brought the cute purple phone home, and upgrade to an HTC Evo. We were anticipating the pain of re-entering contacts, so I tried BitPim, software I hadn’t used for several years. It failed on both of our current phones. I was about to go with Sprint‘s solution for backing up contacts but then I discovered that if you’ve got a bluetooth radio, you can easily move contacts to and from the phone.

Official Ubuntu circle with wordmark. Replace ...
Image via Wikipedia

Vicky’s new(ish) laptop has bluetooth. I hit the function key and the little applet fired up. I told my phone to make itself visible for 3 minutes and paired it with the laptop. This is all painless and mostly automatic through the applet. I played around and could move files between the two, but contacts wouldn’t send. Then I discovered that you have to tell the applet that it’s OK for the phone to send it contacts. It’s a button under the list of known devices. The Lotus has a menu item for sending all contacts, and they came over quickly. Vicky’s lame Samsung SPH-M220 requires clicking on a contact, going through the whole process of connecting via bluetooth and then sending…for each contact. She’s going through her list right now.

Once again, it just works on Ubuntu.

Categories
Business News Politics

Are you ready to swim?

“The truth hits everyone like a million atom bombs, and I can’t understand how everybody can be so calm. Time is running out and we all just sit around. So leave your message at the beep, ’cause I am leaving town.” —Leave a Message, Get Dead

Yesterday was Tax Freedom Day, although here in California it’s April 14th if you consider our higher-than-average income taxes. Divide up the days you work: the first hundred days are for the government. The balance are for you to spend on yourself, if you ignore all the other extortion you pay as sales tax or other fees.

It’s impossible to “get by” in the US now. The average family is left with $100/month after mortgage, food and health insurance, a scenario assuming no vacations and one car! So many people are out of work and leaning on government to take care of them, that 33 states are out of money to fund jobless benefits. California is at the top of the list. When income can be variable, a rational approach is to save during times of plenty to cover the lean times. Government does not work this way. Government moves by political pull and the expedient solution of the moment.

As all odds mount against any rational, moral person being able to make his way through life here, the Galt Meter tilts into the red zone. Can you imagine a meter that shows how close we are to the nightmare world described at the end of Atlas Shrugged, a doomsday clock that shows how close we are to destruction by weapons of immorality? It seems we’re now at a 53/47 split. Nearly half of us work so the other half can loaf and tell us what to do. Furthermore, the top 10% of producers pay 73% of taxes.

Mark Steyn calls tax-payers suckers, the rubes filling PT Barnum’s pockets. In fact, we are livestock. Within the system, we have little choice but to pay. You can choose self-destruction in the form of unbending resistance, or you can choose self-destruction by exchanging your soul for a whip in your hand. Disobey or obey. This dichotomy is false. The alternative is to stop participating.

The way forward is out. An incredible opportunity approaches. Statism is dead!  What was a theoretical conclusion will soon be demonstrated empirically. Because of its imminent failure, statism’s captains will lose sanction, and no longer be recognized as authority. That inspires fear and excitement, similar to jumping off a high cliff into deep water. Are you ready to swim?

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