I have long respected the advice I find on iGames.org. Get a membership and study A LOT before opening.
My husband and myself have a game center in Moab Utah. It opened August 2003 and is very successful. However, the work schedule is very long (we are open about 96 hours per week in the summer, and 80 during school) and we also produce travel brochures for the Four Corners Region. We can no longer split ourselves between both ventures, and we are selling our game center.
So, if you love Mountain Biking/hiking/incredible scenery, and you are ready to escape the cubicle, our business is available for $40,000.
Though it was a hotly anticipated rumor, silver LIVE accounts do not have free play every weekend. This coming weekend will actually be the first free access to all areas of live for Silver accounts. MS has not announced their next free weekend as of yet.
Well, this is anecdotal, but we own 9 xbox360's and have 3 more customers that bring in their own to play on our network. (We own a network game center.) So our systems are also on 12+ hours per day and are under very high use.
So, out of our personal experience with 12 separate systems - 9 Premiums and 3 Cores - we have had one unit fail. It developed the 3 Red LED flashing issue, we called the very next morning. Microsoft had the shipping box to us the following business day, and 4 business days later, we received a replacement system.
We also had one controller go stupid, with the right trigger sending sporadic info that is was held in, even with no hands on the controller.
We are adding 8 more premium systems in April, as soon as they are in the supply chain.
The arcade section is LOTS of fun. I'm a Zuma addict! And more are being added all the time. They games are priced at $5-10 and post your score on the leaderboards.
=========== Great Giggles - check out this auction:
It is also about the UGLIEST item I've ever seen as an add on... JEEZ. Maybe just a little bit of asthetics.
Plus, the over heating only happens when stuffed into an tight entertainment system with no chance of air circulation. My powermac dual 1.42 G4 would behave the same way if I cut off all chances to breathe.
I have 6 xbox360's in current use every day, 12+ hours per day. Not a single problem yet, other than one game title was stolen. The 360's are very nice and a pretty scary threat to Apple's Digital Hub concept.. But then, apple innovates, and MS takes that to the real market.
Any hoo, the 360's are being caught up in a sea of FUD and I just want to say it just isn't all true.
=========== Great Giggles - check out this auction:
I remember using other vendor's IP stack because the MS one was a resource hog and didn't like to talk to the unix servers consistently. Geez, I think this was a world before Samba, because I remember a Guiness drench evening discussing how implementing Samba would solve problems and how we were going to sell this to the stuffed shirts. Amazing how long ago and how recent all this really is...
I bet the dozens of men in the adjacent cubicles all feel the wrath when the 2-5% of the female geeks all begin their orchestrated menstral cycle - we all sync up, didn't you know.
being poor on papers submitted to the Tax Man isn't very difficult. Own your own business and it pays most of the expenses, owns the vehicles, pays for health care, and other benefits. Draw a salary that is not above a "living wage", and you won't owe much in personal taxes.
I reccommend Mac OSX to everyone that enters my business - a small geek services bureau in a really remote and rural town in SE Utah. I hate supporting PC's, but in my remote town, I am the geek of all trades, and even with my high rates, I still find myself fixing PC's from time to time.
I sell PC support at $75/hour and offer mac support for free. I'll also gladly take their PC to the landfill and help my customers buy a mac to suit their needs. I'd rather loose a customer and gain a happy Mac user in town any day.
It is simply amazing how little I see my customers for fixing problems once I get them off the PC's and onto a mac. What I really love to do is graphic design and tourism development, so getting rid of PC customers is good for having more time to work on what I truly love to do.
I also use the "Ummm, I don't know, I use a mac and just NEVER have any issue like this..." excuse when I just don't want to deal with someone elses dumb PC problem.
Xboxes are cheap - and also, like my macs, virus free. I'd rather spend an extra $100-150 on a console than have any WindowsXP under my roof.
I have a small geek works business - I offer PC support at $75/hour and Mac Support for free (plus parts as needed). Posted on the big window to the world.
Yes Broadband makes a HUGE difference
on
Broadband Bits
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· Score: 1
I live in a very remote town of 975 in Rural Utah. The next town of 10,000 people is 60 mile north. Grand Jct is 110 miles east. Our state was very proactive in creating incentives for rural phone service providers. We now have broadband in 85% of the hick towns out here.
And what are we doing? Many are telecommunting to companies located in big cities. Others have started their own businesses based around internet services. Call centers pop up in every small town - better than outsourcing to India! Medical Coding is a huge part of Utah's economic development plan.
Personally, I do web development and graphic arts. I am very pleased that I don't have to fedex my proofs and that I can upload to my printer a 200 meg file in minutes.
Broadband is a very important part of bringing rural locations into the modern economy.
Re:Government Incentives required
on
Broadband Bits
·
· Score: 1
How about Incentives instead. I live deep in the rural back country of Utah. I have 768kDSL for $35/month. Why? Out state govt had the foresight to offer massive tax incentives for the rural phone companies to upgrage their infrastructures and get broadband into rural Utah. This was done in part to help stimulate the rural economies out here, which are primarily based in agriculture and tourism. However, now with broadband available in just about every little town over 700 people, we are seeing a great many other industries pop up. Utah continues to develop rural technology businesses through their SmartSite program http://smartsites.utah.gov/ and have graciously provided my little upstart company with over $10,000 in grants and equipment, only because I am a geek working to create more geek jobs in rural Utah. I don't believe that we need more government, just turn those funds into incentive programs instead of red tape nightmares.
erm, excuse me, but OSX panther is infinitely more easy to use than windows and without the headaches, virus and malware. And it comes free with the purchase of any new mac you desire. Also, it doesn't require activation, a real "big brother" feature I dislike about XP.
Then burn the playlist as a CD - no loss - and pull it back in using whatever format/program tickles your petunias. I think you do not understand what burn-rip means. When you burn a CD-quality CD from iTunes - there is no loss.
Again, a fancy dance is the price for not buying that which you surely covet. You know you want one.
You can output several forms of music with iTunes. You can put whatever format you prefer on your non-iPod.
You simply can not use iTunes to upload the playlist to a non-iPod. Use the software that came with your non-ipod or drag the songs onto the mounted non-ipod hardware.
This is simple stuff. If you want it to act like an iPod, then get an iPod. If your cheap and don't want to pay the price for an iPod, then your hidden cost is that you have to fiddle with converting to some other format and upload your content a little more manually.
Sheesh, I always thought of slash dotters as a little more technically competent than the average User... I was wrong, oh so very wrong.....
I started my own business - now finding success.
on
Vive La Loafing!
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That is precisely what I have done - and five years later, we are looking at our second profitable year in a row (last years profits were less than $1000, and we paid no salary).
We lost everything in the great dot com bubble burst - our 401k lost 80% of its value and stock options weren't worth the paper they were penned on. I was not laid off, but my days were certainly short - the company, Global Crossing, went down the tubes less than 6 months after I walked away from my comfy System Admin position and fat salary.
My husband and I decided to live inexpensively and search for a niche market that we could be happy working in. We fell in love with the rugged back country of South East Utah. We tried several business models - one failed - some didn't get off the drawing board - and two are actually creating jobs for more than just myself and my husband. And two other business concepts are simmering and need employees to take off - I can only do so many jobs at once.
We did it all with no financial backing from banks, govt or venture capitalists. We sacrificed all the comforts that most people could not live without.
We purchased a modest home in a remote rural town for $38,000 and we've been building our skills and dreams ever since. We've worked low skill near-minimum wage jobs to ensure the house payment gets made. We've raised chickens and gardens to supplement our food stores. I've not had a car with air conditioning for nearly 5 years now. Did I mention I live in a desert?? One of our cars was purchased for $300 the other for $100. We work seven days per week and 14+ hours per day. But no one is going to lay us off. And the fruit of our labors is just beginning to ripen.
I formed a business incubator to help my business through low cost office space ($10/year). We've recently moved out of the incubator and into our own office. Business this month is 200x better than it was one year ago.
As for employees, I am just starting to search for the right people to help expand our business endeavors. I get to learn all about employee taxes and insurance. Now, my biggest obstacle is finding talented and intelligent people out in the styx ( the gene pool is a wee bit shallow out here), or luring compentent people out from the various silicon valleys - people who are sick of working for something that has no lasting value. Guess how many I've get beating down my door to take a huge paycut - so far, zero. I plan to post an internship on Craigslist this fall, I hope to find someone smart enough and worthwhile of my time and investment to further grow our business.
Until now, we haven't been able to expand or offer jobs that are guaranteed to pay the bills. I asked a couple dozen different friends to come out and put a stake in what we are building. No one came. But we have made this happen without all those things that are generally listed as needed to build a business. It CAN be done. Not by just anyone, but by those that are willing to make huge sacrifice and a long term commitment to making it happen.
Costs millions more than the Virginia Tech project and at its highest can only do 11.7 TFlops - 1/3 less performance, but then it's just our tax dollars at work.
Slashdot Mirror
I have long respected the advice I find on iGames.org. Get a membership and study A LOT before opening.
My husband and myself have a game center in Moab Utah. It opened August 2003 and is very successful. However, the work schedule is very long (we are open about 96 hours per week in the summer, and 80 during school) and we also produce travel brochures for the Four Corners Region. We can no longer split ourselves between both ventures, and we are selling our game center.
So, if you love Mountain Biking/hiking/incredible scenery, and you are ready to escape the cubicle, our business is available for $40,000.
http://www.launchpadgamecenter.com/
Though it was a hotly anticipated rumor, silver LIVE accounts do not have free play every weekend.
This coming weekend will actually be the first free access to all areas of live for Silver accounts. MS has not announced their next free weekend as of yet.
Well, this is anecdotal, but we own 9 xbox360's and have 3 more customers that bring in their own to play on our network. (We own a network game center.) So our systems are also on 12+ hours per day and are under very high use.
So, out of our personal experience with 12 separate systems - 9 Premiums and 3 Cores - we have had one unit fail. It developed the 3 Red LED flashing issue, we called the very next morning. Microsoft had the shipping box to us the following business day, and 4 business days later, we received a replacement system.
We also had one controller go stupid, with the right trigger sending sporadic info that is was held in, even with no hands on the controller.
We are adding 8 more premium systems in April, as soon as they are in the supply chain.
The arcade section is LOTS of fun. I'm a Zuma addict! And more are being added all the time. They games are priced at $5-10 and post your score on the leaderboards.
m =8247683126
===========
Great Giggles - check out this auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
It is also about the UGLIEST item I've ever seen as an add on... JEEZ. Maybe just a little bit of asthetics.
m =8247683126
Plus, the over heating only happens when stuffed into an tight entertainment system with no chance of air circulation. My powermac dual 1.42 G4 would behave the same way if I cut off all chances to breathe.
I have 6 xbox360's in current use every day, 12+ hours per day. Not a single problem yet, other than one game title was stolen. The 360's are very nice and a pretty scary threat to Apple's Digital Hub concept.. But then, apple innovates, and MS takes that to the real market.
Any hoo, the 360's are being caught up in a sea of FUD and I just want to say it just isn't all true.
===========
Great Giggles - check out this auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
Full game price is all of 15% over cost. there isn't alot of margin for retailers on the game or any thing in the industry.
m =8247683126
Just don't stand it upright, and no more scratched discs.
===========
Great Giggles - check out this auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
I remember using other vendor's IP stack because the MS one was a resource hog and didn't like to talk to the unix servers consistently. Geez, I think this was a world before Samba, because I remember a Guiness drench evening discussing how implementing Samba would solve problems and how we were going to sell this to the stuffed shirts.
Amazing how long ago and how recent all this really is...
"seasoned sysadmin pros"
You misspelled Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
I bet the dozens of men in the adjacent cubicles all feel the wrath when the 2-5% of the female geeks all begin their orchestrated menstral cycle - we all sync up, didn't you know.
being poor on papers submitted to the Tax Man isn't very difficult. Own your own business and it pays most of the expenses, owns the vehicles, pays for health care, and other benefits. Draw a salary that is not above a "living wage", and you won't owe much in personal taxes.
Then please explain why all those x86 Windows Virii won't work on x86 powered linux systems...
Open Source CRAP is always better than proprietary CRAP - share the CRAP, that's what I always say
I reccommend Mac OSX to everyone that enters my business - a small geek services bureau in a really remote and rural town in SE Utah. I hate supporting PC's, but in my remote town, I am the geek of all trades, and even with my high rates, I still find myself fixing PC's from time to time.
I sell PC support at $75/hour and offer mac support for free. I'll also gladly take their PC to the landfill and help my customers buy a mac to suit their needs. I'd rather loose a customer and gain a happy Mac user in town any day.
It is simply amazing how little I see my customers for fixing problems once I get them off the PC's and onto a mac. What I really love to do is graphic design and tourism development, so getting rid of PC customers is good for having more time to work on what I truly love to do.
I also use the "Ummm, I don't know, I use a mac and just NEVER have any issue like this..." excuse when I just don't want to deal with someone elses dumb PC problem.
Xboxes are cheap - and also, like my macs, virus free.
I'd rather spend an extra $100-150 on a console than have any WindowsXP under my roof.
I have a small geek works business - I offer PC support at $75/hour and Mac Support for free (plus parts as needed). Posted on the big window to the world.
I live in a very remote town of 975 in Rural Utah. The next town of 10,000 people is 60 mile north. Grand Jct is 110 miles east.
Our state was very proactive in creating incentives for rural phone service providers. We now have broadband in 85% of the hick towns out here.
And what are we doing? Many are telecommunting to companies located in big cities. Others have started their own businesses based around internet services. Call centers pop up in every small town - better than outsourcing to India! Medical Coding is a huge part of Utah's economic development plan.
Personally, I do web development and graphic arts. I am very pleased that I don't have to fedex my proofs and that I can upload to my printer a 200 meg file in minutes.
Broadband is a very important part of bringing rural locations into the modern economy.
How about Incentives instead. I live deep in the rural back country of Utah. I have 768kDSL for $35/month.
Why? Out state govt had the foresight to offer massive tax incentives for the rural phone companies to upgrage their infrastructures and get broadband into rural Utah. This was done in part to help stimulate the rural economies out here, which are primarily based in agriculture and tourism. However, now with broadband available in just about every little town over 700 people, we are seeing a great many other industries pop up.
Utah continues to develop rural technology businesses through their SmartSite program http://smartsites.utah.gov/ and have graciously provided my little upstart company with over $10,000 in grants and equipment, only because I am a geek working to create more geek jobs in rural Utah.
I don't believe that we need more government, just turn those funds into incentive programs instead of red tape nightmares.
erm, excuse me, but OSX panther is infinitely more easy to use than windows and without the headaches, virus and malware. And it comes free with the purchase of any new mac you desire.
Also, it doesn't require activation, a real "big brother" feature I dislike about XP.
Then burn the playlist as a CD - no loss - and pull it back in using whatever format/program tickles your petunias. I think you do not understand what burn-rip means. When you burn a CD-quality CD from iTunes - there is no loss.
Again, a fancy dance is the price for not buying that which you surely covet. You know you want one.
You can output several forms of music with iTunes. You can put whatever format you prefer on your non-iPod.
You simply can not use iTunes to upload the playlist to a non-iPod. Use the software that came with your non-ipod or drag the songs onto the mounted non-ipod hardware.
This is simple stuff. If you want it to act like an iPod, then get an iPod. If your cheap and don't want to pay the price for an iPod, then your hidden cost is that you have to fiddle with converting to some other format and upload your content a little more manually.
Sheesh, I always thought of slash dotters as a little more technically competent than the average User... I was wrong, oh so very wrong.....
That is precisely what I have done - and five years later, we are looking at our second profitable year in a row (last years profits were less than $1000, and we paid no salary).
We lost everything in the great dot com bubble burst - our 401k lost 80% of its value and stock options weren't worth the paper they were penned on. I was not laid off, but my days were certainly short - the company, Global Crossing, went down the tubes less than 6 months after I walked away from my comfy System Admin position and fat salary.
My husband and I decided to live inexpensively and search for a niche market that we could be happy working in. We fell in love with the rugged back country of South East Utah. We tried several business models - one failed - some didn't get off the drawing board - and two are actually creating jobs for more than just myself and my husband. And two other business concepts are simmering and need employees to take off - I can only do so many jobs at once.
We did it all with no financial backing from banks, govt or venture capitalists. We sacrificed all the comforts that most people could not live without.
We purchased a modest home in a remote rural town for $38,000 and we've been building our skills and dreams ever since. We've worked low skill near-minimum wage jobs to ensure the house payment gets made. We've raised chickens and gardens to supplement our food stores. I've not had a car with air conditioning for nearly 5 years now. Did I mention I live in a desert?? One of our cars was purchased for $300 the other for $100. We work seven days per week and 14+ hours per day. But no one is going to lay us off. And the fruit of our labors is just beginning to ripen.
I formed a business incubator to help my business through low cost office space ($10/year). We've recently moved out of the incubator and into our own office. Business this month is 200x better than it was one year ago.
As for employees, I am just starting to search for the right people to help expand our business endeavors. I get to learn all about employee taxes and insurance. Now, my biggest obstacle is finding talented and intelligent people out in the styx ( the gene pool is a wee bit shallow out here), or luring compentent people out from the various silicon valleys - people who are sick of working for something that has no lasting value. Guess how many I've get beating down my door to take a huge paycut - so far, zero. I plan to post an internship on Craigslist this fall, I hope to find someone smart enough and worthwhile of my time and investment to further grow our business.
Until now, we haven't been able to expand or offer jobs that are guaranteed to pay the bills. I asked a couple dozen different friends to come out and put a stake in what we are building. No one came. But we have made this happen without all those things that are generally listed as needed to build a business. It CAN be done. Not by just anyone, but by those that are willing to make huge sacrifice and a long term commitment to making it happen.
Costs millions more than the Virginia Tech project and at its highest can only do 11.7 TFlops - 1/3 less performance, but then it's just our tax dollars at work.