Now from home

If you are a software developer and you are planning to build a product or service, take a look at the Microsoft BizSpark program. If you qualify, the program will give you access to all the Microsoft software, professional support and visibility. It’s similar to an MSDN Premium subscription plus hosting solutions.

I personally think this is a great move from Microsoft. There’s no question that the future of Windows, and therefore Microsoft, depends on software developers betting on their platform.

This program is more convenient for startups than the Empower program. The reason is that you don’t have to commit to certify your application or become a Microsoft Partner at the end (I’ll talk about this in another post).

The sign up process is very easy, however you’ll need a Network Partner. I personally contacted Bob Walsh from 47 Hats, because I’ve been following him for a long time. He is by the way one of the most active BizSpark Network Partners.

This program is a no-brainer for any startup.

This week I’ve been doing some improvements in my business infrastructure. Basically I’ve been upgrading to Windows 7, moving to Gmail and trying to get rid of my old general purpose server.

I’m very happy with all the changes.

First of all Windows 7 rocks! It works like a charm.

Second, my move to Gmail has been painless. Now I can handle all my email from one just place and one account. I’m no longer using Outlook, so one app less to install and configure. Besides this I can access my email from anywhere and by the way, the offline feature is working great too. This move is going to pay off in my next trip to Germany on September.

Finally I had an old P4 running Windows 2003 server. It was used as a file server, print server, FTP server, subversion server and it run a couple of VM). I setup this machine years ago and it has serve me well. But now that I have a WHS is kind of redundant. Not to mention is always on and it makes a lot of noise.

So I’ve been moving away each of its responsibilities one for one.

The file server is now my WHS. Nothing to change here except some network mappings.

I connected the printer to the WHS and install the drivers. No problems.

My code repositories are now hosted on the WHS machine. This was a little trickier but I managed to install the SVNSERVE service directly.

When I need to enable FTP connections I’ll do it on my machine. And the VM runs on my Quad-proc machine nicely when needed, especially now that I have 8 GB of RAM.

Due different reasons, my wife’s holidays this year are going to be split in different weeks. Last week was one of them. We rent a great villa in Benissa. We did it using the web Homelidays.com which, by the way,  I strongly recommend.

I packed all I need to move my office, which basically means my laptop and my mobile phone. As soon as we got there, I connected my laptop and tried to find a unsecured WI-FI spot. No luck! All our neighbors had properly set up networks (but I wanted to be sure . Then I tried my phone. It connected without problems and I was able to read my email at a reasonable speed. Then I relaxed!

That very same day, at night, I tried to check my email accounts again. I powered up my DELL M65 notebook and the screen didn’t lit up. This has happened to me several times using this laptop and usually it’s been fixed by powering down the laptop and turning it on again… but not this time!

Luckily, my wife brought her laptop too. I connected the mobile phone and… no drivers! Paradoxically Windows needed to connect to Internet to download the drivers to be able to connect to Internet. Oh, boy!

Next day I drove to Benissa and connected to Internet, using my wife’s laptop, while enjoining a great breakfast. I installed the drivers so I could connect to Internet using my phone again.

Later that day I check my email using my wife’s laptop and my phone. Everything was fine except that after a while the connection speed plummeted down dramatically. A client sent my a small PDF, only 500 Kb, and I was unable to download it. It seems that my phone company gives me some 3G juice but only for a fixed amount of data, then it falls back to GSM. Ok, I’m on holidays. Sure my client can wait until tomorrow. Next day I was able to download the PDF and answer his question, but then I received a phone call. One of my apps was not doing the automatic invoicing due an error. I knew exactly what the problem was, but without my source code and without a decent Internet connection I was screwed. I had no other choice but to drive back to my office (120 Km).

At least I was able to fix the problem with my laptop’s monitor. Dell support was excellent. It turned out that the VGA connector was not properly connected.

Note to self: Broadband Internet is a must when on vacation.

I’m using Skype as my main business phone line for a couple of months. It’s working fine so far.

Recently I upgraded from version 3.8 (I think) to the latest 4.0. The Outlook contacts have disappeared. This is very inconvenient because 99% of my calls are to land lines and all my contacts are in Outlook. As far as I know it’s a bug that Skype is already trying to fix.

Meanwhile I’ve found a workaround. It seems that if the phone numbers doesn’t have the international prefix, Skype refuses to pick them up as valid phone numbers. So now, I’m adding the prefix +34 every time I need to call some local phone.

UPDATE: Looks like Skype has fixed it, so if you download Skype now you’ll probably won’t be affected.

Expanding on my first post, I quit my job almost 12 months ago. Back then, the words crisis and recession were not in the news. Not even remotely. Sure people talked about the real state bubble but other than that, the (occidental) world economy was brilliant.

Once I took the decision of quitting my job, the world economy turning point started to kick in. In Spain, due the imminent general elections, this fact was neglected by our politicians. Especially by the govern. They knew that difficult times were ahead us but they said just the opposite. Oh! This could be another post.

Anyway, here we are. Barely a year later we’re surrounded by the worst crisis of our economy. I remember when people told me I was crazy when they knew that I was quitting my job. Now they would call me suicide.

Do I regret my decision? Not at all. It was a very carefully thought-out decision. But to tell the truth I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do it now.

Ok, here I am (again). This time from home.

Yeah! I finally drank the quit-your-day-job-and-give-your-dream-a-chance kool-aid last year. I should have started this blog then, but you know, I was frightened. I couldn’t waste any second thinking or doing things not related to generate income to sustain my new status. But you know what? I was wrong. Sure you have to think more carefully how do you spend your time, now I’m on my own and my monthly check is over. However, it’s easy to forget why I quit my safe day-job. If you don’t pay attention, soon you are building a new cage around you.

So, the very first post of a new blog must talk about who I am, what I plan to rant write about here and blah, blah, blah…

I pretend to remain anonymous for now and, therefore, enjoy total content freedom. Suffice it to say that I’m a Spanish software developer, living in Spain. I’ve been employed by “the man” for twelve years but recently I quit and started working as a one-man-band or MicroISV. What will I write about here? I really don’t know. We’ll see. As a software developer expect some technical posts, but this time I’d like to write about other things: politics, news, family and life in general.

By the way, Spanish is my mother language. I’m forcing myself to write in English and hopefully improve it in doing so. Hope my level will be enough for you to understand me.

I plan to write most posts in English and Spanish. Let’s see if I can maintain both versions… If you are interested you can find the Spanish version here: http://www.nowfromhome.com/es