If you’re going through Hell, try to enjoy the scenery…

Of course, as I start to write this post, Rodney Atkins “If you’re going through hell” starts to play. Rather appropriate. What a weekend. I didn’t want to say anything until it was all done. A bit superstitious I guess on my part, but… it is now over. All but one last bit. Now to explain.

Over the last month, we have been scraping by paying the bills for the company. When Carlos, our one business partner came to visit last month, we stated rather succinctly that the company was in financial straights. Not unfixable, but that it had to have something done fast. Karen and Carlos both said that things would get done. However, they had a severe case of “oh… look at the kitty” on about three other projects. RBT was not primary on their radar when it should have been. It was also expected that we drop everything we were doing in order to follow Karen and Carlos’ latest interest. Oh, and keep the RBT stuff running as well. This meant many long hours and short nights as we literally did double time to get things done for them. It was wearing both Dan and I out. At last count, there were at least 5 projects besides the wireless side of RBT being channeled through us.

Meanwhile, Dan and I have been working without pay for the life of the company. 9 months. We figured the first 4 or 5 months would be without pay. However, we did not expect this. Nor did we expect that we would be the only ones handling the day to day aspects of the business.  Doing some business projections, Dan realized that we needed a loan or a grant fast otherwise we were in trouble. We emailed everyone and asked for a meeting on Friday evening. No luck. All we got back was a terse email from Karen.

So, Dan and I talked all night. I cried. Dan was unhappy. However, as we realized that there was nothing for us to do financially at this point, we had only one option. We resigned. Dan and I are no longer part of Raton Basin Technologies. It isn’t what we wanted to do, but it was our only recourse. Both of us are have hit the limits to what we can do to creatively control our bills.

Yesterday we spent packing up and moving the business end of things over to Karen’s. Erin helped which was a godsend. There was way too much stuff that could not be moved by me or just Dan alone.  This morning we dealt with the IRS, Colorado business etc. Nothing is in my or his name now.  We will take care of the bank account and that will be the end of it.

However, that will not be the end of computer work. I have no doubts that Dan and I will be back in the computer repair business very soon.

We Are LIVE!!!!

On Tuesday RBT went live in Aguilar!

Dan and Karen finally got all the bugs worked out of the MicroTik and the rest of the system. Karen then tested the logins and they flipped the switches. boom! Aguilar was live with wireless Internet communications.

I no sooner got the call that we were live than we had the first few customers log on. Wheeeee!!!! This was really good as we had less than 24 hours at that point to pay on the T-1 bill. Luckily we made enough. Now to just keep that cash flow going.

Sadly, we had to take the MicroTik out of the Budget Host because it and the Engenius radios are not talking nicely. The Engenius products don’t like heat or cold in extremes. This means that we have had 4 of them fry in less than 3 months. Not a happy thing. So, BH is up and running free wireless at the moment. :< Not great for the pocketbook. However, we hope to have that fixed in the next month.

Meanwhile, we are working on paperwork. Forms, letters, billing and all sorts of other bits. Wheee….. NOT. My office is a mess. I also need to make up a new ad for the Huerfano Journal as well as a “letterhead” or logo for the business. Our business cards are rather generic, and I want to do something with lightning bolts or radio waves and mimic the local scenery with it. Dan wanted a skull with crossed lightning bolts under it and antennas for ears. Karen said no. Bad enough that our favourite song at the moment is The Last Saskatchewan Pirates by the Arrogant Worms.

Dan wants it to play when people bring up our website or for our hold music on the phone. Karen just twitches as she gets the song stuck in her head. teeheehee….

Yesterday was busy in that between taking all sorts of calls, I made posole and then Dan, Morgan and I headed to Gardner School for Poetry Night by the 5th & 6th graders. They do this sort of Beatnik coffee house thing. It’s always fun. Last night in the middle of one of the girls reciting her poem, a spider descended from the ceiling. The table of girls to the left saw it and started to squirm. Dan went to the rescue and removed a wolf spider about the size of a nickel. Dan was acclaimed a hero. I’m not sure who flinched more, the girls, or Julia, the principal. Afterwards, we drove home and after checking to see if Aguilar was still up, we went to bed early. Wheeeee!

Today started out with me taking the kids to school and Dan checking to see if Aguilar was still running. Gads! You’d think it was a newborn baby he had to check to see if it was still breathing. OK, well it is sort of a new baby. :> We had our first customer who forgot how to log on and another inquiry about equipment. We are going to have to keep and inventory of routers and cables as well as switches and the rest of the computer bits. Thank goodness for lots of shelves.

Karen and Dan are also out looking at a tower site. It might be for sale cheap enough to snatch up. If so, it would be a real feather in our cap. Tonight we also have to work on documenting all of the fun stuff…. like how we did it. sigh… Oh, and I get to start a new book. Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks.

I’d much rather read Widdershins By De Lint, but that will just have to wait a bit. Professional reading comes first. I’ll take it with me when I go to pick up the kids at Badito. After we come home, I’m going to warm up the posole from last night. John and Beth are due home really late from their Library conference in Pueblo. Good thing the kids don’t mind eating in a half finished kitchen.

Well, I’m off! Yeah, and more than just my rocker!