Cory Collier

I’ve seen a lot of mis-information, and mis-guided information on how to start a corporation. The specifics of this vary by state to state. I live in Florida, and I went through the process on my own. The process was a bit difficult, but only because there wasn’t a clear guide on what to do.

Hence, this tutorial

First, you’ll need to download a form, that indicates the type of corporation you want to be. This is NOT to determine if you’re an S-Corp or C-Corp. The determination of S-Corp or C-Corp is done with the IRS. That determination is done later. For now, you’ll just need to decide which of the following you will be:

• Non-Profit Corporation – If you want to be a 501c3, this one is for you. (form here)
• Profit Corportation – S-Corp and C-Corp (form here)
• Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) – Typical LLC (form here)

The forms will outline the specifications for each of the types of incorporation. While each of the forms contains the necessary questionnaire, I don’t recommend just filling in the blanks. There are a large number of templates for this. Google searches typically will bring up something to work with. Here’s the one I did for Hacked For BBQ, Corp.

Once  you get something written up, mail off the package with money included. Once you’ve gotten this done, you’ll have to wait a couple weeks for the state to get back to you. If everything looks good, you’ll get a letter of confirmation regarding your corporation.

Once you have this letter of confirmation from the state of Florida, it’s time to get your FEIN number and file your corporation type with the IRS. I did this as an S-Corp, so my experience may be different than some of the rest of you.

Go to the IRS’s online application for obtaining an FEIN number at the current website for this : http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00.html. You’ll click a link that says ‘APPLY ONLINE NOW’. Afterwards you’ll be sent to a page giving you the instructions on how to complete the FEIN process. The process itself is fairly self-explanatory. Completing this process immediately provides you with an FEIN number, with which you can open a bank account and start doing some business.

To close, I’d like to point out how unnecessary services like company.com are. These services are overpriced, and often put people in difficult situations. DIY business starting isn’t nearly as bad as it might seem at first. As always, any feedback is certainly welcome.

I used to always refer to a different site when I wanted to remember how to setup a machine to use SSH without a password. That site (I don’t recall what it is) isn’t around anymore. So, I guess I have to post the tutorial here.

SSH is one of the major tools in what I do. For any developers out there who don’t know about it, you’re missing out. Long gone are the days of requiring screen sharing or remote desktop to manage another computer. SSH is the bomb, and it’s been around for a long time.

Here’s how to use it, without needing to enter your password when you make a connection to a remote machine:

• On the computer you’re making a connection from (i.e. your home computer)
• • If you do not have a ~/.ssh folder already, create one.

  • ssh-keygen -t dsa -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa -P ''

  • scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub <username>@<servername>:~

  • Make an old-skool connection to the server you just copied your public key to (i.e. your public webhost)
• on that server:

• • cat id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2

  • chmod 0600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2

That’s it. Keep in mind, that you’ll still need to specify your username when connecting to the host (if it’s different than your username on your local machine). If you want to get around that, you’ll need to setup an SSH config file (future tutorial?).

So I got a call from a client today regarding a few issues they were having. Most of the problems weren’t all that difficult to solve, save one….

The boss’s computer would immediately log off after he tried to logon. While this might sound funny (in other circumstances, it really is), the client (who is a really cool guy, whom I respect a lot) did not think it was funny at all.

So, I dived into the Google to find out the issue. The short version; there was a bad registry setting. Basically, when this sort of thing happens, the first thing you should check is the registry. Now, you can’t connect to the registry locally, since you can’t logon to the computer with this issue.

So, the first thing you need to do, is logon to a computer on the same network as a user who has administrative rights on the computer concerned. Once you’ve gotten that far, you’ll need to open regedit. Something like this:

After that, you’ll need to connect to the computer in question. That’s easy, check the following pics:

then… 

The following key is what you should be looking for:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

That key should contain a string value for ‘Userinit’. If you’re confused, you should see something like the following:

Well, you probably shouldn’t see the green box, but you should see the string value for Userinit. If you don’t see that value in the root of key Winlogon, then you’ll need to create it. 

That’s not too bad either. First, right click the right hand pane of the registry editor:

Select the ‘String Value’ item in the right click menu. Once you’ve gotten that done, you’ll have a new string value in the right hand pane, awaiting you to name it. It’ll look something like: 

Name the string Userinit. After you’ve done that, right click the entry and select ‘Modify’. Make sure that the value for the key is:

c:\windows\system32\userinit.exe

Again, here’s a picture:

And that’s it. If you have any issues after you’ve gotten this done, I recommend an ERD disk or formatting your HD. Those are extreme options, I know. However, I don’t think you want to tool around with your computer for hours on end ( or maybe you do ).

Often, I get asked by folks why an e-mail didn’t reach someone. People get an email that has some cryptic message about why their email didn’t reach it’s intended recipient. While there are an untold number of reasons as to why that could happen, there are a few things you can do to narrow down why it failed.

Regardless, the first thing I always do, is check that the email address is valid. It might sound funny, but just like that hot girl might have given you a phony number, you might have the wrong email address. This happens a lot more often then you might think.

So, how do you check the email? Enter Telnet to the rescue. Don’t worry, Telnet is cross platform. If you have Linux, Mac, or Windows (geez), you can use Telnet to figure out if the e-mail address you’re trying to reach is valid. It’s one of the few things that seem to work on damn near any operating system you can think of.

Continue reading »

I use email a lot. I’m sure many of you do as well. So why not have a super-safe way to keep all of your email (from as many accounts as you might have) in one place, and get some virus protection to boot?

Sound too good to be true? It’s available to you right now. Thanks god, errr…. google…..

Get Google To Store All Your Email

First, login to gmail (yeah, you have to login first :/ ). Next, find the ‘Settings’ link in the top right of your browser. Continue reading »

Funny titles aside, I’ve had the opportunity lately to expand my devlopment horizons far beyond what I’ve previously thought possible. The MemberFuse project has required far more project management and documentation than anything else I’ve ever been involved in. Since I’m so excited about it, I thought I’d write a tutorial on how to setup Eclipse on a Mac and integrate with Trac.

For those of you unfamiliar with Trac, and / or what it’s about: Trac is a ticket management system well suited to SCRUM type software developement. Actually, Trac works well with any type of software development methodology, but it’s been a real boone for us using SCRUM.

Trac integrates with SVN, so your existing SVN login information can be used to log in to Trac. What’s more, all of your SVN changesets are logged in Trac and can be viewed as an RSS feed.

The point of this tutorial isn’t to get into a long discussion about Trac however. The point of all of this is to educate on how to get your eclipse installation to work directly with Trac.

First let’s start with getting a version of Eclipse that suits your needs. I’m a PHP guy, so I’m using Zend Studio for Eclipse. The current version at the time of this writing is (Neon beta). I’m pretty sure it’s free. However, even if it’s not, I still heavily recommend it. The download is pretty big (around 300MB) so be patient. Once you’ve got it downloaded, the installer is pretty self expanatory. If you’re not a PHP developer, I’m sure there’s some pre-made flavor of eclipse out there to suit your needs. You figure it out.

Once your Eclipse app is installed, you’ll want to get the Mylyn plugin. The Mylyn plugin is what handles the Trac connection and ticket synchronization. Anyways, you could download the package manually, but Eclipse’s managed installer works amazingly. So, we’ll use it.

First, fire up your Eclipse App. Then navigate to the following location:

Help / Software Updates / Find and Install

The install / update dialog window opens and you have the option to either update existing features, or search for new features to install. We’re installing new stuff, so selecte ‘Search for new features to install’ and click ‘Next’.

Next, you’ll get a window with a bunch of options. The checkboxes indicate existing features you already have in your Eclipse setup. We’re adding new stuff, so find and click the ‘New Remote Site…’ button in the upper right area of the window.

Here you’ll be prompted for an update site URL, and the name you wish to call it. The name you want to call it is irrelevant, but I’d stick to something that makes sense. The URL field is very important, so use the following url:

http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/eX.Y

Change the X.Y to whatever your version of Eclipse is. I’m using Eclipse 3.3, so I’d change the X.Y to 3.3.

Once you’ve got that much in there, go ahead and click ‘OK’. That closes the current window, and you’ll be back to the window with all of the options. Click ‘Finish’ and the Update Manager will attempt to contact the udpate site you’ve provided. If you’re provided the option, click the checkbox that says ‘Automatically Select Mirrors’. It just makes life a little easier.

Be careful when using this with some of the other plugins, as you can corrupt your Eclipse setup with some of the less well QA’d plugins out there. Mylyn is pretty stable, so you’ll be fine letting it do it’s thing.

Once the update manager finds everything, you’ll be prompted as to what you want to download and install. I’d use descretion here. You will require most of the packages listed. However, unless you really want Bugzilla integration (you might), I’d elect to leave that one alone.

After that, click ‘Next’ and go through the various prompts you’ll see. Basically, you’ll be prompted if you’re sure you want to install the packages, and yes, you are.

Congratulations! You’ve got Mylyn and Eclipse setup! Now, it’s time to get into how you actually use the stuff…

Click the following menu path: /Window / Show View / Other

Now, you’re going to see a new window prompting you for what type of view you’d like to see. Navigate to Mylyn / Task Repositories:

Once you’ve gotten that done, the Task Repository pane will appear (somewhere) in Eclipse. Now click the menu button in the upper right corner of the view, and select ‘Add Task Repository’

A new window will appear that prompts you for the type of task repository you want to connect to. It appears I wasn’t as judicious as I thought when I setup Mylyn myself (note that I have the option to add a bugzilla repository, which is useless for me). Anyways, select Trac, and click ‘Next’

Now you’ll be prompted for the URL of the repository and your login credentials. Go ahead and fill in the specifics of how you’re required to connect to your own Trac repository, and click ‘Finish’.

Now, you’ll want to go back to the show view menu. From there, select Mylyn / Task List.

After you’ve gotten that much done, the Task View will appear. From there, you’ll need to add a query, to get the tasks that are important to you.

To do this, you’ll need to right click somewhere in the whitespace of the task view, and select New / Query.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll get a new window (the Query Window), and all of the options will be filled with the options and applicable answers provided by Trac.

Now, you’ll see a list of tasks in the task view provided by your Trac repository. Double click one of them to see it. You’ll have a few options available to you. The most important of those options is the activation option.

When you activate a task, all files you open afterward will be added to the ‘context’ of the active task. Another awesome feature here, is that your time on the task is monitored, which is great for reporting how long some impossible Trac ticket took you to finish.

Once of the real values to this setup, is SVN integration. Everytime you commit, or merge your files, the timeline of Trac is updated, and reflects your changes via Diff view. That’s a bit off topic, and I’ll save that lecture for some other time.