General Posts

Cirrus Aircraft Flying 2.0 Video

28 Apr , 2009 No Comments

As many of your know, I currently own and fly a Cirrus SR22 airplane.  This is an amazing aircraft that’s been an invaluable asset to my business.  Several months ago, Cirrus Aircraft gave me the opportunity to take part in a video presentation they were developing to introduce a concept called Flying 2.0 which is about changing the way you travel.  It’s about flying on your schedule, not on some crazy airline’s schedule.  It’s about making more time to do the things that you enjoy in life.  It’s about freedom, flexibility, and getting more done in a day to help your business succeed.  It was truly an honor to be able to be a part of this video and to share with others how much this aircraft has changed my life.  I hope that you enjoy the video!

Happy New Year Thoughts for 2009

01 Jan , 2009 No Comments

This past year has been a great year overall!  I spent a lot of time traveling  to cities across the country.  Some of my travels were to familiar placed I’d been many times before like San Francisco, Aspen, Las Vegas, Denver and Chicago – all great cities with unique personalities that make them great.  I also visited cities like Austin and Duluth which are more off-the-beaten-path, but were great as well!  I’ll actually be back in Austin in just a few weeks from now and am looking forward to visiting again.  It’s about a 6 hour flight from Orlando to Austin in the Cirrus so it’s a bit of a trek, but well worth it once you arrive.

Besides doing lots of traveling and a good number of conventions and meetings, 2008 was also a busy year in terms of actual business.  We once again had solid growth and I couldn’t ask for a better staff of people who really care about treating our customers well and taking care of their needs.  On a more personal note, it seems my to-do list is never-ending, but I’m getting through it slowly but surely.  There are a lot of on-going projects and goals that I haven’t yet accomplished, but will continue working towards completing in the year ahead.

As I look forward to 2009, I see a very good year ahead.  I know you’re probably shaking your head right now wondering if I’m the only person in the world who’s not a pessimist with all the news of the economy and so many bad things happening to so many good people.  Sure, I’m keenly aware of the disastrous state we’re living in right now, but I’m choosing to keep my thoughts positive which I feel is the best way to get through this challenging time.  Negativity breeds like cancer and is crippling to a person’s ability to succeed at their goals.  It skews your perceptions by putting a dark tint over everything in life.  This darkness makes problems feel even deeper and you begin to loose hope right at the point when you need it the most.  It’s a downward spiral that’s hard to recover from once it begins.  As I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of goals for the year ahead – some of them are small, but others are huge and won’t be accomplished overnight – but they will be accomplished.  I know that I’ll reach them because I’m keeping my head high and my attitude positive.  You’ve got to believe that your dreams can become a reality, that tomorrow will be a better day than today, and that you can accomplish great things.  Believe in those people around you who are positive as they’re you’re best ally and will give you the strength to believe in yourself.  They are the ones who you can trust and reach out to for motivation when times get tough.  There will be situations that are out of your control, challenges and hurdles that seem impossible to overcome, to-do lists that are daunting, but a positive attitude is they key to overcoming those obstacles.

Take time out of your busy schedule to SMILE, LAUGH, DO THE THINGS YOU LOVE TO DO, SPEND TIME WITH PEOPLE YOU LIKE, HAVE FUN, and ENJOY LIFE!

Do those things and you’ll be amazed at what a great year 2009 becomes!

How to Set Up Your Slingbox to Work with an Ooma Device

30 Dec , 2008 17 Comments

Those of you who’ve met me know that I’ve got a little (or a lot) of geekiness within me when it comes to high tech gadgets.  Two of my favorite gadgets are the Slingbox (lets you view and control your DVR from wherever you are – or even watch live TV just like you’re sitting on your couch) and the Ooma device (crystal clear FREE local and long distance phone calls using your regular home phones – no phone bills – EVER!)

My VoIP (Voice over IP) phone provider discontinued their service a few months back.  I went to Best Buy to purchase a Vonage kit when I discovered Ooma – buy it once and never pay another cent – that sounded like the perfect price to me!  The Ooma system works flawlessly and has perfectly clear calls – the only problem is that it blocks you from viewing your Slingbox remotely.  I didn’t realize this until I was at my office one day and fired up my SlingPlayer to view a breaking story on Fox News, only to find that my Slingbox wouldn’t connect.  Due to how you plug in the Ooma device to ensure voice calls take bandwidth precedence (for clarity – using a technology called QOS), it kills the Slingbox remote viewing ability.  Basically, the ethernet line goes from your modem, to the Ooma device, then out to your home router (wired or wireless).  I beat my head against the wall for hours trying to set and reset the Slingbox IP address, properly enable port forwarding on my router, calling my internet provider to see if port 5001 (used by the Slingbox) was blocked, etc.  Then I remembered the cabling configuration of the Ooma / network / Slingbox and realized that the Ooma device was the culprit which was keeping me from viewing my Slingbox remotely.  So, in an effort to help others who may run into this same ordeal, I’ll explain step by step how to make a Slingbox work remotely when you’ve got an Ooma device installed as well.  This guide will require some basic network knowledge, but is not difficult if you understand general concepts behind how networks operate.

Let’s set up the Slingbox IP first.  To begin, launch your SlingPlayer.  Go to the Settings then to the Setup Assistant.  Click where it says Setup Internet Viewing.  Click where it says to manually configure your network settings (you’ll need to click this on the next page too).  Next, click the Change button and input the IP address on your local network you’d like to use for your Slingbox.  In my case, I use 192.168.2.200 (I know 200 is high enough that no other devices will automatically try to use with DHCP).  I prefer using a static (pre-set) IP address like this rather than DHCP so that I’ll always have your port forwarding set correctly on my router (we’ll do that later).  With DHCP, say you have a power failure – once your router comes back online, your home system grabs an address (xxx.xxx.xxx.1), then your laptop (xxx.xxx.xxx.2), then your Slingbox (xxx.xxx.xxx.3).  After another power failure, let’s say that first your laptop grabs one (xxx.xxx.xxx.1), then your Slingbox (xxx.xxx.xxx.2), then your home system (xxx.xxx.xxx.3).  Basically, without a static IP address set, you never know which device is going to get.  That scenario can make your port forwarding settings on your router not work for your Slingbox anymore.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about with all of these techno terms, don’t worry – just set your address to some number like (xxx.xxx.xxx.200) – or in my case, 192.168.2.200 like I specified above – it will work – trust me!

Okay, we’re all done setting up the Slingbox IP address.  Now let’s set up your router to properly forward traffic to your Slingbox.  Go to your router’s setup screen using your web brower (usually https://192.168.123.1, https://192.168.123.254, or https://192.168.2.1 – check your owners manual for this address).  Once you’re in there, go to the area where you can set up what’s typically called Virtual Servers or Port Forwarding.  Set up Port 5001 (the Slingbox port) to redirect to whatever IP address you set for your Slingbox (in my case, 192.168.2.200).  In case your router asks, the port type to forward is TCP.  Save these settings – you may need to reboot your router for them to take effect.  Before we leave the router screen, find the general status page where it shows all of your internet settings.  Somewhere on this page, you’ll find a WAN IP address – copy down this number – you’ll need it in just a minute!  I won’t reveal my WAN IP here, but it’s in standard IP address format of (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) – I’ll use (100.100.100.30 for this example).  This is actually the address the Ooma device has assigned to my home network router.

Your router is now all set and ready to go.  Time to do the final step – settting up port forwarding on your Oooma device.  In your internet browser, go to https://setup.ooma.com.  Click on Advanced and scroll down the page to where it says port forwarding, click Add New Rule.  Where it says Start Port, type in 5001 (the Slingbox port).  The type is TCP.  Where it says forward to IP Address, type in the WAN IP address you wrote down from your router internet settings page (100.100.100.30 from my example above).  Click Add Rule and you’re all set!

Now, double check your settings by reviewing this document and making sure they all are set exactly like I’ve specified.  Then, head to your office or your favorite coffee shop and fire up your SlingPlayer.  Presto!  It should connect and your laptop or desktop will be streaming live (or DVR) content from your home Slingbox.

While it took me quite a bit of time to diagnose the problem and figure out the solution, in reality, making these setting changes to make your SlingPlayer connect to your Slingbox remotely should only take a minute or two.  In essence, all that you’re doing is telling the Ooma unit to forward incoming Slingbox traffic (port 5001) to your home router (100.100.100.30).  You’re then telling your home router (100.100.100.30) to forward the Slingbox traffic (port 5001) to your Slingbox (192.168.2.200).  The tricky part of figuring this out was the basic premise that when thinking about a network, we usually think that all the locally connected devices are on the the same local subnet (such as 192.168.2.xxx or 192.168.123.xxx) – but Oooma changes the game – it creates a network within a network with two different IP address ranges.  That was the issue that was originally causing me all the headaches until I pieced everything together in my mind to develop this solution.

I hope that this document helps others who find themselves in the same prediciment that I ran into when setting up the Ooma and Slingbox to work together.  I’ve tried to make this as straightforward as possible, but unfortunately, there’s no real good way to make networking discussions “simple”.  So, if this is way over your head, find a local college student or technie neighbor, buy them dinner and give them a printout of these instructions.  As of the writing of this blog post, neither Slingbox nor Ooma has posted these setup instructions in their tech support areas (which surprises me), so you can save yourself the trouble from even looking for them by just following my instructions above.  Hopefully, Google will index this page quickly so others are able to find it and save themselves headaches as well.

Enjoy using your Slingbox and your Ooma – working together in harmony at last!

Blogging From My Blackberry!

19 Dec , 2008 No Comments

One of my biggest challenges with this blog is finding the time to write new posts. It seems like sometimes life moves too fast to get all the things done we want to in a day! So, I realized I needed to adapt and go mobile if I ever wanted this blog to grow. I made a bunch of tweaks to the default WordPress software (which runs this blog). At first things crashed and burned – scratch that – they didn’t even get off the ground. The first dozen tries resulted in posts filled with random characters as if someone given my Blackberry a good shake (or tried to see if Blackberry’s can float – hint: they can’t!). A little bit more tweaking of the encoding methods being used by the Blackberry device and parsed by the WordPress software and presto! I’m blogging from my Blackberry!

There is one small limitation that’s yet to be solved. While text posts work fine, there’s still not a good way to send pictures I snap on my Blackberry up to the site to be included in postings. There actually is a software add-on available for this purpose, but it opens up a major security hole. No thanks! I’ll stick to posting plain old text rather than compromise security on the server. I’ll write my own sofware to securely address this issue when I find some extra time, but until then, I’ll just add pictures manually after the posts go live (like I did with this one). At least I can do all the time consuming part of actually writing the posts easily on the go – in my car, in the air, or basically anywhere!

Why the Bailout Plan is Destined to Fail

07 Oct , 2008 No Comments

I tend to think of myself as an optimist, but when it comes to the government’s $700 billion bailout plan, I think it’s destined to fail for one simple reason:  The money is going to the same people who got us into this mess in the first place!  Does anyone really feel like they’ll be any more responsible now that they’re spending taxpayer’s dollars rather than investor’s dollars?   They got a financial get out of jail free card rather than having to take responsibility for their actions.  So, what’s the lesson learned?  Make bad decisions and the government will bail you out.  This morning, I saw an interesting article in the Washington Times that highlights just how little these guys have changed their behavior since the bailout plan went into effect.  Some top executives of AIG spent $440,000 on a post-bailout retreat at a posh resort – including spending $25,000 on spa services.   Your tax dollars hard at work!  If these guys were serious about being fiscally responsible, they’d be meeting at a Hampton Inn by the airport instead of a high end resort.

So, what would I do if I were the man in the fur coat?  I’d lend the money to those companies and financial institutions which have made good, solid business decisions.  Encourage those businesses to continue on their positive course and capture market share from the companies who haven’t been fiscally responsible.  We’ll end up with a group of solid winners and the losers will cease to exist.   The free market system can work, but we need to focus incentives on businesses that do things right rather than rewarding those who don’t.