Here I am! After 13 hours flight from LA to Taipei, I am sitting in front of the free Internet store and type this blog. I will fly to Hong Kong in just about two and half hours. The funny thing is that I use Yahoo Messenger to call my brother in Taiwan. It’s actually connect to the Yahoo voice server in the US and calling to Taiwan from there. So the voice delays, but OK.
Last minute update before my 2007 backpack journey
Within 4 hours, I will be on my way to China. This is my 2007 backpack journey that I have dreamed for a while. I did 7 months backpack travel in 2006. Now it’s time for 2007. It won’t be as long as last time though. Before I take off, I want to update what I have so far.
I think life is so short. I want to travel as much as I can while I can still afford and do it. Two days ago I post “Prepare my backpack journey to China 2007.” I am so exciting about this trip to China.
Here comes my last update!
Sync thunderbird profiles and mail accounts between computers
Thank you for visiting this blog post I did way back in 2007. This content is no longer suitable, since there are lots changes in Thunderbird. In reality, using Thunderbird on multiple computers is no longer a good solution. It’s the era of cloud computing. I’ve since switch my day to day email operation to Google’s Gmail. I also forward all my custom domain email to Gmail and use Amazon SES to send email for virtually FREE.
Still want to know how? Continue reading …
While I am preparing my backpack travel to China for 2007, I decided to carry one of my older and lighter compaq laptop with me. So I can backup and load pictures to my online photogallery whenever I can. I also want to check email with my favorite email program “Mozilla Thunderbird.” I have seen people share thunderbird profiles between a dual boot computer system between Linux and windows XP. That gave me the idea that I can easily transfer all my thunderbird profile and emails between computers.
This is how-to!
Prepare my backpack journey to China 2007
Personally, I love travel and taking photos. Travel around the world is my dream. I have been working so hard for years, now it’s time to pick up my backpack and travel to China again for 2007. Last year in June 2006, my dear wife and I both quit our job and backpack travel to Taiwan, Hong Kong and China for 7 months. We came back to US in January 2007. It was an awesome trip. It’s not as luxury as many people do, but it’s a self-tour journey. It’s the longest vacation in my life.
From August 7th 2007, I won’t be able to write any post and reply comments for days and hopefully not for months. I am sure to post some interesting photos whenever I can. I will be sure to bring more souvenirs back as well.
Now. It’s a hot summer again. It’s the best time to do backpack travel, so we don’t need to carry heavy winter coat. We don’t have plan and we don’t know where we will be going. We don’t know how long we will be traveling this time. We stay at one place as long as we like. There is no rush, no push, and no worry. It’s the best way to enjoy my life with my lovely wife.
I still remember one of the success entrepreneur said in a conference that you are not success if you only work for money. To be a true success entrepreneur, you have to know how to balance your life between work and family.
It makes you no success entrepreneur, if you are just a slave of your fortune.
You need to make your money work for you. I think I finally understand that now! When I come back, I will work even harder. Most importantly, I will work even smarter!
After all, money is not everything, but money can give you a lot of things. My suggestions to my viewers are “Saving is as important as investing.” Make your money work for you!
Huang Shan, China – #1 yellow mountain – a must hike mountain for hiker
First of all, click here to see the slide show. Yellow Mountain Slide Show
If you are a hiker and you have never hiked to this number one mountain in China, you will be shame on yourself. The mountain is called Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain in Chinese). It’s one of the most known mountains in the Chinese painting. It’s one of the most weird and beautiful mountain in the world too. The weather in the mountain could change four seasons in one day. You can have Spring in the morning, Summer at noon, Autumn in the afternoon and winter at night.There are only few hotels (about 5) in the mountain. If you decide to stay in the mountain, you’d better book the hotel when you arrival in the village though your hostel host or hotel manager. The only reason you will stay in the mountain is to watch the cloud sea and sun rise. The hotel price in the mountain is very expensive and you sometimes have to share room with 6+ other strengers. You are recommend to carry as little items as possible and leave your luggage in the hotel in the village. These are some people who just don’t listen. So they have to turn around and back down to the village. Shame on them! I will tell you why!
Yang Shuo, China – A peaceful moment of my life
Last year, My wife and I took 7 months off and travel to Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong and China). That was a peaceful moment in our life that we have no worry, no fear, no job and no regrets. We have waited for that vacation for years. We went to many many places and decided to stop at Yang Shuo, China for about two weeks. We were so relaxe and relieve, just like we were in the heaven. I took many photos with my Nikon D70s. The weather was cloudy, but perfect for summer vacation. Click here to view the slideshow.
We plan to go there again this summer, we have more places to go. 50% of the people there are foreigner. That is one of the famous places in China. If you look at the Chinese painting, you will know what I am talking about.You can see more photos/slide shows from my photography page.
Start online e-commerce store business in Arizona
I think it will be useful to put down the processes of starting an online retail business in Arizona. Who knows what will happen tomorrow. I may start a new business on my own. Although this is not the first company I start, however, it’s my first online retail business.
These are the brief steps.
- Search availability of the new company name at Arizona Corporation Commission.
- Filing the required documents to register the company as s-corporation.
- Download the filing forms here.
- Covert Sheet
- Articles of Incorporation for Domestic Corporations
- Certificate of Disclosure for Business Corporations
- $95 check write to Arizona Corporation Commission
- If the document is filed with Expedited process ($60 + $35), it will take about a week to get the Article of corporation document return ($5/each). Otherwise, it will take about 55 days.
- Once received the article of corporation, publish the article in 60 days. AZ Capitol Time can complete the whole process for about $91, including mail the published copy to AZ corporation commission.
- Once the process is completed, call IRS to get a new EIN (employee Identify Number)
- Download and file the 2553 S-corporation election form to form the s-corporation
- Apply the Arizona retailer license online at AZTaxes.gov.
- Apply a new business check account with bank
- Apply a new business credit card
- Find a good company to buy the startup package (including bylaw, minute book, etc)
- Register the desired domain name at GoDaddy.com
- Find a good hosting company. ex ANHosting.com
- Setup open source shopping cart Zen Cart
- Customize the logo and layout
- Input the products
- Setup Paypal business account and link to the shopping cart (Paypal IPN)
The time to complete the entire corporation filing is about a month. Now. It’s up to me how to run the business. Few notes to remember.
AZ requires to file the tax return monthly. Fedral requires to file tax return qurterly.
Small Business starts small – Does domain name matter?
I have been receiving emails or private messages on many small business forums about where and how to start a small business or home based business. They often asked me how to find their business name and register a domain name for their small business. Does domain name matter to their business? What a domain name can do to help them gain more business or drive their business forward?
The answer is simple. Domain name does matter. A good domain name will attract visitor and help the web site to be indexed and searched easier that just some weird domain name. I registered all my domains at www.GoDaddy.com. They are the largest domain and web hosting company in the world.
Now, what domain name should a small business owner get? Here is some guide lines.
- Frist of all, don’t try to get a domain with a big brand name in it. For example, digggoogle.com or googleme.com, which has google in the domain name. You might get sue by those big shop when your site is getting quiet traffic.
- Try to find a name close to your own business name.
- Get dot com (.com), if you can. Most of search engine will look for your domain + .com to find if there is such a domain existing. The search engine will list it in the order or .com, .net etc. And most of people who only remember the domain name will type something like smallbizdir with .com after that while he/she means to type (smallbizdir.net). Not many people remember to type .net, .org, .info or anything else. So get .com domain as you can.
- Find a good domain registration company to stick with. I personally recommend www.GoDaddy.com, because of their credibilities. I don’t host my site with then. Their shared hosting is not as good as what I am getting from ANHosting.com. I would choose GoDaddy.com for higher end dedicated hosting.
- If you can’t find a good domain name close to your business name, think about something sharp and easy to remember. Yahoo and Google are both very easy to remember.
- Don’t make your domain more than 12 characters long. Most of people will not remember long domain or just forget the .com, .net part of the domain. A long domain will also make your email address hard to remember. A long domain name might not fit your newly design business card of advertisement flyer. Can you remember this email address? [email protected]. You got the point.
Does domain matter to your business? Domain is just like your company name, it’s part of your business plan and success. Without a good domain name, you won’t represent your business in a good and wealthy way.
Nikon D70S – Mexico Trip
Last year in April, I took my Nikon D70s to Mexico. A 9 days 8 nights cruise tour. It was great to have my Nikon D70s travel with me. I, of course, took my Nikon D70s with me to Asia (China and Taiwan). It was a great experience that I took over 6000 pictures in just few months. You can find my photography on AOL’s wonderful Pictures servic here.
這是我第一次帶著Nikon D70S去這麼遠的地方. 9天8夜的遊輪之旅去了墨西哥的西岸.
This is the sculpture near the beach. It look like a stair to the heaven.
天堂之梯
A weird stone wall look hell on the lover’s beach at Carbo San Lucas, Mexico (Lands End)
漁人: Catch me if you can! 鳥: 大伙兒上! 別讓魚跑了!
Cabo San Lucas 的陸地盡頭 右邊的石頭像不像恐龍喝水?
Cabo San Lucas 的陸地盡頭 及愛人海灘. 世界惟一跨兩個海洋的砂灘
In this vacation, we left Phoenix Arizona and headed to Log Angles. We stayed in one of our families house in Orange Country. Then we took the curise tour with norwegian star cruise line. It took us to the following Mexico cities.
Acapulco, Mexico’s second largest tour city after Cancun.
Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa‘s little cancun beach
Puerto Vallarta‘s beach
Cabo San Lucas – The land’s end and Lover’s beach. The only beach in the world, that has two oceans around.
PHP + ADODB + IIS + MSSQL + Windows Authentication
These is my technical notes on how to make PHP connect to MSSQL using Windows Authentication, if PHP(IIS) and MSSQL are running on separate servers.
Environment:
PHP4 + PHP Adodb + IIS + MSSQL
In normal case, using PHP Adodb library do not allow you to user windows authentication to access MSSQL runing on the server or other server. To use the windows authentication in PHP to access MSSQL server, you will need to tweak the IIS configuration and the PHP connection string.
IIS configuration
– Open IIS Manager
– Right click on the web site running the PHP script.
– Choose Properties and go to Directory Security tab
– Click Edit on Anonymous access and authentication control
– Change the Anonymous access user name and password to the desired domain username and password
– Uncheck the “Allow IIS to control password
– Make sure the domain user has rights to access desired database on the MSSQL server
PHP Script
Useing the following connection string when connect to MSSQL with PHPAdodb library
$myDSN=”PROVIDER=SQLOLEDB;DRIVER={SQL Server};SERVER=[MSSQL Server Name];DATABASE=[Database Name];Integrated Security=SSPI“;
Notes:
As you can see, the doman user will need to have rights to access both servers. The user will also need to have rights to execute PHP.EXE and read(and possible write) access to the PHP script folders. Basically, the domain user will need to have everything IUSR_[server_name] user has.
I have not had chance to test this. Please use it at your own risk.
Reference:
Authentication methods for connections to SQL Server in Active Server Pages