Saturday, December 3, 2016

Excuse for not posting for over 2 years

Started Sole Proprietorship

Well, it's been a while.

If you think it's because I've been lazy, you're quite right, but not completely.
I actually registered as a sole proprietor and now have a VAT registered "business". Yay...
My blog posts and some activity on a Swedish music forum attracted some attention from people who had some stuff they needed fixed, and they asked me if I could take a look at it.
So I decided that I might as well register a business and make it right with taxes and stuff.
It's nothing big, just to keep things legal and keep my paranoid mind at ease.

I registered back in October 2014 and since then my own repairs and projects haven't been as prioritized as much as the repairs I'm doing for my clients.
I realize Oct 2014 is pretty much when I stopped posting, so .. I guess that's my excuse ;)


It's in no way any kind of "professional" enterprise, just kind of a side-job. I sit in my music/electronic room in my apartment and fix stuff, not any dedicated office or workshop or anything like that...
I want to help. I like to think of my services as more a cheap option to help keep things alive instead of either trashing(or parting out) your unit because nobody will look at it or it's too expensive, or paying as much as the whole thing is worth in repairs (or maybe more).
It may take a loooooong time and I don't promise I'll be able to fix it. It's not gonna be the best repair job you've seen in your life, but I'll actually try my best to help, not for making a lot of money, but I do want some compensation for the time and effort.
My goal is that it should be worth repairing stuff and I'm running a "no fix, no fee" policy.

As some of you may know or have figured out, I reside in Sweden and thus all of my customers (except one, recently) are from Sweden. For that reason my info page is all in Swedish.
So maybe it's useless to you unless you're Swedish, but I'll link to it anyway, just in case :)


Also, I'd like to just get this out there:
I will NOT perform any repair assistance more than the occasional quick tip or advice, because it's just not possible and practical to try to analyze an electronic device when you don't have it in front of you. So if you have questions about something, ask away, but if it looks like:
"I'm trying to repair this. Please tell me what to do next if I get this and that voltage from pin xx at IC blabla.", I can't help, because that is just remote troubleshooting, which is exactly what I want to avoid.

Again, I love to help, but there are limits to how much time and effort I'm willing to put into it and what I'm actually able to assist with without having the device on my own workbench. I'm sure you understand :)

Recently

So what have I been doing? Fixing some stuff.
As a matter of fact, I've been thinking of blogging about the repairs and service jobs I perform to perhaps help share some info that may be useful to you.

On a side-note, I got laid off from my "real" job as a programmer in September 2015 and I've been unemployed since then. You'd think I've been fixing a lot of stuff since I have a lot of spare time now, but.. well.. I'm still a bit lazy.. so while I do have more time it doesn't really mean I've increased the rate at which I repair stuff...
I honestly have an embarassingly long backlog, up to a year actually...
The past couple of months I've tried to reduce the queue a bit and I'm starting to get things done now at least...
However, sometimes people don't always bring stuff to me when we've agreed on a time, or they don't pick their stuff up, so my place gets cluttered with things. That's also a part of the problem, but hardly the biggest issue (which is me, heh).

So, can't I live off of these repairs then? No, not by far. The total turnover, in case you're interested, since October 2014, is less than ONE MONTH gross salary I had as a SW developer.
I'm cheap, so no.

What's next?

Well... Looking for a job, primarily as a C-programmer, but almost every employer just wants web-coders, app-coders or linux kernel beards. I'm none of those, just mainly a plain C-programmer, so the competition is tough for the few remaining positions.

More interestingly for you though, I've been thinking of going through the stuff I've been working on and put some new posts up. Some things have been simple (e.g. replace a battery), others have been more complex, and there's been an occasional "it was broken before I brought it to you but it seems to work fine now". :)
So there may be some posts appearing soon about repairs I've done during the past 2 years.

I'm just wondering if I should ask the people who own all the stuff I've been working on if they're OK with me posting pictures of their gear, though they will remain completely anonymous of course.
I don't know if I'm even requires to ask them, but it might be nice anyway.

So, more repair posts appearing soon hopefully!

No promises though ;)

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