New Business selling SnowSocks, doing a Masters and everything else

I've been incredibly busy the last while. There's a small part of me thinking I might be stretching myself beyond what I can possibly handle. But I think I'm well able for all of it. Who says you can't start up a new business while working a full time job and doing a part time Masters at night in Electronic Design Engineering?

My Masters has been proving very interesting so far. This semester I'm studying Digital Synthesis Modeling as well as Research Development Techniques and Problem Solving. For the Digital Synthesis Modeling, I've been using a Basys2 reference board to learn how to program in both VHDL and Verilog. The first three assignment proved difficult enough and a great basis for the fourth (capstone) assignment. The first three were: 1) Led flashing 2) Sequence Detect using switches and buttons 3) Implementation of Seven Segment display. The fourth assignment is the truly interesting one though. We have to design and implement a uP (microprocessor) connecting to an onboard SRAM, that sends and recieves data to and from the SRAM. This will prove difficult and may not even be possible on the Basys2 Board. Sure we'll see what happens. We also have to learn to script using command line scripting in DOS, Perl and TCL for complete automation of the synthesis process.

The Research Development Techniques and Problem Solving module has also proved very interesting and is a welcome break to all the technical work in the digital synthesis modeling. For the problem solving, we've looked at problem solving techniques including TRIZ, the nine-windows, 40 inventive principles, the contradiction matrix and many many more. We were also given a KAI test and I got a result of 95, which means I'm equally Adaptive as I am Innovative. I'd have to give loads of references here on what exactly that means, but I don't have time for that.

My new business venture has proved very very interesting. From ordering my stock from overseas, to customs and VAT, to advertising, marketing and selling at the markets, I have learnt so much so far. I still have a lot more to go as well. So far it's going really well and I hope to increase my sales in the coming weeks. I'm basically selling snow socks.

Here's my companies website (http://www.snowtyregrips.com) have a peak, I appreciate any and all feedback on the site. I appreciate it even more if you purchase one of my top quality snow socks from me.

I'll write more about the difficulties I found setting up the business and everything over the coming weeks, maybe over christmas I'll have time to write this all up.