I turned in my two weeks notice and had the big chat with the chiefs today. I explained my desire to work part time on my own in order to spend more time teaching the Bible, and they respected that. While disappointed, they were all totally cool about it and would like to maintain a working relationship. I'll be sticking around for the full two weeks and after that they'll still have plenty of work for me. [Edited]. That should hopefully ease the transition while I'm drumming up clients of my own and working on other projects.
When I got home my business license and LLC certificate from the state secretary were waiting in my mailbox. Perfect timing.
The domain host (1and1.com) I signed up with provided a website creator tool as part of their free package. I was impressed. It took me less than an hour to whip this bad boy together.
Great past few days. Here's a brief recap of some highlights ...
On Thursday, winter battled spring and gave us a windstorm. The sky turned brown, and countless tumbleweeds filled the streets, careening off cars and buildings like superballs. I saw one man leaning into the wind while tugging a four-foot diameter weed behind him like the chute of a drag racer. A moment later the wind tore it apart, leaving only the stalk in his hand. Dust devils emerged from nowhere and dissipated as quickly. I think spring won.
Since I had to work on Saturday, they gave me Friday off and I went skiing. Icy conditions, but a gorgeous day. Some clouds, some blue, and lots of wind, but a clear view from the mountain. I never managed to get a picture of the lake when the sun was just right, but here are few takes: 1,2,3,4
On Saturday, I helped install LCD mounts in five OR rooms of a nearby hospital. I had to dress in surgical scrubs. I witnessed a live operation where they used a camera and the image showed on a monitor that the surgeon was looking at while cutting away (actually, it looked more like he was using a tiny cauterizing iron to burn away) what appeared to be diseased tissue. I think it was in the fatty tissue surrounding the heart, but I'm not sure, and I decided I probably shouldn't interrupt to ask. When I had lunch in the cafeteria I got an employee discount and the lady asked if I was new there. Heh heh.
Today I cooked for the speaker (salad, steak, and fetuccine alfredo with fresh mushrooms, garlic, and red pepper. oh yeah). He's a former Bethelite of a bygone era, so we had plenty to talk about.
Spring is here. It was almost like the weather looked at the calendar and said "Ready, set ... hold on a sec, is it the 20th or 21st? ... ok, go!" and bam!, we kick it up a notch.
genuwyn.com domain? Check
applied for business license? Check
filed to start an LLC? Check
new e-mail address? Check
free business cards? Check
logo and letterhead? soon ...
new website? soon ...
I will now be checking email to dan@genuwyn.com, and sending out the mass-mailer update shortly. It may take a while, but I intend to wean myself off of hotmail.
Things are moving right along. I was planning on quitting come May, but with the potential business I have lined up, and being as I am, right in the middle of several projects, I'm thinking that April sounds fine.
Although there are plenty of things I don't like about my job, that's not why I'm quitting. The primary reason is the current lack of flexibility that prevents me from pioneering. I may not be able to pioneer immediately when I'm on my own, but I'm going to try to ramp up and hopefully get back to the full-time ministry by September, with some auxillary months in the interim.
I'm nervously excited. [Edited. I nixed the ninny talk.]
Micah got hitched last weekend and is honeymooning somewhere in the Caribbean, no doubt swinging in a hammock and sippin a margarita to the crooning of Jimmy Buffet. Not so much Margaritaville as Hamburger in Paradise.
I took care of sound at the wedding and reception. The couple filled four CD's with what turned out to be mostly lovie-dovie slow dance stuff, like Unchained Melodies. Love that song, but it doesn't do much to get a floor full of young people hopping, and here in Spokane, the old people "young at heart" just don't hop. I had to listen to the songs ahead of time on headphones and keep skipping ahead to the faster stuff. Then someone told me to turn down the bass. I did. Then someone said that if it was any louder they might be able to hear the music. Meh. You can't please them all.
Here are some ideas I've come up with while brainstorming for the past few days. All of these have the [name]Consulting.com domain available, but I haven't done any trademark searches. Two that use a made-up word actually have the whole domain available.
Any of these sound appealing?
Snap
Metaflux
Salamander
Syncopated
InfoSync
Copacetic
Tiger Eye
Cygwyn
Afterburn
Scorpion
Slipstream
Syscape
Cyncopate (www.cyncopate.com)
Isometa (www.isometa.com)
I've decided to strike out on my own. This seems the most practical way to facilitate pioneering, and honestly, I'm tired of the current daily grind. I'm hoping that by the first week in May I'll be positioned to make the leap. To start with, though, I need a good company name, and I'm open to suggestions. I would like the .com domain name if possible, so uniqueness is important. Naturally, I would like it to meet the following impossible criteria:
1. Short
2. Easy to remember
3. Apropos to my services
4. Sounds cool
5. Not corny
What are my services? I'd like to keep it broad, but focused on office workflow automation and fairly small-scale .Net application development. Target market? I initially envisioned small to medium size businesses that don't have their own IT staff, but I've readjusted to include larger companies that have IT support but not in-house application development. My sales pitch will focus on providing improved and intelligent use of existing infrastructure to increase efficiency and enhance data usability and accessibility. Such grandiose language will be accompanied by several specific examples demonstrating what I'm talking about. Although I really enjoy interface design, I'm going to focus more on simple things that can be done using MS-Office automation, such as automating the population of Outlook's task list and calendar by linking to their workflow app, or generating Excel reports that combine data from their contact management software and accounting system to provide better market analysis, yada yada yada. You get the idea.
So what should I call it?
Rabbit-Proof Fence gets 4.5/5 stars. True story about three half-aborigine girls (ages 7,10, and 14) who escape an internment camp of sorts and trek 1500 miles through the Australian outback to return home. The children had no prior theatrical training and yet their somewhat amateurish performances lent a powerful credibility. I thought the director could have done a little better job of emphasizing the magnitude of the accomplishment; the girls' appearance didn't change much along their six week journey. Nitpicking aside, though, it's a fantastic testament to the enduring power of the human spirit.
* bit of a spoiler *
At the end, they show the actual women who made the journey, now in their 70's, and the subtitles inform you that the oldest girl was later brought back to the same camp along with her little daughter. She escaped and made the journey again, this time carrying her daughter on her back. Tremendous.
