Today is the end of an era. From this point on, things will be completely different in my life. Only time will heal my wounds... Today is the last day that my office-mate will be working here at livemercial. Yes, its sad to say that after 1728000 seconds (give or take) of sharing an office, we will have to say goodbye. He has decided to move on to greener cornfields by being his own bossman. I think one of the deciding factors might be that his NEW office mate will sleep with him. Apparently I was not giving enough in our relationship *sniff, sniff*. As of tomorrow, there will be an empty void, and empty desk in my office that I will have to overcome. Never again will my music have to compete with his music. Never again will my silence be second-best to his silence. Never again will the boss not come in to talk to me. And that, I will miss. I send out this next song, to my officemate Jeff. Its a song of love, faithfulness, and devotion. Tupac's "Dear Mama".
For the past couple years Ive been set against purchasing a TV or promoting someone elses television purchase. Why? Well, I have been a BIG fan of projectors. For those who might have misunderstood me, when I say projectors I don't mean projector TV's, but actual projectors that project images upon a screen or wall. Ive liked the size and quality that a projector has. Anywhoo, back to the story. THis past thursday I went out and got myself a television and dvd player. I just had enough of the vcr and 9in black-and-white-with-a-white-streak-going-down-the-middle-of-the-screen-wannabe-television.
I ran across this blog today surfing the oreilly network. Its the funniest thing ive seen all day, but probably not something you want to view in mixed company. here
I've talked to 2 different people this week concerning a potential of 4 websites (2 being realistic). This is quite the news considering the direction I am going with my webhosting/design company. Its september still, which gives me a little over 3 months to design AND implement the rest of my infrastructure for chattahosts so I won't experience growing pains. As it is right now, business is almost coming in too quickly. I do work a full-time job, and therefore spend an average of 8.5 hours a day in front of a monitor. I then go home to spend another 3-4 hours each evening working on website stuff. I have 4 websites (not including my own) that I am currently working on, a couple that need maintenance, and about 6 potentials that are on the back burner at the moment. Pretty much all of these websites NEED to be done by christmas, which doesnt leave much time for socializing... Fortunately I have John doing all the graphical work for me, which saves me a ton of time & effort (thanks john!), and all I have to focus on is some layout issues, and implementation.
Heidi (or my girlfriend, for those who have not been formally introduced) is coming up to visit in another 3 weeks. It will have been something like 7 weeks between visits this time, and boy am I ready to see her. She just got a third job the other day (on top of full time school...), not to mention she spends a decent portion of her remaining time talking to yours truly. She decided this past week that she *IS* going to be moving up here, in December/January, and she picked up that extra job to help pay off school, and give her something to do in her ever-decreasing spare time. I told her she should sell websites for me, since the money is better, and it can be done in her free time. She opted not to, I guess that's understandable. Anywhoo, Im frikkin excited about her visit, and even moreso excited about her moving. It will be nice to finally have someone to hang out with up here, and who better to hang with than your girlfriend? (I guess if you had a wife, they might be more fun to hang with... unless your girlfriend is nicer than your wife :P)
I am what some people would like to call a 'work-a-holic'. Not knowing the full implications of that stereotype, I will clarify that I work for a sense of being useful, being productive, and to achieve goals that I have set for myself. Every so often I am able to experience more productive days than others, but rarely do I encounter an 'uber-productive' day. A normal productive day is when I get most everything done that I had planned to get done. An uber-productive day is when I get everything done that I had planned, plus some extra things. Yesterday was one of those days. And one of the things that helped it become uber-productive was finding a good billing application...an answer to prayer. I had mentioned the same application in my previous post as the one that didn't work. Well, fortunately I'm a moron, and it was only my failure to do something (what, im not sure) that stopped it from installing correctly last time.
I am in the foundational stages of starting my own company, and I am still having trouble finding one of the cornerstones of my foundation. I NEED a billing application, free and open-source. I have searched freshmeat, and taken a gander at several of their results. I've found a couple here and there, but there is always something wrong. Most of them are antiquated already, and very non-functional. Then you have the other end of the spectrum where the application boasts functionality, and yet i follow the installation directions and voila, it doesn't even work. All of this makes me want to write my own, but that Is something I do NOT have time for. At this point, I have a little over 3 months to create my business' foundation, test it, become fluent in the process, and be ready to roll come Jan. 1. On the bright side, I have a decent client base, and plenty of work at the moment. This translates into a solid portfolio, and some spare change to help offset some of the initial costs of starting a business.
Having said all of the former, I am still left with the desire to share this with someone. Eventually this would be a nice business to replace my day job (in case anyone at Livemercial is reading this, don't worry, that won't be ANY time soon). In order to succeed, this business would need a developer, a designer, and a sales/marketing person. There are several guys out there I know that could be a one-stop-web-shop (for instance bob), but I am not one of them, and therefore I NEED someone else. For the time being, I'll just use john...
Everything seems surreal when you are tired. You occasionally wonder if you really are awake. Once you actually come to the conclusion that you are awake, you wonder how easily it would be to fall asleep. You wonder why your eyelids are incredibly heavy, and why your head keeps dropping. You begin to see what's going on around you, but more from the perspective of a bystander, unable to control what you or anyone else happens to be doing. You are comforted by the thoughts of your pillow and your bed, and when its bad, you frequent thoughts of being horizontal.
Sometimes, no matter how hard one tries, you just can't get to bed when you plan on it. This morning, I think I could shut my eyes and be out withing a minute...
I think this deserves a second posting...
I changed the colors of my blog a few weeks ago, and have never been that satisfied. I took a look at it today, and i really just dont like them. I guess it's back to the drawing board for me.
I changed the colors of my blog a few weeks ago, and have never been that satisfied. I took a look at it today, and i really just dont like them. I guess it's back to the drawing board for me.
This morning, instead of hopping right into work, I blog. I haven't been able to blog lately due to my extremely large workload, and my inability to get chattablogs to cooperate with me. Anyways, my company is leaving for a confernce either today, or the next couple days, and at that conference they wanted to demonstrate the software I have been writing. About 2 weeks ago my supervisor gave me a list of added features or requests, and asked me to let him know which of the items on the list were feasible to have done by conference time. Since then, I have been handed various top-priority, could you have this done today, projects. Amidst those projects I have been able to complete all the features I said I would, excluding one... Its quite sad. I was really really hoping to have it done. However, having more time could have helped me out, but even considering that I'm not sure if it would have been completed.
I find it sometimes stressful to work at a job that requires me to be intelletually sharp, all the time. As a programmer, sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. My superiors undestand this, but our client's do not, and therefore we are held at the bar our clients set for us. Well, I will now get back to my splendiferous project. (besides i think the batteries in my keyboard are dying).
In an article it seems as though a mothers diet has a great effect on the genetic makeup of her offspring. In the article, the tests were done on rats, but if the results were that convincing, then one must think there could be at least *some* relevancy to humans. It kinda makes me wonder what my mom ate while she was pregnant... Also, pregnant cravings, do you think that might be natures way of helping develop the baby's genes?? Where could one find a menu of food-gene relationships? kinda like only eating donuts would help your child develop the senses necessary to be a cop (haha). or maybe pizza and coke help your child develop into a geek.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to Dallas with my girlfriend, and *meet the parents*. Ok, so I already had met them, briefly this past christmas, but hadn't had the opportunity to spend any time with them. Fortunately I left a good first impression then, which made this visit so much easier. It is also quite fortunate that my weekend didn't turn out like the movie (meet the parents). In addition to being able to spend time with heidi's family, I was also able to do a little (a very little) work on the side. Her dad has been one of my clients for about a year now, and he took me to meet with one of his friends/business partners concerning a website. It turns out that I have the opportunity to pick up a business that not only is serious about their web presence, but already knows what they want, and isn't afraid to spend money to get it (thats great for me...). I also got to talk to heidi's dad about redoing his website, which is another financial opportunity. So overall it was a good weekend. Sadly though it was only 5 days, and I would have preferred to have seen heidi longer than that, but the whole 8hr distance thing really puts a damper on it. We survive though.