This weekend my wife and I were off to a late start. It was early afternoon and we were trying to decide on where you have our first meal of the day. We were hungry!Deciding on where to eat generally isn’t an easy task. We have a few places that we both always agree on, but eating at the same five places gets old so we try to shake things up every once in a while. It was T.G.I.Friday’s this time. Neither one of us could really remember what they served other than burgers and such so we gave it a try. This was the beginning of the worst restaurant experience we had ever had…
We arrived and at first glance, they didn’t seem to be busy at all. The girl at the hosting stand reacted like a deer caught in the headlights at first however and ran to the back after we walked in. A server came back with her and they talked for nearly a minute, giving us several glances in the meantime. It was awkward and we almost felt like having to get us a table was a huge burden on them. The server turned to us afterwards to motion us on and explained that they were training a few people today and she was one of the trainers. Well good!, I thought. We’ll get someone with some experience. I will never make that assumption again.
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I haven’t had my phone for a week and updates were just announced at todays Macworld conference. The new features include being able to add more icons to the iPhone springboard, sending SMS messages to multiple people at once, advanced video playback, and adding lyrics to be added to your songs on the iPod.
I am very impatient so as soon as the conference ended, I hit the software update button and viola!, a new iTunes update.
After a 50-something MB download, I still had to download the actual software update for the iPhone which was another 150 MB. That took about 90 minutes to finish and I’m chomping at the bit! iTunes asks me if I want to install the new firmware and I continue. But uh oh! An error pops up on my screen.
Unfortunately iTunes wants you to be connected to the internet at all times so it would not update my phone. Fortunately I had been reading about hacking it before and remembered that pressing the Option button when clicking Update will let you select a file from the hard drive.
I located the update in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/ and everything seemed to work fine. w00t!
I don’t know what it is about new beginnings. We love em! Something about the idea of starting with a clean slate is always appealing. Then at the end of the year, we feel crappy about not having kept our resolutions from the year before, and so the cycle continues.
Is there anything different about Jan 1st that makes it so much easier to drop a bad habit? Probably not. At least not in my opinion. But mentally, it feels like I can’t get away from the feeling of needing to accomplish more this year than the last. I do good for about three months if I’m lucky and then mess up or realize that I’m not as close to finishing a project as I thought. Depression sets in, and giving up usually follows because this year has been “wasted” already. There won’t be another new year for at least 9 months! I feel like I have to wait for some momentous occasion to start fresh again.
So if anything, my “new year’s resolution” this year is to forget the new year hype. We don’t need a new year to make changes in our lives. Every day starts fresh without mistakes so my goal is to make as much use of every single one that I can!
Last night I was on my way home when I noticed that my gas light was on. Being off in my own little world (as I usually am when driving), I had no idea how long the light had been on, so I pulled over to the nearest station I saw. It just so happened to be the Chevron right next to the apartment.
I’m not crazy about stopping, and this particular station didn’t have the greatest prices, but what was I going to do eh?
So I stop, get out of my car, and get ready to put some gas in the tank. I’m minding my own business when out of nowhere I hear, “%lt;BEEP%gt; DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN DOUBLE YOUR POINTS WHEN YOU BUY…” Startled at first, I regained my thoughts quick enough to notice a little device with a speaker attached. I instinctively reached for the device to find the off button and rejoiced when I saw the word “Mute”, so I pressed it and everything was calm again.
While continuing to wait for a full tank of gas, I glanced around to see if anyone else had met this machine with the same enthusiasm. Most of the “savvy” looking people had turned it off. Anyone else who couldn’t figure it out, either waited in their car or just sat there with a look of contempt on their face.
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One of my biggest dreams has always been to work for myself. I’ve tried almost every thing and been suckered by all of the scams at least once… pyramid scams, having my own eBay store, “Work From Home! Make $XXXX A WEEK!”
That dream is finally starting to happen with freelancing. My wife and I have enjoyed a certain level of success for the last year or so, but I will say that it hasn’t been the walk on the beach that we’ve always wanted.
I still say it’s worth every bit of time that we’ve put into it, but there are several things I wish I had thought of ahead of time. Time management would be one of those things.
We thought we could make our own hours because we would be our own boss. Well, that’s not true. Have you heard “The Customer Is Always Right”? What about “The Customer Is Your Boss And Signs Your Checks”? Yes, that’s right. Money doesn’t just magically appear once we’re done with a project, like we thought it would. Instead we’re forced to constantly walk on eggshells in order to keep clients happy. And they’re not all bad, really. In fact, most are actually quite pleasant. But all it takes is one bad email to ruin an entire day, or even entire weeks.
It starts out with deadlines. Usually those are reasonable unless we’re desperate for a new project (this is putting bread on the table after all). But the worst consumers of my time have been problems due to the hosting we provide as well. There is no one to leave in charge when we need a break or a vacation. I am always on call. If something is wrong with the server or a customer is not receiving certain emails, I have to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice, and that has happened while we were on vacation (that’s a nightmare for another post).
With all of that said, I will repeat myself and say that it’s been worth it every step of the way. Some days are definitely better than others, but there is great fulfillment in seeing your creations become reality.
Amazon recently released Kindle, a wireless reading device where you can download books from their website at a cheaper rate. At first, I thought this sounded like a really cool idea. I could have access to almost anything right at my fingertips. My wife can tell you, I buy A LOT of books.
I’ll start off with what I think is cool about it.
When I said wireless, I meant totally wireless. No routers or wifi internet access needed. After buying the device, it comes with a wireless service similar to what we use with cell phones. I can be almost anywhere and buy a book to read, which is pretty cool. The service requires no monthly plan unless you want to use it to read many of the preselected blogs that they have allowed access too.
The prices of books seems to be fairly reasonable too. It looks like Amazon is offering books for around $10. My technical books can get fairly expensive. If you have bought any, you know that they can sometimes be up to $50-60. Even though publishers are allowing PDF downloads now, a $35 book is still as much as $20 just to download it online.
Another plus to having books in a digital format is the ability to be able to search and add digital bookmarks, so that is also really a nice feature.
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I’ve got a new direction for my blog. It’s me! Like it? My marketing team thought it was an awesome idea. I’m making a fresh start, and new commitment: to keep writing, not matter what. That’s a promise to all of my readers… or… umm… reader (Hi Mom!)
I’ve started a lot of new projects recently. None of which I can really claim to be awesome at, but if I’m having fun, who the heck cares? I’ll go ahead an mention a few of them that I’m pretty excited about:
- DiscGolfr - I’ve been planning this one out for a while now. The last several weeks I’ve actually started to flesh out my ideas into actual code. Basically this is a site for anyone who plays disc golf to look up courses or other players. I want to allow users to submit their own photos and also keep track of their scores for different rounds.
- Music - I’ve spent a little money on getting a super cheap recording setup in my house. And when I say cheap, I mean cheap! (USB microphone anyone?) I told myself that I’d start cheap until I know that I’m going to stick with it. I’ve had a few ideas that I’ve worked on, so I’ll be writing about me experiences with that and hopefully posting some MP3s
- Video - This is the one that I probably know the least about. I just know that I find it interesting so I’m jumping in. It started with making a home movie in iMovie on my computer, but I’m moving up in the world. I’m waiting on Final Cut Express to come in the mail so that I can start using that. Along with video stuff, I’m wanting to also take a lot more photos. I’m in the middle of organizing my flickr account, so once I do, I’ll probably sync those with my Wordpress feed somehow.
- Web Development - The wife and I run a small web development company, and I enjoy writing about the goings on with that too. Shameless plug in 3… 2… 1… What? Are we available for hire you ask? Why of course we are! You can view some of our work at MediaGlo.com. You can contact us by filling out the Request a Quote form on the site.
Originally I was considering separate blogs for all of these things, but since these things are all a part of me and what I do, I am keeping it all in the same place.
I’ve read about customizing Wordpress templates for different categories. I might experiment with that a little bit just to give some parts of the site their own look and feel, but we’ll see.
That’s about it for now. peace
