Year: 2017
I am on a not-a-vacation
I have taken a week off from my day job. Well, next weekend, I will be in training for 3 days so it is not exactly a full week (9 days if you count weekends on either end of a ‘vacation’) and while technically the training is for the Boy Scouts, it is leadership training that is supposed to be on par with Covey Leadership and other corporate training. Plus I have homework to prepare for the weekend of training.
I had really hoped to have this week to work on the house and perhaps travel to visit with relatives or to take Amy somewhere special. Alas, today is Sunday, and while I am very relaxed, I am sitting at the computer to do some work for my day job (the one I am on vacation from) and for my evening and weekend job (my freelancing). Adulting is hard.
And then it got real
You know the programming is getting intense when the incense comes out.
Turbulence
It is a beautiful Sunday. I could easily spend it just being outside. Instead, I will be on the computer all day. I am making good progress but want to make better progress. The potential to allow stress to get out of hand is high but I’m staying frosty.
From the mouths of babes
Evan: "Daaad, I know how to brush my teeth. I’ve been doing it for 12 years."
How Cards Against Humanity spent the Black Friday money.
Karlee, Holly, and Maria 🙂
https://cardsagainsthumanity.com/blackfriday/
Happy 16th Anniversary to My Wife
I use the Adobe Creative Cloud
From the mouths of babes
Evan, entering the house with an Amazon package: "The postman says we are his best customer!"
Continuous learning
I believe we should be learning all the time. These are just a few of the things I work on in my idle time: Ham radio, Fusion360, growing my own food, and cryptocurrencies.
Need mwar hardware
I really need a 27-inch iMac on my desk at the house.
Ouch
I’ve noticed of late, that my injuries are not healing as quickly as they did in the recent past.
It’s Sunday night
I really want a few more days in this weekend.
Exhausted
So tired.
Love/hate relationship with invoicing
"What is your greatest weakness?" It’s the interview question we all hate. I’d have to answer, "invoicing." Granted, when I get into it, I love invoicing because generally, that means money will be coming in from my clients. But I really dislike asking for money. Except when I do ask for money and it arrives. I also dislike justifying my time which is why I enjoyed the dangerous fixed rate work for so many years. Fixed rate was nice because my tightly budgeted clients knew what they were paying and if I did my job well, I made a profit; the risk was that I didn’t assess the problem correctly and ended up working fo minimum wage or less. For instance, when I was running my ISP, I received a phone call asking if I built websites. Naturally, the answer was yes. She asked, "How much?" Having no idea what I was doing, I responded $600. She became my first client and I ended up supporting her on that same $600 for 2 years. When I finally asked for money for my services, she dropped me like a rock and gave her business to someone else.
I learned a great lesson from someone who hired me to juggle at an event. She said she had a 4 hour event and wanted me doing atmospheric juggling for the 4 hours. I gave a rambling reply as I worked up a rate on the spot, "Well, I normally charge $85 for the first half-hour then $50 for every half-hour after that. So four hours comes to $435." Before she could speak, I spat out, "But you are a non-profit so you probably have no money so I could probably do it for $200-$300." She paused, then said, "Okay. Let’s do it for $200. But I’ll give you a bonus in the form of a lesson. You need to know that I was budgeted for $500 so your original $435 would have been acceptable. Additionally, you quoted me $2-300. Why would I pay $300 when you told me that $200 was fine? Put that in your pocket and I’ll see you at the event."
The most annoying aspect of invoicing is that it gets in the way of producing work which could be invoiced for money. I cannot bill for invoicing (based on my bills from my lawyer, he would disagree). I have systems in place to make invoicing easier and more accurate. Three months ago I was doing better at time tracking and invoicing than three years ago; today I am doing it better than I was three months ago. None-the-less, I have a mental block that hinders the process…but I’m fixing that.