Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

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Week 2 – no work

A major project culminated on Saturday July 25. I did something unusual. Instead of jumping into another project or lighting a big fire under my sales and marketing hat, I spent a week tending to long neglected personal things. This was both necessary and cathartic. I feel human again.

Today I did some final testing on some client code and got final approvals and sign-off closing out yet one other project. I now turn my energies to patch a little code as a favor to an old client of mine and this afternoon I have a scheduled conference call to complete some research for a bid for what may be my next project. Hopefully by the end of the week I’m off overhead and back to billables. So far, I think it is a good idea to add a week of "no work" after an extensive project for tidying up loose ends and making up for neglected areas in my personal life. However, if by the end of this week I am not back to billable hours, I will declare it a failed experiment and begin working on a mental breakdown.

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And we’re off…

Cathy is out getting to tour all the area high schools with the respective principals. Today she has appointments to tour Karns High School and Bearden High School. We’ve sent the older two boys to Indiana to paint their uncle’s house. The two little ones are playing while the sleeping teenage girl babysits. I need a day at my computer without distraction. Perhaps it is time to wake the teen. If you don’t see another post on Reality Me, she ate me.

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Last week I caught up!

In the name of prioritization and business, I have spent the past several months neglecting many things in my personal life. Last week I was able to catch up on many of these things. I am a much happier person! The trade-off of taking personal time to get caught up is that this week I have no projects scheduled since I did no marketing last week. I strive to keep my schedule booked out 2 months so it is odd to have nothing. Obviously I need to strike a slightly better balance between business and personal life.

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Today’s Status Report

Today is far from over but I feel a status report is in order. My wife had important meetings today that would keep her out of the house most of the day and early evening so I’m in charge. She left, two neighborhood children joined our horde, and I attempted to meet my goals. Of course, the older two children were off doing their own things all day so I had no true backup. My goals were simple: write a business proposal in the morning and walk a client through the changes I’d made to their application in the afternoon; if time permits, prospect for more work.

We had no causalities on my watch, but the collateral damage is awesome! Only one dog was so muddy that she needed a bath. Only one child needed a midday bath. We had only 1 temper tantrum and associated bout of tears, otherwise a happy day. There was lots of laughs and much bouncing on the trampoline. I realized that my yard needs to become a much higher priority. I failed to get the proposal done. The chat with the client went well but didn’t end with the "all done" that I’d hoped. I did, however, get some long overdue to do items off my list, such as ordering the dogs’ flea preventative, and that felt great! Now I need to cook dinner and see if I can begin digging our house out of the rubble.

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From the mouths of babes

Looking down at the trampoline I see one child drawn and quartered by four other children. They waddle to the edge of the trampoline and start rocking the captive child back and forth as if to throw her from the trampoline to the ground. Then they release sending the captive nearly to the other side of the trampoline with a flop.

Me, opening the window and softly calling down into the valley: "Hey Noah! Do me a favor and make sure we don’t go to the hospital. I don’t have time for that today."

Earlier it was:

Me: "Evan. We have guests. They don’t want to see your penis."

You know.. there should be a book they give to new parents titled, "these are the ridiculous things you will say" with a list of the absurdities you will utter. I’ve said them all!

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Today is marketing and sales day

As a freelancer, I wear many hats. I am a programmer, quality assurance engineer, project manager, gopher, sexy intern, accounts receivable, accounts payable, technical support, information technologies (IT), customer service, human resources, facilities manager, accountant, marketer, and sales person. I’m sure I forgot a few. Today I am wearing my marketing and sales hats. I have committed myself to getting a proposal out the door by lunch.

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frustrationfrustraTIONfruSTRAIONFRUSRATION!

I’ve spent the day trying to accomplish something that should have taken 40 minutes and is preventing me from doing the things I really want to be doing today. Something that I’m not even getting paid for. I feel that I’ve been constantly interrupted. At one point I declared, "I’m taking the next 40 minutes and finishing this" during which time I was interrupted 3 times. So finally a crisis hit. Minor. The 7 year old, the 4 year old, and the dog went missing in the creek. Normally this would not be a big deal but we’ve had substantial rain these past couple of days. Also, I believe there is a sinkhole in the creek that the children do not know about. It’s mostly covered with debris right now. It’s not really on my property and I’ve been wanting to clear the debris away to see if it is the entrance to the rumored cave that is supposedly nearby. Right now, I simply know that water flows into the ground through the debris at that point and I don’t want the children near it. So I channeled Coach Boomer (which I only now realized is one of my heroes, Bruce Campbell!) for some echo location and proceeded to be anything except that great TV dad that I so aspire to be. Several tears later, everyone is safe but mad at me. And I feel like crud.

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Seeking Recommendations on Netbooks

We find ourselves on the road a bit too much to be as netsavvy and gadget freaky to not be able to have some productivity happening while out and about. I believe a netbook is an economical means to fill that connectivity hole our family stumbles into far too often. Do you have any suggestions, recommendations, or warnings on netbooks, brands and operating systems?

Via Twitter, I’ve learned that Dell solders memory into the netbook making them not easily upgradeable. I now know about http://www.netbookreviews.net/ thanks to xempt who also recommends NewEgg (a favorite shopping spot of mine). Jfloyd pointed out that lspegman has a Hackintosh netbook with a "few glitches but no biggie." steverb says netbooks are 90% the same hardware and gives kudos to Dell’s keyboard design. svandyke likes the ASUS eee (the company we must acknowledge as breaking the barrier for netbooks) and points to C|Net Reviews. ceffyl1 loves her Acer Aspire One D150. jeanroy gave a TweetBrain response (oops. I accidentally closed the question) with good links:

Here are some great links on netbook reviews. http://www.netbookreviews.com/ http://www.netbookreviews.net/ http://www.laptopmag.com/ http://reviews.cnet.com/best-netbooks/ I hope this helps your question. Please follow me on twitter when you get a chance. www.twitter.com/Jeanroy Thanks =D

Asus eee comparison chart.

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You can’t watch them all the time

I caught the seven year old giving the four year old a wedgie. This is one of those moments I feel for single parents because I could not respond rationally and had to tag myself out calling in the second parent. With Cathy’s help we try to convey that this breaks the "no touching between belly button and knees" rule. The question of concern is not why would you do this? but who did this to you? because obviously she learned it from someone. In my head I jump to the worst case scenarios and am horrified. I run down her list of friends and think of the opportunities where inappropriate play could be happening. We probe without making accusations. Amy relents and claims she didn’t learn it from anyone. Then why would she do it? This morning while watching the cartoon network with Amy and Evan, I have an epiphany; She learned it from television.