Life rocks! Yep, life is awesome! For me, the best thing about life is challenges. Seems like I can’t go through a day without challenging myself. The more I do, the more ideas I get about what to do next, and so on and so on and so on. Recently I found a bug in the way I live my life. I spend most of my time chasing stuff and not because I have to, but because it’s fun. I wish I would spend some time enjoying my achievements before I attack the next challenge standing in front of me.  Just looking at the last 12 months, we bought a brand new house, we got married, I worked on a lot of great projects, I made more money then I expected, I met a lot of cool and smart people, and lots more. But now that I look at it, I just took it all for granted, instead of stopping for a moment to say “WOW” or “sweet”, or whatever sounds fresh those days.

OK, the above paragraph totally sounds like I’m miserable. I’m not. No really, it’s all good. I’m just amazed with the endless pool of things that I can occupy my mind with. I don’t recall ever saying that I’m bored. There is just so many things I want to do. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember last time I brushed my hair, but that’s because I like to keep them short like my phone conversations. Perhaps a slightly different topic? …Anyways.

Recently I decided to brainwash myself by watching documentaries about the “Law of Attraction” (like “The Secret“). I came to the conclusion that it’s pretty much how I have been living my life without even knowing “the secret science” behind it. Yeah, I did have to deal with some unpleasant crap in the past, but I dealt with it and I moved on. Some might argue, but I think that one’s past doesn’t determine one’s future. There are so many different paths to chose from, that the path you chose doesn’t mater that much. That is, as long as you have a goal, a destination which you want to eventually reach and you are motivated to reach it. (The key word here is motivation). It’s sort of like driving on a highway at night. You’re driving from Saskatoon to Vancouver, and you know that you want to end up in Vancouver even if you can’t see it yet. The only thing you can see is what is few hundred feet in front of you, or whatever the headlights can reach. There is always a chance that you will take a wrong turn or you might get a flat, or the car will break down, or you will run out of gas money, or even stop along the way to enjoy the Okanagan Valley, but this might only slow you down, not prevent you from arriving in Vancouver.

So all this to say that life is awesome, and that I plan to take some tome to enjoy it. My goal is to organize myself to find time again for things that I used to have time for before. Like photography, music production, blogging, and most importantly my wife.

Now a graphical proof by xkcd:

Pictorial 7/10, Technical 8/10, Interpretation 7/10, Comments: Nice close-up. Technically well done.

Pictorial 9/10, Technical 9/10, Interpretation 8/10, Comments: Too much empty space on top, Flash is very strong. Great shot.

Pictorial 7/10, Technical 7/10, Interpretation 7/10, Comments: Nice colors and shadows. No fill light. Nice title.

I figured it was time for a change, so I moved my blog to WordPress.  Setting it up and importing previous blog went very smoothly.  I did not have much time to play with all the settings, themes and CSS, but it will happen eventually. This new blog not only looks different, but it will contain more as well. Previously it was mostly work related, but there is a lot more going on in my life so I decided to take it one level further and share more with you.  Future posts will tell.

Other then this, as usual, a lot of stuff is happening. Few weeks ago I felt like everyone wanted me to do some work for them. Me being me and constantly trying to push myself to see when will I snap, I did end up accepting them all.  For the first time, I did outsource some of them, and it was a very positive experience. I can definitely get used to outsourcing. It does take a lot of load off my back, but there is a catch. How do you know if the person will do as good of a job as you would? In my case it was simple, I did previously work with the guy and I knew he was good.

So far winter has been awesome. 25C and up, for about 2 weeks now. I’m considering planing some palm trees in my backyard.

Anyways, wife and I decide to go for a road trip to Vancouver. I love driving as I get to see a lot more and also gives me a chance to meet all sorts of people along the way. (Side note :One thing I quickly learned when I decided to leave the cubeland, is to talk to whoever I get a chance to talk to. I find socializing being a very effective marketing strategy for a freelancer.) The whole trip took 11 days and about 3500km. From the prairies, through the desert, through the forests and mountains to the ocean and back. The weather was very cooperative, except when we were approaching Vancouver that it started raining. How weird, it never rains in Vancouver

It was the first time I took some real time off since I started freelancing. It definitely takes more preparation when you are a freelancer. If you have any ongoing projects, you need to make sure that you leave your customer in a stable state so that they can survive without you during your absence. And even then, there is a chance that they will call and email you whenever they need to. You can always chose to ignore the calls and not check your emails, but if you are like me, the “missed call” will leave you wondering what is happening and why they called. I did end up being called on only two occasions. One customer had an issue not related to my contract work, but he didn’t know who to call so he called me. That is rather normal in my field, since I’m a Software Engineer or more commonly known as “The computer guy”. The second time I got called because I forgot to send my invoice. What a nice customer, I wish all of them couldn’t wait to pay me. That being said, I think I did take care of my customers, but it definitely takes more effort. As an employee, there are other employees to take care of things during your absence, as a freelancer there is no one there to have your back.

Now to the aftermath. The worst thing one can do to him/herself after coming back from holidays is to try to get the wheels in motion as soon as possible. There is no logic in taking time off and then burning yourself out in the next few days. I’ve done it before, and I learned my lesson. This time, I decided to take it easy in the first week after we came back. On each day I did a bit of work, but none of the crazy-deadline-multitasking-work. I also took some time to organize our holiday pictures, to take care of some long overdue paper work, reorganized my office room, etc. Oh yea, one thing I forgot to mention: Being an obsessive perfectionist who never stops thinking about the most efficient ways of doing things, while planning our road trip I planned to pass by IKEA to pickup some new furniture for my home office. I’ll be posting some pre and post pics of my office.

Since we came back, there has been some new opportunities and other goodies coming my way, stayed tuned.

Why stop there? That got me thinking that I should try to enhance my other skills. As a freelancer, there are other things that one needs to take care of. Accounting, marketing, documentation, research, customer relations, etc. By having to deal with the above on daily basis, I obviously got better at it, but I’m sure there is still room for improvement. I’ve always been a self-learner. (That might explain why as a kid I walked into a river and almost drowned.) I find it more rewarding when I figure out things all by myself. But the future me decided to try a different approach for once. I decided to learn new things by means that I never tried before. So I decided to read a book. I read books before, but they were all technical and related to my field of study. This time I’ll be reading a book that my wife have chosen for me. I asked for something with content but nothing too technical.

OK, let’s jump to different subject now. Salespeople. Their job is the exact opposite of a developer (me).  A good salesman can sell anything, even something that doesn’t exist. To make things even more interesting, he can promise the client that it will be ready by the end of the week. As a freelancer, I get to be the salesperson and the guy who makes it happen. Therefore I need to make sure that I don’t commit to unrealistic requests. What’s interesting is that freelancing offers way more then just more money. It gives me a chance to explore different fields and opens a lot off doors. Let’s say I’m an employee (programmer) and one day I decide to make a turn and become a marketing manager. I got no experience in marketing, so what do I do? As a freelancer, I get to explore the marketing side of business whenever I feel like. Maybe it’s not on the same scale, but still, it’s a good introduction to something new.

So basically, I decided to invest some time to learn the non-technical things and try out some new learning methods. I will let you know how it goes.

When I started this whole freelancing adventure of mine, I sort of new what to expect thanks to many freelancing blogs and advices from family/friends and others. Well, knowing what to expect and living thought it, are two totally different things. I mean, when you know it’s going to hurt, you’re still fine. When it actually hurts, you realize that you were rather optimistic when you though you knew it was going to hurt.

In the last 73 days I managed to get quite a bit of new contracts. Short ones, longer ones, easy ones, and some shoot-myself-in-the foot ones. Sometimes customer’s expectations are very unrealistic, usually deadline wise. I can implement anything, but I need time to do it. So facing a customer like that, there are only 3 choices. Choice 1, refuse the contract and let some else commit suicide. This choice will likely lead to the customer never contacting you again (in the near future). Which is probably fine, when you have been a freelancer for some time and you have a well established clientèle and a nice fat portfolio. If you’re still new to the game, refusing a contract is not an option. I might be too optimistic, but I find that the more difficult the customer is, the more experience I gain. Choice 2, try to educate the customer. Explain the procedure and why it will take that long. If it’s a new customer, this choice will most likely lead him/her to try to get someone else to do it. If you have already done some work for him/her then the likelihood of your customer lessening to you is slightly grater. Choice 3, take the bullet. Be a hero now and suffer when you get back to your home office.

I did end up choosing 3 more often then I should, which translated to many sleepless nights. The only thing that kept me going is the challenge and new experience. By learning the hard way, and chances of me not making the same mistake are lower. Even if my social life has been close to none, I don’t regret anything. (By the way, thanks to my wife for being so understandable and patient.)

I started practicing choice 2 on customers for whom I did some work previously. It worked for some, actually it worked for most. Sidenote: I noticed that when I charge more, they pay more attention to what I say. If I charge less, I find myself being treated more like an employee. So they tell me what to do and how much time I am being given to do it.

So far, it only happen once that I actually refused a contract (choice 1). I got to admit, it’s a strange feeling, a weird feeling, but I try not to look back. Some customers might actually respect you more for being honest and have a better image of you.

OK, so besides work, I did some more work. Different kind of work though. I organized few things. I’m already an organization freak (and I’m proud of it), but there were certain things that I have been putting aside for too long. I even made myself an excel sheet…actually I don’t use Excel. Instead I use IBM Lotus Symphony, which is free, and is not bad at all. I just love IBM stuff, specially their laptops. Anyways, so I made myself a list of what I know I have to do for my customers and I tried to come up with realistic time estimates. It came close to 500 hours. So my next post will be in about 4 moths. Just kidding.

Also, one of my main servers died on me. There is never a good time for a server to go offline when it’s being used 24/7. So between juggling projects, I ended up rebuilding a new server. I decided to go virtual this time and free. I’m running VirtualBox, and so far so good. I figured, next time hardware go bye bye, I’ll just have to copy the virtual OS image to a different computer and I’ll be back in business. That will be 10min of work instead of 1 day.

Another thing, I think I’m starting to understand what others mean by “isolation”. The other day I went to pick up mail and I felt like I don’t belong outside. The sun shining on my face felt weird. For a short second I thought about getting back to the cube land, but I like being a freelancer and I like programming. I just need to find time for other things.

I got much more to write about, but I will keep it for future posts. Yes, I will write again

Picture of the day: “Big Mac”, probably the only fish who have seen so much code in his life and will see much more.

My office is starting to look like an office. We finally installed blinds which were totally worth it. One cork board was not enough anymore, and I finally framed all my certificates and diplomas to remind me what I achieved so far. Maybe I should just post some pictures of my office.

Just 2 days ago I finished an important contract (aka. “Door-opener-to-a-warehouse-of-contracts”). I did put a lot of time/effort into it and judging by the feedback I got, it was noticed.

After 33 days of me, myself and I, life is still good. It is actually getting better and better everyday. I’m starting to notice certain mistakes I made when starting this adventure. Only some minor ones, but I guess it’s a sign that I’m gaining technical experience and business skills.

Once again, thanks to “Feed the Dog” for poking me.

I found an interesting tool called nLite. It lets you create an image of your own version of Windows XP. You can customize it whichever way you want. I managed to shave off 250MB of clock-cycle-wasters and harddrive-space-polluters. Time to go through all the options and decide what to disable… 4 hours. My own custom image Windows XP that is faster then Carrera4 on the picture above…priceless.

Entertainment of the day: grocery shopping with my wife.

I added FeedBurner. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.

I feel like attacking a new personal project. I’m thinking an application for my PocketPC which will automatically keep track of my millage and destinations. I could use it to keep a log for business expenses. It could be interesting to see my driving habits at the end of the year. For now I’m using a pen and paper, but that’s so 80′s

Entertainment of the day: CSI Miami. I love how they arrest people because their tire pattern matches a pattern on a crime scene. Every tire is unique. So if you decide to use your own car to rob a bank, at least change your tires on your way back home.