Pick a book you like.  Open a few tabs; search for it on Amazon.  Search for it on Barnes.  Compare prices for paper books, compare prices for digital versions…

For me, and the last five books I wanted to put on my list, prices match to the cent.  So much for price shopping these two

I could see each company’s bots working overtime on this and allowed by competitor; I could see competing companies sharing getaway vacation islands together as well…

Borders is only competitive with an online coupon.  But Barnes is almost as gracious with coupons as Borders is so, price shopping comes down to who’s coupon is in my inbox.

Coupon fight it is!

A few months into this self employment gig, I read ‘The Dip’ by Seth Godin.  Ok, I read a few weeks ago; maybe I should have read it a few months ago.  The premise of the book is simple.  Its a short reflection on the fact that, like it or not, we can only excel at a few things (or one) and how this is indeed better than being a jack of all trades.

Godin postulates that, by attempting to be competent at many things, we end up being mediocre at all of them.  He describes briefly how we’re encouraged all through our school years to do well on everything we’re taught instead of being rewarded for excelling at one thing.  Later in life thou, we are most rewarded if we are the best at whatever we do.  While this may be true enough in the context of this book, a book from a fantastic marketing guy, most of my successful peers seem to excel at multiple things.  Godin spends some time explaining how not even second best is good enough in a connected society such as ours.  Instead, he encourages us to focus our time and energy doing those things where we can be better than anyone else for our particular situation.  This is not to say ‘be the best on one skill’ but more along the lines of be the best for the situation you’re in.  With this, I agree 100%.

These past few months, we’ve done coldfusion apps, rails apps, custom wordpress (php) sites and pondered or quoted flex, seo work and everything in between.  This is typical for an IT shop… think of that ‘generalist specialist’ angle to what we do.  I can’t say its been a waste of time, we have to pay bills and being self employed is lot of fun but, reading ‘The Dip’, I can’t help but wonder if choosing only one of these (application types) would’ve been better, worse or the same as trying to cast a wide net for profit.  The usual mode of operation here is to entertain most things if they guarantee fair compensation, prompt execution and payment.  Maybe I’m missing the point of book a bit since Godin talks about multiple careers paths, etc.  Guess this is nothing more than an interpretation but the fact is that the book is a nice quick and insightful read.

Godin, unlike me, makes a very eloquent argument in a short, concise and entertaining book worth the couple of hours reading time.  I could not do the book justice but reading it did have a profound effect on my take on work and definitely on how I spend my time.

Choosing what we work on (for the most part) is one of the most joyful aspects of consulting and contracting.

So far, we’ve found out that there are plenty of opportunities for small companies like ours to make a living. There always seems to be a small shop or an entrepreneur that needs a killer application or website.  These are not always the most lucrative ones. But taking into account how interesting they are and how unpleasant it is to work on something that may get shelved at any moment, they are worthy of consideration.

Catering to these clients is a nice reminder that our skillset is not restricted only to doing ‘data-driven’ sites or applications.  Among the usual accounting applications, the real estate applications, we’re either putting quotes out or building sites for ‘inspecting stuff’ (details if we build it), political websites (upcoming), simplest of content management systems (and not so simple) and even online directories for niche markets that no one seems to have bothered to serve.

If you ever wonder, yes, there are plenty of applications you can profitably write that you feel passionately about but do not believe they are worth your time to do so.  Often, we forgo pursuing these endeavors assuming we can better spend the time doing something else.  We end up with our heads always forgetting these not so silly ideas we have only to shortly afterwards see someone else develop something similar and with much success and personal satisfaction.

One of the more empowering tools working in IT is automation tools. Some of my time best spent in past few weeks has been devoted to deploying a WIKI, a SCM System (SVN), a Bug Tracking System (Mantis), etc.

Notice how all these are open source. At the same time, there are plenty of commercial alternatives to each of these. One Company whose products excel (I think) is Atlassian. My issue is that, while their offerings are fantastic; there is usually an open source alternative which, while not as feature rich, is more than feature complete to cater to my needs.

However, yesterday they started offering a starter licensing program where you can buy any of their products for ten dollars each. Looking at their details page, it is easy to see how much ass kicking one gets for $60.00.

So far, a month and a half into self-employment, most of it has been great fun.

Some of it, however, is just like this…

This time Adobe is giving away non-commercial licenses to Flex Builder to any unemployed developer (or any unemployed).  Just head over to: https://freeriatools.adobe.com/learnflex/ and fill short form.

Adobe seems to always giving away some awesome software in a similar fashion.  Good move!

Having wrapped my last work gig a bit more than a month ago; I’ve devoted all my time to building a business (or two).  I am fortunate enough to have joined forces with two old time friends from the dot-com era, really.  They both have been working independently now for quite some time and we’re betting on the success of joining forces to establish a better rounded team.  God knows I could not pull such a thing by myself  Between the three of us we figured we cover all the skills and needs we could not fill independently.  We each have varied aspirations individually and hope to help each other.  Kevin Fraser, at Eolatech, is mostly interested in the hardware side of IT and maintains a thriving business hardware support single handedly.  Cameron Thomas, at Creativeroot, mostly focuses in design and software business development.  I kind of fall in the middle having done a bit of both. My primordial intent is to help them both as best I can so that we can grow together.  Once we have the ball rolling, my utmost desire is to focus on developing sustainable websites.  Not one-off customer commerce sites but revenue generating sites.  There should be more time for these in due time, we have barely any time to deviate from our main task of doing what it takes to grow this business portfolio and client wise.

Having wrapped my last work gig a bit more than a month ago; I’ve devoted all my time to building a business (or two).  I am fortunate enough to have joined forces with two old time friends from the dot-com era, really.  They both have been working independently now for quite some time and we’re betting on the success of joining forces to establish a better rounded team.  God knows I could not pull such a thing by myself

Between the three of us we figured we cover all the skills and needs we could not fill independently.  This is not a post to peddle our services so I won’t write about that (yet).  Suffice it to mention that I am in good company.  We each have varied aspirations individually and hope to help each other.

Kevin Fraser, at Eolatech, is mostly interested in the hardware side of IT and maintains a thriving business hardware support single handedly.

Cameron Thomas, at Creativeroot, mostly focuses in design and software business development.  I kind of fall in the middle having done a bit of both. My primordial intent is to help them both as best I can so that we can grow together.  Once we have the ball rolling, my utmost desire is to focus on developing sustainable websites.  Not one-off customer commerce sites but revenue generating sites.  There should be more time for these in due time, we have barely any time to deviate from our main task of doing what it takes to grow this business portfolio and client wise.

In this short time flying solo, we’ve been fortunate to get a few medium sized sites which are taking care of the bills…

The first site I’ve been involved with is Parker Business Planning (for the locals, of Parker Boats fame).  This is a typical B2B application for accounting and all sorts of monetary forecasting for boat dealers.  Representative of Coldfusion sites, this is mostly a closed site with nothing to show outside the walls.  If I were to put it on a portfolio in one phrase, I would say ‘Distributed-excel-accounting-wizbang-package’.  I am certain at least one of you went ah!  Enough said.

The other site I am putting lots of efforts now is a ropes course management application.  The site, LeapCM.com, written in Rails, is a bit easier to describe.  A Home Brewed CRM for a niche type of adventure camp.  That sounds about right.  We all have high hopes for this as well.

That’s it for my status report.  I am hoping for the time to post more about the daily grind self employed, the good and the bad. I am very excited about this opportunity and where this different career path may lead!

Quick note – Snow Leopard hosed my svn.conf file on upgrade; it may do it to you  Figured this may save someone a minute or headache…

Quick note – Snow Leopard hosed my svn.conf file on upgrade; it may do it to you  Figured this may save someone a minute or headache…

I had my Subversion configuration details in its own file residing in ‘/etc/apache2/other/svn.conf’ where I declared my password file, etc.  Upgrading to Snow Leopard ‘erased’ this file, among other other conf files, and suddenly my repo went puff.  Re-creating this file and restarting Apache fixed this.

I just discovered Warehouse 13 on Hulu and really like it.  Warehouse 13 is a science fiction show reminiscent of old sci-fi shows. There is no gore, gratuitous sex or cheap shots for laughs so common nowadays; just entertaining sci-fi plots.  British science fiction shows still do this.

Whenever an american show does this however, it risks getting canceled before first season wraps up.  Ever heard of Masters of Science Fiction?  Either that or their script writes change from science fiction fans to infomercial producers (too many to list).

Warehouse 13 is up to episode 4.  So far, it has many features worthy of fandom: good plots but not too serious, classy cheesy sci fi elements of yore and even a cylon guest appearance.

Perhaps this is news to me and not most of you? I’m trilled either way with the show and think its a nice break from science fiction ‘me too’ shows most networks put out… I hope Hulu distribution helps shows like Warehouse 13 find a fan-base and stay true to their original premise.

I recently had a much needed eye exam at Costco. This is the first time the doctor (or health professional) that cares for me is (seemingly) younger than I am; I must indeed be getting old.  I resisted asking him about what he thought of the upcoming G.I. Joe movie for fear he would poke my eyes.  Anyways, he was great and the exam was neither unusual nor unpleasant.

The latter particularly because I did not expect to go to a one stop shop this time (the ones where they both give you an eye exam and sell you glasses). I am a little ashamed to share but this is the one reason I do not get glasses as often as I should; I always feel ripped off after leaving the store many hundred of dollars poorer. This is most often the case anyways for me; feel free to disagree.

Whatever, after much online research, it is apparent I am not alone. If you have found yourself in a similar predicament, a good starting point on the web is the GlassyEyes Blog. I discovered this blog from Lifehacker a long time ago but had forgotten about it (I remembered this when I was quoted a new pair of glasses). Here I found how many disgruntled people are out there with the price of prescription glasses. Also, I discovered a whole online industry, albeit small, catering to these cheapskates :p.

I read all of the store reviews and browsed their online selections. Seeing the prices so reasonable, I gave LBWEyewear a shot and ordering a pair of glasses with the prescription I just got.  Be aware that it is important to obtain the pupillary distance for you (PD); this is not part of the eye exam. Just do as I did: get exam done at Costco ($55.00) and ask the guy at glass store to measure your PD, he wont mind.

The ordering process is very simple and similar across all online stores I checked out and only one of them requires you to fax them your prescription, I do not remember which one. After adding all the bells and whistles, I placed my order and immediately received a confirmation email for it. Worth noting that they have a crappy ‘Shopping Cart’ bought from a kid at a flea mart or something. The email had my order but my prescription was incomplete. Go ahead, try it… odds are your order will look wrong before you finish placing it. I immediately called them and talked to a ‘Peter’ who corrected the order on the spot and sent me on my way.

Two weeks have passed and I just received my glasses. I saved me more than a hundred dollars (from the Costco price, lots more I am sure from other stores) and couldn’t be happier. I am so happy I may try another store shortly ordering a pair of prescription sunglasses this time to see how it goes.

I thought I would share; most of the people I know wear glasses and since they are way less frugal than I am this may benefit a whole bunch.