Results tagged “work” from jmac.org blog
I am pleased to announce the public debut of my latest professional identity, Appleseed Software Consulting LLC.
The website is pretty spare right now; there are at least two major sections, including a new blog, which aren't ready yet. But the remainder makes for a fine public web presence, and so up it goes today.
Yes, the domain name is a little fiddly, but what can you do? I also nabbed appleseedsc.com and appleseedsofwareconsulting.com, but I figure that the version with the hypen in it looks best in print. It's what's going on the business cards.
I've been meaning to note for a while that I am no longer in hell, and am once again happy with my work situation. I say this fully realizing that I also said this last summer before I fell flat on my back. But I know exactly what I did wrong then, and it's a mistake I won't make again.
In short, I ran a business with no marketing and a single customer, who was under no obligation not to simply wander off when they felt done with me. Leaving me with no income and no plan to attract new customers. It turns out that customers aren't employers.
After six harrowing, empty-cupboard weeks of full-time, unpaid work I had some marketing in place and a small corral of active customers. That interim was really rough, but knowing that I pulled myself out of it through my own strength (with assists from my excellent friends) is awesome. My confidence in my ability to do business as well as sling code shot up tremendously, even before I started actually collecting money again, just from witnessing my own success at finding and connecting with new customers.
Gord willing, I now have a heightened awareness of pitfalls that I haven't fallen into yet. Not too long ago I was talking with some friends on the train. One, who had just landed a lucrative full-time job, said he was tempted by my stories of the independent life, but was also made quite wary by my little time of troubles. I said that I had learned my lesson from all of that, and I don't foresee any other terrible things happening to me. "Unless someone sues me," I mused. Suddenly, I felt very cold. "Yes, that would count," said my friend.
So that is why I am moving forward with this reorganization plan, primarily as armor against any future legal blows. (No, I'm not expecting anyone to sue me. And really, that's the point.)
I am seriously considering writing a book, or something bookish, about my experiences. There's a lot of spilled ink about becoming a consultant, and far more about embracing the freelance life in general. But I haven't encountered any works targeted specifically towards software professionals, coming to them with the message that there is another way and offering advice on how to break free and get started.
I discovered the lifestyle by accident, by way of launching an unrelated startup, and later looking for supplemental income without having to go back to a job. After a year of trial and error I finally have an idea how it works. And from this vantage point, I continue to feel surprise that I know tons of software people, but only one or two work for themselves. It's certainly not the life for everyone, but for me it is without a doubt the best job I've ever had. I probably could have started years before I actually did, had I only known it was possible. The message needs to get out more.
The MIT Mystery Hunt is only a few days away. I'm determined to get as much money-work as I can done before then; there is a backlog, with end-conditions in reach. There won't be much Volity or Gameshelf progress, despite so much I want to do in both. (Though maybe I'll squeeze more in if put the video games away for now...)
Some of my team (Immoral, Illegal, and Fattening, Attorneys at Law) gathered at MIT Saturday night to practice, breaking up into groups of four and then running through a shorter puzzle extravaganza. (It was this one, actually, by Dan Katz.) I was on fire, solving three puzzles alone, and helping to finish up a couple more. My puzzle-fu has never been stronger, and I was pleased when another group still finished well ahead of us, suggesting that our whole team is really well poised this year. (That group contained a hunt veteran who is joining our team this year, so that's exciting too.)
I hope that we at least make it into the endgame, which would be a first for IIF. I was last night reading the 2006 hosting team's description of that year's endgame, and filled with fear and desire.
Walked to Davis first thing in the morning yesterday. Deposited a pleasantly prompt client payment into my bank, and then visited the Harvard Vanguard blood lab to get the ol' stick-n-drain. This was the final bit of followup business from my May checkup. It took so long because it required a 12-hour fast but did not require an appointment, making it quite easy to tell myself that I'd do it next week - week after week. My eagerness to hit the bank, and my good spirits resulting from same, moved me to delay my morning coffee and finally deal with it. I'm told that I'll get an analysis in the mail soon. I do not expect bad news.
Things are getting interesting with work. Starting next week, and continuing for the next month or two at least, I'll be working on two high-priority tasks for two clients. I have decided that, so long as the business is just me, two active clients is my maximum. That is, while I'll always seek to grow my client database ever larger, the number of clients who are actively expecting work from me at any given time should not exceed two.
Technically I already had a little experience working with two clients at once this past week, when I did some late-night emergency work for a third client. That was an interesting exercise in stress management and judgment. The problem was an ornery Perl script written by someone who didn't know Perl too good which leaked memory at an alarming rate, so much that it ran any machine into the ground within minutes. It needed to work ASAP because its output was crucial to a presentation the following day.
Printed it out, took it apart, stated to rewrite it. After an hour, it was clear that I wouldn't be able to finish it before midnight. So, with the client's OK, I settled for simply identifying the one thing causing the leak, patching it, testing it, and then handing it back otherwise untouched. Billed two hours, and noted in my report email that I'd be happy to help clean up the program later on, if they'd like. (An excellent habit for an independent contractor, suggesting one's own follow-up tasks to clients.)
Anyway, yeah. My only concern, as always, is leaving room for Volity. Lately I've been working on it whenever I've been hot to do so, which lately has amounted to around two evenings per week, and that's been all right. Found and killed a real forehead-slapper of a design problem on Tuesday night, which I do believe will make all the "random" and "unpredictable" errors that have been delaying the alpha release finally reveal themselves as nothing of the sort, allowing their rapid isolation and eradication. I hope to put a lot of time into the problem this weekend.
I have started a task for a new client whose development paradigm involves distributing a VMware file representing a complete FreeBSD system running the client's software. This is interesting, if slightly insane, and I'm willing to roll with it.
Sadly, my MacBook does not feel the same way. It still possesses the mere one gigabyte of RAM that held when it showed up on my doorstep last April, and it's being crushed under the weight of all the stuff happening on the virtual box.
So it came to pass that I placed an order for four phat new gigabytes from my friends at 18004memory.com, which despite its cheesy name has been a fine RAM vendor to me in the past. I had a nice phone chat about compatibility with a clueful CSR named Mike just now, so I'm feeling extra-warm about them. Went ahead and requested priority overnight. Three cheers for business-expense tax write-offs!
Fun fact: a major selling point of the Mac Plus when it launched in 1986 was its inclusion of one full megabyte of RAM. And I remember chuckling when I first read that ten years ago, as I had just upgraded my PowerMac to 16 MB. Sixteen times as much memory capacity, little more than a decade later! O RLY.
I get to learn interesting new Perl stuff for this job, including Catalyst, Moose, and DBIx::Class. I enter the latter with an open if skeptical mind. Looking forward to seeing what happens.
(The title of this post references the name of my creamy white MacBook. I don't know first-hand of anyone else who uses cheese varieties as a machine naming scheme, which surprises me, in retrospect.)
