No more clients

If I've learned anything from the recent client that has been giving me so much trouble it is to make sure you document EVERYTHING. I've been working on this site since March, why? Because they refuse to simply talk through email or IM like normal clients. Now don't get me wrong I don't mind on-site visit or phone call once in a while, but these people wanted me to come to their shop for every little revision. It has gotten to the point they want me to call in every single thing that was completed or changed. It is insane.

But by far the icing on the cake is that they're threatening cancellation and legal action if the site isn't done by December! Keep in mind that I've remade the site twice, completely overhauled the database 3 times, made multiple small revisions to the site, gone on site at least 4 times, sent an un countable number of (unread) emails. I'm just plain sick of these people.

If I had enough money to return the original down payment, I would, and then I would ask them to never contact me again. But unfortunately the big disadvantage of being a college student is that when you get money, you have someone who wants it for a bill. Honestly, I've been looking to sell personal belongings just to get enough money to get them away from me.

Since I can't though, I've decided to take a more agressive approach. I'm going to call them everyday until I get the site approved and launched. I'm also going to be enforcing my times, generally I reffer clients to a time table on my site of when I'm available for a phone call, but I usually answer anytime. Not any more, I'm going to send any calls straight to voice mail until my normal hours. No more specially made manuals explaining basic computer skills. And no more running right over to help then when they don't understand something or their mistyping their password in the login form (yes, that really happened).

After this is all over, I think I'm going to take a nice long break, not take on any more clients and just mess around with my site.

How Steve Jobs affected my future

I know I said I wasn't going to write a post like this, but I changed my mind now that all the post funeral ranting had subsided.

Whether you love Apple or hate it you probably know of the infamous CEO Steve Jobs, or at least the black turtle neck an jeans he was famous for. But what most people don't know is how Steve Jobs changed the world. Now I know alot of people will argue Microsoft is better, but that isn't what I mean. Mr. Jobs life story is always what captivated and inspired me.

In 1976 when Jobs was just 21, he and
Steve Wozniak started Apple Compters. They only had the Jobs family garage to work in, but that didn't stop them. They funded their ventures by selling Steve's Volkswagen bus ands Wozniak's authentic scientific calculator. With this the two created a series of personal compters called the Apple I. This inital model earned earned them $774,000! Three years later, the Apple II released, earning 139 million! Apple Compters then became a publicly traded company worth 1.2 billion on the first day.

The next few products from Apple didn't do as well though, and IBM overtook Apple's sales. In 1984 Apple released the Macintosh, styling the computer as something youthful, romantic, and creative. Though it had superior performance, it was still IBM incompatible, and that didn't work in a IBM dominated market. John Scully, the then president of Apple, believed Steve Jobs was the problem and began phasing him out.

In 1985 Jobs resigned as CEO, sold his market shares in Apple and left the company he and Wozniak created in his garage. Jobs always looking for the next thing to change created a new company called NeXT Inc. The following year he purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar, Jobs invested 50 million of his item money. After many big hits, the studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Jobs Disney's largest share holder.

Although Pixar flew NeXT fell. In 1997 Apple bought NeXT for 429 million, thay same year Jobs took the position of CEO again. With Jobs return Apple flourished. With a new management team, altered stock options, and a self imposed annual salary of $1, Apple was back on track.

Even on his death bed he was sketching new accessories for the iPad and trying to learn new things.

I think it is a truly inspiring story. He builds the company, had someone take it away, makes another company, merges with one of America's largest companies, and finally revitalizes his originally company; bringing it back from the brink of death.

His story taught me to follow your passion and stock to your  belifs.

It taught me that even if everyone blames and kicks you out, get back up and keep moving forward.

And most importantly, take pride in everything you do, make excellence an expected standard, never settle for letting your products be mediocre.

Stupid Subway people..

So I went to subway today after class. All I wanted was an egg sandwich, but that would be to easy. The only egg sandwich that subway sells after 11 is the bacon and egg sandwich. I don't eat bacon for health and religious reasons, so I ordered the sandwich without bacon. The subway girl spazzed and said "No I'm sorry sir but we cannot sell that sandwich without bacon on it. company policy!"

So I was all 'Uhmm... yeah... ok... can you just wrap the bacon seprately then?' She agreed and I went on with my order. After I paid I walked over to the trashcan, opened my bag, and threw the bacon away (they put the bacon in a cookie bag). I turned around and the subway girl was just glaring at me.

I dont think I will be welcomed back to subway anymore lol.

Lunch with hitch hikers

About 20 minutes ago I saw a young couple my age (early 20's) and they were hitch hiking to north carolina. They were siting outside mcdonalds with their dog asking for food. I decided I had time between classes so I pulled in and asked them what they wanted to eat they looked kind of suprised when I asked but said they only wanted two chicken sandwiches. I went in and order the chicken sandwiched, then decided we should get fries and also some water.

While I was there ordering one of my friends saw me and asked what I was doing, after I explained what I was doing and I asked if he would like to have lunch with the three of us. He looked disgusted at the fact I was considering having lunch with some homeless hitch hikers and refused.

I throughly enjoyed having lunch with these two people. Unfortunately I can't remember the girls name but the boy's was Tod. They were quite intelligent and interesting as opposed to the typical stereotype of homeless people. We talked about where they came from and what it was like growing up there, where ask they had been and what it was like there.

After we were finished lunch I offered to take them to the Salvation Army but they refused since it was clear across town and out was already 4PM. So we parted ways there.

After I got to school I saw my friend from mcdonalds again. He was asking me why it was that I bought those hitch hikers food and implied that it was for religious reasons. I was kind of shocked by the question. I had never reply thought about why I do things like that, but it isn't anything like to ' buy a ticket to heaven.'

In all honesty I didn't do it for anthony like that our even to look good our to brag about out on the internet. I did it because there was two people who were siting there hungry. It was because they were two human beings who wanted help and deserved to get it.

Mid-Terms ahhh!!

This coming week is mid-terms for me. So I might not be posting a lot due to studing and last minute work.

On the good side I should be getting my first Free Lance pay check Monday! It may only be $50 but its the first bit of money I've made as a free-lance. I'll also get my first contract signed on Monday for the Sheriff's Office signed.

Speaking of which, I finally finished working on my contact today. I've been writing one up over the last few weeks to try  and avoid problems.

But the main message for this time is, if anyone is actually reading these, I wont be on for the next few days.

PR news

After months of struggling I've finally gotten a break! The local sheriffs office has decided they want a site that they can update (aka a cms). Great! What's better? O got the job! After almost an hour of discussion we decided on $250 being the base price with $25 a month for the server.

I was sent home with an outline of the sure structure as they get the content and images together.

What could be better than this? How about a county wide press release? Yes! The sheriffs department is going to have a press release about the site because of the tip section, where someone can anonymously submit tips on some one with  warrant on them. Because this is a new feature for the department they are really trying to push it. But why is this good for me and getting me excited? They are planning on mentioning me, my site and recommending me for everyone else who want work done!

Finally a good day!

Today I had my appointment with Donna from mdsalem.com. It went great. Not only am I going to be re-doing their entire site for my Service Learning credit, but I'm also going to continue updating it, I convinced her to switch to my server, creating brouchuers, and doing other sites for Donna. It turns out she works for quite a few different companies that Salem. She sent me home with with a PDF file she wanted edited and converted into a PowerPoint Presentation and was willing to pay for that as well.

After I got everything finished up with Donna I headed to my next stop, Country Accents on Greene, a small shop near the city I live in. I had a tip that they were considering getting a site and I wanted to be the first one to jump on it. The lead paid off. After about an hour of talking and explaining the owner showed a lot of interest in getting a site and said she would have to talk to her husband about it first. Hopefully I'll get to hear more from them soon!

Special effects

I went to see"i am number“ four last night. It was pretty interesting, I'm not really a fan of alien movies though.

I was really impressed by the special effects though. It was really high quality stuff.

It inspired me to take up after effects again. I want to try and make a few of the effects I saw in the movie. The first effect I want to remake is the teleporting effect number 6 did, that one really stood out to me. The next effect I'd like to try is the reguvinating effect 4 used on 6. Unfortunately those will take awhile to make, but until then I will be making my own version of 4s hand glowing effect. This is, for the most part, finished. All thats left to do is take the video and track it to something. After effects built in tracker sucks though...so I may have to manually track it to something.

On another note Peace & Conflict Studies if beginning to look promising. We're finally getting out of all the war stuff and into the peacemaker studies.

And I just got news(literally) that I've been accepted to take the electricians union test. I've been really hoping to get into this due to the complete lack of web design work available where I live. If I'm able to get into the union I do plan to finish my assoc degree since I only have a two semesters left. I may try and keep going after my masters at the state college, but from the sound of it the union training keeps you busy. But who knows. What matters is they will pay me to learn from then then give me a job. A well paying job.

This how ever does not mean that I plan to stop my side job of website development. I plan to keep this up even of I can only do it a few hours a week.

Feb 22

Today really sucked.

It started out great. When I woke up I was well rested thanks to my new sleeping aid. I started my new morning rutien, sda lesson, pray, meditate and I was feeling great. Next I decided to do some zend framework work. I worked clear up to the setting up a database with sqlite, but couldn't get the php script to run right.

Then the day took a turn for the worse. Mom got up in an extremely bad mood and immediately started bitching. I couldn't take it anymore so I used shoveling snow as an excuse to escape her. When I got outside though I remembered why I hated shoveling at my parents house. They have this old plastic shovel with a metal handel, and it is by far the worst tool for shoveling ever invented. The actual shovel part is so thin and flimsy that it bends if to much snow is lifted with it!

After a half hour of (atempting to say least) pushing snow around with this shovel it's finally decent enough to go back inside. As soon as I step in the door mom goes of about tracking snow. Yeah sorry about that mom, I mean the only reason I spent the night at your house is so you and jerry wouldn't have to shovel snow yourselves, but it's cool yell at me for standing on the tiled kitchen floor right inside the door.

Instead of getting mad I decided to try and be nice. I figured she must have a head ache, but it was apparently just a bad case of bitcitous.

Why?

Well I've been thinking about doing a blog for awhile now, but with school, moving out and a girl friend time is limited.

Yesterday changed my mind though. I read that netutsplus was wanting new writers for a posting position. Hell yes! After class tonight I plan on putting together my "piece of cake, cakephp tutorial." It will hopefully be up in the next week or so.

I also did alot of research on ScreenFlow, my screen casting software, and I feel I've learned how to use it fairly well now. Knowing how ocd I get about my projects though I'll end up editing it with After Effects.

As far as work goes I'll be finishing up my last website job this week. I desperately need to find some new clients. I have a few leads I'm going to follow up with around town. I also had the thought today to offer my services to the student council at my college. They're not even mentioned on the school site and I've seen the flyers they put out, they're horrible. Catching anyone in the school council is the hard part though. I've been to theyre office multiple times and they're never there! They don't even have anumber to call... But regardless I'm not giving up that easy.

In more personal news my girlfriends, kayla, arrival has been delayed once again. She was originally going to be here March 8th, but her father wants to meet me first. I can't blame him for it, he's never seen me and now his daughter wants to move states away and live here. But without her here I'm still very lonely. The new date for her to be here is April 14th. The reason for this is her little sisters spring vacation. The whole family is conning up to see me.

That I don't mind. Her mom had always been nice enough to me, and her little sister Raven loves me. I'm pretty nervous about meeting her dad though. I've talked to him on world of warcraft before but that's it. I just really hope he likes me and lets kayla stay up here...I'll wait as long as it takes to convince him that I been take care of her and provide for her.