monkey!

January 31, 2008

Freelancing: Why it could, or not be for you

Freelancing is the act of doing work for someone that you are not truly working under. They give you a task, a time frame, you complete it, and if you like each other you may do more projects together. There are many sites that help you find freelance work.

Freelancing has been known to pay out pretty well for pretty simple work. Most companies looking in the freelancer market are simply needing some quick fixes or a small addition to their company, and hiring a dedicated person or entire team to do this is just not in their budget. You can speak to 90% of CEO’s out there and I’m sure they do not truly understand the amount of time, skills and testing to get various tech-related things done.

So basically, Freelancing sounds awesome! You’re getting paid a premium, from home and after you’re done with the job, you most likely never have to speak to the client again. What is there to lose?

First of all, this is coming from the point of view that freelancing is a “part time job” and you are not doing this fulltime. Freelance full time is just a stupid idea in general and I don’t know why anyone would put themselves through that kind of hell.

Where does Freelancing go wrong? It limits you, it restricts you, you’re usually not working with your own code, and client’s are absurdly picky. Here’s some disgustingly annoying things I’ve had to see/hear:

• Working with other peoples code can be the worst thing ever. One client I worked for had a large scale website that was developed by a freelancers from India. Each page had a mix of PHP/Html, it was horribly formatted, and to simply change the header of the site, I had to modify about 25 files because they did not use a simple header inclusion. This is of course one of those worst-case scenarios but it is very common.
• A client I worked for would spent about an hour or two with me making small, tiny tweaks after I had completed the project to his look. He sent me a PDF with the image of what he wanted, and it was essentially a carbon copy. He then spent an hour telling me small things like “Make the S from the header be above the N in ‘Name’. What the fuck is that?
• Many clients are flaky. I haven’t had this happen too much but some will promise you money, or more projects down the line before even paying you, in an attempt to make you lower your price or essentially work for free.

Those are of course, only a few of the things I’ve encountered over the last few months. Freelancing has its upsides, it pays generally well (An average of $35-50 / hour), you don’t need to have a close relationship with your client, and you can do it at your own leisure.

However, I’ve realized freelancing is not for me. Sure, I can do it at my own leisure but the tasks I am doing are crippling my creativity. Last week, I spent about 10 hours total working on a project for a client. I got paid, and was happy, but I also lost a lot of my free time to work on my own personal projects and move my own ideas forward. Nitpicky clients, the loss of time for your own self, and horrible code are some of the reasons why I won’t be freelancing anymore.

I myself am full of ideas and think it would be a greater investment not only financially, but more so mentally and educationally to spend my time doing the things I love and working for myself, creating wonderful applications and services that I am happy with, not the entire polar opposite.

Although this post was mostly bashing Freelancing, here’s some good resources:

• Freelance Switch - A great site helping you move your life to full time freelance. Gives tips on dealing with clients, finding the good jobs, and balancing it all out.
• oDesk - Probably the best site I found for freelance work. It’s easy to use, and it can send you daily alerts of new jobs based on a criteria you’ve chosen.

I’m back

After about 2 weeks of non existence, my blog is back. Been very busy.

Some things that I’ve been working with in the past 2 weeks:

• Django Python Framework
• CakePHP PHP Framework (I like Django better ! )
• SEO Blogs and resources
• The ups and downs of freelancing. When you should and should not do it
• Sitting outside in the freezing cold for 10 hours for a band I don’t even know that well
• Getting oddly excited to see Spice Girls in a few days

I’ll be posting some lovely text soon.

January 11, 2008

Today I went crazy.

For the longest time ever (Since I was 15), I have run the site Gaming World. The sites been through its up and downs, and currently in its down point (No site, just forums, slow server, lots of downtime) I decided to finally do something about one point

Then last night, I read this topic and I decided to make some changes. I sat down, and researched what I needed for the forums to function correctly, how to fix everything long term and got going.  I did my calling, my ordering, and wrote some notes to the staff and went to sleep.

Woke up this morning, and immediately got going. Shut down the GW Forums, and went to work. Backed up, uploaded, modified config files, and within 2 hours we were seeing the Gaming World forums on their new home.

Through all of this, I was able to response to queries, keep in contact with my consumers (Or in simpler words: The GW users), and talk to my “staff” about what needs to be changed, and gave them timelines.

Today was a sign of the old admin that used to run GW (Me). I got detached from the site and couldn’t put much care and thought into it, but today I did, and I can only hope this spark I’ve had for the last few weeks about changing things and moving forward will stay.

Essentially, this is a lesson in keeping your costumers happy. I kept mine updated, joked around with them, and let them test things that no one else could see (The beauty of an IRC channel) and in the end, I had a functioning, speedy forum and no one was complaining at the 2 hours of downtime.

January 2, 2008

Going into the ring with Diet and beating it

It’s the new year, and for many their new years resolution is to lose weight. It’s hard to lose weight for a lot of people, and it takes a lot of dedication and commitment, but it can be done without too much hassle.

About 2 years ago, I lost 50 pounds in about half a year. I initially lost it really fast because I went on a very strict diet, but it slowed down and I finally evened out at a now healthy 160 pounds. It wasn’t easy initially, but once I got into it, it felt like normal.

With this new year, Miranda wants to go on a diet and lose some weight. She had the idea in about December but it’s pointless to begin a diet during Christmas, even I ate a ton of sugar! We’ve decided to both go on a Yeast-free diet, which are very good post-Christmas due to all the sugar/cookies/cakes you had which has built up in your system.

Miranda’s goal is to lose 20 pounds by February 20th, in which I will get a nipple ring for her if she does (I am an idiot, I know). My goal is to simply stay on the diet, and help her out. I will be cooking most of the meals and trying my best to keep her full and happy without sugar, bread, milk and all those other goodies.

With that in mind, here’s some tips I learned from my own weight loss a few years ago that I found helpful (Some are probably common sense!)

• Help is the number one motivator you can get. If you have someone with you doing the diet, then you will feel much better. When I was on my diet, I lived with my parents and my mom did a lot of work to research foods I could eat and cook me delicious meals. It’s how I discovered the joy of Sushi.
• A diet need not be bland. When I was dieting, I had no sugar (Except Brown only later on) for about 6 months. Not a single teaspoon. However, after I dropped the initial cravings it was no problem. I learned of all new kinds of delicious foods like Sushi, Sweet Potato, Risotto, and all sorts of things.
• Never be hungry. You may feel hungry initially if you’re used to snacking all the time but if you provide yourself with big wholesome meals and snack on some fruit and/or veggies throughout the day you are golden. You do not want to be going to bed starving.
• Get in a routine and follow it. I had Sushi every friday, it was way more calories then I needed but it was filling and I loved it. I would go out once a week for some nice restaurant food (After my initial detox). It’s slightly expensive to go out every week, but it was nice and I could afford it.
• If you’re not enjoying it, adjust your diet so you can. This is a diet you will have for the rest of your life. You need to follow something that you don’t mind keeping. For me, I have dropped Bread and Dairy from my diet and I couldn’t be happier. I don’t need them, I don’t crave them. If you can drop Pop from your diet, that’s already a big step.

Hopefully those few tips helped. I love helping people with diets and working things out so drop me a line if you’d like some help. I’m now off to the grocery market to buy about a weeks worth of delicious meats, veggies and fruits for us.