Wow. And I didn’t even get a kiss.

So I was working on a project for a client and needed some pages scanned. 10 8.5×14 color pages to a PDF. I took it to the local printshop, and was told it shouldn’t take too long to get done.

Well, it took a week – and the bill was $50.

I immediately started looking for a scanner that would do the same thing – it would cost a pretty penny. Wow.

Yes, there is still a pulse.

I’m alive. Honest. I mean it. Seriously, I can feel my pulse right now.

Work has seemed to have taken over my life – both my ‘corporate’ job and my own business. Its really cool. I even had time to run lights and sound for the local community theater production. That is through, so now I’ll focus on keeping up-to-date with my online friends and churning out some work for my other clients.

As I said, the corporate job is going well. As a matter of fact I got a 3.5% merit increase which put me up to over $10.50 an hour (a far cry from what I get paid when work is good at Mindstorm, but I’m not complaining at all). The best part of the whole thing was this:

Jim is a great asset to the <blank> Department. He does a fantastic job of working independently as well as on team project. He is able to apply his many skills and talents to the professional materials he designs. He is well organized and does a great job of keeping myself and others involved in the projects informed of project stats and progress. Jim is always upbeat and positive, and contributes many great ideas and suggestings to the department projects. Jim has a great desire to learn every aspect of the <blank> Department and takes time to learn new software and techniques on his own time. He works closely with other Specialists in corss -training exercises, to learn from others and share his knowledge. He is always willing to accept new projects and thrives on challenging projects! Jim remains calm under high pressure and persuant in spite of difficulties. Jim is very creative and applies his stong technical skills and knowledge across many project types. Jim is always kind and courteous and is well like by other team members. Jim takes pride in his work and it shows!

I’ve been in this department for little over 3 months. After all of the years of hearing people do nothing but tear me down or laugh because they think that I can’t do something because of the background I came from has all been washed away. And while I’m not in radio, Big Effin Deal. I’m liked and appreciated for me. And nothing can beat that.

My Life Right Now

10 Wake Up

20 Work

30 Go Home

35 My business work

40 Eat

50 Sleep

60 GOTO 10

Gettin’ nerdy with it.

So work has been pretty interesting lately… I’ve been doing a little bit of everything, and not a whole lot of training related stuff. I’ve produced a few Product Vendor DVDs (anytime a vendor would visit and give presentations, we’d tape it, and then I’d take it from there)… and have been learning databases on the fly. I bought a book on Access, and have been elbow deep in creating a learning management system. I’ve done about 8 forms, just about as many queries and reports, with a TON to go. I’ve actually been getting help thanks to Google – between my Google searches and groups.google.com, I’ve gotten pretty far, and am suprised that I can grasp it so well. I’ve always had problems trying to wrap my head around databases, but for some reason it seems to be coming to me pretty easy.

While some of my friends might give me grief that its Access and not mySQL — hey, at least I’m getting it under my belt, and it will let me jump into the stuff I should know.

Other than that, I’ve been working my butt off and today I actually felt like I was having fun at work. Which is probably the second time in the almost 2 months I’ve been in this position. I guess its not too bad.

As a matter of fact, our company celebrated its anniversary, and as a gift, the founders gave everyone a bonus check. Can’t beat that.

You know you are popular at work…

I have a part time job as a call center employee – its inbound, so I'm not one of those people who call out and annoy you at dinner time…

 Well, needless to say, I got a call from the Call Center's manager today, asking why I had not applied for a promotion, and I had replied that I was waiting for a response to another position, and I was told I should really apply for this job too.

I think its pretty slick that they like me there enough to tell me that I REALLY need to apply for a job. 

Today’s Nifty Little freebie

So as a web designer, I have to be able to do things like, oh, add audio to websites for clients, and the such. And it can be a bit of a pain trying to find utilities that are reasonably priced, but one that I did find was a Great little program called Sonic Memo. Basically, you drop your sound file into it, set up where you want it FTP’d, and BAM! Its up and online with its own little player. I paid for it, but the author, Jay Jennings, is now offering the Lite Version for the amazingly low price of free. Here is the Link to get your own copy. I almost forgot. You have to subscribe to his mailing list, but you can always unsubscribe, and its a cool little program.

Still kicking

I know, I promised I would blog more, and it looks like I’ve given up already. Not so. Just been REALLY busy, but a good busy.

Need to grab a bite and then off to work. Then work. Oh, and more work after that.

Whoo!

Web Hosting, southern accents and rising from the ashes.

So for those of you who don’t know, I have a hosting business. It’s not doing too well.

See, I used to write for Lockergnome, and from there would get tons of links to a special that was run for them. Well, things went through quite a bit of changes over there, and I think I got lost in the shuffle. It was nice getting the 2 hours back that I used combing through the Lockergnome Forums, of which suprisingly I’m still an administrator! Well, writing for Lockergnome drove a TON of traffic my way, and therefore the business was doing well. Then I stopped writing. Almost completely. No blogging, no Lockergnome. Therefore the traffic disappeared. No traffic, no new business. No new business, no new tech toys for yours truely.

Now, 4 years into hosting (including a short stint as a reseller for a company that disappeared into thin air) and my client base is shrinking – the expenses are climbing, and I know I need to kick it into gear or else I’ll be hosed. And I *will not* be another ‘That Hosting Company‘.

So the great journey is on – trying to bring the hosting business back into the black (where it sat for a long time). One of the resources I am looking at is Mitch Keeler and his Web Hosting Show. He is pretty much the Web Developers channel over at LG, and while I do enjoy what he writes, I can’t stand to hear him speak for more than say…30 seconds. He’s extremely intelligent, but his very slow reading of his script and this souther accent make me think of the vulture from the Looney Tunes cartoons. I know that sounds bad, and I don’t mean to be insulting to the guy, but thats just what I think. So right now, I’m religated to reading his blogs and thats about it. I might try downloading a more recent show and see if it has improved any. Who knows?

The next thing on the list is to eliminate some expenses. For example, 6 months ago we got our own dedicated server. But I’m still lugging people around on the reseller account I opened when I first started this gig. I need to kill that account relatively soon. As a matter of fact it comes due again late next month.

Then its time to clean up the backend. It is a mess. We tried a new billing system, and while it looked slick. I didn’t do diddly squat. What’s that sound? Oh, us flushing $150 down the crapper because the new billing system crapped out on us. What? You don’t notify us if there is a new signup unless they do a 100% completion? Gee, thanks. And you won’t write modules to work with processors other than the ones you are in bed with unless I pay for it? You mean I get to pay for something that everyone else would get to use? Gee, no thanks. The decision was made to go in, clean up the old billing system, and get it back up to 100%.

I also want to be able to go to HostingCon06. But it moved from Chicago to Las Vegas. So it went from learning opportunities to bad buffets and craps tables. Thats a tough one. (Not really. Vegas!!! I love that town, but thats another post.)

I have a long road ahead of me – but hey, I think I can do it. Who knows, perhaps I’ll do even better. All a matter of perspective.

My favorite employee

This guy sits with me in the office every day sleeping, squeaking for attention and enjoying the occasional carrot and photo op…