After being sick for about 8 days... I'm finally feeling better.

I had never been as sick as I was in these 8 days.... started with high fevers.... my entire body ached.... then it was soar throat and headaches..... then it switched to headaches, fever, sinuses... then headaches, fevers, sinuses, earaches.....  then headaches, fevers, soar throat, sinuses.... then soar throat and sinuses to finish it off...

For the entire week, I could barely work.... I tried to work on some stuff from home here and I just couldn't focus for any length of time.

So I ended up taking what I think was a great decision and rested (for the most part) for a few days.

Hard being self-employed and being sick like that not being able to work.

This week, it's back to normal.... I've got a long list of stuff to catch up on.... and at least, I've been productive in the first 2 days of the week.

How are you?? Hope you are well!

I've been on my own again for a few months. These first few months have shown promise and challenges.

As I was reading some blog posts I found 2 posts the certainly echo many things that I relate with.

Advantages of being a freelance developer

Disadvantages of being a freelancer

I really can relate with this stuff.

Like many I'm sure, I've been spending some time thinking about who to lighten the debt load that I'm presently carrying.

I've just started going from site to site, google this google that and I've found a couple of interesting articles.

One that I found has a blogger tell a story about his youth and in this story comes an early lesson on borrowing money.

I thought this post was well written and just thought I would post about it in case anyone who happens to come across this might find it useful.

Post by Rob
Get Your Children in Debt to Keep Them Out of It!

This is a lesson I could have used too.

Even though I'm sitting here on PEI.... in Canada. I follow international news and since the presidential process has been roaring for about a year and a half in the states (guess they really really really can't wait to say bye bye to Bush) I've been following all the rucuss.

I guess maybe I watch CNN a bit too much (ok, there I admitted it).

All the details can be found over here on CNN's website.

One thing I wonder about tonight's extravaganza is just how much question jumping..... or avoiding...... or answering a question with another subject they have on the agenda will happen.

That's something that always tires me out when listening to some of these debates.... in that some polititians are just so good at giving a totally oblivious sounding blurb to the subject of the question that was asked of them.

But I suppose like so many... I'll be watching.

Let it begin!

I've watched a variety of political debates, interviews, tv commercials....etc..

Being Canadian, I'm certainly following our federal election with interest. And  also, being so close to the US, I'm following their presidential elections also.

There are certainly common threads in campaings across borders..... there are also similarities.

Something that bugs me is that the bulk of the messages that I see are designed to sell you the party...  I suppose actually speaking or creating commercials about a parties platform might become un-entertaining, because you would hear the same thing over and over.... and well, as we do here the same things over and over.... focusing on party platforms would just lack all the cheapshots and crap that people (or maybe media) react upon the most.

All the signs.... a tool to sell you the candidate, just like a hotel room or a cup of coffee. The commercials, sometimes filled with sound bytes to make the oposition look bad whatever the context the byte was taken from..... and taking parts of the oposition's platform and only highliting something to put their platform in bad light while ignoring facts that may actually contradict whatever point is trying to be made (saw examples in both Canadian and US elections)....

Basically, I find much of what is said amounts to dribble. Amounts to the sound of stong winds blasting wind chimes.... or maybe the sound of a traffic jam.

I find the campains and some messages about the same as Tonka trying to sell their toy trucks to kids on Saturday morning.... flash a few things that will really awaken them (your audience) in a short time..... and then play it again....

This one, I found entertaining.
Palin hits Obama for 'terrorist' connection

All I can say, is that I don' t believe you can be rigorously honest and be involved in the political machine. I once heard the story of a priest who ran in politics for a short time and then quit because he said you couldn't be honest in that rat race.

My only advice to any politician for my vote would be.... talk to me about YOUR platform. If you trash the other guy... you're telling something about YOUR character..... and likely won't get my vote.

I thought I'd do this just for fun... I found a favorite snack because I didn't want to take the time to make a sub.... so I made a very quick sandwich version... and I love it.

I love spicy stuff.... not all the time mind you. All the time meaning every meal. Although, more and more, I'm loving spicy foods.

Thought I'd do this just for fun.

So here's a my step by step photo recipe.

[More]

I love chilli.

Just found this article. Although I really love chilli and eating spicy foods, super hot chilli where the actual spicy-ness kills the taste doesn't appel to me.

This story has a sad ending.... read the article.

Telegraph.co.uk article

Watching oil prices going through their dramatic cycles and listening to some reps talk about how prices are all based on supply and demand kind of gets old.

Seems as though when the last hurricane came around, there was that huge spike in prices (over FEARS that refineries would be damaged).... turns out there was very little damage. I wonder what they did years back.... collect on their insurance like the rest of us??? Now they just use it as a reason to pin the extra cost of running their day to day business while keeping their profit margins at record highs.

I guess, it really is the perfect business model (in a sad way).... we're all so dependant on oil (to some degree) that they can just jack the prices in a sudden surge or maybe %50 over a year or two and there's really nothing we can do about it. Oligopoly anyone??

Meanwhile, there are no guts in regulating these corporate entities to protect everyday people and other various small and medium size businesses from having their expenses rise exponentially while "Big Oil" posts record quarterly profits (or if not record.... how about very,very,very,very healthy profits). Some people even see such a spike in home heating oil that they can pretty much no longer afford to heat their homes. I personally know people in this category. And honestly, I find it quite disgusting, even some might say "evil" to have a large corporate entity comprised of human beings who will look over people's suffering in the name of profit margin.

This analogy could of course be used with other types of large organisations.

And of course, in this day and age, the wall street stock market speculator can help reach directly in your wallet in ways that weren't quite as possible in yesteryear. Buyers and sellers and their "worries" are taking money out of your pocket.

Here's a little article on Yahoo! that mentions it.

So.. today, as mentioned previously... is my first day into the realm of self-employment... well, first day full time in about 2.5 years.

Have I made a million bucks??

Come on man, not in my first day!! What r ya talkin' bout man???

I've spent some of my day organising myself, with dotProject as mentioned in the previous post, and also thinking about various areas that I want to focus..... started thinking a little bit about a marketing approach.

Marketing is something I've rarely ever done. And something that I'd have to say is so very important.

I'm really looking forward to the challenges ahead.

But today in fact, I guess I have picked up a couple of leads.

I had been contacted about a contract that should last several weeks and it appears as though this is gonna happen.

I've also picked up a small website to host.

So, after my first day, I've made progress!

I'm very excited about this. Last time around, I had no idea what I was doing.....

This time around, I feel much more comfortable.

It's important not to give up, and if there are things that you want to accomplish, you gotta try....

It's better to say "I gave it my best shot" then "I should've tried".
(That's what I think!)

Going back a few years, when I was fully self-employed... I found dotProject. I needed a project manager type of program and went through a gagle of them.

dotProject seemed to have many useful features, many of which I desired. But one problem that I had was that I couldn't seem to configure it so that I could set up client accounts and properly give them access to the projects I had set up without the accounts being mangled with other business info and etc.....

Well, after fiddling with it last night and being motivated because of my recent rank as once again diving into the world of self-employment... I think I've properly configured it.

The docs have improved over the years. And I've foud this page (and a few of the other on the Wiki) quite helpful.

If you've never used dotProject, you can check it out here: http://www.dotproject.net/

I've had my eye on a ColdFusion based project manager, but so far haven't used it. Since I have some data in this implementation of dotProject, I'll continue to use it.

Later on, I might try to join an open source project, much like the CF based project/task manager.

Peace y'all!!!