dustyLogic

What a productive day. After driving my awesome wife to work, I went for a short walk by the river. Then, on the way back home, I stopped as Starbucks to get a grande-mild-with-room-for-cream. By the time I got back home I was already pumped to do some serious coding. I grabbed my TODO list to carefully chose my next victim. Before 4pm I already accomplished more then I expected. So by walking away from my desk at 4pm I would have been completely satisfied with my performance for today. But Why stop there?

I found an interesting tool called nLite. It lets you create an image of your own version of Windows XP. You can customize it whichever way you want. I managed to shave off 250MB of clock-cycle-wasters and harddrive-space-polluters. Time to go through all the options and decide what to disable… 4 hours. My own custom image Windows XP that is faster then Carrera4 on the picture above…priceless.

Entertainment of the day: grocery shopping with my wife.

I added FeedBurner. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.

It felt like a very short day today. Even if I worked for about 11h, it flew by incredibly fast. I managed to check off a good number of points of my TODO list. I also picked up another 500GB harddrive. Seams like I can never have enough free space.

I feel like attacking a new personal project. I’m thinking an application for my PocketPC which will automatically keep track of my millage and destinations. I could use it to keep a log for business expenses. It could be interesting to see my driving habits at the end of the year. For now I’m using a pen and paper, but that’s so 80’s

Entertainment of the day: CSI Miami. I love how they arrest people because their tire pattern matches a pattern on a crime scene. Every tire is unique. So if you decide to use your own car to rob a bank, at least change your tires on your way back home.

Let me start by apologizing to my loyal blog readers who helped me realize I did not post anything for a week. I ended up working long hours, with almost no room for entertainment (that includes blogging).

Here’s a short summary of the week:

I have to say I’m proud of myself. I didn’t do any work over the last weekend. I did a lot of other computer related stuff, but nothing for my clients. Zero billable hours.

The week didn’t start too good. I figured out I was getting less and less productive with one of my customers. I’m working on few simultaneous projects for him. Each of them requiring maintenance and changes, which eventually lead me to spend 80% of my time dealing with little requests and 20% implementing new features. This is what happens when you deliver a product that is 90% completed and you never get a change to go back and fix those little glitches. So anyways, I had a talk with the client and explained he my new plan. I will stop developing new stuff for few days and concentrate on wrapping up whatever is already in production. He wasn’t too happy in the beginning, but I did manage to make him understand. Things are back to normal now and I learned my lesson.

Entertainment of the day (Monday): An ex-co-worker talking loud on his cell and his explanation why he talks so loud: “Because my friend on the other end was talking too quiet and I couldn’t hear him”. Hmmm…

The rest of the week just flew by. I don’t even remember all the stuff that I accomplished this week. Is that normal? Am I getting old? Another good reason to get back to daily blogging.

Picture: Today’s weather. We have 4 seasons in Saskatchewan: Winter, winter, summer and winter. Summer is really beautiful, but it only lasts one weekend. That was last weekend.

The meeting with the big guys went very well. Even if I’m just a little fish, deep waters don’t scare me. Looks like we will be moving ahead with the deal. I’m super excited, this might just be the tip of the iceberg of contracts with this company.

Other then that, I did some mockups and tried to figure out few bugs. Not much to write about. Overall a very positive day. Looks like the weather will be crappy for the weekend, but I can already think of 99 things that I can do indoors.

On the picture: A must have office furniture: Sumo bag.

I’m getting addicted to blogging. I helps me re-think my day and plan the next day. I’m also down to 1/2 cup of coffee/day.

Today was a day of real-life examples of bad software design. Likely not my designs, but they do affect the part of project on which I’m working on. Design phase is essential to have a healthy product, dohhh. Why is common sense not so common?

Tomorrow I have a meeting with some big sharks. I should be stressed more then I actually am. At some point in life I realized that no matter how much money you have, how much decision making power you have, you are still human. One thing that all humans have in common, is that none of us likes to get screwed. I don’t like fake smiles and overinflated marketing with lots of fine print. I usually present things as they are and in a very straight-to-the-point manner. Anyways, I’ll let you know how it went.

If you are wondering what’s up with all those little pictures in my posts. Well, I finally dusted off my SLR camera, so I’m posting some random photos of the day. All of them are post-processed in less then 5min.

Entertainment of the day: interview with Rob & Big . I quite like this show, but it looks like it’s over. Big Black got married and has a baby.

Purolator has a delivery service which guarantees a 9AM delivery. But, I’m not Purolator.

Some customers have unrealistic deadlines. I figure it’s because they don’t know how much work it takes to accomplish certain tasks. Which is perfectly normal, but not so easy to deal with. Just after I sold them the idea that my software solution will fix their problem, they want it for the next day. What I found works best is to divide the whole project into modules and deliver by modules. It still won’t be delivered the next day, but way sooner then the deadline for the whole project. In my short freelancing experience, customers always want something “now”. It doesn’t need to be the whole thing, but at least something that will make them feel that I am helping them and it’s just a matter of time, but things are on the right track. Some clients are more chilled out then others. Making your client feel more comfortable is definitely a “must have” skill for a freelancer.

I had a 30min nap today and it felt good. I was planning on having those regularly, but the plan didn’t work. I’m doing an on-site contract so it’s hard to justify naps.

Other than that, I think I’m done buying work tools for now. My start up cost was mostly licensing and I got all licenses I need for now. Actually, wait, I still need to buy a good office chair. Any recommendations?

Those are my hot peppers to be. I planted them few weeks ago to have something that is “alive” in my office. And NO, I didn’t start talking to plants yet.

I made a big mistake today. I calculated how much an hour of doing nothing costs me. Then I did something worst that that. I divided the previous number by 60. If you start looking at your time this way, you will never take a single minute off. Than means working evenings, nights and weekends. OK, OK, I’m exaggerating here, but it will make you think if you should say “I’m done for the day” or rather “I’ll do one more thing and then I’m done”.

Entertainment of the day: willitblend.com

Summer was here, but it’s gone now. After a weekend at +24C, +7C feels like winter again. I’m not here to talk about the weather, but honestly, I don’t have much to write about today.

I’m doing a contract for my previous employer. I have spent most of the day at his office. I did get quite a bit of work done, but over all I recall it as being boring few hours. Maybe because I find my other projects more exciting and I want to get back to them A-sap. I’ve spent the evening doing some maintenance work (rather unexpected). I introduced some minor bugs (very minor) to the latest version of my application that is currently in production. Not logical bugs, just interface glitches, but I like to fix those right away. Otherwise, I have to write them down on my To-Do list, and then get back to them eventually. Which will create even more work, sort of like a Sisyphean task.

On the healthy side of things, this is a good to read article for all of you desk jobbers: “7 Postural Habits To Make Now To Increase Your Health”.

We bought patio furniture over the weekend, so guess where will I be working from in the mornings?

This morning, it hit me like a falling brick.

I drove Aleksandra to work this morning. And then I realized that I don’t have to be at work at 9am. So I went for a walk to take some pictures (included in this post) of a London-like foggy morning. Unlike a friend of mine, I followed a path along the river. I was back home 30min later and ready to work.

I’m usually super motivated in the morning. So I start the day by accomplishing few shorter tasks from my To-Do list. Then check them off my list which makes me even more motivated. Then I attack a task that will take me at least few hours of that day. When I feel that my productivity depreciates, I press the pause button on the big task and I go back to my To-Do list to pick an easy task. Afterward, I press the play button again. At the end of the day I usually do regression testing.

Now that the summer is here, I plan to get into photography again. You can check out my gallery on DeviantART.

Another great day at home/office.

I can get a lot more done during the day then in the evening. However at around 11am I caught myself slacking off watching music videos on YouTube, including the new Madonna and JT and some old school. Other then that I’ve spent the whole day coding.

I need to figure out a good way of documenting my projects and keep track of changes. For now I’m using flat files and a note book on the corner of my desk. I’m running a database server at home, so ideally it would be something that would use a database for storage.

I decided that whenever I will feel to tired to do any serious work or just unproductive, I will spend that time looking for new tools and things that will improve my work flow. My time will be better spent doing low priority tasks then doing nothing at all. I hate doing nothing, it puts me in bad mood.

Looks like my Friday lunch plans will have to be moved to another day. One member of our lunch crew has a case of influenza.