Job Three, Finally

Finally received my third assignment from The Hut. It's simple but should be fun - a page to allow maintenance of an XML file with location information. They want to be able to modify a list of locations, along with a blurb about the location. The XML file will then be used on their site to feed into a Flash-based interactive map. Simple, unless I feel like getting silly and use the GMaps API... :)

Total Independence

Woo-hoo! I successfully set up my machine so that I can do development on it completely independent of The Hut or anyone else! That's given me a boost in confidence. I think I'll make the most of that boost by calling C(F)D, the guy I sent that email to a few days ago.

Filling Time

No word back from the local designers. Any second now, I'm sure...

I was able to get an agreement from RR to set me up accounts to do side-projects. That's really cool of him. I'm trolling the freelance boards for postings and I found one that I think I should be a good fit for. It's making a community site where people can build online portfolios of their work, so there's the user creation piece (new for this CMS) plus a gallery (not new). Should be quick and if the guy doesn't like it I guess he just won't buy it.

On my own

So he didn't warm up much to the idea I had so I'm stayin' solo. I will still be getting plenty of work from him but I need to build up some alternates.

One thing I ran by this guy is to add an additional design shop to the family. There's a local company of creatives here that is looking to hire. I'm going to propose that rather than hire another employee they consider continuing to do the leg- and design-work but then turn over the back-end stuff to me and my guy. They're concerned about outsourcing but hopefully with me right here in town for them to beat up if it comes to it they'll go for it.

And I've got my own website idea to work on during the slow times. And some other small projects just for fun but might fill out the ol' portfolio. :)

Anxiety

I am now a freelance web developer. I finished my second job two Fridays ago and haven't been given a new job from my (currently) sole customer. I have a few things I could do and I had wanted to be freelance so I wouldn't be limited but I'm starting to feel like I'd rather just pull for that customer than for myself.

So, I emailed him about it yesterday but haven't heard back and I'm anxious to get going on something! I spent the bulk of last week working on things around the house expecting to receive more work at the end of the week - that's what my customer told me. But, no word and, hence, no work! Grr.

Getting Grandma Online

My grandma wanted to move from MSN-TV to a real computer because her bank's website was no longer supporting that platform. After setting up the hardware, I called her in for a quick tutorial. Try as she might, however, she just couldn't log in to her bank account! She would try and fail then I would try and get right in. Finally, I had her speak what she was doing while I was hovering over her and when she spoke "one" I didn't see her finger typing a '1'. So I had her do it again - it turned out she was typing 'l' -- a lower-case 'L' -- in lieu of the number '1' -- "That's a one on a typewriter!" she insisted. How do you argue with that?