ilovecode

Merry Christmas everyone (even if you don’t celebrate it)! Were you all good this year? I didn’t have anything on my wish list this year except for a new watch. Nothing fancy, just useful. I’ll find out in the morning if I got it . What did you wish for this year?

I did give my blog a new design. What do you think? You can change the color by using the color switcher in the top-right corner. I thought of storing people’s preferences with a cookie, but ultimately decided not to.

Hope everyone’s holiday is great!!

Well, I’m back on the job market. In my last post about entrepreneurship, I mentioned that I may have to get a “real” job versus what I’ve been doing for the last year and a half. By real job I mean, actually showing my face in a public office. Grooming would be involved. Daily grooming at that.

I haven’t sent out so many resumes since 2003! We are moving to Washington, DC and to say that the jobs are plentiful would be an understatement. The process so far has been interesting. I daily check CraigsList, The Washington Post, and many more. Because there are so many jobs out there, I can be picky and choosy and apply to only the ones that sound interesting. I’ve been in the position before where you apply for anything you qualify for just because it pays the bills and you don’t care if you enjoy it. Fortunately, I’m not in that position right now.

When we first found out we were moving a couple of weeks ago, there was a mix of excitement and regret. I was stoked to be going back to the states but what about all I have tried to accomplish over the last year and a half? I’ve created something I can be proud of definitely and it’s not something I will just stop doing. I will quit working on client’s sites but will continue to grow my own. The web is my passion and luckily I have a really understanding family who support me in that. Because we are moving to a place with a higher cost of living, I can’t continue to do it as I have been because I don’t make enough to sustain the life we want to live in DC. So, instead of seeing it as a setback or seeing it as failure, I see it as an opportunity. I will get to work on projects I never would have before. I am applying to jobs where there is a possibility to learn more skills. I think the thing I am looking forward to the most is working with new people. I have always learned the most from the people I work with. It’s great to surround yourself with people who may have different outlooks or perspectives than you; it challenges your way of thinking and shows you other options.

So, where does this leave all of my personal projects? Well, it’s really no different than how it is now. Right now my full-time job is to work on clients sites. The job will replace this. I built up my personal sites in my free time which will continue. And heck, if the salary is good enough, it may actually let me hire someone to help me out on some of the ideas I have for my sites that I don’t always have time to implement! Unfortunately there is never a shortage of ideas and an overabundance of time.

This week I found a really great blog about entrepreneurship that I enjoy reading. The authors challenged us to take their Entrepreneur Interview.

What’s your personal mission statement?

It might sound cliche but it really is to live life to the fullest and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves!

What’s the biggest mess you’ve dealt with this year?

This is an easy one, but it was also tough situation to be in. I had to fire my first client when we were so close to finishing the job. Long story short, he was doing something which was definitely unethical and violating copyright laws and involving us, unknowingly, in it. I wrote a more in depth post about when to fire a client which you can read more of the grisly details on.

What current entrepreneurial efforts consume your time?

My main effort has been spent building up my blog forum and community. A lot of people think you throw up a website and you can be successful; but that just isn’t the case. The site is really built around the community members and my immediate goal is to offer these members more value to their already free membership! I currently offer some WordPress themes that are ONLY available to our community members and I have a few other things in the works. Once traffic is higher, I plan on trying to monetize the site more! I have plenty of other sites that have been in the works for a long time that I need to work on and get off the ground as well.

Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? When do you get most excited?

This is a tough one because there are so many things, I could go on forever. A big reason I started with programming is that I loved to build things and create things and I think those are traits that every entrepreneur should have. You may not be building something tangibly, but you are still creating and building. I love to create and innovate.

The life of an entrepreneur is made up of plenty of ups and downs so it is very important to have sources of inspiration and motivation to keep you going through the lulls. Success stories are one thing that really inspires me to achieve. When I get to hear about successful entrepreneurs who achieved success (which is all relative), it excites and and inspires me as well! My family is a HUGE source of inspiration and motivation for me. I absolutely LOVE the life I have with them and my ability to do all of the little that seem so insignificant, but if I was a 9-5′er, I couldn’t do them like:

• Volunteering at my son’s school every week.
• Taking Sara time on Fridays (if I had a productive week) and treating myself to some time outdoors, just me and my camera. It’s almost a form of meditation for me.
• Going to see my husband for breakfast or lunch.
• Being able to take french classes twice a week.
• My work breaks consist of me throwing the ball for my dogs.

It’s really the simple joys and pleasures that I never want to give up, which keep me going.

I get excited at various times, but I really enjoy the planning stage as that is when you get to flush all of your ideas out which can sometimes get out of hand because what started out as building a toy boat, has turned into building a yacht to sail around the world. It’s also great in the programming stage when the pieces are put together. I tend to develop more modularly and once a lot of those piece can be put together into a complete product, that is awesome.

Boxers or Briefs? or as Naomi says, Bikini or Thong, duh?!?

Ummm… boy shorts! Now, who’s with me????

What do you do when you’re not [designing | programming | managing | writing | toiling for the wo/man]?

Exploration! I love going new places and checking out new things. There is so much beauty around us that really just gets taken advantage of; I make sure I don’t fall into that category.

What one thing made the biggest difference when getting started?

I would say me not being able to find a job right away out of college played a pretty huge role in my starting my company. I thought to myself, all of these companies want experience, so I’ll make my own. Once I started, I couldn’t stop!

What’s your exit strategy?

There is no exit strategy for me. If I fail, that’s okay, I get back up and do it again. Unfortunately I have always been the type of person to learn things the hard way, but I feel that those are sometimes the best lessons learned. I have failed at some things and I have no doubt I will fail again. When you come face to face with failure, it shows you a lot about your inner strength and determination.

What is the last thing that made you belly laugh?

I laugh all of the time, but something that made me spit out my drink was when I was reading my email and the latest spam comments were about my baby maker…it was just so absolutely ridiculous that I couldn’t help but laugh.

Have you ever been in business before?

Still in the same thing I’ve had going on, but my business is changing. I am moving away from developing sites for clients to developing sites for myself.

At what point do you consider yourself successful?

This is very relative. I don’t have certain milestones that indicate success. The questions I ask myself are:

• Am I happy?
• Is my family happy?
• Do I enjoy what I do?
• Am I able to make enough to support my family and our lifestyle?

Right now I can say yes to all of those although in a few months we will be moving again to the Washington DC area where the cost of living is much higher than here, so I need to try to step it up or I may have get a job for the man for a little bit so I can save enough money to buy me some time to build up the income level to where I need it to be. It’s a personal dilemma I am struggling with now so I will keep you updated on that.

Everyone and their Moms (literally) just rave about a Mac and a lot of the people who rave about it have as much experience with it as I do. I can admit that yes, I would like to have one, but more just to see why the hell people won’t shut up about it. I am told at least once a week that I should own a Mac and I always ask why and most people don’t really have a good reason other than:

• They’re Sexy - You’re right, they are. But I’m not about to put down at least $1500 on something because it’s sexy. Plus I think my laptop is sexy. I don’t typically upgrade to the newest models simply because of appearance. There needs to be some functional requirement that is also met to get me to consider upgrading. Think of all of the other sexy gadgets I could get for that price tag!
• All of the cool guys have one - Yes, that is a real reason I have been told. News flash…I’m not cool.
• Macs are better than PCs - This is completely subjective and as of now, I can’t see how they are better, but again, read my disclaimer.

So, to all of you fanboys who always tell me to get a Mac (even my dad asked me why I don’t own a Mac) here are my reason for NOT owning a Mac:

• I don’t need one - Really, I don’t. The only time I really felt like I had a functional need for one is because I develop websites and I like to ensure the sites look right in all of the major browsers, to include Safari. But I got around this by using tools like BrowserCam which lets me remotely login to a computer to see how a site looks in whatever OS and browser I want. Also, Safari is now available for Windows so it can give me a pretty good idea if I don’t want to fire up browsercam.
• I don’t have the time for one - Being that I’m a Mac n00b, there would be a definite learning curve and I don’t have time to sit around and play with it just to get things how I want them.
• I like Windows - You heard it right folks. I. Like. Windows. I know a lot of my friends and peers are M$ haters but I’m not. The software MS creates works for me and I’m happy with. If I am happy with something, I don’t feel the urge to change things up.
• I like my software - I have a set of software that I use for development and day to day office management. I paid for the licenses and I don’t really have the desire to pay for anything for the Mac when I’m happy with what I have.
• It’s expensive - I can get a pretty kick-ass desktop and monitor for under $1k and I already own all of the software I need so it would be free to port over. Mac’s are pricey and on top of the equipment costs, I would have to pay for the software costs. No thanks. iDontThinkSo.

If you want to get me a Mac, I will take one. I will play with it and it will sit on my desk (there’s even room) and I will think it’s pretty, but, there is no way in hell I am paying for one. One friend said on twitter the other day he saved $100 off a Mac (don’t know if it was a macbook or iMac). Saving $100 is not a deal. I am the queen of deals and saving $100 off of the original price is nothing to write home about. Try saving $500 off a regularly priced $1200 computer. That’s a deal! Ok, I’m starting to rant so let me post some questions to you:

1. If you own a Mac, can you give me a GOOD reason why I should try one and why it’s worth the money?
2. If you don’t own a Mac, what are some of YOUR reasons for not trying it out?

Flame on!

Size really does matter, at least when it comes to hard drives. One of my favorite sites to visit is Slickdeals.net. This site usually has all of the best deals and are typically tech-related. I was looking at it this morning and I saw a listing for a 500GB External Hard Drive for $100. Everywhere else it was $140 so that is a pretty good savings. Plus you can never have too many external hard drives lying around right? Well I didn’t act immediately, thankfully.

I continue to scroll through all of the latest deals and I see something else that catches my eye. It is bigger, shinier, sexier than the last one. This one was a Hitachi 1TB external drive going for the low price of $200! This made my knees get weak. How was I going to resist this? I have three of them right now and did I really need another one? My current ones are all in use but with one this size, I could easily combine them into 1. The temptation is killing me. I still want to purchase it but I haven’t yet! Just look at that thing. How can anyone NOT want it?

For some really weird reason, when I see a big hard drive, I get excited. When I see a big hard drive at an amazing price, it is very hard to resist my urges. Do you have anything that has the same effect on you?