So the universe heard me babbling about the iPhone, I guess because I managed to ‘aquire’ an iPod Touch (1G – 32GB) over the weekend thanks to Kal. He stumbled some at his supplier and couldn’t resist, I in turn have been focused on the functionality of the iPhone (which the iPod Touch has) and so the universe has provided a way for that to happen. (So I couldn’t resist).

Naturally, I had to Jail Break it ASAP (I’m just that kinda guy), but I didn’t like the Pwnage pinapple boot screen so I made my own (image shown here). I always preferred the retro Apple look. The process of Jail Breaking these is dead simple now, and pretty much an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually figure it out. even the latest 2.1.1 firmware (for FirstGen only so far) I also managed to get OmniFocus on it, (as well as a bunch of other things that I may or may not use), and I got hooked up with a nice car cradle so I can have my ear snacks in the car. Can you say w00t? I can.

Now I have removed all possible excuses for GTD and it’s time to get down to business, quit dragging my ass, and actually get things done. Procrastinators Unite … Tomorrow

Heh … It looks like I fixed my blogging issue, yesterday’s post appeared like clockwork. It’s getting late so I’ll keep this one short. (it should appear like clockwork too).

Had an interesting issue with a client today, (I’m not going to bare all the details here) in a nutshell I was given the go ahead to get something posted, which I did promptly, only to have an internal snafu on the clients part have the post reversed. Now I know what kinda political things go on in companies, but why waste the freelance developers time only to undo it, so it can be done again tomorrow with additional cost? Somethings I guess just won’t make sense all the time … that was my idea of a professional rant though

Oh, I also had a peek in on my logs last night, some interesting traffic showing up to view my site … Being Ex Rogers has its perks (its not what you know, but who you know sometimes) … I’ll say this (as I put on my tinfoil hat) … I know you’re watching :-p … You go right ahead and watch, watch me expand my network of people, clients, and income through this blog…. Watch me succeed … this little blog is generating traffic for my freelance business, and generating income in Google Ad-Sense. (I make no qualms about it), Google wants to advertise on my blog? good business for me I’m not hiding the fact that I’m advertising on these pages, hopefully the content is better then the advertising though. But for YOU … Come back often to watch, hell, comment if you like, I would love to get the feedback.

That would be good, to actually post stuff that people comment on, interesting stuff … like this? I’m sure it will only get better… Craig said that he is enjoying the blog so far this year … Thats at least one piece of positive feedback (Thnx Dude)

Working from home tomorrow today … need to get some rest, not in the polyphasic cycle just yet… soon tho (hopefully)

I like to take inventory at the end of my projects, I like to look at what didn’t go so well, and then try to come up with ways that I can improve so that I can grow as an individual.

This one project that is finally coming to a close, after being stalled by the client for a pretty signifiant duration. There was no real reason for the project to get stalled, I think the Christmas Holidays played a part of it, and there isn’t really a whole lot that I can do about that. But part of the delay was that the point person for the project (in the clients organization) Fell off the project and didn’t communicate well.

Is there any way that this can be improved on? Well yes, I think there is… Moving forward I will simply insist (and include as a term to working on a project) that the client sets up a weekly (minimum) scheduled time for a status update (regardless of the clients size), from me to see that things are progressing, and from them to ensure that the project won’t linger in the last steps and delay my final payments. I typically do this with large clients just by virtue, but on small things that should take less then a month, its been ‘normal’ to just communicate when you need to, however it’s a little discerning when a 3 week job turns into months of waiting.

In this specific case, there isn’t a whole lot I can do about the ‘human factor’ on the project, and the delays that result from people that just don’t see that they are responsible for getting things done, because as a freelancer your depending of them to pay you. The big clients are the ones that are usually behaving this way, but this isn’t a big client. On the contrary, they are a very small client, but they behave as if they are a big client (one of their major problems IMHO).

In addition, this is the type of client that even though they have additional project work for me, I will be very skeptical of doing business with them again, I think its a good example of knowing when to say ‘no thanks’ to a project. Even if I could use the work. In their case, the unprofessional behavior (leaving me in limbo) doesn’t make them a client that I want to do business with.

With luck this will get finished off early next week.
Still waiting on the client. :-S