Freedoms & Lifestyle

Warning: helpfulness can be inspiring and contagious.  I’ve been hit with the bug since our star designer and PM, Reid Peifer, launched his beautiful new project, REMAKERS.

REMAKERS is a center dedicated to bringing new media to non-profit organizations.  As Reid puts it in his mission:

REMAKERS strives to be a resource, sounding board, and source of inspiration to groups and individuals working to make the world a better place.

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Often I find that when pressures mount my first reaction is to defend myself.  Take, for example, a recent conversation between me and Reid.

Reid: Peter, when you have a moment, I could really use some dev support to spec out a small plugin for one of our clients.  It’ll only take an hour tops and would really help me a bunch.

Peter: I’ll get you some dev support as soon as our dev projects calm down in a couple of months.  We’re working as hard as we can and you’re not the only one who has need you know?  I mean I’ve barely slept in like 5 months and have started to BUY laundry and dishes instead of cleaning them because of these deadlines that we have to meet and oh my god you’re totally STRESSING ME OUT WITH YOUR INCESSANT DEMANDS!  CAN’T YOU SEE THAT WE’RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN? AHHHHHHHHH!

Reid: Um…  I’m sensing that this is not the best time to ask you about this.  When can we talk about this again?

Peter: I’m sorry Reid, I don’t mean to be wigging out so much.  I’m really not that stressed.  But I don’t know when I’ll be able to help more.  I appear to be double booked for every appointment i have over the next 6 weeks and I just can’t think about this right now.  I know it might not seem like it but I’m working really hard and you should know that I’m working hard, can’t you see that I’m working hard?  What more do you need from me?  AHHHHHHHHH!

Obviously this slightly dramatized interaction could be improved.  There are any number of ways to better address Reid’s request, but one stands out to me in particular: an open call for help (possibly paired with some anti-psychotics).
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Hopefully you brush your teeth. You floss. You use anti-bacterial mouth rinse. You chew sugar free gum between meals. But if you don’t go to the dentist, you might end up having to get gum surgery like me. Go to the dentist regularly, it is worth the money even if you don’t have insurance.

As I did not have dental insurance, and personally have no love for the experience of visiting my dentist, I let it go for the first few years of running my business. I was broke after all. When I finally did get dental insurance last year and popped in for a visit, the hygienist looked at me with an aghast expression and asked how long it had been since my last visit. FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!? Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty. Two gum surgeries later, I am doing better. In retrospect, a $50-75 teeth cleaning visit, even just once a year, would probably have been wise.

Short blog, important thought. If you are running a small business or an independent contractor, make sure you fit in a few small preventative health care visits.

From the horses mouth.

Wow. I’m hosed!

I spent the last 6 days phonecall-coding-QAing-designing-fatigueing. I probably gained a few pounds. Think i may have lost some eye sight. Definitely got some gray hairs. After a week like that, I’m sitting here trying to remember why I wanted to work independently in the first place.
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The first time I ever talked to Peter was on the phone. He was interviewing me to work on a project already in development. I generally like interviews. It’s a chance to meet a new person, learn about what they do and show them what you’ve done. I was happy after talking to Peter. Not only because I was going to work with him, but from my answer to one of his first questions: “If you could do anything in life what would it be?”. I answered immediately: “I’m doing it”. Peter repeated my answer out loud. He was trying to come up with another question that would encourage me to be more descriptive. As we continued to talk, I realized Peter wasn’t only interested in my professional abilities, but was genuinely interested in my hopes and dreams. Continue Reading »

In honor of the theme of this year’s Blog Action Day, we’ve decided to bring up the topic of commute reduction. After all, it is one of the reasons that drove most of our team to go indy. It’s as simple as this: we believe that a good number of people that work in the realm of technology can find ways to work from home and cut down on the number of days that they spend commuting back and forth to an office. Sure, this isn’t for everyone, but with a relatively small percentage shift towards this new trend, very real benefits could be reaped from the environmental perspective.

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I’ve always thought it was ironic when smokers “go out for a breath of fresh air”.

Recently, I found myself sympathizing with the plight of the proverbial smoker when I came under heavy fire from my friends for answering my iPhone email in front of them. So I left the company of friends to go outside and communicate with people by myself.

Having skipped many of Shane’s important emails in my attempts to skim read, I came to realize that I need a better system for checking my email in social settings. Checking my email while in the presence of my friends, my family, or especially my wife is a great way to misread emails AND piss off the people I’m with. It’s like missing two birds with one stone.
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It’s over. Word’s out: you can get online at a coffee shop for real cheap – lots cheaper than paying an office rent, and the drinks are better anyway. There are dozens of people with laptops in almost every place with a free wifi connection. Students downloading torrents, guys in suits tethered to their slogging, bandwidth hogging exchange servers, hipsters making music, yoga moms surfing web. I’ve seen homeless-looking guys seem pulling out beaten up old laptops and getting online. Yeah, our local shop Lulu’s is still fun, but you better bring your own cellular internet access if you want to do any real work – the network is too busy. If you can even get a table…
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Wish you could see the future? So do we. The first night we got our iPhones, Peter decided what the world needed more than anything was a mobile surf predictor. Who could argue with such an impeccable understanding of human nature!

After a bunch of research looking for good prediction data, some math and homework, we realized that reporting the current surfing condition is fairly easy. On the other hand, predicting the future is a whole different story. Through his search for quality information, Peter came across a bunch of great public ocean data resources. If you happen to be as surf obsessed as we are and want to play the amateur oceanographer, here is a list of the sites we found with the help of our associate, Ben Porterfield.

NOAA | Storm Surf | Storm Surfing | Surfline: Pleasure Point | Buoy Weather | Wavewatch | Wetsand | Surfing Santa Cruz

The All Night’er is something that all of us have dated at one point or another in our lives. Staying up til’ 3am running on nothing but coffee and the knowledge that any sane person would be sleeping certainly isn’t a rarity in any case. And heck, it’s a little romantic the first time you do it… like the first time you try to stay up all night when you’re a kid. Whimsical, sure, but for the design professional who gets his or her work from freelance contracts, the all nighter is more than an occasional date, it’s a long-term partner, and understanding it is key to conquering it and unleashing your true productive power.

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