Quick note

Still here. Still very busy

Running is going well. Short runs in the softstar 2mm runamocs at 6am 3x a week. Really concentrateing on posture, form and technique. It is working - at children's hockey today I was barefoot and had to run back to the car over a mixture of concrete, asphalt and grass. It was fantastic and easy and comfortable , it was my longest completely barefoot run

Spent the morning at Hockey the mini-sticks, Cameron's team which I help coach are doing well winning their third match out of four this term 8 -2 and Cameron scored. Last week they played the the best team in the tournament for the third time and lost 10 goals to 5 but to put this into some sort of context, in their first meeting we lost 15 - 0, second game 7 - 0 so we are really pleased with progress. we face the second best team next week.
Emily has started playing and after very little practice with the team. In her first match she only touched the ball once and she knocked it out. Today in her second match she really contributed and help set up one of the goals. She is really starting to get used to the speed of the game. The rest of the team have played about 12 games. They won their game 5 - 3 only their second win (5 - 0 the other one) both wins were with Emily playing.

Join the movement and we'll start a revolution - stop all unnecessary shopping - separate your needs from your wants.

Holiday is over

Had a 2 hour chat with one of my clients discussing the future direction of his online business we went full circle about selling/not selling through his websites. We concluded that he already used trademe (like ebay) and uploaded all his product info there and didn't have time to put the same info on his other websites so I would act like his IT department and he would pay me to do it

It was a good meeting and like most of my clients we get on really well. But there is a lot work to do and it begins tomorrow. After I finish reorganising all the images on my brothers business website. He asked me to add new stuff but I couldn't till I'd sorted out the mess the cowboys had made - it's like being a forensic webologist tracking down all the photos. And in the afternoon I have a prospective new client who needs a rush job. There is a good chance I will get the job if I want it as I already did a website for her husband.

Join the movement and we'll start a revolution - stop all unnecessary shopping - separate your needs from your wants.

Fiddling with the look of blog.

Please be patient with any problems, after redoing Teresa's class blog I want to do my own but as with all design ideas for myself I have too many ideas. This time I am going to persevere.

Join the movement and we'll start a revolution - stop all unnecessary shopping - separate your needs from your wants.

Rant

Just got the final payment from the client from hell. I was drawn into the acrimonious mud slinging but saved myself. I had just sent an email that contained the phrase 'if you don't pay by Wednesday your website will be offline!' I sat back after it went and felt sick and thought this is not me. I immediately sent another email saying this isn't how I operate my business and I am ending this unpleasantness and that I would end the stalemate by sorting out the issue that had caused the problem. I just decided it didn't matter who was right or wrong somebody had to be above it.

I immediately felt 100% better and I didn't care if she thought she won it just wasn't worth it. I also wanted to get paid and then she go elsewhere when she needed help. She had already told me she wished she hadn't come to me.

I related this to 2 of my existing clients one of which has been with me for 3 years and the other 2 and I told them how much I appreciated their laid back attitudes.


Then yesterday I finished a basic website for someone (I only do basic because there is a demand) I do them cheap but I still put in a lot of effort with the design, theydon't have the finer details and they don't get to change anything about the design. This one was a bookbinding business, I designed his website selling him as a craftsman with 50years experience. Why did I bother, he just complained that things weren't the way his old one had been. I think he just would have been happy if I had just plonked some photos in the middle of a screen.

A lot of people just don't know what makes a good website, they can't tell the difference. No thanks, no appreciation. Thankfully I know that the vast majority of my clients think I do a great job because they tell and refer me to others. It is just that you always remember the negative ones and it just so happens I've had two in a row.

Teresa said that they are just negative people in life in general.

I'm going to do a training post tomorrow.

Join the movement and we'll start a revolution - stop all unnecessary shopping - seperate your needs from your wants.

Weekly training and life

Where to start? Over the last 3 weeks I've been feeling really tired and not really enjoying training just getting it done, feeling grumpy and the continued poor winter/spring were combining to get me down. I know it is time to back off when I have to make myself go train and even not hearing my alarm clock go off.

I had a rest week about 4 weeks ago were I only trained one session of the 3 disciplines, then had 2 full weeks (and they were good weeks) but then I had an easy week last week when I only did 2 of my usual 3 sessions. Then it was supposed to back into two more full weeks of training but I still felt exhausted on Monday at swimming but swam really well but felt shattered afterwards , I just I'd overdone it especially as I had swum 2 quick in Pandora's Pond the day before (second open water swim of the season and it was very cold). Come Tuesday morning and the rain was coming down in bucket loads I and just couldn't 10miles on another rainy day.

I tried a turbo session on the bike Wednesday and all I could of was reasons to get off although at the end it was okay. I didn't run yesterday (Thursday), no swim today. I might run tomorrow I'm going to see how I feel and hopefully I'll do 2and half hours on the bike on the road Sunday and three laps of the pond Sunday afternoon.

All this hasn't been helped by being stressed with work, this doesn't happen very often I usually pick my clients and not take on too much. A job I just finished was for the rudest client ever for a month everything was going great, until she got fussy, demanding, ignoring my advice, wanting complicated things done quickly and changing her mind constantly with a deadline I never agreed too. I almost quit when she got really offensive saying my work was for want of another word rubbish.

So I told her what I thought of her behaviour I was calm , polite but firm and I explained to her her website was looking so bad because she had ignored my advice about how much content to add and that if she insisted on doing it her way it would break the design which is of course she did and it did.

It was a typical situation where somebody doesn't know anything about the subject but ibsists they are right. I took to emailing her all the stuff that needs to be on a website that goes unseen such as the testing on all the different browsers, refining the coding.

She made me feel sick.

I've spent the last few days catching up with my other clients who are all very patient laid back people who are a mixture of existing clients having another website built, upgraded, refrshed and a couple of new ones. I explained this to this other client and said I must be doing something right because I 've got long term clients and this year I've had a lot of referrals.

On top of all this it is Emily's ballet performance week - this means lots of extra practices, late nights and the performance s on Saturday. I'm going to go and get her now.

Join the movement and we'll start a revolution - stop all unnecessary shopping - seperate your needs from your wants.

Caught out by cheap software

As the title says I was caught out by buying cheap software. It was an online reseller. It was so much cheaper than the buying the same software from the official supplier I ha suscpision (spelling??) right from the start but the bargain hunter in me won. It was a lesson learned that cost me about $200US. It was fulll of bugs didn't install correctly wouldn't uninstall so I could install a full cost version.

I am annoyed with myself because I hate wasting money- I had the money saved for the upgrade of the software (it is for business), I had to get a technician out who couldn't solve the problem of the uninstall and wanted to take the computer in for a couple of days (I have some deadlines looming).

However after the tech went away without the computer (this all happened Friday)I was going to drop it in next Tuesday but I was prompted by something he said. I went onlione and found some uninstall software (free version) and that did the job. I installed the new software, worked out how to mySQL databases server running again (for testing my work) and I was away.