I've not been posting here that much in the past couple of weeks. Why?
Projects. As I've stated, I'm nearing official launch date for my website. It has a planned release of November 1st, 2009. In conjunction with that, we are finally launching my wife's Etsy shop as well. She's working a full time job, full time classes finishing up her BA degree (business admin), doing translations for her company, and taking pottery classes on Saturdays, with a line of pottery goods that she'll be launching in 2010, time dependent. In between freelance work, the e-book, the website, the language lessons, and everything else...we are lucky if we have free time on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. We are both very, very busy little bees.
Once the website goes live, this blog will be transitioning into personal only. The time for seperation of professional and personal is way past due, which was the whole spark that set this into motion.
On the plus side, once the website is launched, things will slow down for the rest of the year. I'm booked solid with work until the end of the year, and I'm really hoping to have that e-book published by then as well. Had hoped to have it done by November but...well, life has a funny way of knocking your timelines around a bit. Suffice to say, business is great, and only getting better. 2010 should be a really knock-out year, and I'm looking forward to expanding my horizons in Europe, especially.
Hope you have a Happy Halloween!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Progress!
Settled on a good theme for the website today, and I'm about 30% done with the content sections. Right now I'm just waiting on e-mails back from clients who I asked for testimonials from, as well as finishing up the rest of the content, adding links, bios, pictures, and customizing. Sure, you can set up a website in a day, but to flesh it out takes time, and I'm not a professional web designer. I'm taking my time. Official launch date is November 1st, so I'm not rushing anything. I want it pristine when it goes live.
Other than that...today was smooth sailing. Spent the morning/early afternoon doing some freelance work, then spent about 3 hours working on the website. I'm doing another hour's worth of work while dinner cooks, then it's time for a relaxing evening with a bottle of wine and Evy's company while we watch the latest Heroes and Castle episodes.
Other than that...today was smooth sailing. Spent the morning/early afternoon doing some freelance work, then spent about 3 hours working on the website. I'm doing another hour's worth of work while dinner cooks, then it's time for a relaxing evening with a bottle of wine and Evy's company while we watch the latest Heroes and Castle episodes.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Update
Website is coming along nicely. I expect to have it launched by the weekend. I actually spent about 4 hours this afternoon working on themes and such.
Busy. Have a test on Wed. Two projects to finish up for October. Another rejection on one of my shorts, so time to find another place to ship it off to. Evy's B-day on Halloween. Have to buy her a present.
No time!
Busy. Have a test on Wed. Two projects to finish up for October. Another rejection on one of my shorts, so time to find another place to ship it off to. Evy's B-day on Halloween. Have to buy her a present.
No time!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Things that make you go "%(*)@)#!!!!"
I work from home. As a result, I rarely use public transportation, other than when the weather is crappy, or if we are lugging 50 lbs worth of groceries or some such. Evy tells me horror stories about the tram, but I don't always get to experience things first-hand.
Yesterday, I did. And I can totally appreciate her perspective on it, as well as agree with the big WTF question regarding the following behavior.
Bulgarians, for some reason or another, are incapable of riding the tram without all crowding into the very front of the tram. There can be four tram cars available to sit in...but all forty people on the tram will be crammed into the first 10 feet of the first car, packed in like sardines. They refuse to budge, and they get incredibly irritable and cranky when you need to get through. To the point where they will screech at you for pushing by.
Why do they do this?
Let me explain how the tram system works here. If you want to ride the tram, you either need a ticket, which can be purchased from a kiosk on the sidewalk, or from the driver. Or, you can deposit coins into a slot machine (which rarely ever works) which gives you a paper ticket. This is at the front of the tram. You can also purchase a swipe-card which can be used at the card-reading stations located in each tram car.
If you want to buy a ticket from either the kiosk or the driver, you almost always have to have exact change. You cannot, for example, buy three tickets with a ten leva bill (tickets are 1 leva per). The driver or the kiosk attendant will tell you to get bent. Unless you do like me and just pretend like you don't understand that they are asking you for exactly three leva, at which point they get very cranky. Evy has actually had a kiosk lady yell at her (literally yell) for not having exact change.
In any case. If everyone were using the coin machine or purchasing tickets from the driver of the tram, I could understand why they are all packed in up front. But they aren't. No one from Bulgaria ever uses the coin machines, because they know that the damn things are almost always broken. Only foreigners use the coin machine because they don't know any better, which means you then have to get a ticket from the driver. Most Bulgarians who ride the tram regularly have a card to swipe at one of the various card readers. Remember, there are one per car.
Yesterday we went to the store and got a new router, a all-in-one printer/etc. (needed a new one), and some various sundries. We had coins to burn, so we decided to get on the front of the tram and the tram was just about to leave so we didn't use the kiosk, we just bolted for the door. There were 5 cars.
The front of the tram was so crowded that I couldn't get up the stairs with the printer box I was carrying. I then proceeded to get two paper cuts as I tried to jostle my way through a PACKED crowd of at least 40 people....ALL OF WHOM HAD CARDS AND WERE TRYING TO GET TO THE CARD READER AT THE FRONT OF THE TRAM. The other four cars....empty. Not a soul.
One lady yelled at me. Two older men were cursing as I tried to maneuver through with my box held above my head. Meanwhile there were at least 35 other people yelling at each other trying to get to the damn card reader. Meanwhile, Evy finds out that the coin machine is broken (imagine that) and she needs to buy tickets from the driver. Only, the front of the bus is so crowded it takes THREE stops before it's clear enough for her to actually get to the guy and purchase a ticket.
Know how many of those people purchased a ticket from the driver? Zero. Know how many of them used tickets in the punchers? Zero (when you have a ticket you have to get it punched with a hole puncher unique to each tram mounted on the wall; ticket checkers will sometimes come in and check to see that your hole punches match the tram you are on). Every single individual on that tram used their card, and they all used the very first tram card swiper, ignoring the the other four swipers in the other four cars.
Why? Why don't people use the other tram cars? Evy said she always just gets on the last car and never has to fight for a seat, while she can look ahead and watch 30-40 people all clamoring for the card reader in the first tram car.
I don't get it.
Things that make you go hrmmm
Yesterday, I did. And I can totally appreciate her perspective on it, as well as agree with the big WTF question regarding the following behavior.
Bulgarians, for some reason or another, are incapable of riding the tram without all crowding into the very front of the tram. There can be four tram cars available to sit in...but all forty people on the tram will be crammed into the first 10 feet of the first car, packed in like sardines. They refuse to budge, and they get incredibly irritable and cranky when you need to get through. To the point where they will screech at you for pushing by.
Why do they do this?
Let me explain how the tram system works here. If you want to ride the tram, you either need a ticket, which can be purchased from a kiosk on the sidewalk, or from the driver. Or, you can deposit coins into a slot machine (which rarely ever works) which gives you a paper ticket. This is at the front of the tram. You can also purchase a swipe-card which can be used at the card-reading stations located in each tram car.
If you want to buy a ticket from either the kiosk or the driver, you almost always have to have exact change. You cannot, for example, buy three tickets with a ten leva bill (tickets are 1 leva per). The driver or the kiosk attendant will tell you to get bent. Unless you do like me and just pretend like you don't understand that they are asking you for exactly three leva, at which point they get very cranky. Evy has actually had a kiosk lady yell at her (literally yell) for not having exact change.
In any case. If everyone were using the coin machine or purchasing tickets from the driver of the tram, I could understand why they are all packed in up front. But they aren't. No one from Bulgaria ever uses the coin machines, because they know that the damn things are almost always broken. Only foreigners use the coin machine because they don't know any better, which means you then have to get a ticket from the driver. Most Bulgarians who ride the tram regularly have a card to swipe at one of the various card readers. Remember, there are one per car.
Yesterday we went to the store and got a new router, a all-in-one printer/etc. (needed a new one), and some various sundries. We had coins to burn, so we decided to get on the front of the tram and the tram was just about to leave so we didn't use the kiosk, we just bolted for the door. There were 5 cars.
The front of the tram was so crowded that I couldn't get up the stairs with the printer box I was carrying. I then proceeded to get two paper cuts as I tried to jostle my way through a PACKED crowd of at least 40 people....ALL OF WHOM HAD CARDS AND WERE TRYING TO GET TO THE CARD READER AT THE FRONT OF THE TRAM. The other four cars....empty. Not a soul.
One lady yelled at me. Two older men were cursing as I tried to maneuver through with my box held above my head. Meanwhile there were at least 35 other people yelling at each other trying to get to the damn card reader. Meanwhile, Evy finds out that the coin machine is broken (imagine that) and she needs to buy tickets from the driver. Only, the front of the bus is so crowded it takes THREE stops before it's clear enough for her to actually get to the guy and purchase a ticket.
Know how many of those people purchased a ticket from the driver? Zero. Know how many of them used tickets in the punchers? Zero (when you have a ticket you have to get it punched with a hole puncher unique to each tram mounted on the wall; ticket checkers will sometimes come in and check to see that your hole punches match the tram you are on). Every single individual on that tram used their card, and they all used the very first tram card swiper, ignoring the the other four swipers in the other four cars.
Why? Why don't people use the other tram cars? Evy said she always just gets on the last car and never has to fight for a seat, while she can look ahead and watch 30-40 people all clamoring for the card reader in the first tram car.
I don't get it.
Things that make you go hrmmm
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Swamped
Enough said. I'm finding my schedule very maxed with the addition of language lessons, because suddenly I find myself spending at least two hours a day studying on top of doing freelance work and trying to fit all of my side-projects into my daily schedule.
I'm behind on two of my personal projects. Sounds familiar by this point, doesn't it? :) If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you'll see that my personal projects often fall to the wayside for weeks or even months at a time. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think, because my professional career is continually progressing, and that's the important part.
Met some really interesting folks @ my language class. One guy is French, and he's my age, married to a very sweet and beautiful Bulgarian woman (met her the other night; they are a super cute couple. And yes, I used the word cute in a sentence). As far as I understand it, he works logistics for a couple of humanitarian companies helping to get medical and other types of aid packages to various places around the world. We are going out for beers next week, so I'm going to find out more.
There's also a German lady who speaks 6 languages fluently. Her husband is a German language teacher and they have traveled around the world for over 20 years living in various countries for 5-7 years at a time on contract with her husband teaching at various places, and they just came here 6 weeks ago for a 5 year stint.
Then there's this Serbian guy who is probably mid 30s. Apparently unemployed. Not sure if he's married.
Was a British woman in her late 30s/early 40s in our first lesson, but she didn't show up on Wednesday, so no idea what she does.
Another kid is an Indian who is here getting his doctorate in mechanical engineering at some university here. He's probably mid/late 20s.
Then we had a late addition last night. She's a Spanish woman who works for the Ministry of Environment and just came to Bulgaria. Probably in her late 40s, early 50s.
So, with the exception of one, we are all working professionals.
Now, having never taking a language course before, I wasn't sure what to expect at my first class on Monday night. I was totally unprepared. It was not "Hi, welcome to Bulgarian for Foreigners. This is an introduction class and we will be getting you into it nice and easy".
Instead, it was bend-you-over-the-desk-and-beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-wall-of-text. She didn't speak a WORD of English, which was a shock to everyone in the class, believe me. Me, probably least, because I didn't know WHAT to expect, but I think everyone else, who had taken language classes in other languages before, expected some sort of English introduction. Nope. This woman is hard-freaking-core-to-the-max.
But she's also very good at what she does. I struggled through the 2 hour class on Monday, but understood most of the lesson by the end. I came home, I studied, and on Wednesday night it was nice to not have to look at my lesson book like most of the others did when it came time to brush up on Monday's work.
Felt bad for the Spanish lady because she walked into day 2 and had no idea, and she was in absolute shock the whole class, because she had NO idea where we were at. At one point she asked the teacher something in English, which warranted a HUGE sigh from her and a "Only this once. Never again".
Still...we had a hell of a lot of fun on Wednesday night. Still don't understand the majority of what she's saying, but we have learned enough at this point to be able to ask people names, where they are from, what they do for a living, what languages they speak, and the generic greetings. We've also learned some of the really confusing sentence structure for Bulgarian, such dealing with that damn "li" (if you are Bulgarian you know what I mean).
Thankfully I have until next Monday, so I've got a few days to study. Had a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to getting in there on Monday and rocking out. It'll be extremely refreshing here in a few weeks to actually have a CONVERSATION with someone other than my wife and her friends :) It's been a very difficult situation at times when at family gatherings because I always need a flipping translator. Thankfully I have a very patient woman by my side, otherwise I'd be up poo creek w/o a paddle!
I'm behind on two of my personal projects. Sounds familiar by this point, doesn't it? :) If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you'll see that my personal projects often fall to the wayside for weeks or even months at a time. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think, because my professional career is continually progressing, and that's the important part.
Met some really interesting folks @ my language class. One guy is French, and he's my age, married to a very sweet and beautiful Bulgarian woman (met her the other night; they are a super cute couple. And yes, I used the word cute in a sentence). As far as I understand it, he works logistics for a couple of humanitarian companies helping to get medical and other types of aid packages to various places around the world. We are going out for beers next week, so I'm going to find out more.
There's also a German lady who speaks 6 languages fluently. Her husband is a German language teacher and they have traveled around the world for over 20 years living in various countries for 5-7 years at a time on contract with her husband teaching at various places, and they just came here 6 weeks ago for a 5 year stint.
Then there's this Serbian guy who is probably mid 30s. Apparently unemployed. Not sure if he's married.
Was a British woman in her late 30s/early 40s in our first lesson, but she didn't show up on Wednesday, so no idea what she does.
Another kid is an Indian who is here getting his doctorate in mechanical engineering at some university here. He's probably mid/late 20s.
Then we had a late addition last night. She's a Spanish woman who works for the Ministry of Environment and just came to Bulgaria. Probably in her late 40s, early 50s.
So, with the exception of one, we are all working professionals.
Now, having never taking a language course before, I wasn't sure what to expect at my first class on Monday night. I was totally unprepared. It was not "Hi, welcome to Bulgarian for Foreigners. This is an introduction class and we will be getting you into it nice and easy".
Instead, it was bend-you-over-the-desk-and-beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-wall-of-text. She didn't speak a WORD of English, which was a shock to everyone in the class, believe me. Me, probably least, because I didn't know WHAT to expect, but I think everyone else, who had taken language classes in other languages before, expected some sort of English introduction. Nope. This woman is hard-freaking-core-to-the-max.
But she's also very good at what she does. I struggled through the 2 hour class on Monday, but understood most of the lesson by the end. I came home, I studied, and on Wednesday night it was nice to not have to look at my lesson book like most of the others did when it came time to brush up on Monday's work.
Felt bad for the Spanish lady because she walked into day 2 and had no idea, and she was in absolute shock the whole class, because she had NO idea where we were at. At one point she asked the teacher something in English, which warranted a HUGE sigh from her and a "Only this once. Never again".
Still...we had a hell of a lot of fun on Wednesday night. Still don't understand the majority of what she's saying, but we have learned enough at this point to be able to ask people names, where they are from, what they do for a living, what languages they speak, and the generic greetings. We've also learned some of the really confusing sentence structure for Bulgarian, such dealing with that damn "li" (if you are Bulgarian you know what I mean).
Thankfully I have until next Monday, so I've got a few days to study. Had a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to getting in there on Monday and rocking out. It'll be extremely refreshing here in a few weeks to actually have a CONVERSATION with someone other than my wife and her friends :) It's been a very difficult situation at times when at family gatherings because I always need a flipping translator. Thankfully I have a very patient woman by my side, otherwise I'd be up poo creek w/o a paddle!
Monday, October 12, 2009
!)(@#$
Seriously.
So, we had three year warranties on our computers when we bought them. Sounded good.
I've dealt with warranties on computers before. I had to have Dell replace 2 graphics cards back in Colorado, and getting them to do so was like pulling teeth. But they did so in the long run.
Evy's power supply crapped out the other day. Still running power, but the internal fan to keep the power supply cooled isn't working and started smelling the room up like lovely melted plastic parts. We called to see about our warranty and found out that they wanted us to bring the ENTIRE box in (as in the whole case), not just the power supply.
We then find out that because we have opened the cases twice to clean them...we've voided our warranty in its entirety.
WTF? You can't even open your computer to clean out the dust ever 6 months or so without voiding your warranty? Even Dell never pulled that one on me.
On the plus side power supplies aren't that expensive. I'm just very irritated that simply cleaning the dust from the parts voided the warranty because we "opened the case".
(Yes, they can tell. There's a sticker on the inside that gets torn when you open the case, so they know if you've opened it or not).
@)_*(@#$
So, we had three year warranties on our computers when we bought them. Sounded good.
I've dealt with warranties on computers before. I had to have Dell replace 2 graphics cards back in Colorado, and getting them to do so was like pulling teeth. But they did so in the long run.
Evy's power supply crapped out the other day. Still running power, but the internal fan to keep the power supply cooled isn't working and started smelling the room up like lovely melted plastic parts. We called to see about our warranty and found out that they wanted us to bring the ENTIRE box in (as in the whole case), not just the power supply.
We then find out that because we have opened the cases twice to clean them...we've voided our warranty in its entirety.
WTF? You can't even open your computer to clean out the dust ever 6 months or so without voiding your warranty? Even Dell never pulled that one on me.
On the plus side power supplies aren't that expensive. I'm just very irritated that simply cleaning the dust from the parts voided the warranty because we "opened the case".
(Yes, they can tell. There's a sticker on the inside that gets torn when you open the case, so they know if you've opened it or not).
@)_*(@#$
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Moving ahead
Finally got around to calling an international tax accountant this morning, and looks like I'll be moving ahead with getting all my 2008 stuff squared away. Yes, I know I'm way beyond the date you are supposed to take care of taxes, but here's the thing...I didn't make any income last year (about 2,000 total), as we were living off our savings account the whole time. Technically I didn't even have to claim any income for the year because I made below the "claimable" level, but I still want to get things squared away so 2009 will flow easier. 2009 will be a little more complex, because I have clients from all over the world, but obviously I can't file for that until next year. The good thing is, they don't charge nearly as much as I originally anticipated, so that's nice.
Website! I finally took the time and started researching hosting and packages this morning. It looks like I'll be getting the groundwork laid in this weekend. I had a friend of mine offer to look into it for me, but after I did some digging I found some rather nice Wordpress tutorials + hosting packages through the LIP website, and it's only about 80 bucks for a year's worth of hosting, and I'm figuring it'll take me the weekend to get the actual website up and running. So...that's another thing that's about to get knocked off the list.
Next item on the agenda is the e-book. I have the general outline done, and I have the "meat" text there. I've already started doing research for the actual numbers I'll be providing in the book, based upon tax figures and worldwide income statistics, and otherwise. I am pretty sure I'll have it done by the end of October. At which point I need to start looking for a publisher.
Now, I could self publish, but if you remember my post from earlier in the year...I don't really think self publishing gives people any credentials. Anyone can self publish. Which means a bunch of absolute crap gets put on the market because there are a lot of people out there who have no business calling themselves writers, but because they can self publish a book and stick their name on it they can call themselves an author. Nevermind the fact that it's never been put past a professional editor before...in their heads, they are writers. I'm not that kind of guy. I whole-heartedly believe that until an editor has taken a look at your work and approved it, then it isn't really credible. Not everyone agrees with me. That's fine. But that's my feelings on it. So if you know any good e-book or even regular book publishers who you think would be a good fit for publishing a book on global freelancing, let me know. Otherwise I'll be starting to shop for an agent in November, and see if I can't get this thing sold in one format or another.
Evy told me I have way too many ideas, far too many passions, and not enough time. I've been stressing out lately about which projects to focus on, because I have dozens of them I want to work on, and I'm spreading myself too thin. So I made a decision on Sunday. For the rest of 2009 these are my goals:
I really hope to cross the 100k word mark on the fiction novel by the end of the year. Maybe. I've been hovering around 80k words since June, so if I can manage to write chapters 13, 14, and 15, I can push past the 100k mark.
A big issue with fantasy novels these days is that publishers are becoming more and more unwilling to publish novels over 150k even from big-name authors like Brandon Sanderson, George R. R. Martin, and otherwise. Sanderson was discussing his issue with hist latest Mistborn novel on his website, and how the book stores were the ones throwing a fit about the size of the novel, not the publishers themselves. They were worried that a 200k novel was going to "take up too much shelf space" and cut into their profits. Now, while I don't think I'm going to be at 200k words...my outline is for 25 chapters. If I'm at 100k words with 15 chapters...well, that's at least another 60-80k worth of words to finish the outline, which will put it at around 160-180k words. For a first-time author. I have a feeling I'm going to have a hell of a time getting an agent to sell that, but it's not going to keep me from trying. I can't break it down any smaller than that, because the outline calls for 4 books and that's the best natural breaking point. I could probably shave it down to 150k, but...well, we'll just have to see when it actually gets done.
In any case, here's to success, and here's to good health. Hope you head into the holiday seasons with good cheer and good luck.
Website! I finally took the time and started researching hosting and packages this morning. It looks like I'll be getting the groundwork laid in this weekend. I had a friend of mine offer to look into it for me, but after I did some digging I found some rather nice Wordpress tutorials + hosting packages through the LIP website, and it's only about 80 bucks for a year's worth of hosting, and I'm figuring it'll take me the weekend to get the actual website up and running. So...that's another thing that's about to get knocked off the list.
Next item on the agenda is the e-book. I have the general outline done, and I have the "meat" text there. I've already started doing research for the actual numbers I'll be providing in the book, based upon tax figures and worldwide income statistics, and otherwise. I am pretty sure I'll have it done by the end of October. At which point I need to start looking for a publisher.
Now, I could self publish, but if you remember my post from earlier in the year...I don't really think self publishing gives people any credentials. Anyone can self publish. Which means a bunch of absolute crap gets put on the market because there are a lot of people out there who have no business calling themselves writers, but because they can self publish a book and stick their name on it they can call themselves an author. Nevermind the fact that it's never been put past a professional editor before...in their heads, they are writers. I'm not that kind of guy. I whole-heartedly believe that until an editor has taken a look at your work and approved it, then it isn't really credible. Not everyone agrees with me. That's fine. But that's my feelings on it. So if you know any good e-book or even regular book publishers who you think would be a good fit for publishing a book on global freelancing, let me know. Otherwise I'll be starting to shop for an agent in November, and see if I can't get this thing sold in one format or another.
Evy told me I have way too many ideas, far too many passions, and not enough time. I've been stressing out lately about which projects to focus on, because I have dozens of them I want to work on, and I'm spreading myself too thin. So I made a decision on Sunday. For the rest of 2009 these are my goals:
- Get the freelance book finished
- Find a publisher for the book
- Get a website up and running
- See where I can get on the fiction novel
I really hope to cross the 100k word mark on the fiction novel by the end of the year. Maybe. I've been hovering around 80k words since June, so if I can manage to write chapters 13, 14, and 15, I can push past the 100k mark.
A big issue with fantasy novels these days is that publishers are becoming more and more unwilling to publish novels over 150k even from big-name authors like Brandon Sanderson, George R. R. Martin, and otherwise. Sanderson was discussing his issue with hist latest Mistborn novel on his website, and how the book stores were the ones throwing a fit about the size of the novel, not the publishers themselves. They were worried that a 200k novel was going to "take up too much shelf space" and cut into their profits. Now, while I don't think I'm going to be at 200k words...my outline is for 25 chapters. If I'm at 100k words with 15 chapters...well, that's at least another 60-80k worth of words to finish the outline, which will put it at around 160-180k words. For a first-time author. I have a feeling I'm going to have a hell of a time getting an agent to sell that, but it's not going to keep me from trying. I can't break it down any smaller than that, because the outline calls for 4 books and that's the best natural breaking point. I could probably shave it down to 150k, but...well, we'll just have to see when it actually gets done.
In any case, here's to success, and here's to good health. Hope you head into the holiday seasons with good cheer and good luck.
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