I’m a website designer & programmer. I can work with anyone, anywhere in the world. I chose to be different and do most of my work in the local region. But like I said, that’s different. Many of my colleagues think more is better, and try to price low and gain money on quantity rather than quality, both of their clients and of their services.

When searching for a service online, I don’t care if you’re looking for website hosting, website design, logo design, custom graphics, or an alarm company (the only item in this list that I’m not providing), you probably want — or need — to know where the person is.

So how do you figure it out?

I wanted to use a specific set of examples in this post. Top-of-the-search engine results with fantastic prices, and absolutely no phone number or address to be seen on their website. Sites that ended up being in other countries. Websites with blatant grammatical errors that obviously still rake in enough cash to get to the top of Google search results on pay-per-click hot topics that are highly competitive.

But they asked me nicely to remove their website address and information from my blog. So I’m removing it. Not exactly sure what offended them about the post, as they were only a live example and it was true that they were in a foreign country, but I’ll remove it to keep the peace.

Some cliches exist for a reason. “You get what you pay for” is one of them. In a vast sea of choices and no education, people choose the products by lowest price. There’s either too much information, or not enough, to educate the consumer into making informed choices.

There are real dangers in sending your money to a foreign corporation. They can be of the most stellar reputation, 100% honest, hard-working people, but you are still never afforded the same protections and conveniences you have working with someone in the same town or at least the same state. It is much less convenient to do business out-of-state, or out-of-the-country. If it’s out-of-state you have the additional complications of figuring out which state/jurisdiction to interpret your contract in, and where you have to travel to in order to arbitrate disputes. In foreign matters, unless you have the type of money it takes to go to International court, you don’t have legal protections no matter what the contract says.

If you are going to a local company, you can check their mailing address, their reputation, get a real referral from someone you know to someone you know you can trust. You can track their professional affiliations, check the Better Business Bureau to see if there are complaints against them. And more.

So how do you figure out who people really are? There is a database that stores their legal domain registration information. There is real consideration to abolishing this information on the web, but in the meantime the more of us who are using it for legitimate reasons (to check on the idenitity of a service before purchase) the better. This database is accessible at http://www.whois.net/

If you enter theirdomainname.com into Whois you can see their registration record. Enter “theirdomainname” in the field for looking up domain registration data. Make sure the right suffix is selected (”.com”) and click GO!

Not all domains show legal registration information online. The domain owner can hide that information by paying their domain registrar a few extra bucks to make even that anonymous…. Then you need to get into some website gymnastics to figure out who these people are, and I am not sure it’s worthwhile. If they’re hiding, maybe they have something to hide. More often, though, people are banking on ignorance. This blog post is to help some people wake up and smell the scandal. The flip side of this idea: If you run a legitimate business, you should not be anonymous on the web, and prospective clients shouldn’t need to resort to the “whois database” method above, just to figure out where you’re located. I get a few junk mails and a junk fax or 3 for having my information up — the worst is the domain-registration related spam, but that’s a hazard of doing legit business on the web.

I suggest you look at people’s Contact Us page and check that their information matches their WhoIs registration — check their professional affiliations and their memberships in local chambers of commerce. Ask if there have been any complaints against them.

If you’re in the local region, you could ask for a face-to-face with the person you’re doing business with. The only way to see eye-to-eye on any project is to actually be able to look someone in the face.

Moral: You pay for what you get.

Good luck!

I run this one-woman minority-owned company called Eclectic Tech. Started out with the intention of doing whatever it takes to help people (with technology). Found that most people need help with websites, so that’s my primary selling point and like any other company, I have to flaunt it.

I do my best to make sure I don’t bleed my clients for every cent they have. Came up with a great way to picture it — sudden inspiration in a restaurant in Warwick: “Free your website from the Bastille! Liberate your website from your oppressors!” all in a French-ish accent I like to flatter myself is pretty good. It was a hit. I love making people laugh.

Well, I have yet to find a French person who is offended. I don’t like doing the same schtick twice, but this is certainly my most popular self-aggrandizement. So it stuck — now I run around saying “Liberate your website!” a Whooooooole lot. Usually with the French accent. Because people actively request it. Once I did it in a fake Transylvanian accent “Is your vebmaster sucking you dry??” Did any Transylvanians come out of the woodwork to take offense? There was a room full of about 60 or 70 local business people — no one said anything, a few people laughed, most people smiled.

So, my client Paul Ellis created this Faaaaaabulous commercial for me, inspired by my own inspirations. He has 4 actors do this commercial — 3 “Mexican revolutionaries” and a damsel in distress. Same basic schtick: freedom from your oppressive webmasters. It’s on the radio. It’s on my website. I love the commercial. It’s a work of art. It’s a whole minute-thirty long, you can’t BUY an ad slot like that on the air!

After all my other “revolutionary” spontaneous ads, someone’s taking offense at the commercial. Maybe more than one someone. Because maybe, just maybe, it’s racially biased.

I don’t know who you are, but there’s no racial slurs in the commercial — there’s no vandals or “bad guys” in any of the voices and the webmaster’s race or lifemate are not mentioned. The damsel cries “Help, Help” and the revolutionaries come to tell her about Eclectic Tech and how Eclectic Tech can free her from oppression. I’m not Mexican, so maybe I have no right to portray Mexicans in my advertising any more than I had a right to portray a French revolutionary, or a Transylvanian vampiress. But I grew up the daughter of an Argentinean immigrant. I’m Hispanic. My children are 1/2 Puerto Rican, and all Hispanic. When he described the commercial to me, and I read the script, I thought it was cool. When I heard it I thought it was brilliant.

All of this was probably not an issue until it came time for Paul Ellis to run for Chester Town Supervisor. After all, someone has to find some dirt to fling and get offended — and men aren’t marching after him with torches and pitchforks for the character named “Harry Paratestis” so I guess the next obvious target is my commercial. Gotta get dirt on this man who works himself to the bone, collaborating with everyone on every project, trying to make people laugh, no matter what their color, gender, or who they sleep with. So this man makes me an inspired, funny, and talented commercial, intended for play during a radio COMEDY, and somewhere in the middle of the high sidekick and the dead guy with the dirty name, people can’t seem to locate their sense of humor anymore. It’s with the missing sock, people!

No wonder commercials have to resort to CGI-animated bullfrogs and geckos. People have missed the point, but I’ll let you in on it: The joke is NOT about the revolutionaries. The accents are trite clues that there’s a bigger joke going on. The REAL joke is about web-masters who take advantage of their clients, creating websites no one can touch but them. These people charge either monthly fees or per-change charges for people to keep their websites up to date. And so far, even THEY aren’t taking offense!! No matter what color they are, where their ancestors are from, what language they speak, who they sleep with, or what gender they are, the webmasters have not risen to defend themselves. I believe they have every right to their residual income, and I believe their clients have every right to get fed up with it and choose a different alternative, which I will happily offer them. And I’ll use every historical reference to revolutions and oppression I want — as long as it makes someone giggle — to drive that point home. Robin Hood? Sure! Boston Tea Party? You betcha!! Moses & the Pharaoh? Now you’re talking! “Let my website go!”

I don’t get people. But here’s one Hispanic woman who is saying WTF about this attitude. Do you want to talk about crimes against humanity: Paul Ellis made me laugh! Now there’s a crime — I might live a little longer because I laughed and released some endorphins. If you don’t find it funny, why are you listening? At least I got a good hearty laugh out of the thought of anyone being offended!

I have a client. Not a loud client all over my portfolio, a pretty quiet client. A good client. A repeat client. I worked with Kevin Burke of Lucid Marketing last year doing piecemeal projects while their systems administrator was out.

He’s started a new company named Light Iris, with a focus of marketing to new mothers.

He had a notion one day that he should get a better perspective on being a new mother, and has been wearing a 35-pound pregnancy suit on his off-hours. Not to parade around town, but to get an idea of what it’s like to have all that extra weight on.

He’s doing this experiential experiment for a month. You can read about it at http://blog.lightiris.com/

My taste in chocolate went from white and milk in childhood to darker and darker chocolates. With the one exception of some stale 70% cocoa concoction my roommate gave me, I can go up to a 90% bar and be quite happy. I keep a bag of Ghiardelli double chocolate chips in the house to dip into for a quick fix, or for a rare batch of cookies or pancakes. Organic, free trade, Swiss, German, it doesn’t make much of a difference to me — just give me my chocolate, and no one gets hurt!

Except that those are made in a factory. The best chocolate to give, receive or eat is chocolates made with love.

Fran Greenfield (aka “Candy Fran”) of Candy Designs by Fran is sought-after and well received in both Orange and Sullivan counties, and most definitely makes her chocolates with love. Hand-made, melted, dipped, coated, drizzled, packaged, and often hand-delivered, Candy Fran makes the most exquisite treats you could ever eat. People who have given her corporate gift baskets always come back to give them again and again. Last fall, all my top clients got a treat created by Fran and I got thank-you emails including one with the subject line of “MMmmmmm chocolate!”

One was undeliverable, and so I ate it (can I still deduct it from my taxes? I tried!!). Clients shouldn’t move without informing their vendors *tsk*.

Fran’s treats are available retail and wholesale, and she’ll ship them to you or your clients. If you buy your candy from other online vendors, you might just be getting Fran’s chocolates under a different name…I just hope for everyone’s sake they still have a healthy dose of Vitamin-L (love), because if that’s lost in translation you ought to order straight from the source.

“My name is Fran, and I’m a chocoholic….” (Fran Greenfield, Orange Networking Alliance, Feb 20, 2007)

A year ago, I joined the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, and I went to my first business networking blast last July. I didn’t have the networking thing down yet, so I was sitting and crowd-watching, and saw this woman with an enormous basket of little bags. It was a “speed networking” event, and I wasn’t in her row, so I didn’t have the pleasure of being directly gifted with a sample. When the event was over, she announced that she had plenty left, and put them on a table on the side of the room. I still didn’t “get it” and continued networking as much as I could stand to before fleeing. The event had started at 6:45am, so I beg both ignorance and exhaustion as my lame excuses.

In September there was going to be an Expo, and I considered sharing a booth at the Expo with another business. I had been taken under wing by Melanie Richards of Prism Promotions who showed me the ropes and gave me several really good lessons about networking in Orange County, NY. It was due to Melanie that I spoke to the Chamber about sharing a table, and Fran was recommended as a booth partner. I spoke to Fran about possibly sharing a booth with her, but as enticing as sharing a booth with the highly-sought-after Chocolate Lady was, I bowed out due to financial frustrations and a lack of preparation time. It was my first year in the Chamber, and I’m the type who learns (A LOT!) by watching. I volunteered to help at the event rather than take a booth. So I finally met Fran at the member dinner mixer after the event. She was bubbly, lively, friendly and forthcoming, if a little frazzled, but who isn’t frazzled at the end of a long day at an expo?

I had been checking out local networking/referral groups, and because several people I had met and really liked at the Chamber were members of Business Exchange Network, I ended up joining that group. Fran is one of the members, and since I now get to see her almost every week, I’m a little more out-of-shape, a lot more chocolified, and I’ve gotten to know this wonderful woman much better than I would have otherwise. She is quirky, but bright and cheery, and I admire her. She’s modest and exceptionally generous, and she actually has two jobs — Candy Fran by night and child photographer by day. I can only imagine she gets the biggest and brightest smiles out of children, without needing to bribe them with chocolate, because she gets smiles out of adults without the chocolate as well, though I suppose the chocolate anticipation really helps.

If you’re looking for a treat for a holiday, a gift to say Thank You to a client, something to bring for an extra “Ah” or “Oh” at a networking event, an unforgettable chocolate business card, or to put on a few pounds in absolute ecstasy, talk to Fran. If you don’t believe me, come to some of the events where Fran often shares her treats by bringing samples. Or I’ll send you a chocolate business card made by Fran, I have a few left…

This post is a whole lot of thank you for someone who touched my heart as well as my taste buds!

Today I ran to the bank to sign some official papers. I had my pen-in-hand and I was ready to sign when the bank officer offered me a pen, and my business associate said “She’s always prepared.”

Aside from the “Time is my one finite commodity” email signature, my comments in my blog about time, and the sermon I gave at Toastmasters about time, I always carry a pen. Having my pen in my hand and ready was the efficiency borne of my awareness of time and not wanting to waste it for anyone. Why I had a pen with me is another story, aside from knowing I was going to the bank specifically to sign something.

I started writing poems and stories when I was 11 years old. While my muse has been blissfully quiet lately, I spent about 15 years under the constant demands of Erato, the harsh mistress of writing. Poems came to me at all times of the day, and on some occasions woke me from deep slumbers to make me press pen to paper in the darkest hours of the night. If my hand cramped and my eyes teared, it was nothing next to the torment of the poems, lyrics, inspirations, that came to me when I had nothing to record them with. Slave to this strict mistress, I obediently began to carry something — anything — with which I could write. She had no patience for ink blots, pens that skipped, cluttered paper, or any other excuses. When she demanded, I would write.

While under her thrall I learned to choose better pens, to choose better notebooks, to keep these instruments handy. I have a book and pen next to my bed, so that if something should take hold of me in those chilling wee hours, I wouldn’t have to shiver at my desk.

One of my inspirations literally came to me in those dark hours — lyrics for a song (perhaps her cohort Euterpe had decided to borrow me?) — and I sat in my kitchen singing, humming, laboring and pouring out a piece inspired by the tale of Beauty and the Beast and neo-pagan symbolisms. Thankfully I haven’t tried recording the song

Regardless, you’ll notice that whenever I’m without a pen I get a haunted look of fear on my face, and perhaps I seem distracted. That’s me praying earnestly to the Lady that she not strike me with inspiration at that moment.

http://www.eclectictech.net/wiki/Learn/GeekYourResume

Why didn’t I put this in my blog? I have no idea.

I wrote an awesome article for geeks (and anyone) on the steps & styles needed to build a proper resume. Back in May of ‘06. I guess I was explaining the process to someone and went whole-hog and created an article on my website for it, and I forgot to mention it in my blog for all of Technocrati to see.

With so much competition, your resume is the first thing people are going to see. You want to stand at least head, if not head & shoulders, above your fellow jobseekers. I spent time as a tech recruiter, and I say that probably 50% or more of the geeky job-seeking force needs a serious Resume 101 class. Since you’re not likely to stop playing World of Warcraft long enough to take a class, but still need a job to pay the monthly fees (not to mention electricity and ISP), I’m going to give you a little boot camp (or a boot somewhere else) so you can get up-to-date.

I’ve included Word and Open Office resume templates with my Geek Your Resume article. With style sheets. I expect you all to get off your collective buttocks and look for work. Now.

Good luck out there, soldiers! Make me proud!

Often the topic of starting a “great” web business comes up, and in my age and wisdom (being both old to be a freelance web programmer, and one of a minority of women in the field) — there’s two ways to go: thinking “in” the box = come up with new brilliant technology, patent it and hire people to program it better and faster than anyone else can so you can quickly market it. If it climbs to the top before it is cloned you become the next target for people trying to out-do your website. This track is getting VERY old, VERY fast. Mainly you and your absolute best friend need to be programmers to do this (think Microsoft, Google…) because you can’t trust anyone with your terrific idea. Also it has to be so ground-breaking that only the best (read: smartest, wise, long-range thinking) of venture capitalists will see the end of the rainbow where the pot of gold sits. If it is easy to get the funding for your idea, someone probably is making it already.

Thinking “out” of the box = coming up with a way to use normal everyday technology to do something that fills — rather than creates — a real need or niche. It’s cheaper, faster, and if it really IS filling a need, it’s going to spread by word-of-mouth, and it won’t be “just a fad”. This technique aims lower and comes in under the radar — no billion dollar baby here — but it’s safer, less stressful, and you don’t have to be a programmer, generally speaking. The programmer is unlikely to run off with your baby if it doesn’t look like a “google killer”.

The problem is that great ideas are easy — the means to really make them work is the harder part (invention = 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration). I’m frustrated with people who want to “share” the rewards of their great web program idea (equity sharing) of up to 50%, but won’t be doing any of the actual work to make it hang together and be practical. If someone comes to me with a truly great idea (and I have NDA’s if they don’t), I can find them a great programming team, but the team will probably want cash on delivery, not equity. More “google killers” die every day than make it. They’re not original ideas, and if a site dies before it makes money, there’s no equity and it’s a huge waste of the programmer’s time.

Imagine that someone turned to you and said, “I have a great idea for a newspaper! I’ll give you the ideas, you develop the newspaper and run it, staff it, write for it, etc. I’ll give you 50%.” That approach frustrates me. People don’t get it. I can translate it to dozens of other fields — “I have a great plan for a house, you just have to build it. Then you can live on the top floor, and I’ll live downstairs. Ok?”

Somewhere in there people are cheapening the act of programming. After all, it’s just bits and bytes, right???

The Internet mimics life in a “survival of the fittest” way. I don’t pretend to know what’s “cool” or “hot” anymore — I work with “useful” I won’t get rich but that wasn’t in my personal game plan. I have my own great or good ideas, some might make me money, some won’t but will look really good on my resume.

Then there’s the flip side of this: If you’re not the head of the programming team and you’ve paid someone to build the google killer — what if it works? Now you have to program new features, fix bugs, etc. You either need to re-hire the same team, or get a programming staff. You go on Craigslist and choose the person who claims somehow to be able to fulfill your great Internet dream, but if you have this beautiful web baby together, are you really ready for that long-term commitment with a total dweeb with no business sense?

I can’t wait to be so busy with people I’ve looked in the eye and shaken the hands of that I can’t afford to even GLANCE at another Craigslist ad. I love my clients dearly, but you don’t know how rare it was that the people I dealt with BECAME clients at all. I certainly wouldn’t want to become business partners with some guy with the “next killer app” idea and had to actually look on Craigslist for a programmer. So wait — your only experience is the front end of websites as a user, and you think you can somehow manage a killer web application programming team? That’s an incredibly poor business move and you’ll get laughed out of the bank. And you want the programmer to work for nothing but equity? That’s spec work.

That brings me to another thing: Have you ever had one of those managers who knows absolutely nothing about what you do? It happens in IT all the time, but much less so in other professions. BUT if you’ve ever heard a nurse bitch that someone “stepped in” as the head of the nursing staff from a business-only background, you might get the idea. In most large corps — and this is a place where Microsoft does NOT get bad rankings — the heads of the corporation have NO IDEA how to produce their main products…much less have a clue what their IT department does sitting at their computers all day.

It’s never a good idea to manage something you don’t understand. Ever.

On that note, are you interested in a basic web programming class?

Doctors have this problem. The moment someone at the party finds out they’re a doctor, they get the “Oh, it hurts when I do this…” request for free advice.

I get a little less of it than they do, since there aren’t as many Mac owners, but would you believe my dentist did that to me? Did she think I was going to offer to come to her house to fix her ailing Mac for her? Or was she offering me to take the Mac home with me and keep it?

Macs are less popular than bodies, but I’m sure every PC tech at a party has this problem. It’s never worse than when your family finds out that you do computer support, however. I don’t, really DO computer support, not really. Certainly not for PCs. But the moment they hear geeky terminology, the relatives come out of the woodwork with stupid Windows questions that a Mac maven like myself can best answer with “Hrm. Sounds bad. Why don’t you buy a Mac?” which of course leads to SOMEONE eventually actually getting a Mac. Now you’re in business. Without getting paid.

My kids have Macs, because if I gave them PCs and they broke, got viruses, etc. I would just want to install Linux on them and be done with it, and the expensive games would then be worthless.

Considering the amount of time they spend with the games, maybe that’s not such a bad thing, after all — however, I digress…

Whenever there’s a problem with the computers, the kids run in with panic, or determination to break any boundaries I assert in an attempt of procuring aid for their electronic addictions. Today my son’s computer isn’t on the network, so he has no Internet. Oh, what horror! I’m sorta happy. And exhausted. I certainly do NOT want to spend my wee-morning hours figuring out why his computer won’t talk to our wireless device. My laptop is fine, he needs to be on a bus soon, so who cares? Obviously he does, but you get the point.

Somehow the computer has become a right rather than a privilege.

My mom got my old iBook. After her first 10 questions or so, she’s been relatively quiet, until lately when it seems the modem may have died. That’s a hardware issue I can’t debug or fix since I’m 1000 miles away. So mom’s pretty much been golden.

However, I see everyone from linux to PC techies running around fixing their family’s computer issues. I’m not sure the doctors take care of family members in this way — aside from the stupid party questions, how many family members want to take their clothes off in front of you and be touched, sometimes rather intimately, by their son/father/sister/cousin? So somehow, for the doctors, I think the buck stops at free advice.

There seems to be a law of the universe that for every geek there’s at least one completely technically inept relative who has the lead touch and every computer or network they put their paws on breaks. Then there’s the Internet un-savvy relative who blunders into adware and spyware, bad offers, identity theft, etc. And the mother — usually it’s the mother (mine’s guilty too) who likes to pass along their spam, chain letters, petitions, jokes, etc. so they can share their inbox pain with you.

If you’re the black geek of the family, you get the call, the email, the questions, and have to travel to the relative’s house to do unpaid charity service in the name of family peace. After all, didn’t you ask the person with the green thumb in the family to do your landscaping? You didn’t? Didn’t you ask the one most talented in the kitchen to come over and cook for your Thanksgiving meals? No? What about Aunt Martha? She’s a neat freak and keeps a perfect house — didn’t you ask her to wash your kids’ underwear and scrub your kitchen floor? You didn’t do that either? Sheesh, what type of relative ARE you??

What is it that makes being a geek one of the few areas that people can trounce your personal, familial and professional boundaries? Doesn’t Uncle James know that if you’re fixing his computer, you’re bound to find his porn folder?

I think it’s one of the mysteries of the family moral and ethical system that I won’t understand. I mean, my mom’s a nurse, but I never asked her to take my blood pressure, administer an enema, draw blood, or give me chemo.

My family’s pretty good on the scale of things, too. I watch others suffer under the burden of having done the family a “favor” and set up a computer network, which then they also must support when it’s broken. It’s true that people have much more respect when you set up a fee schedule. Suddenly they think twice about what they’re breaking on the, computer or network, since they’ll have to pay. Otherwise it’s “what the heck, my nephew will fix it.”

Maybe it’s a good thing my family hasn’t really realized that I do graphic and 3d design. All I need is for requests for unpaid or speculative work in the design area. Make my logo, do my website, I need a brochure…No one seems to think that time is limited, no one wants to take their work home with them, and we all need money.

It’s really messed up how programming can follow real life. I think maybe I’ve been programming too much lately. It doesn’t matter. In the car, I was working on the Magical Chain Mail Vest (a shiny crochet object to be gifted to my son as part of my plot to enrich his imagination), and it’s a very loose design (anyone who has seen the bows and arrows hat — that’s the stitch pattern I’m using for the vest — I’ll post the directions if it comes out OK.)

I’ve been watching how quickly this vest is taking shape. But it’s a nonsense vest. It’s for show, for play. It’s not going to be WARM, any more than the “bows and arrows hat” is warm. It’s not “real” it’s a vague vacuous waste. To be real, it would need to be re-done entirely (and probably in a different yarn).

I tried “rapid application development” (RAD) tools a few times. Not RUBY on RAILS but equivalents in PHP. I’ve tried RAD for a real open-source project (my Contract Manager application, still in Alpha, but taking good shape right now — note I ripped it apart and started again without the RAD this time and it’s come much(!) further). And when it comes down to it, it’s just not robust. It’s not real. It takes shape very quickly, but it’s never going to keep you warm in the winter. Very much like quickly creating a magical chain mail vest from Freecycle freebie yarn for my son. I’m sitting in the car crocheting and suddenly the yarn and the work is the equivalent of Cake or Ruby on Rails, and it all comes together — it all makes sense.

I had a similar revelation today. It’s Saturday. Time for my own projects. Time for Laundry. Time to kick back and relax (yeah, right!). I got up, started working on a new quicky open-source idea, got distracted by Guy Kawasaki’s blog entry for online reviews, started looking into getting on Yelp to place reviews and see what it’s like, got distracted by Technocrati, and now I’m posting to my blog and doing blog upkeep.

My partner, who had to rush out to meet a friend today, called and asked what I was up to. I said something like “I’m being me!” Huh? “I keep getting tangented — it’s like when you start a new clause with an open bracket in a program and you forget to close it. Eventually you’re nested 10 IF statements (etc) deep and you forgot how you got there, and what you need to do to close out your brackets.”

When actually programming, both my partner and I start out every new “clause” in a program by typing the open and close brackets — even in HTML I do this — then backspacing to type the contents. “if ()” hit backspace then type. It doesn’t mean you’ll remember everything you wanted to do in every level of the loop if it gets deep, but it does mean that you won’t get nasty errors — just bugs

I wish I could do that in real life. I have a program to finish — I have gotten most of the laundry READY but not run any loads yet, I would like to go out, I need to check the mailbox, and I want to work on getting something going (maybe a newsletter to my clients) so people give my business good reviews on a variety of websites, so I can request referrals, and so I can return the favors for them. Oy vey! It’s Saturday, so I think the laundry then the mail come first.

I’ve been busy this month, but as I always say “This month’s work is next month’s money.” Whether a 15 day billing cycle or a 30 day billing cycle, with or without a late fee, and so on, by the time the job is done and billable, and then by the time you get the payment and take it to the bank, it’s next month.

Last month was really rough. That means this month I’m terribly poor. I’ve gotten at least 3 new awesome clients, all giving me repeat work, and all paying me on-time. But there’s still this cash flow problem.

So here’s how the day goes: If I don’t have a morning business networking meeting, my 6am to 9am slot is taken by email, breakfast, and catching up on news and potential work. If I have a project that has loose strings, I tie them. Ship out something I said I would have on their desk by morning. Surprise a client with something done ahead of schedule — those are the best. Sometimes something inspirational came up while I was asleep and begs for my attention. This month I actually get to sleep in — my son’s at my mom’s house way far out of state, so I can sleep til 7:30 if I don’t have a morning business meeting.

From 9am-12pm I return calls, do job intake as needed, follow up on people answering their morning email, send out invoices, catch up on accounting work, work on billable projects due by the afternoon, etc.

Sometimes around 1pm I have a business lunch with someone. Other times, I take a long lunch break since I was up since 6am and I’ve hit a 6 hour mark for working during the day.

At 2pm I check the mail. This is the important part of this rant.

From 2-5 I’m doing billable projects, answering phone calls from late risers, and checking the news feeds again.

Now, back to 2pm — when school is in session, more like 2:30pm, when my son gets home. The mail comes around or before 2. I think. No one really can tell if or when the mail is going to come. Or when. Sometimes it’s here around noon. Sometimes it’s a little late. But most days if we check for mail at 2-2:30pm it’s here. It’s my one chance for exercise every day. About 1/10 mile round trip walk to the mailbox.

Today the mail isn’t here. The mailbox is empty. My wallet is filled with cobwebs, the banks are about to send me threatening letters, every bill under the sun is about to come due, and I had to beg my utility provider to PLEASE waive my late fee. I open the creaky door to look again. Empty. A third time? Yep, that mailbox sure is empty. I stand in disbelief squinting against the sun and look down the block. Surely the postal person is coming. Late over a latte or ice cream? If there are packages, the postal worker is here around 10am — other days before 2pm.

How do you deal with an empty mailbox at 2pm. 2pm is perfect — enough time to drive to the bank with that check that finally came. 2:30 is pushing it. At 2pm if the mailbox is empty, you have to run back to the mailbox at 2:30pm, wallet, keys for the car, checkbook in hand — ready to flee to get to the bank by 3.

I hate being desperate.

But what if it’s still empty at 2:30pm?

You begin to wonder what’s going on. There are a billion outstanding invoices. People say the check’s on it’s way (it went to the accounting department, it was sent…), but I get enough junk mail, don’t I? Why would it be EMPTY? The days where it’s all junk mail, at least I know the mail CAME. Maybe the answer is more junk mail. Publisher’s Clearing House? I was just thinking to tell the credit bureaus to stop giving my info out to credit card agencies looking to get me in debt to them. Save your paper! but now I can’t tell whether the mail came today or not. Is there a check? I have this daily Schrodinger’s cat syndrome when I open my mailbox — is my bank account doomed to die or will it be resurrected for another week? Maybe I can convince the postwoman to leave me a post-it saying “Sorry, none for you today!”

I worry that maybe someone’s beating me to the mailbox. An ol’ game of bait and switch. That’s not today’s mail — it’s yesterday’s mail. I’ll get today’s mail tomorrow.

Maybe I can blame it on my kids. It’s all my kid’s fault. If I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t have bills, and I wouldn’t need to charge people money — I’d do it all for free and liberate the world from lame static websites in the name of the tech revolution! Somewhere there’s a flaw in that logic, but in my panic over my bank balance, I guess I’m not thinking clearly.

This month’s work is next month’s money. I’ll be bluddy rich next month. Rolling in it. I better have enough work next month to get me through October.

In the meantime, what’s the best source of snail mail spam?

2:30pm. It’s still empty.