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/

[tags]clients,bias,education,family,humor,identity,inspiration,life[/tags]

I’ve been working on the Orange Environment website, and one perk is that I’ll have a table at the Earth Day event in Warwick on April 21st.

I’m a very conscientious person, so I have to scrutinize myself to justify being there. When people walk up to my table and ask me why a web designer is there at a booth on Earth Day — what can I say to defend my “position”?

• My office runs either on sunlight from a big bay window or compact fluorescent lights
• I use 100% post-consumer paper
  • loosleaf for client notes

  • multi-use printer/copier paper for my laserjet
• when I get mail or fliers that are only used on one side, I keep them by the phone for quick note jotting.
• when a paper is used on both sides, I recycle it (sometimes shredded first)
• I have a home office only
  • the same heat for my home is heat for my office (the office room adjoins the kitchen; it’s a one-zone house, but at only 830 sqft it should be!)

  • I save on auto fuel & auto wear-n-tear
• I drive a used but still energy-efficient car for business & personal use (1994 honda civic at up to 33mpg)
• I turn the printer off when not in use
• I work by sunlight whenever possible
• I leave any extra computer equipment off whenever possible so only one computer is running the majority of the time
• I use wash-n-wear clothes for the most part
  • the washer is a high-efficiency front-loader rated exceptionally for water efficiency

  • the dryer has a dampness sensor thus is self-regulating
  • I use a scent and dye free detergent
  • I don’t use a fabric softener
• I use refurbished toner cartridges
• we have a duplex printer, and I print on both sides of the page for any multi-page documents
• whenever possible I print 2-up duplex, for reference documentation, because I don’t mind reading tiny print, but I do mind wasting paper
• I save the plastic &/or cellophane windows of envelopes I receive for craft projects (they make great filling for homemade cat toys!)

There are still areas in which I’m a culprit, however. I could (always) do better. We occasionally use whiteboards in my office, and I’m not really believing the EAP certification regarding the inks. I want desperately to know if there’s such a thing as soy laser toner cartridges, or any other alternatives that won’t turn the laser printer into a hunk of waste. I could use dryer balls, and I’m considering that (if they make the dryer even a tad more efficient it’s worth a 1 time expense). I could scold my roommate for leaving the bathroom light on. I printed up letterhead I could hardly afford, it came out lousy, now I have a ton of letterhead that shouldn’t have been printed in the first place, and should have been on recycled stock — live & learn. That letterhead is now the back of any one-page fliers I produce as handouts.

So I guess instead of feeling guilty, I could try to relax and realize that there are a bunch of things about me that cause me to stand out in a crowd of web design/programming professionals that could be considered when positioning myself in the “green” community as well: I’ve been an herbalist for about 15 years, I’m an Interfaith Minister, Reiki master, & Shaman. I guess having a booth isn’t such a bad idea after all!

The new Orange Environment website went live today, celebrating 25 years of rigorously keeping an eye on the environment. They have upcoming events – March 1st there’s a free conference for farms/agriculture, and on April 21st they’re celebrating Earth Day in Orange County, NY.

Please help this terrific non-profit survive another 25 years!

Slashdot rejected my question submission, so I’ll write about it in my blog and see if anyone is interested in answering it.

I have insurance, but I want exactly the RIGHT insurance. My insurance agent says that what I have may very well cover what I do, but is hunting high and low for insurance that will explicitly rather than implicitly cover both the design AND the programming portions of my business without making me broke. All she’s finding are either policies with specific exclusions for web programming, or policies that are exceptionally expensive.

The problem is that every programmer is being lumped together. That means that programmers working on the stock exchange big bucks applications with billions of dollars in transactions a day at risk are being lumped in with smalltime web programming outfits like mine. I’m a programmer on the PmWiki project, and I create custom plug-ins for PmWiki for clients before contributing what I can back to the project, or accept bounties for plug-ins made directly available to the general public. I’ve also made alterations to other plug-ins for other open-source projects, and I’m creating an open source project or three of my own.

Now, I am not belittling the risks to my customers. I know that their business is everything to them, and that’s why I’m looking for insurance. But I don’t play with the big boys and my customers are not forking over the big bucks to cover the overhead I would have to pass along to my customers to cover the big insurance policies.

If I’m installing ZenCart, and ZenCart has a bug, am I covered? I never touched the back-end of the program, but of course every application — open source or otherwise — has inherent bugs and risks. I trust open source because the bugs are squished in a timely manner and I don’t have to pay for upgrades. Would all those policies with programming exclusions cover this?

When a policy excludes programming, I see there being a really fuzzy line between “web design” and “web programming”. Certainly there’s a point at which something is very clearly web programming, but is it programming if I create a script that processes a webform to email the results to my client? Is it programming if I’m creating JavaScript DHTML DOM alterations? What about when I’m working on a design for a Smarty template? There’s pseudocode and even PHP code in there, but it’s all about the design.

In any case, what I want to know from my fellow collaborators in the world is:

What, if anything, do you do about insurance for your web application or programming company?

Do you have any suggestions for underwriters for open source programmers?

If you aren’t insured, have you even considered being insured?

[tags]insurance,programming,open source,custom programming,web application programming,expenses,design,legal,money,slashdot[/tags]

Today my son asked me about whether he could mix milk and honey. I hear about the land of milk and honey, there are dozens of blogs named milk and honey about cooking, cookbooks called milk and honey, a honey cookbook that I have on my shelf, and a medieval recipe book. None of them have a single milk and honey recipe — unless you’re looking for soap or enemas.

So I put myself to the task. Here’s the recipe:

4c milk (skim, part-skim or whole)
1/4 cup honey

heat milk over medium heat (I used skim)
slowly add honey while stirring until dissolved
(coat measuring cup with a little milk to help the honey pour, or rinse with warmed milk to get out the remainder of honey.)
remove from heat before it boils (I removed it before it even scalded)

Makes 8 half-cup servings — note that it’s like candy. A full 8oz cup would probably be a lot.

This is VERY SWEET but it’s also REALLY good. If you don’t like things candy-sweet try less honey or add an extra cup of milk. Organic milk and raw fresh honey would probably be great — I’d just remove it from the heat ASAP to keep the honey and milk from losing too much of their vital nutrients to the heat. Adding honey to cold milk doesn’t do the same thing at all; the honey pools on the bottom of the cup.

I’m drinking it hot, and I’m chilling the rest to try it cold. My son is very happy with it. It feels like it would soothe a very sore throat.

May make a good substitute for eggnog for people who don’t like the idea of drinking eggs I didn’t try adding any spices to it, and I’m sure that using whole milk would make it thicker and of course more fattening (thus probably tasting even better). If I try adding spices I’ll add them to the comments.

Note that milk and honey baths are used to prepare livestock for county fairs and shows. LOL

[tags]recipe,milk,honey,family,candy[/tags]

I bought fresh spinach and feta cheese at Sam’s Club in Middletown. The plan was to make Spinakopita, one of my son’s favorites — I was going to make it with pie dough. I have a clue what dealing with filo is like — so it was “spinakopita” — I know it’s not, but who cares as long as my son eats it?

Then the spinach scare. Ok, so I throw out the spinach. Even though it was “organic” and probably didn’t go near any other spinach — with so many people in the hospital and someone dead, it’s not worth spinakopita-ish to make everyone in my family sick.

So then what? I have a pound of feta and no place to go. So I bought a LOT of fresh broccoli. About 4 florettes. I steamed it. I thawed 2 pie crusts.

I cut up about 3 cloves garlic fine.

I didn’t have a yellow onion so I used about 1/8 of a hefty red onion. — about 3-4 tbs when chopped fine.

I fried up the garlic & onion in olive oil, tossed some crumbled up feta in briefly — probably a good 1/2-3/4 cup. Only for about a minute or less — I removed it from the heat when the cheese started melting a little — just enough to make some creamy oil in the pan, but not to make a gooey mess.

I burned a finger from the steamer — that is definitely a prerequisite!

Then I used tongs to hold pieces of broccoli on the cutting board (they’re HOT!) and chop them up with my handy veggie cleaver — cutting up the florets and stems into tiny chunks and a bunch of bittie flowers. I tossed this in with the stuff from the pan in a bowl, mixed it up and made some very sloppy loaves with quarters from the pie crust — I cut the crust dough into quarters, then rolled it out thinner with a rolling pin. You may want to cut them, ball them up, re-roll them and make loaves like empanadas. I was short on time. If you seal them well, take a sharp knife and put slits in the top.

Now I am waiting for them to cook so I can eat them. I’m trying cooking them at 375 even though pie recipes cook hotter.

…

Mmmmm — I waited until they were crisp but barely brown, and they’re YUMMY! They also passed the son test.

Enjoy!
[tags]recipe, spinach, broccoli, garlic, onions, pastry[/tags]

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.

[tags]family, rant, humor, life, interruptions, personal, prices, truth, spec work[/tags]

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.

[tags]rant,money,clients,time,humor[/tags]

Mowing lawns could be hazardous to your health.

Take a somewhat out-of-shape person, give them insufficient liquids, 85 degree (Farenheit) or higher temperatures in the late day sun, about an acre of lawn and a mower and you have a recipe for disaster.

Make that person pig-headedly stubborn about getting the job done in one continuous grueling bout of sheer testosterone and you have heatstroke.

I’m not writing to extoll the virtues or dangers of heatstroke. I want to leave that to the experts.

I want to extoll the virtues of natural lawn mowers.

No more gas guzzling noise polluting mulch making hay spewing 1.5 horsepower rack-n-pinion steering (*cough*) bag-toting machine fury!

No. Just a little fur, some neighborly tolerance, and patience.

I have several lawn mowers. Woodchucks. Rabbits. Deer. If it weren’t for the sheer overwhelming SIZE of the lawn, woefully seeded with absolutely useless grass, I probably wouldn’t need a lawn mower at all. Give me ground ivy, chickweed, mint, wood sorrel, plantain, dandelion and cleavers any day over 100% useless indigestible grass. While we must have grass, since it’s not my lawn, then at least we have our natural lawn mowers. I even have photos — I’ve just been too bloody lazy to put my photos into the blog. I have to actually get off my butt and do it

These lawn mowers have many myriad benefits:

• they’re eating what most people hate anyway. The woodchuck and rabbits specialize in the little plants between the blades of grass, like dandelions — the ones the mechanical mower misses anyway. The deer eats young grass — enough deer and there’s no grass to mow in the first place!
• instant composting. As these critters graze, they leave behind yesterdays morsels in a ready-to-use form. Bonus: herbivores don’t have i-coli bacteria. The compost is ready for your soil, worms, and all other manners of nitrogen-hungry life
• They’re cheap: (what!! No nested lists GRRRR)
• You don’t have to pay at the pump
• you don’t need to buy or maintain machinery
• you don’t add extra wear to your car fetching mowers, oil, gas, parts or taking it in for repairs
• you no longer need to buy fertilizer
• You don’t pollute the environment
• When these lawn mowers break down, they biodegrade quickly — no need to get them hauled away in the trash and have them take up room in a landfill
• they replace themselves
• they provide hours of amusement and possibly food and exercise to your pets

Anyway, here’s a billion blessings to our lawn mowers — they’re welcome here any time — as long as they stay the HECK out of my garden.

[tags]critters, environment, grass, dandelions, plantain, wood sorrel, gratitude, humor, woodchuck, rabbit, deer, rant, expenses, garden, lawn, recycling[/tags]

I’m personally and professionaly one of the NO!SPEC rebels. I believe that professionals should not hand out creatives (work, sketches, anything that takes substantial time or could be stolen and produced by any kid with an art program) for any client’s job without being under contract to be paid for the work, deposits or down payments optional. This extends to contest work, where dozens of designers are invited to submit finished works in the hope that they will be picked out as the one good enough for the reward.

I’ve been reading and commenting on NO!SPEC articles for a couple months, and now I come across an interesting post on Craigslist:

Date: 2006-07-12

Carnegie Hall Seeks Original Art for Its Playbill Covers!

THEME “Music as a fundamental expression of the human spirit”–using Carnegie Hall’s 2006-2007 season as inspiration. Please visit carnegiehall.org/subscribe for complete season details.

ELIGIBILITY Open to all enrolled students (valid identification required)

STYLE AND MEDIUM Any style and any medium, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and computer-generated art

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS jpeg, tiff, or pdf digital format only; file size not to exceed 2 mb; e-mail to artcontest@carnegiehall.org

PRIZES Each of 10 selected entrants will receive $500 and 2 tickets to a performance at Carnegie Hall.

Deadline: August 31, 2006

Selected artists must be living, reside in the United States, provide their Social Security numbers, and sign a release for the use of their work.Winning works will appear on the covers of Carnegie Hall’s concert program books throughout the 2006-2007 season. Please note that while we encourage all forms of artistic expression, some controversial subject matter may not be suitable for publication. Submissions should not be literal representations of musicians appearing at Carnegie Hall. Also note that while artists will retain ownership of their original works, the photographic representation of each winning work will be considered a work made for hire for The Carnegie Hall Corporation (CHC), and CHC will own all copyrights and other rights in it, including, without limitation, the exclusive right to adapt it and to use it for any purpose and in any medium now known or devised in the future, perpetually and throughout the world.

no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: $500 and 2 tickets to a performance at Carnegie Hall

This contest is of course a contest. Carnegie Hall is looking for dozens of people to pour their time into a project, and looking to reward someone and use their work. Only this time there are some key differences. It’s open to students only; not many speculative work contests are only open to valid students. There are 10 prizes — that certainly increases the chances of winning, and means that it’s less likely that there will have been ties for first place and the winner chosen by the flip of a coin. Knowing PlayBills, it’s possible there will be 10 covers printed, and all the winners’ pieces distributed to a very mixed audience (and making a terrific portfolio piece). The prize is pretty fair — they’re giving out a total of $5000 to 10 students — and how many students couldn’t use $500?

Other interesting things to note: It’s mixed media, and there aren’t many chances for students to get that type of money for a media of their choice. It’s not a venue where the student would be needed for branding advice, or future support, unlike logo or website design contests — they need 10 single photos/pictures to print for the program book covers. The work produced by the entrants would be able to be generic and useful for other purposes (unlike a logo or web design).

I’m not saying it’s a good contest; I find it difficult to judge this one. What I am saying is that of the contests I’ve seen, this one is different, more fair, unlikely to hurt Carnegie Hall in the way that most speculative contests I have seen are eventually going to bite the company holding the contest.

Would anyone care to comment on it?

[tags]activism, spec work, competition, rant, time[/tags]