It’s day something, 19 21, that’s it. I decided to leave off the days from now on, since it seems my finances are stable again. Starting my own business isn’t ever going to be finished though, so I can’t say my job search is over.

Right now I am doing work with LifeSnapz, and have several roleplaying game writing contracts on deck. I am still looking at one full time employment opportunity, but I have at least one other possible large job that is definitely interesting. Note: Make that three others. Overall, I am really hoping to make this business work.

I am really enjoying being on my own with this. I still have some schedules set by other people, and I still need to meet those deadlines. The place that I work, and when I work though, are pretty much up to me. It is amazing how much I realized the commute and working in an office was taking out of me, now that I am not doing the 2-3 hours of commute a day, plus the hours in the office. I also get to see my kids a lot more, big huge plus there.

If any of you out there are needing Rich Internet Application (RIA), Flex/Flash, or web development work done, contact me through the comments if you don’t know my normal contact info. I’ll get some contact information or a form up soon. Just realized that I don’t have that up.

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So my interview is probably postponed until January 5th or after due to the holidays and people being out of the office. This isn’t really a surprise, since I have been through this part of the year when I was contracting before. Since I have the one freelance contract right now, I’ll be fine until then.

Note the nugget of wisdom above for other contract and freelance workers. December, especially the last two weeks of December, is the worst time to find work over the entire year. I suppose that this year for many people that it is doubly so. So if you have the chance to grab a contract or three that will last you into January, do so early.

Here’s an almost disaster turned into a great customer service story. My machine is an HP Pavilion notebook, a dv7 series for those that are interested. I have had it for several months now, and earlier last week, the AC adapter started making strange noises. Today, I thought it would be a good time to call HP service to see what they would do about it. While on the call, the adapter stopped charging my notebook, and I couldn’t get it to work again. (I have since the call, but then, no power.) Let me just say that the HP support person was very helpful, almost too self deprecating, and she was quite efficient, even if her computer systems were slow. I was on the phone just about 20 minutes from the start of the call, to the end where they took my address and were shipping me the new AC adapter. A fairly short, and definitely productive, call and I will have the new AC adapter on December 26th via FedEx. The computer is under warranty, and I was thinking that they would need me to cross ship the old adapter, and so did the support person, but as we both found out, I don’t need to. I keep the one that is acting up, and get the new one later this week. Not that I am going to want to use the old one, but in case the new one shorts out, I can go to the old one for backup. Overall, I would continue buying HP products. A few years ago, I would not have said that. Good job HP.

Happy holidays!

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Hello again,

So yesterday I posted a question of do I keep up the hunt or not. Sleeping on it, I realized that I was not as comfortable with my current status to stop the hunt. Today, I am going to follow up with my recruiters and see where things stand. The interview was postponed, or so I assume, since I have not heard from the recruiter who was setting it up (bad form there, always keep your clients up to date).

I am going to take a step back though, since I have my freelance project that I need to get cracking on. Today will be mostly a work day, to get that project really started. I have a decent proof of concept working, I now need to get it past the prototype stage.

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Hi peeps!

Today I had yet another interview, and it went quite well. I have already been informed that they wanted me back for a second interview as soon as tomorrow. Though given the weather, and the fact that the recruiter called me earlier and said Monday was also possible, I am thinking it will be Monday.

The opportunity sounds like something I have been looking to do. It is about 50% coding/development, and with the other 50% being management of the teams, external resources, and client interactions. Definitely something I have done before, and also enjoyed doing. Lots of new development, since it is an advertising agency, and the projects are more short term. They use Subversion, which is cool, since I find Subversion to be a very very good thing for version control and asset management.

What else? Most of the Christmas shopping is done, and I have started on the freelance project, though mostly the planning, since coding it was a bit difficult with all the running around I had to do today. Oh, and for anyone wanting to find 10 South Lasalle in Chicago, Google Maps puts it about 10 blocks north of where it actually is. So I got very very cold walking around for a half hour trying to find the place I was needing to be. Good thing I had planned on getting lost. Though I hadn’t planned on getting that lost, or on being outside that long. Brrr.

Tomorrow, coding, and probably either staying inside, or heading to Panera. Depends on the weather where I do the coding.

I apologize for the lateness of the posting, the start of the interviewing was at 9:30am, so I had to be out of the house by 7:30am to make the right train.

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