Month: February 2015

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Ahhhh That felt good!

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Sometimes trying to do work for friends is just not a good idea. I always feel guilty asking for what I’m worth and because I feel guilty I don’t ask.

The practical result of this little mind game is that I do good work, but always end up being taken advantage of a bit. You know, $80 keyboards, and $40 spools of cable add up. But I just gave the shit away…

That’s a problem that I’ve got to get over. Part of it will be the absolute certainty on my part that I am worth every freakin penny I charge for whatever I do.

I need to make sure as well that I’m billing for everything that gets left behind as part of the job. “OH, your keyboard is broken… well it can be replaced for $20 or you can have my really nice $80 keyboard for $80.

I’d been asked to take a look at some data and see if I could present the material in a better way. I said, “Sure” without even thinking about it. 

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That was mistake number 1. I should have thought about it, I know these folks and I know how one of them thinks.

Mistake number 2  I shouldn’t have offered to do anything until we’d discussed MY PRICE!

It’s about time that I stopped being a charitable organization. My Price was never discussed and I find that really odd given the circumstances.

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Mistake number 3 was that I should have called a halt to my doing anything when I wasn’t getting cooperation gaining access to the data I was supposed to evaluate. Instead I got directed to an incomplete website and was sorta left with nothing.

Mistake number 4 was not calling an end to the whole mess when suddenly I had a deadline to finish. I still hadn’t been given the materials I’d requested to make the evaluation in the first place.

In fact there had been an email wherein I’d been told that my friends had been sidetracked for several weeks. I took this to mean that they really weren’t committed to getting this little project off the ground.

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In this particular case, I’ve got other clients that are PAYING and know what the heck in general they want and are willing to work with me to deal with questions that come up.

You know what? Cash talks!

I just threw in the towel on the undefined unestimated project.

Sure I’m leaving money on the table, but you know what? I think it was going to be a never ending, a.k.a never satisfied project.  

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I’m cutting my losses, and calling it SKOOLING!

I feel pretty good about it. Now I don’t have this weird undefined thing looming over my head. It’s helped a great deal with my ability to focus.

I’ve moved on to a challenging project where I can see the $$ at the end of the tunnel and I’m learning something new too.

 

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Well, the other half is running Yosemite…

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The other half decided to update their computer yesterday. I was a bit surprised, but it was a full moon and all.

Thankfully the upgrade went well and I wasn’t needed except for one or two minor bumps in the road.

I did babysit the installation of the patches and updates to various Apple applications after the primary upgrade was completed.

Today, I’m getting notices about shared calendar changes pretty continuously but I take that as a sign that the system is working and the other half is transitioning as much as possible off Google.  The other half will never be free of Google because the corporate calendar is hosted on Google, but it’s nice to see ‘em giving it a good ‘ol collage try.

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Technically the other half could have made this transition a while ago when we dumped the Android phones. Better late than never I suppose. I think the Yosemite feature that is going to get the biggest workout is texting.  Yosemite handles the normal iMessage stuff of course. Additionally, Yosemite when combined with an iPhone handles routing of SMS messages, so right from your computer keyboard you can continue texting all those folks who are sending  you SMS messages using their Androids. Instead of fondling your phone for half your messages and using your full sized keyboard for the other half of your instant messages.

My texting volume has quadrupled since I upgraded to Yosemite.

I really like that unless something is wrong (like my phone is on the guest network and my computer is on my internal network) I can make and receive phone calls via my computer even while the phone is in another room. The down side is that I find myself wondering where the hell I left my phone.

I suspect that particular problem will be duplicated now. 

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No, we’ve not upgraded our phones to iPhone 6. I’m thinking that we’re going to wait a while longer and that we’ll do the phones and the iPads at the same time. My guess is that our need to upgrade will be driven by the adoption rate of ApplePay. When that becomes ubiquitous at all the stores, and gas stations where we shop then we’ll make the move. A big driving factor will be Costco, the phone upgrade process will, no doubt,  be initiated on the fateful day the other half comes home and says, “Costco is taking Apple Pay now.” 

As I think about it, Costco would be well served if they could use the NFC to communicate member numbers AND payment information at the cash registers. It might speed up the whole checkout process and Members could handle renewal on the fly if their membership was due.

Ooops, another block of calendar changes just blasted in…

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I just realized, I’m going to be able to disconnect from Google completely! Since the other half is moving to Apple Calendar for our shared information, I no longer need to maintain a gmail address to subscribe to the Google calendar. Yipeee!

I remember when Google’s motto was “Don’t Be Evil”.

Don’t get me wrong, as a search engine, they’re awesome! I’m just not too sure I like that they’re seemingly everywhere these days. It’s starting to seem a lot like big corporation evil on the scale of “Big Oil”

No, I’m not deluding myself. Apple has exactly the same potential It’s just come down to choosing which poison I’m willing to take.

From my perspective, everything Apple pretty much works seamlessly together.

The difficulty for me was in the management of the exceptions. My contacts list for my Android phone was on Google’s servers, that sometimes properly, and often improperly transferred to my computer, but wouldn’t transfer to Outlook without glitching all to hell and gone. So whatever integration I might have enjoyed between Microsoft Office components was a pipedream.

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Contrasting that experience with my current situation. My contacts, calendar, email, word processing etc are all present and accounted for on my iPhone, iPad, and computer. What really makes it amazing for me is that using Yosemite and the latest IOS I can start something on any device and complete it on any other device.

That’s cool, and I use it all the time without thinking about it.

It has been said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

That being said, I like the Apple Magic.