New Project?
Earlier today I sent an email to my VP informing him that today is my last day on the project I've been working on for the past 20 months. This means I will no longer be chargeable. In consulting this is called being "on the beach" or "on the bench". I prefer "beach". In addition, I told he though I'm working on some non-chargeable business development proposal work, that I should probably resign if I don't find a chargeable project by the end of the month. He's taking today off though so I don't expect a reply until next week. Of course, about an hour after sending him the email, I got an email from a lead on a project here in the Seattle area. They say my skills match perfectly for what their looking for, and I'm local too. So they seem really interested in having me work on that project. Oh great! I think I was actually hoping there wouldn't have to be a decision to leave the company and I would just have to leave because there wasn't anything for me to do. So next week I'll meet with them to find out what they plan on having me do. I think I'll probably try the project for a month, but if it doesn't meet the criteria I mentioned before (short commute, good project, passion for the work), then I think I'll have to quit. I hate to join a project and then quit a month later, but that's the way it goes. I'll have a better feel for it next week. Monday's a holiday, and I'll be busy all weekend with my parents visiting so my next post will be on Tuesday. Have a good holiday!
- posted by Drew @ 5:10 PM  

 
Old School
I've been working on creating a site for me "day job" the past many days. And in trying to keep up with the latest web design recommendations I've learned that writing HTML tables to lay out a web page is now considered bad. The thing to do these days is use CSS DIV tags and the like to make your site look real purdy. So for those that haven't a clue what I'm talking about here's a quick explanation. To layout a web page you used to create a tables (or many of them) so you could place the pictures and text in just the right place. Kinda like this simple table:

Stuff Here

Other Stuff Here

So this was the old school way to do it. Now you're supposed to use cascading style sheets (CSS). This technique lets you define specific area on the page and then apply different attributes to them. Kinda like this:



So here's the problem: Style sheets don't work the same in every browser. What might look one way in Internet Explorer will look different than in Netscape, and what looks one way in Netscape 4.0 will look different in Netscape Navigator 7.2. There are tricks to make things work in most browsers but I just don't think it's worth it if I can accomplish what I want using tables and not alienate customers on my sites. So I'm sticking with the old-school tables. This might make me look out of practice to those that actually analyze my code, but for most users, I don't think they're going to care.
- posted by Drew @ 4:33 PM  

 
Update: Extra Work
So I got word today that my offer for doing the redesign for $550 was accepted. Now I just need to get my company formed so it can receive the funds instead of it being counted as my own personal income. And on that note, it sounds like my plan will be to form an LLC in Indiana (since my father can provide some free legal services there for me), and then I'll register as a foreign LLC in the state of Washington. This will require a quick (and hopefully not too expensive) consultation with a local lawyer here in Seattle. I'll probably look through lawyers.com to find someone in a 2-3 person practice nearby. My good friend Alan also sent a note recommending that I check into bizfilings.com. Hopefully I can get the ball rolling on all of this by early next week.
- posted by Drew @ 11:41 PM  

 
Extra Work
I got an offer to do a site redesign as a side project today. It's for a site that I threw together early in the year. So the site is wheeltechnology.com. I wrote about it in this post. And I'm posting my first draft of what I might make the new site look like. After some prodding I was able to get some information out of my friend that about the most that I could ask for would be about $500. Not enough if I were doing freelance work as my career, but $500 can help with the expenses of getting my plans off the ground. Plus this has a chance to lead to some easy follow-on work. Plus though this is a redesign job, which could take some extra time, it's only a brochure site. The job also has the benefit that the owners just want something that looks good and does the job, but aren't going to be picky and request a lot of revisions (which is why I would normally charge by the hour). More on another opportunity related to this tomorrow.
- posted by Drew @ 12:22 AM  

 
Decisions
I was talking with an old friend on the phone last week and I mentioned something about work. "You're still working?" he asked. The answer is yes. I'm still keeping my full-time job, even though I've moved from Houston to Seattle. At least for now... As a consultant I had been working remotely from Houston for a client for 8 months already, so working from Seattle isn't any different (except for the time difference). A few weeks before leaving Houston I meet with my VP to let him know about my upcoming move and to discuss what my options were. I was certain that there was only one option: wrap things up and resign prior to my move. So it turns out that they wanted me to continue working on my existing project until the end of August to allow ample time transition my work over to someone else. In addition, my VP said he'd help me find another project and another practice within our Seattle office. I'm itching to start working on my own company on a full-time basis, but I've decided not to turn anything down until I know what's available. So if there's a great project available to me in Seattle, then perhaps I won't resign. But I'm going to be really picky with any projects that come up. No weekly travel, no government clients, no long commute, no incompetent project leadership, no impossible schedules and no poorly planned solutions. If I'm sticking with my current employer I need to not just enjoy what I'm doing, but I need to be passionate about it. Passion about my work is something I've lacked for almost 4 years now and it's something I realize is most important about any work I'm doing. So here's the dilemma: I've been told that there are a few opportunities in the Seattle area for which I might be a good fit, but I haven't been able to get many details about the projects nor a commitment that I can be placed on the projects. There's only a week and a half left on my current project, and I'm sure my VP will want to know what the plan is going forward. So do I propose going non-chargeable (aka going "on the beach") for a few weeks or a month to give time to see what develops in terms of these other projects becoming available (and therefore continue getting a paycheck)? Or, is it time to tender my resignation, stop getting a paycheck, and give up on the possibility of working on a local project? What makes this an even harder decision is that I just got an 8% pay increase. I'll have to decide on a plan within the next couple days.

- posted by Drew @ 2:27 PM