Monthly Archives: October 2013

Self-Employed Slacker

3:17 a.m.

It’s not the work that kills me, it’s the hours. If I were independently wealthy (hello Publisher’s Clearing House, did you get my address wrong AGAIN?) I’d still do most of what I do now. Just not quite as much of it… I love doing photography, and I do truly enjoy doing design work. But I’m not sure I’d be getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning to do it day after day. My customers’ deadlines are important to me, though, so I’ll do whatever I can to get the job done on time!

Now, where’s that coffee. I need another refill. It’s my day off today – I gotta get this stuff done so I can go slack off for an hour or three.

5:10 a.m.

Exporting some photos. It always ties my computer up for a few minutes.

I’m worried about Beloved Wifey. After the pneumonia last fall her health (which has always been precarious at best) took a turn for the worse. (Worser?) After months of illness, doctors, etc., our primary physician (who’s great!) and the Mayo finally got a handle on what’s been going on. Five or six weeks into her new meds, Wifey was doing better – well enough to go back to work. But yesterday she called me, “I think I’m coming down with something again.” And sure enough, this morning she’s as sick as ever again. Things move sooo quickly with her – yesterday morning she was fine, this morning she’s miserably ill.

Something ain’t right. I worry.

5:42 a.m.

I swear I’ve airbrushed the same “Exit” sign out of at least 30 photos this morning. In a dimly-lit reception hall those things glow like you wouldn’t believe. In the background of every “first dance” photo, there’s that silly Exit sign, merrily glowing away… Bah.

6:34 a.m.

This seems an awkward time for my computer to want to back things up, but whatevs.

Today is Halloween, my least favorite holiday. I don’t like the blood and gore, and I’ve never been a fan of spooky stuff. If society would be content with cute cartoons of pumpkins and children wearing sheets over their heads I’d be fine. But there’s all the icky stuff that goes along with the holiday – zombies, corpses, chainsaw massacres for “fun.” I guess I’m just not a fan of violence, or the ramifications thereof.

My favorite Halloween was about ten years ago (everything in my past was either “yesterday,” “a few months ago,” or “ten years ago” – I’m not into specifics). I was playing in a happy band and had a gig that night. I showed up to find that the singer had dressed as me. I laughed for quite a while, and to be honest it made me feel good that a friend thought enough of me to do that. That’s really my only fond Halloween memory.

Whoops, computer’s done backing up – back to work!

7:04 a.m.

Exporting photos of a wedding shoot. It’s not the self-doubt that bugs me so much as, well, the self-doubt. I’m never satisfied with my photos, but eventually I gotta quit tweaking them and give them to the customer…

Beloved Wifey is sleeping, the dogs are in their kennels whining – it’s almost breakfast time. I smell like old cabbage. I have about an hour to choose the top photos from this shoot and get them off to the developer, get a shower, feed the dogs, and gather my thoughts before the “It’s 8:05 a.m. and I just got the e-mail you sent me last night” rush. With luck Wifey will be able to get in to see the doctor this morning.

7:45 a.m.

As soon as these photos are done uploading I can go take a shower. I stink like nerd and my feet are cold.

8:46 a.m.

The Hippie Has Showered. Dogs are fed and back in their kennels for their morning nap. Wifey is getting ready for her doctor’s appointment. The wedding photos I’ve been working on the past few days are exporting and uploading and doing their various things. Time to make another pot of coffee and get a start on the day. I’m hoping to get some motion design work done, burn the wedding photos to disk if they finish exporting, design a patch for a biker friend, and get started on a website I promised a local church several weeks ago. If I’m lucky I’ll have time to start on another web design that needs done as well. (Sorry, don’t mean to bore you, I’m just sort of talking out loud here, planning my day.) I’m wanting to fix that pesky trim under my deck and fix the leak in the garage room too if I have time. Then I can chill for a bit.

9:01 a.m.

Shoot. I forgot today’s billing day. Everything else is on hold until that’s done. Gotta get the statements in the mail!

10:43 a.m.

Billing is done, just gotta trot the envelopes out to the mail. Wifey is at the doctor – with luck she’ll have some answers soon on what’s causing her current illness. The poor girl’s on so many medications already…

You know, those Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes Forms are TRICKY! I’d forgotten how stressful they make it. Gotta get that in the mail too. As blessed as we are, we could sure use a little cash infusion.

When I was a child, I always thought that the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes was a contest. I imagined they chose the neatest entry, the one where all the stamps were JUST right, perfectly straight and centered exactly in their appointed box. I still do, to be honest. Not that I’m persnickety or anything, but I got out a scissors and a ruler to make sure my stamps had perfectly straight edges.

I’m sure they’ll choose my form this year. I’m sure of it!

11:46 a.m.

[Redacted]

The deadline for three motion design ads has been moved up to noon tomorrow and I just took an informal contract for a CD cover design. I finished the photos I was working on this morning, now I just need to burn the DVDs for the customer – yay! The monthly billing has been figured up, printed, collated, enveloped, stamped, and is happily in the mailbox next to some other correspondence and my winning (I’m just positive!) Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes Entry.

12:15 p.m.

I love absolutely EVERYTHING about food. Love love love it. Except, well, choosing it. Or shopping. Or storing it. I’m not actually all that keen on preparing or cooking it, either. And I hate cleaning up afterwards.

12:21 p.m.

The dogs are unhappy about spending so much time in their kennels the past few days. I’m unhappy about muddy pawprints scampering through the house. Maybe I can teach the finicky cat to clean the dog’s paws before they come inside. Hmmm.

4:27 p.m.

I worked on some correspondence with some clients. (My motion design customer called – one of their clients couldn’t upload a file through an FTP server I’d set up for such eventualities. The guy called – it showed up as “Los Angeles Area” on my cell phone, but he assured me it was “Hollywood,” in a very clipped New Zealand accent. Seemed like a nice guy. Couldn’t understand a word he said. I’m looking forward to seeing his work, though. Hollywood has a lot more money and resources to spend on motion design than rural Iowa. Ten to one says that the designers here in the Midwest can hold their own against West Coast designers any day of the week – if we’re provided the same amount of time and given the resources.)

Eventually Beloved Wifey noticed I was still tapping away at the computer and kicked me out. “Here, you,” she said, “take dis beer und go outside und play mit de doggies. You stink like computer geek, und you haven’t seen the sun in veeks.” Und so, thus endeth my narrative for the nonce. I shall go outside und play, then I may come back inside and play my bass guitar (if I can find it) for a bit, then go to bed.

Life is, indeed, good. I’m happy to work hard in order to have a happy Wifey who cares for me. Good good good.

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Awk!

The Asian Beetles are swarming! And I’m not talking about Korean folks driving VWs – I’m talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of little red bugs all all swarming our happy little home, all trying to find their way in for the winter. And the swarm is just beginning – I imagine it will be much worse in a few hours…

We do have a pest control company that comes out a couple times a year to spray our house. The little buggy bugs will soon perish – hopefully outside!

When we first moved here, just three winters ago, we had Asian Beetles way, way bad. Without exaggeration, I’d go through the house two or three times a day with our “handi-vac” thingy, vacuuming bugs up. There were specific spots where they’d congregate – around the windows, on the ceiling in our laundry room, by the tub upstairs. I’d quit often empty the vacuum bag in the toilet three or four times a day and flush thousands of beetles to their watery little graves.

In other news…

WordPress sucks because I’m stupid. And, this rules:

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A Wednesday in Late October

Thank You To…

Apple Computers

I’d like to do a big shout out to Apple Computers for making me change my AppleID password so often that I have absolutely no clue what it is. I’d also like to thank them for making me remember my iCloud password at random times even though (as far as I know) I don’t use iCloud.

Adobe Software

Adobe Software has won a special place in my heart for allowing a breach of security and having my financial information stolen – and not telling me about it for five weeks. Now I have a new credit/debit card, new numbers to memorize, and I have to go reconfigure ALL my monthly automatic withdrawals… I’m happy they told me, and I’m happy the bank gave me a new card. But I’m unhappy that it will take me hours and hours to get everything sorted out again – time I don’t have.

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Random Thoughts for the Day

Good doggy

Burning sticks is interesting when you have a Golden Retriever nearby.

She’s always trying to help Papa. Unfortunately she was trying to help Papa by bringing Papa the sticks he dropped in that big smokey pile… Even when Papa goes inside.

I happened to glance out the window to see a branch (about the size of your arm) on our wooden deck, merrily burning away, leaving a nice scorch mark for me to worry about. The scorch mark matches the burned hole in our yard where she dropped the other burning branch…

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Near Riot Conditions

Facebook crashed early this Monday morning, striking terror into millions of users who are now faced with the reality of actually having to work today. Hundreds of thousands of Americans check their Google + accounts for the first time in nine months…

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Back at it? Perhaps?

Hello, blog. I’ve missed you. It’s been a while.

This post is probably the most boring I’ve ever written, but it’s a bit of a test. A new platform, new I/O, new environment, it’s all new.

Years ago I tried to start a blog without really knowing that’s what I was doing. I was trying to do things the hard way – I’d write an article on the front page of my website, archive the previous post by hand, try to update all the links manually… It was a mess. At the time I was working in the art department of a local print shop, and was responsible for typesetting and designing the newsletter for the Siouxland Senior Center. I remember the day the newsletter’s editor brought in that month’s articles – including one on blogging.

I had no idea…

Not only were other people doing the same thing I was, but there was software out there that did all the tricky parts! Astounding! And even more surprising, there was a whole community of folks out there, blogging on nearly every subject I could think of… My horizons expanded dramatically.

I signed up for a Blogger account because their logo was neater than Blogger’s main competitor, WordPress, and started writing. I’d go to work every morning and hope for a slow day. In odd moments between design jobs I’d zip out a sentence. By the end of the day I’d have a post ready to publish. Sometimes it was just a paragraph, other times a full-blown essay. I enjoyed not only the distraction and the artistic release, but much more importantly I enjoyed the people I met – all of whom I’m still connected with today through Facebook. I felt like I was part of the community, a virtual neighborhood.

I blogged for years, and enjoyed it massively. The opportunity to express my views and get feedback from my peers was priceless. But then two things happened in close succession that effectively ended my blogging.

The first thing was that I quit my job at the print shop and started my own little freelance company, HippieBoy Design. Suddenly instead of working eight hours a day with a few minutes each hour to peck away at an essay, now I was working 16 hours a day seven days a week to make ends meet.

The second thing was Facebook. It fit my new life perfectly – most of my blogging pals were also on Facebook, and it’s soooo much easier to jot one or two sentences a day in Facebook than it is to actually flesh out an entire blog post. And the feedback on a Facebook post is immediate, overwhelming, and massively addicting. When you write a full-blown well considered blog post, you’re lucky if ten people read it, and I considered getting six comments to be fantastic. On Facebook I can write a sentence about my breakfast that nearly a thousand folks will see and will get reactions from 50 people in a day.

So my beloved blog withered on the vine, unmourned by any but me.

Over the years, as my blog languished, I started to see more and more websites that were utilizing WordPress as a CMS solution. Eventually I designed a few websites in WordPress for customers, and configured several blogs for my customers. Each time I’d consider more and more seriously moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress. I liked the interface better, the versatility. But the technicalities of converting were daunting to me.

For the past eight or ten months I’d occasionally pull up my old blog and stare at it for a few moments, an idea for a post in mind. But it looked so outdated and clumsy to me that I couldn’t even think of writing. All I wanted to do was move my entire www.radloffs.net site over to WordPress and reconfigure and redesign everything – but I couldn’t bring myself to do that either! In my mind, I’m not allowed to work on personal projects if my customers aren’t seen to first. So the blog sat in the back of my mind.

A few days ago I mentioned my humdrum conundrum to college pal and blogger Allen Andersen. “I can convert it for you, no problem,” he said. “I like doing this sort of thing.” To be honest, I can’t imagine anyone liking that sort of thing at all – the coding, mental gymnastics, research, I hate all those things. I want to write silly essays, take pretty pictures, make pleasing designs, and annoy people with my bass guitar – not struggle with the mechanics of it all… So I was thrilled to hand the keys to Allen.

And I’m VERY grateful that he actually did convert my dusty old blog over to WordPress for me! Hurray and Huzzah! Thank you thank you thank you!

His job was to do the nuts ‘n bolts and he done did it well. My job is to make it pretty and write neato content. I’m looking forward to writing again. I’m sure it will take me months to get the aesthetics where I want them as (again) I have a hard time working on personal projects before my customers’ projects are finished.

But I’m going to write. I can blog on my iPad during my lunch hour and (as I’m doing now) at ten at night whilst laying in bed watching Mythbuster reruns and eating popcorn.

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