I spent the morning finishing up this little contract job, creating a Minti tag for Johnny's Selected Seeds. Minti is the system I helped create back at MINT for building Apache/MySQL/Perl-based dynamic websites, and JSS is one of the many companies that absorbed pieces of MINT's human resources ( Read more... )

Today I finished a draft of a column that I last week successfully pitched to an online publication (where I've appeared before) and asked some former cow orkers for a tech review. Got two responses, one helpful, one less so. Put it aside for now ( Read more... )

Arcus finally sent me a check. It says "Caffeinated Consulting" beneath my name. Eek... I thought I made it clear the letterhead was a gag. Now I will pay for my little prank.

Mumble. Well, if it actually ends up making a difference, I'll go ahead and register a DBA. So: nyeah.

I finally got around to sending Arcus a bill. For some reason, I waited until the owner sent mail to a list saying that he just spent too much money on toys. Take that! Anyway, bless Mac OS X for having Save to PDF an option in all of its standard print dialogs (by way of the Preview app), cuz god knows that I'd never get around to actually ( Read more... )

The Diesel, I see, has embraced the strange weather by removing the wintertime battens from its roll-up front facade. I still feel the need to have some token acknowledging that these temperatures shouldn't be here: I'm wearing my corduroy sportcoat, something I wouldn't do were we having this very same weather in June ( Read more... )

I do not trust this weather. Surely something is afoot when one's Cambridge home is cooler than the air outside, by virtue of the shade -- in December ( Read more... )

Logged two hours of work today for Arcus, my first two ever as an independent contractor. Picked up plenty of useful advice from veteran contractor (and Arcus bossman) Jim, on when and when not to bill. Figuring out how to navigate the customer's whacked-out labyrinth of existing databases and APIs: bill. Thinking to self about how to solve the ( Read more... )