A Green-and-Yellow Milestone
By the ribs of the neon tiger, I am tired. Worked very late, got up at 6am and went straight back to it. I only get that mad when I'm on the home run of something, and in this case it was the website of a theater company called the Gombeens*. They are, quite literally, a bunch of clowns. The nicest clowns you're ever likely to meet though. Not even a bit scary.
So nice in fact that they didn't mind my raising of the final price to twice what I'd originally estimated. I quoted several months ago on the assumption that they wanted something quick and simple. Turns out they had elaborate plans... Well, maybe I should have expected no less from a couple of very creative people, but it became serious work.
I think they still got great value though. I threw in a lot of things like logo creation and a newsblog system. I'm really happy with the finished site**. You may find the colors a... tad intense - but hey, clowns.
(Almost every other site I've done has been all muted and moodsome. It was a nice change!)
As to why it's a milestone: It's actually the first site I've done that's both completely finished and completely paid for. CN's is done but not paid for at all, GD's is paid for entirely but hardly started. All the others are somewhere in-between. This one is the first time I can say "Yeah, I'm all done. Thank you for this wad of negotiable".
So it seems I'm really truly being a web designer now.
Next, I turn my attention to DA's one. DA wants the works; basically he's hoping I can include about every feature of every website ever. Flash, streaming video, several databases, online shopping... The calmest thing I can say here is that it's good to move on to a bigger challenge.
People ask me sometimes how I price work - whether I do it in terms of a time estimate or something like that. I realise now. I'm pricing my sanity.
"Yeah, I can do that. Of course I can do that. But I'm going to have to get, ooh... about yay mad."
This has been Sergei, who knows he's happy because he feels tired. Goodnight.
*"Gombeen" is an Irish word for a fool that's quite hard to explain. Originally it meant something more like middleman, petit-bourgeois, local merchant. But because of exploitation and inequality such people were so hated that the word became a general - and fierce - insult. It's no longer really used, but nevertheless the guys were not allowed to register the name as a company. The tax office won't allow offensive terms.
There goes my plan to to start Cocksucker Corporate Consulting.
**Edit: Two years later, I've removed the link. The clients let the domain lapse and it goes somewhere else now. :(