This domain has always been slated for a business website and I will be slowly but surely turning this domain into that over the next couple of months. I will be touching up posts from here and re-posting them onto my purpleorange.ca website where I plan to talk about business and technology, and phpark.com where I plan to talk about programming and PHP. It is my intention to split the two sites into technical and non-technical.

It has been nice being able to clear my head about what it is I want to do with my career. I have come to realize over the last few months while meeting other Internet and open-source enthusiasts, that I do enjoy what I’m doing - just not in the environments I have been exposed to. It has helped me come to terms with the fact that I’m an entrepreneur that just does NOT have the capacity to deal with the “enterprise” and culture of the corporate world. I am about win/win situations, helping others solve their problems, being supportive rather then oppressive and view “competitors” and co-workers as resources rather then the enemy.

I am mostly interested in working on my own projects while tending to my son during my partners school hours at UBC Okanagan. I have enough money to get me through to the Fall and if I can’t make a living with my projects, I will have to get a part-time job. The heat is being turned up on me to start cranking out these ideas I have to see which of them will fail, which will be successful and learning from both cases.

The time is fastly approaching for our upcoming relocation to Kelowna on May 29th. We have been crammed in our one-bedroom apartment here in East Vancouver since our son was born which leaves me with little to no productivity. I have always been one that at the end of the work day, would clean up my desk before leaving for home and rarely had anything other then a notepad and pen on my desk. My creativity cannot flow when I am working in clutter.

I am really looking forward to getting moved and settled into my new office so that I can get some long overdue work completed.

For someone looking for topics to blog about, this is great news! Up until recently, I have stopped myself short of trying to establish myself as an expert because I recognize that I am yet to stop learning about computers and have something LOTS to say about them! A computer geek friend of my Dad’s gave me a 286 computer in 1991 that came loaded with DOS and FirstChoice - and of course, no manuals leaving me to learn both on my own. It was during this time that I learned how “format C:” can be a very, very bad DOS command when you don’t have installation diskettes (that’s, 5.25″ diskettes, not DVDs!) and get your drive letters mixed up!

Since quitting my corporate desk job where I was beaten up by Micro$oft devotees on a daily basis, I began meeting others like myself who also aren’t necessarily Micro$oft haters, but non-M$ technology enthusiasts who see the role enterprise software plays and why it maintains the market share it does. Because we are not at desk jobs in the corporate world reporting to a Manager or Director that wants accountability (to someone other then themselves), we don’t need the “benefit” of high priced M$ “support” to have someone to yell at when something breaks and need somewhere to point the finger.

But alas, I digress. With oppression comes suppression and with that environment removed from my life, I can get off of defending my choices of technology against crappy marketing slogans, build up open-source community support around me, and get back to telling the world why open-source software is so damn groovy! (Not to mention free up a lot of hard drive space from uninstalling over bloated software and making more room on my bookshelf for my new PHP books).

If you are new to the Internet (really, we all are in some aspects), looking for alternatives to enterprise software, or looking for some new technology tips and tricks, please subscribe to our feed or stay posted for upcoming articles!

In the meantime, I am always curious to find out peoples backgrounds and how they have gotten to where they are today in their careers - especially when the current career has to do with the Internet. Computers are my first career choice coming out of high school where I was a band geek, jock, and an air cadet that loved backpacking and going to our outdoor rifle range. Most of my formal training from college is in Internet programming and scripting, networking wide area technologies, operating systems, project management, and systems analysis and design. I wanted a Bachelors of Classical Music, at one point wanted to be a cartoonist, still ponder becoming a dietician or something health and wellness related, and hope to go back to school at some point for a degree in psychology. I also love sports, collect sports cards, board games, and brisk walks.

From where does your current career choice hail? What was your background leading into your career on the Internet?

We were shocked to also see on the news that there was a giant explosion at 2:30 this morning in the building I used to work out of at Cambie and Broadway between Ash and Willow. We moved offices across the street in the crocked building besides London Drugs a while ago. They are saying the explosion occurred in the Taco Del Mar (which is to the left of Starbucks) and damaged several businesses.

Photo taken from News1130

Very glad to hear no one was hurt and sorry to see so much damage.

The ad goes to a broken page for me so haven’t linked to it. Figured some of you might enjoy it - it sure gave me a good chuckle this morning ;o)

Do you think people purposefully don’t capitalize letters that would make minds like mine not go where it went when reading this?

When your budget is sparse and you’re a one person shop with not enough hours in a day or days in the week, you can get what appears to be little to no work completed if you are working on several projects at once. At least, this is how I am was feeling even when keeping track of exactly what was being done so I can see that I have accomplished work on these projects.

I have been trying to carve out specs for one of my projects for about two years now. That might sound like a long time but keep in mind, I had a full-time job up until a few months ago getting in the way and am now a stay-at-home Dad. The plus side is that I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do; I just need the motivation, time and tenacity to sit and hammer out ALL the code for it. All these requirements, where to start!?

Overcoming Overwhelmed - Tip #1: Narrow Focus
Pick a piece of the project and get it launched!

If you feel like you’re stuck in the mud with no product or service to launch in sight, sit down and pick ONE piece of the project, work on it, make it as good as you can (notice I don’t say great), and get it launched!

Previously, I was feeling very overwhelmed with the amount of work needing done on this project. I have narrowed focus to write one feature of the application, get it launched, and work with the feedback to help improve the application before adding more features. (I feel it’s implied but will state explicitly that obviously the one piece of the project you pick needs to be a big enough piece for you to have a functional product or service to launch.)

Feedback is crucial to improving your product or service and you are the worst enemy when it comes to critiquing your work – especially the design aspect. By at least getting something out the door, you can start reworking and perfecting that aspect of your product or service. The emotional boost from launching will help to build confidence, motivation, and in turn, your productivity to help get the next features completed.

You may wonder how I came to a decision as to what to choose as the one feature to be working on. For me it was somewhat of an easy decision which may not be the case for everyone. The one piece I am working on is essentially the engine for the entire application I am writing in object-oriented PHP 5 which will allow me to more easily add features in the future. I would rather be able to launch the application in full, but at least by first launching this feature, I will start to feel less overwhelmed because part of the application has now been launched and will be in the tweaking stage.

Feeling overwhelmed when first being presented with a problem is a natural reaction that most people feel. What “separates the men from the boys” is in how you methodically spec and scope out the project. Are you one who always tackles a project as a whole? Can you do that without feeling overwhelmed? Or do you break the project down into smaller, more manageable chunks? Does this help you to feel more in control and less overwhelmed? Share your challenges and wins in overcoming overwhelmed.