The Aerie
Boy it's been one of those days. Not accustomed to this.
Started off the day with a very happy trip to the post office, where payment on a long-awaited invoice was received. No, not the Big One from last year - that one is STILL outstanding - but this payment will be sufficient to make ends meet for a while. Very timely.
Off to the banks where I deposted the invoice at the corporate bank, and then I deposted my takings from this weekend's birthday party in my personal account. No, the birthday isn't here yet - but we had the party for the twins so my family and in-laws also gave me cards and some not-much-deserved money.
Also deposited was the cash from the sale of my Geo Metro. Yes indeedy, the Metro is now gone. I don't really miss it except when I go to the gas station. I ran the new sedan with as little A/C as I could manage - and still got only 22 mpg. I've decided that the recent 90+ weather is worth 1 mpg difference.
Then I zoomed over to a client site, where I introduced a business partner to one of my clients. This has been a difficult decision for me - I may be handing my business to a competitor, but on the other hand I may be forging a profitable new partnership. I guess it's a calculated risk.
The other quandry I'm in is that I have a bittersweet relationship with this client. On the one hand, they're the nicest people you'd ever want to work with, and as a business they're really going places. On the other hand, when I started working with them they were making medical devices. Then they stumbled, literally, into a defense contract making medical devices to help soldiers in the field. Helping save soldiers - yes, that's good.
Then one day an engineer walked up to me and held up a bit of metal. "You know what this is?" he asked me? I shrugged. "It's a connector for inside a land mine. We're making them now."
Sigh. From medical devices to land mines.
So I haven't actually done any work with this client for a long time. Someday I'll ask them if they still are making those parts, and if they're not then maybe I'll work with them again. But... I can't build land mines.
Now, I'm no big paragon of virtue. The time in between was when I was at Hell's Cargo, so I was pretty busy anyway. And I haven't outright discussed this with them. Frankly I'm taking the easy way out, letting events move forward without confronting them. Ah well.
So I introduced this possible-partner-possible-competitor, and maybe if they end up taking over this client that will be for the better. I dunno. Sigh.
So from that meeting I zoomed home to finish a proposal. The business partner had a proposal for a State agency that needed to be finished by 2:00 p.m. He had given up on it, but I have proposal templates and of course years of experience, so I sat down and belted it out. Hand delivered it a couple minutes after 2:00... chance of success only slightly better than if I hadn't delivered it at all... but better.
Then it was straight over to my friend's house to fix his computer. Wiped out spyware, straightened up his networking, downloaded OS updates, and figured out that his e-mail hade blown up and he'd lost all his mail since March. I was prepared to do the work gratis, for a friend. And I was prepared to accept a modest payment if forced upon me. But I wasn't prepared for him to suggest the he'd do up a will for my wife and I in exchange for my assistance. That was a little weird... But I suppose it would be prudent.
Zoomed home, helped with dinner. Spent the evening tending the boys and cleaning the office, which had gotten messy while I searched frantically for the title for the Metro (we found it in the fireproof box upstairs) and finished the proposal.
Now I'm wrapping up the blog and planning what I'll do tomorrow - a big day, in preparation for the twins' birthday on Wednesday.
Oh yeah, the other thing I did... I wrote up page outlining what I think will happen in the last 'Harry Potter' book. Some of these people on these fansites, you'd think they never read a book before with some of their guesses...
Posted by Albatross at August 1, 2005 11:37 PM