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4/12/2010

Check Your Fees At The Door

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General

— joeindie @ 10:26 am

If you haven’t done so in a while, take a few minutes this week and go over your various monthly and quarterly fees and expenses. And don’t just eyeball the list, try to remember *why* each item is there and then consider *if* you still need it.

Yesterday I realized I was paying $10/month for an alternate download site that I no longer needed. It made sense at the time I first set it up–but the rationale for it is long gone. Time to pull that plug and pocket the extra money myself.

And I’ll try not to beat myself up over a few hundred dollars lost to just paying the bill each month by habit…

-David

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3/29/2010

XBox 360’s are a Consumable Item

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— joeindie @ 1:43 pm

I bought my son an XBox 360 in October 2006. It lasted 6 months. Microsoft was kind enough to honor their warranty, and sent us a replacement. It also last 6 months, its failure landing just inside the remaining warranty of the first one. They sent us a 3rd replacement–surprisingly with a whole new 1 year warranty. That was 2007. A busy year for the XBox 360, as I’m sure many of you will recall.

That last one they sent has been doing pretty well. Lasted almost 3 years.

Now, though, its optical drive seems to be flaking out. Davis can play downloadable games fine, but games that have to read the disc (like, you know, the ones he wants to play) have a tendency to freeze up the unit.

So I ordered him a new “arcade” version, with the idea of removing the hard drive from the defective unit and installing it in the new one (when it arrives).

When I bought that first unit back in 2006, I had no idea that $400 consoles were a consumable item.

Color me educated.

At least their cheaper now. Some.

-David

PS Know what else is surprisingly consumable? Can openers. I think we go through one (or more) a year. Doesn’t matter how much we spend on the damn thing, it’s going to last about a year, then become an evil carpel tunnel inflictor.

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3/6/2010

Found a "Next"

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— joeindie @ 12:32 pm

I think I found a good “next project”.

It’s not the “next” I thought I would be pursuing at the beginning of the year. For that “next”, I crafted a nice set of goals that would carry me through 2010. January 1st came–and I promptly started looking for something else.

I can be very contrarian sometimes. Even to myself.

For this new “next”, I almost feel like I’m starting over. In fact, I’m encouraging that sense of starting over. I want to start from scratch. I want to drop all baggage and tackle this project as if I had no history at all. No preconceived notions of what can be done and can’t be done.

I’m making myself a complete newb so I don’t follow the same paths I followed before. So that I can see the possibilities and give them all a fresh ponder.

It’s almost like taking a trip with no map and no sense of direction or destination.

I’m curious where I’ll end up.

-David

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2/28/2010

"What Next?" Syndrome

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— joeindie @ 6:15 pm

Being self-employed means never having a boss tell you what to work on next.

Which is a good thing, I assure you. But, sometimes, it presents you (and by “you” I mean “me”) with a paralyzing abundance of choices.

I’m not the most single-minded person on the best of days. Sure, I can focus sufficiently on a project to get it done (eventually). Put me betwixt and between major projects, though, and it becomes a Problem. I can spend week after week wondering, “So…what do I do now?”

Sometimes, when I’m feeling less than kind to myself, I wonder how much more I could have gotten done in my life if I hadn’t spent (and didn’t spend) so much time and energy deciding what I should do next.

Not what I can do or could do. Those lists are easily compiled and admired.

No, what wedges itself under my oil pan and causes me to rock back and forth with wheels spinning ineffectually is the should.

What has the best return on investment?

What will be the most satisfying?

What is the most impressive?

What do I really want to do?

Will I finish this if I start it?

Will it make me look fat?

Which question is the most important today? What will be the most important in a week or a month? I don’t know.

I’ll probably shake it off soon. I always do (eventually). In the meantime, don’t ask me what I want to be when I grow up unless you want an earful.

-David

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1/29/2010

Proper "Adequate" Still Important

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— joeindie @ 11:47 pm

In preparing for 2010, like I do for every new year, I sat down in December and calculated new “adequate” and “good” sales numbers.

This week, based on a nagging hunch, I sat down and did the number crunching again, and found I had come up a bit short the first time around. Oops.

Which means I had to once again learn what I thought I already knew: The Importance of Adequate

To quote myself from 2 years ago:

“It seems that every year I find some new wrinkle in my understanding of my finances and how my business works that makes me think I must’ve been stupid to have never noticed it before. I keep thinking I have this whole self-employed, own-my-own-business, selling-software-over-the-Web thing wired–only to discover that I’ve missed something freaking obvious and instead of feeling proud I should feel lucky it hasn’t come crashing down yet.”

-David

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4/6/2009

Back to Work

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— joeindie @ 3:19 pm

Back to Work

GDC has been over for a week now. I’ve caught up on what got left untended while I was away, and launched into the next features of Project Vee. I’ve also started preparations for a new short story blog, and started editing/expanding an unfinished novel that really needs finishing (so I can tackle some other writing projects this year). And I’m tinkering with an idea for a new photography blog.

Besides being “creative outlets”, the new writing and tentative photography blogs will also be experiments in monetizing blogs. I’ve never done that before (besides a few book/product links). Time to learn, I figure.

I’m usually happiest when I’m working on a number of things all at the same time.

A “singular focus” has never been my strong suit. Why start now?