Howdy mate. Running over them is a bit messy, it's happened to me a couple of times, 4 stroke mower over a fat toad. Small portions of wet smelly toad spread over the lawn. Also, they're poisonous to pets, so removing them in a single 'blob' or 'clump' of toad mass is preferrable.
These toads aren't the most switched on amphibians either, on the Read scale of amphibian cleverrerness they rate about a 2 (out of 10).
I live in an area where Cane Toads are rife during the wet season. If it's just been raining I can guarantee that when opening the front door I'll be greeted by 5 or 6 toads sitting on the front porch. It feels kinda awkward sometimes when you open it and they're all lined up staring at you and they all stop croaking at the same time, kinda like walking into a western saloon and the piano player stops playing and everyone goes silent. You apologise, close the door very gently and go back inside.
As for killing them, a quick whack on the head with a shovel does the trick. We tried putting them in the freezer which kind of works, but we had a couple of instances where they come back to life if they're not frozen long enough and you end up with a toad jumping around in a zip-lock back in your waste bin.
Our next door neighbour had a bit of an idea to get rid of them, create a mobile toad collector who drives around each suburb once a week and offer $1 for each one dead or alive. Train people up on how not to get sprayed by them (attack from behind). The whole poisonous amphibian thing kinda makes it difficult, but we Australians are a hardy bunch and I'm sure we could develop an immunity after a while.
I pretty much ask straight out now about the referrals, but sometimes it can depend on the person you're talking too. Like if it's direct to the business owner, then they generally have no problems at all and in fact almost take pride in coming up with them. If you've been dealing with other managers or are distant from the networkers in the company then it can get a little trickier, but not impossible.
When I take on a job I usually aim to gain a relationship with the big guy which makes the whole process a lot easier. When you deal with middle managers or people who don't talk to anyone else outside of the company you have to reach up the chain through that person to get information. That requires a lot of hassling, but the rule is to always get the three referrals so you hassle until it happens (or they blow you off, which is a big deal to me respect wise).
Saying that, just blurting out "I was wondering if you could give me three referrals" won't really work. The conversation would be lead into by talking about quality of work, and how I sustain business through referrals, then hit them with what I want. But the language has to be certain of exactly what I want, I use language which doesn't give them an escape like getting them to ask me what I want out of the relationship and then laying down the "I need at least three referrals from you" part, which is important, "I would like" or "I was wondering if" will give them something to dodge. Also, I believe that if you have the right understanding behind the question and that you understand what's going on between the both of you then the language is just right anyway.
1. You provide a valuable service to them 2. They understand what your work is worth to them 3. They know as a business owner themselves that networking is key and word of mouth is king 4. You will treat their network of friends with the same level of professionalism 5. You need to survive, which is kind of outside the scope of the original question about getting work out of hours
There are quite a number of techniques that are available to use, I did quite a lot of work with sales people on both product and project work and picked up a number of things through stuff like pre-sales, proposal and meeting rooms sales work, plus I did some high turnover shop floor sales early in my career which taught me about closing and how to talk features/benefits. I read a few sales journals and listen to sales podcasts for other tips (like a few months ago I had to deal with a company negotiator, I thought the deal was cut through discussion then this dude walks in and started making demands telling me what I'm going to do deal wise, I made the mistake of just backing out because it was just unfamiliar territory)
Hopefully though, you shouldn't have to sell yourself too much if the referrals are good as your existing customer will do the ground work for you. It feels good when you ring a referral and they know exactly who you are and are ready to roll. I had one job a few years ago with a manufacturing company who used a piece of custom cutting machinery which was old but essential, CNC controlled and hooked up to a PC.
Turned out the company which made these cutting devices went out of business two years prior the name and rights were bought out by a competitor and they just dropped the product, so they needed to get things fixed. I have some CNC experience from my father who is a toolmaker and I used to help him out with programming lathes and milling machines for large batches of materials, so I took the project on knowing the technical risk, re-wrote one application which controlled the axis on the cutting board and integrated it with their job costing system and materials handling application which controlled their bill of materials. Anyway, towards the end of the job I sat down with them and asked about the referrals and it turned out that there were 20 other companies around Australia which used the same equipment and were suffering the same fate. The owner just got out his address book there and then and photocopied three pages of people, rang them up and said who I was and that they should expect a phone call from me. Five of them actually rang me up first.
While I think the idea of Rentacoder and other bidding sites is good for getting quantity of work through, it's really the wrong type of business model. Basing a service on discounted labour is a short way to make very little money. Not only that, but it de-values your worth. I've been working as an independant programmer for almost 15 years and I've tried a few different ways of finding new work to do, advertising in newspapers, journals, 'door knocking' around businesses with flyers, but by far the best way of getting ongoing well paid work is by referral.
Getting that first customer is the tricky bit, but once you've done that the rule is simple, when the work is either complete or well under way, ask them for a minimum of three referrals for businesses they know personally who may require work, and ask them to put in a good word for you. Always push for three as it covers the odds pretty well and you're nearly always guaranteed new customers. It's difficult to do initially as it feels awkward asking them for that kind of information, but you have to see if from their perspective, they have a valued service that has helped them and their mates should benefit in the same way. I've never had a customer who was not willing to give me referrals in this way.
Fix a rate, do some research into the going rate for your area, don't undersell, don't oversell. After a while you get used to spotting risks, be they technical (in most cases you have to guage the amount of technical risk involved, this will aid in contingency) or political risk.
Don't be afraid to contract other people into the same job with you, just choose people you know, even if they have flaws it's better the devil you know. You can be fussy about the type of work once you have quantity coming through the door, until that point be prepared to do any type of development work.
The discounting thing is the real point though, don't be tempted to do it. Instead of discounting, reduce your services for the same job. Otherwise you'll find yourself doing the same work for one customer at the discounted rate for 10 years and have a hard job trying to increase your rate.
Getting that first customer though, not really as hard as you think. I try to avoid working for friends and family, but if you can get references from friends and family that's the next best thing.
Know your own process. Understand what it takes to go from the handshake to getting paid from an invoice is very important. It's good to know how to gather meaningful requirements, build your own practical specifications, manage customer expectations, managing variations to work and learning to say no at the right time. It's easy to skim over some of these, especially when you first start doing it by yourself, but after a while you realise why they exist and how they can save you time when done right.
A low priority is insurance, professional indemnity is a good one, cover yourself after a while. Not that you're going to be careless about what you do, but the insurance is there for when you get hit out of leftfield. When you get enough income in to pay for the insurance get a broker and invest.
Encryption for everything switched on, assume the PIN doesn't get sent (!), client side encryption. I guess they just store a gump of encrypted data for me and they pick on the users who don't change the default settings. Could be a high percentage of users, say 80%, they can browse through the un-encrypted bookmarks for whatever purposes they choose. Users who know the risks involved and turned on the encryption feel good about it, users who don't know the risks still sleep well.
Really, you cannot trust anyone who spouts about counter offers. Offer them $150, a good offensive play.
Someone squatted on centurix.com and I asked them how much. $5000 was the reply, so I said $100 is my best offer, if that's not enough then have fun with the domain. They accepted, I had the domain for 2 years and just let it lapse, the same company bought it again after I had it. Good luck to them, my current domain suits us much better.
I don't know a great deal about genetics, but if the aorta is missing because of a genetic mishap, then wouldn't placing stem cells in place just 'not' make another aorta because that genetic thingy is damaged which builds it?
I worked for this web shop which chose to seperate HTML from the code so they could hire cheap designers to draw up the HTML to make it look nice. Ended up no matter how simple we made the templates, and how much hand holding we had to do to show them how to do it, they *always* fucked it up somehow. They ended up hiring more experienced designers, paid a higher hourly rate but saved in the long term.
I think it's horses for courses, some quick projects can benefit from mixed source. Some 'enterprise' level applications really call out for seperation. Pick and choose.
I once received an abusive e-mail from some guy who was receiving loads of spam from a source using a rotation of from addresses. My address happened to appear on the mail he received and it he snapped, firing back at me. His mail address was from his family business, looked up the whois information which was correctly filled in. Phone number, address etc, simple google of the domain name showed me forums in which members of the family had posted in, different topics, cars, real-estate. From there I could build quite a profile of this person, his family, where they lived, google earth supplied satellite images of their house. I knew what kind of cars they owned, how much their house cost and when they bought it (purchasing records of individual houses was available online as part of the council areas statistics).
I sent him a mail explaining that it wasn't me sending the spam, and he wrote back apologising, then I explained to him all the information that I'd found including the google earth picture and he couldn't believe what I'd come up with by just roaming around the net.
1. 2 lines of source code from Duke Nukem Forever 2. DNA From a) Bill Gates b) Linus Torvalds c) Larry Ellison 3. 1 Site which can withstand a force 10 slashdot effect (Not a search engine) 4. Someone who can actually write IAAL 5. Used items belonging to the goatse man 6. 3 pounds of lime green duct tape 7. 1 pound of Sillier Putty (tm) 8. 1 Signed Microsoft UAT 9. A travelling salesman who understands non-deterministic polynomial time 10. A girlfriend
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a standard template:
blah blah blah chair blah blah blah fucking kill Google blah blah blah
Howdy mate. Running over them is a bit messy, it's happened to me a couple of times, 4 stroke mower over a fat toad. Small portions of wet smelly toad spread over the lawn. Also, they're poisonous to pets, so removing them in a single 'blob' or 'clump' of toad mass is preferrable.
These toads aren't the most switched on amphibians either, on the Read scale of amphibian cleverrerness they rate about a 2 (out of 10).
I live in an area where Cane Toads are rife during the wet season. If it's just been raining I can guarantee that when opening the front door I'll be greeted by 5 or 6 toads sitting on the front porch. It feels kinda awkward sometimes when you open it and they're all lined up staring at you and they all stop croaking at the same time, kinda like walking into a western saloon and the piano player stops playing and everyone goes silent. You apologise, close the door very gently and go back inside.
As for killing them, a quick whack on the head with a shovel does the trick. We tried putting them in the freezer which kind of works, but we had a couple of instances where they come back to life if they're not frozen long enough and you end up with a toad jumping around in a zip-lock back in your waste bin.
Our next door neighbour had a bit of an idea to get rid of them, create a mobile toad collector who drives around each suburb once a week and offer $1 for each one dead or alive. Train people up on how not to get sprayed by them (attack from behind). The whole poisonous amphibian thing kinda makes it difficult, but we Australians are a hardy bunch and I'm sure we could develop an immunity after a while.
I pretty much ask straight out now about the referrals, but sometimes it can depend on the person you're talking too. Like if it's direct to the business owner, then they generally have no problems at all and in fact almost take pride in coming up with them. If you've been dealing with other managers or are distant from the networkers in the company then it can get a little trickier, but not impossible.
When I take on a job I usually aim to gain a relationship with the big guy which makes the whole process a lot easier. When you deal with middle managers or people who don't talk to anyone else outside of the company you have to reach up the chain through that person to get information. That requires a lot of hassling, but the rule is to always get the three referrals so you hassle until it happens (or they blow you off, which is a big deal to me respect wise).
Saying that, just blurting out "I was wondering if you could give me three referrals" won't really work. The conversation would be lead into by talking about quality of work, and how I sustain business through referrals, then hit them with what I want. But the language has to be certain of exactly what I want, I use language which doesn't give them an escape like getting them to ask me what I want out of the relationship and then laying down the "I need at least three referrals from you" part, which is important, "I would like" or "I was wondering if" will give them something to dodge. Also, I believe that if you have the right understanding behind the question and that you understand what's going on between the both of you then the language is just right anyway.
1. You provide a valuable service to them
2. They understand what your work is worth to them
3. They know as a business owner themselves that networking is key and word of mouth is king
4. You will treat their network of friends with the same level of professionalism
5. You need to survive, which is kind of outside the scope of the original question about getting work out of hours
There are quite a number of techniques that are available to use, I did quite a lot of work with sales people on both product and project work and picked up a number of things through stuff like pre-sales, proposal and meeting rooms sales work, plus I did some high turnover shop floor sales early in my career which taught me about closing and how to talk features/benefits. I read a few sales journals and listen to sales podcasts for other tips (like a few months ago I had to deal with a company negotiator, I thought the deal was cut through discussion then this dude walks in and started making demands telling me what I'm going to do deal wise, I made the mistake of just backing out because it was just unfamiliar territory)
Hopefully though, you shouldn't have to sell yourself too much if the referrals are good as your existing customer will do the ground work for you. It feels good when you ring a referral and they know exactly who you are and are ready to roll. I had one job a few years ago with a manufacturing company who used a piece of custom cutting machinery which was old but essential, CNC controlled and hooked up to a PC.
Turned out the company which made these cutting devices went out of business two years prior the name and rights were bought out by a competitor and they just dropped the product, so they needed to get things fixed. I have some CNC experience from my father who is a toolmaker and I used to help him out with programming lathes and milling machines for large batches of materials, so I took the project on knowing the technical risk, re-wrote one application which controlled the axis on the cutting board and integrated it with their job costing system and materials handling application which controlled their bill of materials. Anyway, towards the end of the job I sat down with them and asked about the referrals and it turned out that there were 20 other companies around Australia which used the same equipment and were suffering the same fate. The owner just got out his address book there and then and photocopied three pages of people, rang them up and said who I was and that they should expect a phone call from me. Five of them actually rang me up first.
While I think the idea of Rentacoder and other bidding sites is good for getting quantity of work through, it's really the wrong type of business model. Basing a service on discounted labour is a short way to make very little money. Not only that, but it de-values your worth. I've been working as an independant programmer for almost 15 years and I've tried a few different ways of finding new work to do, advertising in newspapers, journals, 'door knocking' around businesses with flyers, but by far the best way of getting ongoing well paid work is by referral.
Getting that first customer is the tricky bit, but once you've done that the rule is simple, when the work is either complete or well under way, ask them for a minimum of three referrals for businesses they know personally who may require work, and ask them to put in a good word for you. Always push for three as it covers the odds pretty well and you're nearly always guaranteed new customers. It's difficult to do initially as it feels awkward asking them for that kind of information, but you have to see if from their perspective, they have a valued service that has helped them and their mates should benefit in the same way. I've never had a customer who was not willing to give me referrals in this way.
Fix a rate, do some research into the going rate for your area, don't undersell, don't oversell. After a while you get used to spotting risks, be they technical (in most cases you have to guage the amount of technical risk involved, this will aid in contingency) or political risk.
Don't be afraid to contract other people into the same job with you, just choose people you know, even if they have flaws it's better the devil you know. You can be fussy about the type of work once you have quantity coming through the door, until that point be prepared to do any type of development work.
The discounting thing is the real point though, don't be tempted to do it. Instead of discounting, reduce your services for the same job. Otherwise you'll find yourself doing the same work for one customer at the discounted rate for 10 years and have a hard job trying to increase your rate.
Getting that first customer though, not really as hard as you think. I try to avoid working for friends and family, but if you can get references from friends and family that's the next best thing.
Know your own process. Understand what it takes to go from the handshake to getting paid from an invoice is very important. It's good to know how to gather meaningful requirements, build your own practical specifications, manage customer expectations, managing variations to work and learning to say no at the right time. It's easy to skim over some of these, especially when you first start doing it by yourself, but after a while you realise why they exist and how they can save you time when done right.
A low priority is insurance, professional indemnity is a good one, cover yourself after a while. Not that you're going to be careless about what you do, but the insurance is there for when you get hit out of leftfield. When you get enough income in to pay for the insurance get a broker and invest.
Encryption for everything switched on, assume the PIN doesn't get sent (!), client side encryption. I guess they just store a gump of encrypted data for me and they pick on the users who don't change the default settings. Could be a high percentage of users, say 80%, they can browse through the un-encrypted bookmarks for whatever purposes they choose. Users who know the risks involved and turned on the encryption feel good about it, users who don't know the risks still sleep well.
Thank you mr meteor for making sure my home is toasty and warm.
George is my favorite, Peppa is an attention whore.
According to Einstein, after Physics, everything else is just stamp collecting.
Really, you cannot trust anyone who spouts about counter offers. Offer them $150, a good offensive play.
Someone squatted on centurix.com and I asked them how much. $5000 was the reply, so I said $100 is my best offer, if that's not enough then have fun with the domain. They accepted, I had the domain for 2 years and just let it lapse, the same company bought it again after I had it. Good luck to them, my current domain suits us much better.
I don't know a great deal about genetics, but if the aorta is missing because of a genetic mishap, then wouldn't placing stem cells in place just 'not' make another aorta because that genetic thingy is damaged which builds it?
Now I'm confused.
Morning Moon breath.
So we can think outside the cube
Patch the bad bits of nanotubes with duct tape. It's made from the fabric of space and time itself.
Nearly every site will blast annoying sounds out the instant I visit the page? We'll have to surf porn with the sound turned down?
I'm hoping this will run on my Cray-1 with no problems.
I worked for this web shop which chose to seperate HTML from the code so they could hire cheap designers to draw up the HTML to make it look nice. Ended up no matter how simple we made the templates, and how much hand holding we had to do to show them how to do it, they *always* fucked it up somehow. They ended up hiring more experienced designers, paid a higher hourly rate but saved in the long term.
I think it's horses for courses, some quick projects can benefit from mixed source. Some 'enterprise' level applications really call out for seperation. Pick and choose.
ah, getcha. was thinking there was some humor lost on me somewhere.
Wha? Am i reading the right article there? Where does it say inches are part of the metric system? SI!=USCU?
This is space man, where up is down and inches are metric. You just know it'll end in tears.
I once received an abusive e-mail from some guy who was receiving loads of spam from a source using a rotation of from addresses. My address happened to appear on the mail he received and it he snapped, firing back at me. His mail address was from his family business, looked up the whois information which was correctly filled in. Phone number, address etc, simple google of the domain name showed me forums in which members of the family had posted in, different topics, cars, real-estate. From there I could build quite a profile of this person, his family, where they lived, google earth supplied satellite images of their house. I knew what kind of cars they owned, how much their house cost and when they bought it (purchasing records of individual houses was available online as part of the council areas statistics).
I sent him a mail explaining that it wasn't me sending the spam, and he wrote back apologising, then I explained to him all the information that I'd found including the google earth picture and he couldn't believe what I'd come up with by just roaming around the net.
1. 2 lines of source code from Duke Nukem Forever
2. DNA From a) Bill Gates b) Linus Torvalds c) Larry Ellison
3. 1 Site which can withstand a force 10 slashdot effect (Not a search engine)
4. Someone who can actually write IAAL
5. Used items belonging to the goatse man
6. 3 pounds of lime green duct tape
7. 1 pound of Sillier Putty (tm)
8. 1 Signed Microsoft UAT
9. A travelling salesman who understands non-deterministic polynomial time
10. A girlfriend
Ah, the moderator uncertainty principle.
You can bite my shiney metal ass.
Wow, they're actually really cool. Thanks!