Talk to your staff
One important facet of doing business is to talk to the the people who will actually be doing the work at hand. This is particularly important when you're not an expert on the work to be performed. If you don't know the first thing about sonic screwdrivers, but have a staff member who's considered an expert on such matters, it may be wise to consult with them before accepting a large contract for sonic screwdriver maintenance.

Unfortunately, this important aspect is something that often gets missed in modern business dealings. Contracts will be exchanged and signed, and one day the poor tech staff will come to work and discover they're required to implement a system into which they've had no opportunity for review or feedback. It sounds very Dilbert-esque, but I still see this happen from time-to-time.

I also have a sinking feeling that I'm going to be put on the spot asked for a quote for a rather large project, which also carries some rather weighty legal requirements. I've only been given the spec for this project today, and I'm expecting a request for a fixed-price quote tomorrow. The spec isn't very detailed, and while no timeline is specified, I am certain that it will be very strict.

Commuting
I now recall one of the reasons why I started my own business. Regular commuting is awful. I'm doing some consulting for an old client/employer, and it's a 30-45 minute commute each way. Even though it's a relatively short trip, the amount of time the commute takes is disproportionately large.

Running my own business has been a lot of work, but I feel that I've been entirely successful in my original goal to 'have more free time'. Even though I may be doing about the same amount of work I did back when I had a "real job", I'm doing it with less overheads, and less time constraints. No commuting means an extra hour of sleep each morning, and an extra hour of play each evening. That's just lovely.

New Chickens

Linguistic note for international readers: "chook" is Australian slang for "chicken".

Spent the Easter weekend away in the country on Jacinta's parents' farm. While we were up there the opportunity presented itself to purchase some new chickens, so we did. We're now the proud owners of four new chooks, two Isa Browns (boring but practical), and two Isas with a Barnevelder grandparent (larger, but much prettier).

Everyone seems to get excited about what we name our chickens, but to be honest we're not good with chickens actually keeping their names. Our old chooks now being referred to as Black Chook, White Chook and Golden Chook, for obvious reasons of apperance. Our plan for the new chickens (at Ian's suggestion) was to name them after old coin-op computer games (Galaga, Gyrus, Super Mario, etc).

We've started referring to the Barnevelder-crosses as Dig-dug and Pac-man, but the Isas seem to be commonly referred to as simply Isa and Lace (due to her feather decorations).

Names for chickens are pretty irrevelant anyway. The only phrase they seem capable of learning is 'chook chook chook' for when they're about to be fed.

The new chickens are settling in well, and taking the lead from our old chooks about where to sleep at night, so there's no worry about having to haul them out of trees late at night. Some small confusion arose when the newer chickens didn't realise that they weren't allowed to go to bed until the older chooks had retired, and that one of the older chickens liked to stay up late. A few healthy scuffles resulted as the late-retiring chicken would knock the newer chickens out of the coop until it was sufficiently late until she could go to roost without losing honour.

I'm looking forward to getting five eggs a day again, instead of the one egg per day that we have been receiving. However it will probably be a couple of weeks before the newer chickens are old enough to begin laying.

Why doesn't everyone do personal accounting?
I think I've discovered why some people don't do personal accounting, and just look at their bank statements/balances each month to judge their financial position. It's because spending half a day working through a huge pile of receipts, invoices, and statements is dull.

Dull dull dull dull dull.

Even so, I still find the benefits of personal accounting far outweighs the effort involved. I'm not going to let a meager 2 inch stack of unprocessed papers stop me.

A day off
One of the nice things about running your own business is that after a long week in Sydney, and a busy weekend, you can choose to take the Monday off and have a long weekend. That's the theory, anyway.

The trouble is that even if you take a day off, the rest of the world keeps working. In the period of 9am - 11am I've accquired a new potential client, confirmed two off-site appointments, and had a phone-call letting me know of a machine compromise at a client. Thankfully the compromise was rapidly contained and cleaned.

Given that works seems to have found me, I'm going to spend a few hours catching up on paperwork (relatively relaxing), and try to see if I can finish work early.