another night of insomnia, too much on my mind these days. client AT called me at 8am in the morning asking to postpone our meeting by an hour. riding the subway into boston, i did some calculations and figured out that if i freelance fulltime, at my current rate, i only have to work 20something weeks in a year to make enough money to pay my mortgage and bills after taxes, leaving me more than half of the rest of the year to travel and play (i probably want to work a few more weeks to have enough cash for my other expenses). i finally got to their office in the north end by 10:30, just the way i remembered it 4 years ago. after a quick intro and filling out some paperwork (nondisclosure agreement and a 1099 tax form), i washed my hands and got a free cranberry juice out of the fridge and got to work. it felt good being the gunslinger for hire, coming into town to fix a problem. what i didn't think would be any programming involved turned out to have some code challenges. not enough time for elegant solutions, i hacked out a few quick patches. after about 4 hours i was done. just as quietly as i came in, i left without any fuss, put on my jacket and went out the door. i didn't have lunch yet but i wasn't hungry.
all i wanted to do was to go home, check my e-mail (the pc i was on had a dead internet card), and continue coding for client X. i was relieved to see nothing exploded with project X in my absence, and took some time to address a small SRM bug. that was as much work i could squeeze out for the day, my mind was already starting to lose focus. on a disappointing note, client D told me the project i was slated to work on for next week got put on hold indefinitely, so no prudential action for me. that was the only thing holding me back, now i can concentrate on tentative vacation plans. finally at 5pm i heated some leftover rice noodles for lunch. 30 minutes later julie came over and we went to the last harvard series lecture of the year, about wildlife conservation in russia. it was kind of funny, when the guest speaker asked the audience how many people have been to russia, i figured maybe one or two, until most of the people in attendance raised their hands, made me feel left out having never set foot in moscow before. there were many beautiful slides of the flora and fauna of eurasian wilderness (oohs and aahs from the captivated crowd), with a photo of a snaggletoothed musk deer sending julie into an almost uncontrollable fit of laughter. after the talk, we went to the burger joint around the corner from my place for dinner, each of us getting a burger. we went to star market to get some ice cream before coming back to the house to watch
the apprentice and
ER. after julie left, i packaged up the latest X code and uploaded it to the client's server.
all i wanted to do was to go home, check my e-mail (the pc i was on had a dead internet card), and continue coding for client X. i was relieved to see nothing exploded with project X in my absence, and took some time to address a small SRM bug. that was as much work i could squeeze out for the day, my mind was already starting to lose focus. on a disappointing note, client D told me the project i was slated to work on for next week got put on hold indefinitely, so no prudential action for me. that was the only thing holding me back, now i can concentrate on tentative vacation plans. finally at 5pm i heated some leftover rice noodles for lunch. 30 minutes later julie came over and we went to the last harvard series lecture of the year, about wildlife conservation in russia. it was kind of funny, when the guest speaker asked the audience how many people have been to russia, i figured maybe one or two, until most of the people in attendance raised their hands, made me feel left out having never set foot in moscow before. there were many beautiful slides of the flora and fauna of eurasian wilderness (oohs and aahs from the captivated crowd), with a photo of a snaggletoothed musk deer sending julie into an almost uncontrollable fit of laughter. after the talk, we went to the burger joint around the corner from my place for dinner, each of us getting a burger. we went to star market to get some ice cream before coming back to the house to watch the apprentice and ER. after julie left, i packaged up the latest X code and uploaded it to the client's server.