May 2010

So it looks like paying back the credit cards is on the back burner for now because we are taking a vacation to Disney World. I haven’t had a real vacation for years, so this is going to be pretty big for me, and for Kris and me in general. I put the deposit down today, hopefully they will send me a receipt soon so I know how to pay the rest of the money.

We will be there from September 13th to the 18th and we will probably be leaving New York either the 10th or 11th. We will be discussing it over dinner with our traveling companions, Alicia and Dave.

From this point until we get back it is just a matter of getting as much into the savings account as we can, and if that means working 17 hour days and taking on extra work to get as much as possible, then so be it. I already have picked up an extra client and I think I will look around Sprouter for entrepreneurs to see if I can find any that I can get a product up pretty fast for them. Of course while keeping all my old clients. Hopefully everything falls into place until we leave.

I went to TechCrunch Disrupt this week. It was the first time I actually attended a convention like this and I have to say I loved every minute of it. I am going to post some sites/companies that I saw and that really stuck out in my mind.

SpintheCam – It’s a social social network built around a random video chat. It was really great to see a refreshing idea come to social networks.

Brand-Yourself – Everyone wants to be someone, this site let’s you see how well you are doing at branding yourself online. This is becoming more important as job seekers are using Google as well as background checks for potential employees.

Sprouter – As a freelancer, sometimes it is hard to find work. Sprouter not only helps with that, but it is a place for entrepreneurs to go and get help from developers and other entrepreneurs.

Soluto – Frustrated with your PC like every other PC user out there? Soluto helps with that by connecting your computer to thousands of others who had the same problems, and tells you how to get rid of those problems.

Merel Technologies – For just over $3000 you too can have an equivalent of the Microsoft Surface. It works and it works well, my only gripe with something like this is that you cannot use a stylus, otherwise it would be perfect for using Photoshop with.

Those were probably the companies that stood out the most to me, but checking out companies wasn’t the best part about it, watching someone intentionally dig right into the big wigs at Comcast, Google, and AOL was pretty great as well. I also spoke to someone from Izea, mentioning that this site was part of the “Google Smackdown”, to which he responded “it is a flaw in their algorithm and I’ve told them that.” I honestly would have thought that Izea would have grown too big to care about its bloggers, but I am happy to say they haven’t. Thanks for proving me wrong Izea.

I didn’t realize it’s been so long since I last blogged. I’ve been extremely busy the last few weeks, TechCrunch Disrupt is on Monday and I have had to get everything setup for a client of mine who will be going. I will probably be there on Tuesday and Wednesday representing them, so that’s going to be cool. Hopefully it gets the site a lot of press, which of course means more money, hopefully.

I’ve been so busy that I have had to put my other clients, and this site on hold, hence why I haven’t blogged. I have to say though, after not writing for a few weeks, I have really missed it. I’ve been watching a lot of the A Night with Kevin Smith videos on YouTube and watching him makes me realize how much I miss writing. I am not talking about just on here, I mean in general.

Well I am off to do some of the work I’ve been putting off the last few weeks.

I don’t think I’ve actually written a story or an essay since my last english class and as much as I would love to have an ongoing story in some form on the site, the hardest part for me is the beginning. That’s not entirely true, I am pretty sure I could start a story with no problem, but what I’d want to do is either a comic or video story clip and that takes a lot more time, that I just don’t have at the moment. I’d love to one day write something that would be considered as great as Star Wars, Clerks, or LOST.

It’s no secret that I want to go back to school. I’ve often asked myself why I am not in school currently, I mean I work for myself and I could maintain fulltime status with school and do work on my off time, plus getting a degree and taking classes in business and marketing would help me with what I do now, so why not right? My best answer for the question is money. I was $5500 in debt not too long ago. That’s just with credit cards and my credit is really bad because I’ve had them for so long and have missed a few payments. I figure once I lower the balance on the cards, along with the monthly payments then I should be able to take out a student loan and any other loan I would need to go back to school.

Right now I am down to under $5000 in debt, but it will be back to being a little over $5000 with the interest payment this month. I know it isn’t a big difference, but $500 is a huge dent for me, considering some of these cards I have had since I was 18 years old. I am hoping to be down to $4500 by the end of this year, in fact if I can keep up working with the pace I am, not only will I be able to pay back an extra $500 to these cards, but possibly be more than half paying off the bed and getting Kristen’s cards paid off. The more that we can pay off together the more money we can have in the long run for vacations, and other fun things.

I am hoping though that come January Kristen will have her own car, mine will be in good enough shape for me to go back to school, and the bills minimum payments will be a lot lower than they are right now. Hopefully it all works out the way I want it to.

I’ve been getting a lot done lately, just today I managed to start and complete the new jokes section and I am working on a few other things at the moment. I’ve even been better managing my time with work so I can work on more personal projects. I think in the long run things are going to be better as far as time management goes.

Last weekend we did a lot of car switching just to be able to get a minivan to pick up a new gazebo. Tonight we started putting it together and it’s a lot bigger than anyone remembers it being in the store. I will hopefully have pictures once it’s put together, but we didn’t factor in we’re going to need a pretty big tool to get it complete, a ladder. Even though it says it’s only 8 feet tall, with the double roof that’s on there it’s easily 12-14 feet and a folding chair just isn’t going to cut it when it comes to getting up there.

Kris is going to be gone for a few days, she’s staying at her aunt’s so I am planning on using that time to play the Halo: Reach beta and catch up on some movies. The first movie I will be watching tomorrow is Avatar. Also tomorrow I plan on returning all comments from the last few entries and finding some more blogs to comment on.