The week is half over

Wednesday already. Where does the time go. Got through about a poofteenth of the things I had penciled in for this week Depressing really.

Pretty certain I am going to resign from the Monash work. There are a couple of reasons for this.. not least that the time has come to totally commit to Perfect Notes. But it has not been fun for a while. And one of the things that is pushing me towards this decision is a recent edict from on high that we are not to mention Monash on any online forum. WTF? Oh yeah their is a big chance I am going to sign that. That is going to happen....about the time the Air Force starts hiring pink elephants. Or maybe slightly later

I actually missed a networking meeting (with food) to work at Monash yesterday evening. And have postponed PerfectNotes jobs in the past for the sake of Monash commitments. Not such a great way to build a business.

As a general rule organizations that stifle criticism are not great workplaces. This actually has not been true of my bit of Monash which has some truly great people working for it. But it does not bode well for the future. And.. how shall I put this, I could have wished for more support from my superiors, (Actually I have no superiors and damn few equals but I refer to those with authority over my little bit of Monash ) One colleague.. and he knows who he is turned out to have all the class of.. hmmmmmm.. someone with not much class.. caught the fool writing nasties about me on Facebook in french. Seriously, what an idiot, had me down as a friend too. ( And I so mean HAD) ..as nice as pie to my face mind.you. Its beyond belief how two faced some people can be and I can say that this has soured me on the whole place. That and a bad client or two (well two.. in two years actually) is certainly enough to remind me that I run my own business for a reason. And the reason is so I can deal with people in my own way. Face to face and straight up.

I,ll still see John, the well known PN. Damn good mate and certainly not such a 'superior' superior. I,ll miss most of the people there... some really really good people there. ( I won't mention names or it will become obvious that I have left one or two out. ) Still I did good work for them. I am not leaving owing them everything. I think I trained all the current crop of part timers come to that. And things move on. Shall have to do a resignation letter in the next few days. What it does mean is that without the 3 or 4 50 km commutes a week I am going to have to get more serious about training on the bike at dark oclock in winter in Melbourne. A serious consideration. Its been a really fun job till the last couple of weeks. Pity.

Ok enough winging. Now to work

I need to set up an account as a sellers account. For testing this shopping portal stuff. I guess we are going with Paypal for testing anyway, because it seems like the only one that offers per transaction fees only. Quite steep fees tho. Must talk to Mark as he knows more than me about this. Paypal will do in the interm. One of the others, eway has a testing sandbox environment and I bet Paypal does too... so the testing should be straightforward. Once I have a real sellers account set up I might as well sell something. Anyone got any serious ideas? Something we could buy and flog would be a cute way to complete testing.. might be fun and might make some money. Significant Other has rooms full of junk mind.. that is my fallback plan.

Readers will remember my last run in with Telstra and the pathetic quality of their response. So now I have a client with a dead HP Multi Function Device. Its a fax scanner printer. Been sorting it for a couple of days now. And have had emails back from 'Marie' at HP within minutes of sending her one. About 7 emails yesterday in deciding it was indeed a warranty issue and organizing a replacement. The contrast between HP and Telstra in terms of customer service could not be stronger. Huge huge plug to HP. And indeed to IBM who has been equally responsive in the past. A big raspberry to Telstra who as a company deserve anything bad that happens to them.

The bloke supposedly buying the Toyota is, well I don't know what he is doing. Toyota is still in the way in the drive. Bugger him. Ebay for it I think. Am not in the mood for being stuffed around this week. And I have an engine to track down for the Lancer. And registration to pay for the motorcycle. And some leaflets to give out. And a job to do for Malcolm and another for Ben.. Life is not boring is it?

Kathy has the go ahead to do some costings for one project. Another web site awaits development. Another project seems to have stalled at the other end after I did quite a lot of setup work for it. Not exactly sure how to handle that.. a gentle prod might work. Or perhaps I should invoice them for work done to date..would only be a couple of hundred. Decisions, decisions.. We have more interest in the Virtual Assistant ( I cannot write VA.. I keep thinking of that as Veterans Affairs ) I am pretty optimistic at the moment.