Very busy doing nothing
Things have been very quiet here at the Manor.
There has been no news whatsoever apart from the gubmint announcing that they may soon “allow” me to travel up to 20Km from home. Be still my fucking beating heart.
On the other hand things have been very busy here at the Manor.
A friend asked me to look at a website he was involved with. He couldn’t get into the engine room to administer the site, and could I help? My reputation as the local nerd was at stake here so of course I said I would help.
I have come across some buggers of problems but this was a weird one. It didn’t matter what I tried I couldn’t get the site to work. The only solution was to rebuild it from scratch but the company is running an advertising campaign at the moment and they can’t afford for the site to be down.
Just for the hell of it, I created a copy of the site anyway and it works perfectly. I also discovered that they are paying heavily for services which I can provide for nothing. So I’ll wait until their campaign is over and then switch sites.
I’m a great believer in the “pay it forward” concept. When I started my little company some years ago I found a charity website where the charity was paying through the nose for hosting [for a start, they were being charged €200 a year for the domain name when the name would have been free if they had only bothered to check]. I took over the site with free domain name and free hosting. Bad business sense? Well, no, because word spread and as a direct result I got a contract to build a massive site for a company that paid very well and kept me in business for a couple of years.
Charity sometimes pays?
Not just charity. Being honest and not an obvious shyster helps.
Word of mouth also is far more effective than any flash publicity.
I actually built quite a large business based entirely on word of mouth. I had to quit in the end as I just had too much on hand. It was easier to quit than to go through the hassle of employing people.
I’m keeping busy doing nothing, but I can never tell when I’ve finished.
You're finished when you find you have something to do.
Of course, there was the business venture with Silver Haired Internet Technology back in the Noughties!
Indeed. The only problem is that I had too much S.H.I.T
Grandad, you’re ruining your reputation as a grumpy old man.
I having trouble with my old site. I can't seem to write anything on it. Now I've gone over the engine room with a fine tooth comb (and then cleaned out the comb) but can't find a thing wrong. Perhaps it's a problem with the thing that resides between the back of the chair and the keyboard?
Having just hacked into your backend [if you'll pardon the expression]. I can write some obscenities there if you like?
Only if you take credit for it.