project decloak

Project Decloak

Project Decloak

Haven't decloaked yet. I could write a description of what this project is, but looking at my todo list might help you figure it out yourself:

Current task list:
Upgrade site to drupal 5.x
Allow anonymous comments
review post permissions
Move to kitthodsden.org
Remove / in all links

Speaking to hundreds?

Blog kitt decided around 11:21 on 19 October 2006 to publish this:

Better than thousands, I expect.

So far, all of the various conferences I've gone to, with the exception of one, have been technology related. From SiGGraph to the Future of Web Apps, it's been tech, tech, tech and, just for fun, science. Okay, one was ultimate related, a UPA league organizers conference. It was small, and not one I had to spend hundreds of dollars to attend.

The next one I attend will be another ultimate related one, but it won't be to just sit in the audience and listen to other people lecturing. Instead, I'll be speaking!

As part of Project Decloak, I'll be standing in front of hundreds of people, imagining each and every one of the completely naked, talking about ultimate.



My talk is titled "Ultimate for the non-gifted athlete." It's basically a list of all the tips, tricks, and training Kris has taught me or I have learned in the last eight years. Well, most of them. The talk is geared toward the beginner and intermediate athlete who isn't on an athletic scholarship, but wants to play ultimate better.

I'm surprisingly not nervous about the talk, and have it outlined and ready to go, including notes about what studies to look up and what video clips to find. Poor Kris is going to have the talk memorized by the time the presentation rolls around.

My plans are to have the presentation available on an ultimate website. I haven't decided which domain to use for it, though: talkdisc.com or recsportdisc.com. I own both domains. I wanted talkdisc.com to be a combination of the rec.sport.disc newsgroup plus articles and snippets, but ultimatetalk.com was launched between my thinking of the idea and now, and I don't want to have a copy-cat domain name, even if I did think of the name waaaaaaay before ultimatetalk launched.

We'll see. I'll put it up on one of the sites.

Lesson one? Check!

Blog Posted by kitt at 17:43 on 12 September 2006

Mike received a phone call yesterday at work. From the conversation, I gathered the person on the other end of the line was looking for Drupal developers, and had been referred to our company.

The first call Mike pushed off: our time was booked, we couldn't take on another client at the moment. The second call was more insistent, but Mike still pushed them off. The third call started causing Mike stress. He looked at me and asked me if I wanted to take on another client.

I've been pushing off adding clients, in favor of actively reducing my client load. I've found the optimal number of clients for me is two. Any more than two and I start thrashing, spinning my wheels and accomplishing nothing. With my new insistence on transparency, my work on my own projects and on me, my time seems pretty full, but I thought, sure, I could help a bit.

I called the original recruiter. I talked to the company's CTO. I chatted with the company's lead developer, whom I had met a month ago for a different reason. The work sounds interesting.

But.

Always a but.

I don't really have time to take on more work. I could help them out. I could work for them for a week, a month, a few months. And after those weeks, months, I'd be a bit richer. Given the recent money issues, taking the work was tempting. Very tempting.

In the end, I couldn't do it. I'm saddened by the fact I'll be missing out on working with a lead Drupal developer (which was the biggest draw to the project, actually). But, I couldn't go into a project where it feels like everyone is already stressed, and pressed for time and in a near panic. I'm finally down to two clients, why add the stress by adding another one?