Month: January 2004

This must be a good day for me.  I think I’ve just found where to stay!  I was looking at PrivateProperty.co.za and I found a place just round the corner from where I want to stay, at just under what I’m wanting to pay (including levy and electricity).  Its about 3-5km from Christie’s work, and on the route I’d use to get to my work. AND its just being built, so we’d be living in a house that nobody else has lived in yet.  Anyway, we’re going to check it out over the weekend to see if its all I hope it will be. 🙂

Here is why I love Edgars:

1. Edgars have Edgars Club.
2. Edgars Club has various options.  One of which is “Lifestyle”
3. The “Lifestyle” option has “Legal Assistance”
4. “Legal Assistance” has given me advice on how to start getting my money out of the guy that owes me cash.

The first thing I need to do is to basically write a letter demanding payment. (Unfortunately my phone died as Tracey (the nice lady from the Legal assistance) was explaining to me what to do after that.)  I’ll try again on Monday to get more info, since 4pm on a Friday is really not the best time to be doing this.  Anyway, the tone that Tracey was using when basically dictating the letter to me was very official and quite intimidating.  So maybe this will help speed things up.

On another side, I gather that other people haven’t been paid by him either which is a bit worrying. Anyway, hopefully this will serve as a lesson to anyone who reads it to make sure that you’re incredibly official with any business you do with “friends of friends”.  Otherwise you might end up in a sticky situation like where I am at the moment.

Weddings are not simple things to organise.  Right now mine is sucking up all my free time. (And I’m not even that involved in the organisation)  For the next few weeks my saturdays are pretty much fully booked, and I need to be looking for a place to stay.  Hence the need for a “gopher”, who could run around looking for places for Christie and me.

In the same vein, I could really use a good “thug” to go get some money I’m owed from a guy I did some after hours work for a while ago.  I’m seriously wanting to find out exactly what I’m legally required to do to ensure that he has “read and accepted” the invoice.  Unfortunately as he’s a friend of a friend I didn’t get him to sign the quotes I gave him.  In any case, he’d often call me at odd times to ask me to fix something on one of his websites (e.g. he’d call at 6pm and ask if I could fix a site that evening), so I’d quote him verbally over the phone he’d accept it, I’d do the work and send him a bill over e-mail.  I was waiting for one final job to be complete before I started to ask him to start paying for the previous jobs. 

That job was cancelled in Sept/Nov last year, so I started asking him what he required before he would pay me.  All I had to do was send him an invoice.  So I did (via e-mail).  Then that invoice was not in a format he wanted, so I split it into an invoice per client of his that I’d worked on. (previously I gave him one invoice with all the client’s details together)  That was probably around the begining of November. 

In December he stopped returning my calls, e-mails and SMS’s (in fact his Company’s phone number was redirected to a switched off cellphone number (I got the “The subscriber you have dialed is not available at present.  Please try again later” message that Vodacom/MTN use when a subscriber doesn’t have voicemail setup and their phone is out of reach)).  In January I finally got hold of him and he said that he’d had some “personal problems” and couldn’t handle talking to clients, but he’d pay me at the end of the week.  That didn’t happen.  Then he started ignoring my calls again.  I’m calling him on average about 3 times a day, and calling his office to leave messages about 3 times a day (hoping that the sheer annoyance factor will get him to respond to me).

But today I can tell that he’s now annoyed his staff, in their tone they gave away that they weren’t very happy with him (and in what they said, didn’t say, and asked me not to repeat).  So I’m guessing things are going downhill with his company.  Currently he owes me R4000, which I’m not very keen to lose.  Hence my desire for a thug who could go over there and intimidate him into paying.  Not that I’d want to cause him any harm, but I’d just like him to have some pressure put on him in some way. 

But since I’m not that kind of person, I think I’d rather see what I can do legally.  Anyone got any suggestions?

I was reading on a stack of blogs today about the various people in the US who have been made MVP’s.  It seems to be quite an honour…  Which got me thinking again about my developer community involvement in SA.  A while ago I was very keen to get involved, but then just trying to keep up with the various forum groups on SADeveloper.Net was taking forever (my network connection at work is dog slow (in fact its worse, dogs would be greatly offended that something this bad would be associated with their good name))…  The community grew to about 1000 people in the space of a few months, and with very little time on my hands to be able to try out the various code problems that people were having, I was not really able to give much input.  Combined with a few other facts, like the time it took to read just 10 posts was seriously hampering my work productivity, and that I have such a busy schedule during the week that I have pretty much no time for anything computer related after work.  (Unless I was to do it into the wee hours of the morning)

Since then, not much has changed… well actually a lot has changed… but nothing that would free up more time for me to be able to get more involved in the SA Developer community… In the last 6 months I’ve been singing in the choir at church, doing “backing vocals” for one of the worship teams, moving houses, getting engaged (followed by planning a wedding) which kinda brings be to where I am now… Currently I’m still planning a wedding (its happening on the 13th of March), so I’m looking for a place for us to stay, organising a honeymoon, fighting with a client of mine to pay me (so we can have a nice honeymoon), working, singing, etc.  On the 3rd of February I’m going to be leading a “homecell”/bible study which will also be taking up time…

And slowly I’ve started to realise that “Time Management” sucks!  Its not that I can’t manage time mind you, because I’m perfect (as you all know) – its just that this whole misguided attempt at expecting that the things we want to do must fit within a finite amout of time, like say for example 24 hours.  Who says that I can’t read three books, write two articles, answer 50 queries on various forums, spend time with my fiancé, sing in a choir, go to work, have food, go to gym, and sleep in 24 hours while giving my complete attention to each activity?  Unfortunately, I think I must admit defeat and join the ranks of the “unenlightened” in believing that doing things takes time, and that there is finite time available in each day in which to do them.

So now I’m doing something that’s also kind of “weird”… you see at the start of the year most people make decisions to cut out various “bad” things in their lives, and to take up various “good” activities instead… but this year I’m looking at what “good” things I can cut out of my life so that I can be better at what is left.  This throws up a whole bunch of interesting questions like “what is good?”, “how do you know you’ll be able to do better at what is left?”, “Who are you kidding? Are you really trying to say that you have nothing bad in your life?”, etc.

Well… I can answer some of them:

1. “What is good?”
   By “good”, I’m meaning things that are beneficial and will help me get to my “end goal”. (I’m still deciding exactly what the end goal is)  For example – I know I won’t get to my end goal without my wife to be, so I cut things out of my life that interfere with spending time with her.  Those are the kinds of decisions I’ll be making…
   
2. “how do you know you’ll be able to do better at what is left?”
   Well, I’m not 100% sure of it, but it kinda makes logical sense… If I have 5 minutes a day to practice music now, and after removing various superfluous bits from my life I have 30 minutes a day to practice music, I have a greater chance of improving my musical skills. (and I’ve had an extra 25 minutes a day of relaxation, which is great!)  Its this kind of effect that I’ll be looking for…
   
3. “Who are you kidding? Are you really trying to say that you have nothing bad in your life?”
   Not at all, I have plenty of bad things that I need to remove too, its just that I don’t think its that commonly spoken about for someone to be choosing between which “good” thing to give up, as a “new year’s resolution”… You’re normally taking the “lesser of two weavils” (to quote from the “Master and Commander: The far side of the world“)

I think I’ll “cheat” on a number of points… I’ll do a “trial and error” test… I’ll drop things “for a while” and evaluate what impact it has on my life, especially since I’m begining a whole bunch of new things (like moving closer to my social group, getting married, leading a home group, and having less of my time required by being involved in worship at church (they’re organising the practices a bit better this year so I should only be practicing twice a month, as opposed to 4 times a month last year)) which will have both positive and negative impacts on my time and will certainly change my outlook on life.

I better dash, its 00:36 right now and I should have been asleep ages ago! (there goes that “wonderful” time management of mine again :))

I just read Tim Marman’s blog entry about a poor kid called “Mike Rowe”, who registered “MikeRoweSoft.com“… now he’s being sued by Microsoft for copyright infringement! [more info] Look, you probably find that the kid registered the name with a kinda “tongue in cheek” motive, but really – to sue him for it? I mean, just know I’ll be sued by some other guy called “Paul Sainsbury” for Identity Theft!

How would you prove yourself innocent of that… Imagine… one day the police rock up at your door to say “Mr Paul Sainsbury, you’re under arrest for identity theft”, and you’re like “Who’s identity did I steal?”, and they’re like “Mr Paul Sainsbury’s”, and you’re like “But that’s me”, and they’re like… “You’re not fooling us Mr Sainsbury”. How could you prove that all your documents aren’t fake?

If you are wondering how people could fake these documents, just check out the show “The Agency” (Monday evenings at 7:30pm on SABC 3 for those of you in South Africa)… they have a really cool lady there who basically fakes documents, etc all the time using simple grafic design skills, a PC, a scanner, some program (like photoshop), and a laminator. (plus a few other goodies, but since I’m not into the “fake id” business, I wouldn’t really know what they are… but then I guess I’d have to say that if I was in “the business” so I could not draw suspicion to myself, so you really have no way of knowing if its true or not – but this sentence is getting too long so I’ll stop writing about it)

I guess that “Mike Rowe Soft” case is kinda like those supposed “Stella Awards” that get handed out for the most “outrageous” law suites in the states… like the lady who got sued because a guy who broke into his house slipped on her kitchen floor and broke his arm (or somthing like that)… That’s gotta be an “urban legend”, but I’ve not checked it out on snopes.com.