The Joys of Working at home and being self employed

I've been working at home for about 6.5 years and have been self employed for almost 3. When I tell people I work at home, they usually respond that it must be nice. Well, it takes a certain kind of person and attitude to work at home. My first experience working at home was when I lived in Portland, OR and the company I worked for had basically shut its doors, but kept me on board for a few months. As I was relatively new to Portland and the weather was just awful (it was in the winter) I absolutely hated the experience. After I left Portland and moved back to San Diego, I chose to work at home, while still working for a company in Portland. Since it was now my choice to work at home, things were much better. Working at home gives me the flexibility to goto the gym when I want, run errands when I want, and work when I want. With all this flexibility comes a few downsides. The biggest being that I can work all the time; now that I'm self employed, the more I work, the more I get paid, so it sort of makes me want to work more. Some days I like working at home, occasionally the silence and lack of interaction gets to me.

As for being self employed...I'm not sure that I could work for anyone again. The ability to take off when I want without permission is great. The tax breaks are definitely worth being self employed. The big downsides are that if I don't work, I don't get paid which causes me to work a lot more than if I had an employer and if I'm sick, I don't work and don't get paid. This, of course, can lead to a lot of stress.

Overall, being self employed and working at home agrees with me.

Why do I blog?

Why do I blog? That's an interesting question. I've been blogging for almost 5 months now and sometimes ask myself, why? There are several answers to that question. First off, it gives me an opportunity to get stuff off my chest and synthesize my thoughts. Second, it is a record of what has been going on in my life that I can look back sometime in the future. Third, it is a way for me to write wacky stuff without having to bug my wife with some useless stuff.

Do I expect anyone to read this blog? Not really. It is mainly for me. If others read it, great, but unlike some other blogs I read daily, this is not meant to attract an audience.

Better than the Sony Reader?

The other day I mentioned the Sony Reader for reading stuff on the go. After a little more research and wading through tons of negative comments about Sony's offering, I came across The iLiad. Similar concept, but may be better executed. It appears to read PDF, XHTML, TXT, etc. as well as having 802.11g built in. This looks a lot more exciting; hopefully the cost will make it affordable to mere consumers like me.

Hard Drive Recovery complete

I restored my PowerBook's hard drive to the state it was on Saturday before it crashed using the most excellent SuperDuper!. If you aren't doing regular backups (daily), then you are asking for trouble. There are 2 kinds of computer users; those that have lost data and those that will.