One of the hardest aspects of being a business owner is being able to come up with a metric, even an internal one, for what it means for that business to be successful. For some people, that goal is completely monetary - i.e., if they can sell the business for 1 million dollars within 10 years, then that represents success for them. Making Your Business Work For You As an example, one of my good friends recently sold his business. While it was always his dream to build a popular retail business, at some point he realized that the excitement, and the dream, mostly involved building a business, ...

If you do the math, that's January 2nd, 2010 2011. If all goes according to plan, that's the day I'll head out (with only a single backpack in tow) on a little adventure. While I still have a lot to plan for and get ready before then, I've set a date to hopefully give me the motivation to finally follow through on it. I don't really know why, but I'm always a bit hesitant to travel. Maybe it's all the time I've spent living out of suitcases in hotel rooms, or all the trips I went on that were work related (that usually involved 60 hour weeks, and then nights by myself in a hotel). Other than a ...

Ahh yes, the end of a long weekend. And not just any long weekend, the last long weekend of the summer. So long summer of 2009, it was nice to know you. My niece and nephew head back to school tomorrow, which is sort of exciting for them. I always liked going back to school for some reason. Maybe it was buying a whole new batch of school supplies, or seeing some of your friends again after a summer apart. Granted, after about a week I was sick of the new year, but that first week was usually fun. As for me, I took it pretty easy this weekend. I was originally supposed to go camping, but opted ...

That's probably the hardest question to answer nowadays for me when crossing the border. My life and my job are pretty intricately mixed nowadays, that it's often hard to differentiate between the two. For example, when I went to WordCamp San Francisco, I was asked that question by the border agent. The conference I was attending definitely interested me on a personal level, especially since I have a personal blog, but clearly I can extract some business value out of it as well. So is it a business trip, or one for pleasure? The problem with going down the business line is sometimes the border ...

Pretty good article I read today about the importance of slowing your life down. I think it's relevant since it's basically been the direction I've been taking my life for the last seven months. Read the goods here. ...

You see, I have this friend. This friend of mine, well, he was screwed out of a lot of money for a client job he did. There's a substantial email chain verifying that the work was requested, and the price was agreed upon, so he says. But unfortunately, when it came time to pay, the client became unresponsive and has since disappeared. Normally my friend would be quite content to write off the amount owing, and chalk it up to bad debt. But in the process of trying to get a contact number for the client, he discovered someone else who was owed money by the client. And after talking to that person, ...

I briefly went into town this morning to water my plants, take a shower, and get a few groceries. I also managed to hook up with the guys and gals down at Hawk FM for a follow-up interview to the blogathon one I did on Friday. Other than that, I spent most of today sitting shirtless on my picnic table, trying hard not to melt in today's heat. Thankfully I was in the shade most of the day, but man oh man, when that sun hit it sure was hot. My sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew came up for dinner, and just left a few minutes ago. So right now I'm catching up on a few emails, and probably ...

I left Vancouver yesterday afternoon to head into Chilliwack and pick up the keys to my new apartment. On the way, I stopped and met a really old friend of mine from high-school, and we had a few beers and a plate of nachos. I have to say, it was a rather strange feeling being in my apartment all alone after the landlord left. I sort of just stared around at the empty apartment, trying to digest just how I felt. Without a doubt, I am excited. I am definitely looking forward to what the next year or two will bring, and to enjoying life at a slower pace for a while. I spent the night at my dad's ...

Just waiting for a shirt to dry, and then I'm heading into the office for my last week of work. Hard to believe it's coming up so soon to be honest. I have a few meetings this week where I'll finalize the hand off on a few of my projects, and then I'm done. On Wednesday night (two days!) I'll be heading out to Chilliwack and getting the keys for my new place. I haven't even really thought that far ahead yet, but somehow I'll end up out there and my car will stay there going forward. I haven't even really begun to pack yet, so this will be interesting. I'd like to take my laptop in to be fixed, ...

If you still want to be eligible to win a Nintendo Wii, then make sure you go fill out the survey. TODAY IS THE LAST DAY! ...

Those of you that follow my Twitter feed probably noticed that I almost made it to Serbia about a week ago. I was scheduled to fly over there to spend a month helping out our software development team, but at the last minute it all fell apart. It appears that all the stars at work have realigned, and I'm most likely heading to Serbia this week. I'll be gone most likely for around four weeks, and will be getting a small apartment out there. My flight will most likely take me from Vancouver to Frankfurt, and then onwards to Belgrade. From Belgrade, I'll be taking a car or a train up to Novi Sad, ...

Well, thus marks the end of my first two-week vacation stint. This vacation saw me bounce from San Francisco, to Los Angeles, back up to Vancouver, to a Matthew Good show, then to the North Cascades, up to Whistler, and then back home. Not bad for just over two weeks. Golden Gate Bridge, taken during my trip It was great getting to hang out with my sister, brother-in-law, and their two kids down in Disneyland. Despite only being an hour and a bit away, I don't get a chance to head home that often. Plus, I haven't really spent much time with my niece and nephew (although I was there in Chilliwack ...

I've always been a big fan of four day work weeks, or better yet, working at the rate which you are most productive. That's why I have always gravitated towards jobs that don't have fixed hours. Where I currently work, I really don't have a fixed schedule. If I wake up early, I'll stroll in at 8:30am. If I have a rough night sleeping, nobody cares when I stroll in at 10:30am. Given that flexibility, I'll often do a bit of work at home during the evenings when I'm listening to music or whatever. Utah recently announced that they are switching their government employees to four day work weeks. A ...

Ok, ok. I'll take a break from writing about the iPhone. But business has been great lately - my traffic has nearly doubled in the last few days. Not like I really pay attention to those things, but it's pretty clear when there's a big prolonged spike -- clearly people are excited about the iPhone. To be honest, while talking about web traffic, I'm actually surprised mine has stayed up. I used to host all my plugins here and sort of assumed when I finally moved them over to BraveNewCode that alot of my traffic would disappear. But for whatever reason, my traffic has actually increased quite a ...

I have, over the course of my career, given a pile of interviews. One of the trends I've seen a lot in recent years is people who feel the need to lie or exaggerate on their resumes. There's nothing wrong with wording your experience in such a way to promote you a bit better, just so long as you don't lie or stretch the truth to the point where it's unbelievable. In fact, when I started in the realm of software development, I had basically zero real world experience in the area, and that was often looked as a complete detriment to me (even though I had been coding since I was about 15 years old). ...

I got an email this morning asking if I'd like to speak at a university technology conference in Venezuela in May. All expenses would be paid for. Caracas, Venezuela, photo by josemazcona Fun party in Caracas, photo my rmendez Hell yah baby. Hell yah. I just have to come up with something to talk about. Maybe I'll talk about the cute group of women pictured above. ...

In 1997, I decided to mix things up a bit and took a summer job up in Whitehorse, YT, working at the weather station up there for Environment Canada. It was really my first time away from home in any capacity, and also marked the first time I was in a long distance relationship. Needless to say, when I walked off the plane way up north, I was a bit bummed, and a bit out of sorts. I spent the first three days living in a hotel room, desperately trying to find a place to live, since Environment Canada only offered to pay for three days of hotel. I finally found a small room in a trailer living with ...

Chad's party last weekend was the first of the Christmas bashes, but they are coming hard and fast starting tomorrow. I just picked up a new pair of dress pants and my altered jacket from the tailor, and tomorrow I'm spiffing it all out down on Granville Island. There should be a small little pre-party at my pad near False Creek, and then a small little ferry ride over to Bridges, which is a fairly nice seafood restaurant right on the edge of the marina. Kasia won't be coming to my place beforehand because she apparently needs a gazillion hours to get ready before hand, so we'll just have to manage ...

This is a pretty important week in the life of Duane. On Tuesday I'll meet up with my plastic surgeon which might potentially be the last meeting I have with him regarding this whole affair. My first meeting was about twelve months ago and resulted in two surgeries to my eye socket. I've spent this last year bouncing between doctors offices, getting eye exams, several CT scans, and will meet this week to probably wrap everything up. In terms of my vision, it's still not perfect. I see pretty much everything perfectly below the midline (i.e. looking straight or down), but as I look up I tend to ...

Not much new to report. Work is going fairly well, and I've met most of our Ontario company now. Derek and I hit "downtown" Kanata and hit a few local establishments tonight, which was actually a lot of fun. I have two more days here, and then I get on a plane and head to Toronto for Matt's concert. I'm actually getting pretty excited about the whole ordeal. I talked with Tony briefly tonight and he's in the same hotel as me, which is cool. The next time I probably blog will be in Toronto, a few hours before the pre-show meet-up. ...