Quick fill...

Well, there I was, just minding my own business, when my plate went from empty to near-overflow in no time flat. But I get ahead of myself.

This morning's telecon went well. The subject matter was not overly arcane, and the speakers were clearly audible. I did, however, become reacquainted with why I dislike doing two-hour telecons from my office: first, it's a pain to hold a receiver to one's ear for that period of time (I never did master the art of overly long conversations), and second, with one hand devoted to holding the receiver, that leaves one hand to write while holding the paper in place.

Yeah, I know... both "problems" are readily solved with a little ingenuity, or a little cash and even less ingenuity.

I tried to get confirmation from client M that they did, indeed have work for me, based on yesterday's conversation, but got no answer until later today. By that time, I'd already accepted work from client T and had been asked to do more work by client U. Eventually, M got back to me and now I have... a lot... of work due Monday, some more on Tuesday, and about 5 pages due mid-day tomorrow (and which I ought to get cracking on).

* * *I've been having trouble telneting and ftping into 'onegin'. A look at the firewall rules showed me why, and momentarily disconcerted me.

The rules that distracted me momentarily were the ones that allow udp access from some servers whose names were strange to me, until I realized that these were my DNS servers. Otherwise, the firewall rules basically block any and all incoming requests on the ports 0 through 1023 (which include telnet and ftp), so it really doesn't matter how I configure xinetd. Flushing the rules allows ftp and telnet sessions with no problems; restarting ipchains, however, gets me a slightly different set of rules, but the difference is stark, as the first rule says to accept all connections from anywhere to anywhere (kinda like not having any rules at all). So, it looks like I'm going to have to spend a little time refamiliarizing myself with ipchains and firewall rules, and soon.

Got to get back to work...

Cheers...

Whirl the wind, kiddo...

It's been a heck of a day.

It took me a long time, relatively speaking, to invoice stuff done since the 18th. After looking at all the stuff due tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday, I felt that diverting attention to invoicing was a necessary evil, as otherwise, I'd only get around to invoicing around the middle of next week, and some of the things I actually did invoice this evening had been done over a week ago. After all, the name of the game is "cash flow," as work I invoice today doesn't get paid (normally) until 30 days from now (and then there is that client who seems to be running an average of about 45 days behind, but I digress...).

(Interesting enough, just as was the case the last time I did an invoice binge, I found an assignment on my desk that I'd forgotten about. I need to improve my invoicing practices.)

I've just finished the item due tomorrow. It's a fairly straightforward piece, except for about a dozen new terms in the thing that are nowhere to be found in my references. I've put together a fax and sent it off to the editing staff. With any luck, I'll have answers tomorrow in time to incorporate them and send back the assignment for a 3 pm (CT) delivery.

Before that happens, however, I need to get to the store tomorrow fairly early and inventory the personal property, as I agreed to meet with the county assessor's rep tomorrow. I've already started an Excel spreadsheet listing the stuff in the store, and have listed the items in the bathroom and the "back room." I have the "behind-the-counter" area and "customer area" left to inventory, and then comes the fun part: estimating what the stuff is worth, which is what the tax will be based on. Since it's a relatively small tax, I'm not going to try to lowball everything in the joint, but there's no point in overvaluing everything, either.

I am really happy that I took an hour nap after getting home around 2 pm, otherwise, my fanny'd really be dragging about now. Despite the lack of drag, I must be off to bed. If I get up early enough, I just might do the ham breakfast again... we'll see.

Cheers...