As things become more clear...

I got a call from my client. Apparently, the first part of the "reunion tour" will be getting together in Moscow on August 6th, so as to catch a flight out to Kazakhstan on the 7th. This means I should be flying out on the 5th, but the question is: from where? Flying the itinerary I've flown the past couple of times gets me into Moscow pretty late (and I won't have the luxury of coming in a day or two early, since I do not want to risk repeating my memorable "weekend in Moscow" episode). I need to devote some time to figuring out some alternatives that, in addition to getting me into Moscow at a reasonable time, don't shave my connections too finely. At least I'll have a full complement of luggage, as my missing duffel was dropped off at the store this afternoon.

A long time ago, I installed WordPress on my Springsboard.com domain, right next to TWiki. Yesterday, it occurred to me that primo, I was getting sick and tired of all the comment and trackback spam the blog was collecting, and segundo, I hadn't really touched the TWiki that I'd set up some time ago (nor had it garnered any kind of, um, following that would be disappointed with its disappearance).

So, I backed up the MySQL data from the blog (where I had tentatively begun to post, for my own purposes, extracts from old journal notes, jottings, etc.), used FileZilla to download a copy of the directory structure, and then deleted the files. I probably would have done better to use my ISP's web-based interface to back up my files, but I didn't turn to that resource until the time came to delete a subdirectory that, apparently, contained something over 140,000 files (the 'ls' command resulted in over 2,500,000 bytes transferred, at about 17 bytes per file name; this doesn't make sense, but there you go). Using my ISP's tools, getting rid of the subdirectory was a piece of cake.

I then installed a copy of Mediawiki, just to have something lying around for me to play with when next I fall into a geeky mood.

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For the longest time, I've always had a certain number in my head to represent my monthly "nut," or the amount I must invoice to assure the smooth (more or less) running of the family. Over time, that number has grown in reality, but not in my mind. So over the past six months or so, I've been trying to wrap my mind around a rather spectacular 30% bump in my "nut" (which is to say: I've been increasing the number gradually, in the background so to speak, for the past few months), that hopefully would be accompanied by concomitant levels of invoicing.

The life of the freelance anything generally hangs by a hair. The advantage of not having a single boss who exerts significant control over your life, commands your time, and increasingly, can terminate your employment at will is offset by having, in effect, a number of bosses who exert a different (and to my mind, more tolerable) kind of control, and whose collective action in terms of having work for you to do pretty much assures you from "going dry" (unless for some reason, they all have nothing to assign, which so far has always been a temporary condition).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that bumping my "nut" figure during an "off" month would not be a very good idea, as far as my mental well-being is concerned.

Then again, looking at that previous sentence, I've got to wonder: who's in control, here?

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Cheers...