LADIES AND GENTLEMAN....

Found some old tapes today. Old school stuff.... old Fat Boys, Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J, Run DMC, LA Dream Team, Dana Dane Sigh.... only less then a handful of tapes though. Tapes...can you believe it? I haven't touched a tape in over 10 years. Some teenagers alive today have probably never seen a tape in their lives!!! Dear God.

I used to be all into this old school hip hop stuff. At one time, I could claim I had *every* hip hop tape in the Tower Records shelf. About as many hip hop albums as an Asian kid in Hawaii could get hahah. This was back when their rap shelf was one little spot in the corner of the store. I pretty much bought anything I could get my hands on. Likely we were a couple years behind what was going on if we were in the center of it all in places like Detriot and stuff. But it was still a cool time to be witnessing it all.

Then, like an IDIOT, I sell them off a few years later when I worked at a music store. I was into other kinds of music at the time and I thought "hey I don't listen to these, I can make a few bucks and buy some new CDs". I think I'll forever regret that decision. Now I can't find those albums anymore.

Skinny Boys, UTFO, Fat Boys, Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick..... not in print. EEEEP. Damn I shouldn't have sold those.

I got to find a way to convert what little tapes I have into digital files......

... the DREAM DREAM DREAM DREAM TEAM IS IN THE HOUSE!!!

The sun is coming up

I got the Eagles' CD playing in the background. God some of these songs suck. Yeah yeah, granted they also had some songs that can be considered in the running for "Greatest of all time" like 'Hotel California' and 'Life in the Fastlane'.

I think Hotel California's guitar solo is up there for my favorite of all time for sure. It's just a solo you can almost sing along with note for note. Perfect for late night air guitar sessions at home or in the shower. Yes you heard me!!! Shower! That's not the water sound, that's the sound of the crowd lovin' me baby! Yeah! hehe.

OK, that's sad.

I'm going a little crazy. Hours upon hours of staring at code these past few days has gotten me a litle stir crazy and a little cross-eyed. A dangerous combination. Minor carpal tunnel too. UGH.

Today started with a visit to the office of a graphic designer I really respect. Eric Woo's been doing graphic design here in Hawaii for over 20 years. Here I am starting off where he was 20 years ago. He's been nice enough to humor me here and there over the past couple years.

He contacts me to try help his team fix an HTML problem they can't fix for one of their projects. Here I am thinking "shoots, no problem. 15 mins I'm out of there!" 3 HOURS later I'm sitting here going "WTF mate!" It wasn't their fault but the templates were a mess of crazy code that just didn't make sense. All the while I just KNEW from experience it was likely to be just ONE tiny line or number that's messing things up in their tables.

It became a personal vendetta. Finally, 3 hours later, I find it.... just ONE number in a few hundred lines of code was breaking things. You know what the irritating thing was? It looked ok in every browser except Internet Exploder!!! Damn you MICROSOFT!!!

Well, it felt good to find it, that's for sure. Except that took up much of my morning.

Now I'm behind...make up for it by working till 10:30pm.

Christy surprised me with a call from work today. How sweet. She's often busy in the emergency room. Did I mention she's a registered nurse? Smart girl. Proud of her. At least she's feeling better. She had the flu the past few days.

Mom on the other hand didn't sound so well tonight. Coughing. Telling her she should take a sick day but she insists on working. /sigh. Not good, she's got me worried. Some stress going on at work for her. She's a rock for everyone else when they need advice, but when it comes to handling her own stress she's not as good as she'd like to think. I hope she'll be alright.

Doggies

Back in the 80s I had 2 dogs. Both of them were whippet breeds....almost like miniature greyhounds.

Teeny and Tiger. Tiger was the female. Teeny was named that because when we picked him out from the liter he was the smallest one.

I miss them both. I never know what became of them because when we moved into an apartment they had to be sold to separate owners. Guarantee they're long gone now... so I hope they're happily racing around together in some far out field in the sky.

Blue Hawaii

I picked up this album from iTunes tonight. No laughing. My brother bought this too and jams it cruising over in the Mainland in his Honda S2000 hahah. Not only is it humourous to see all the strange looks.... Elvis is the MAN!

Well, I don't think we can escape it. Mom raised us listening to Elvis, the Stones, and the Beatles. I suppose it's lucky she's trendy as opposed to having to listen to cheesy old Chinese opera. That stuff could make my ears bleed.

Mom loved Elvis so much she gave me his middle name. Aaron. I think I may have been just a tiny thought process away from having been named Elvis Lowe. Thank god she didn't!!

I can't quite do the hip shuffle he did though. But I might be able to do the lip snarl.

You know the funny thing is....whenever I have a mind block, somehow playing Elvis or Beatles makes me pep up and think clearer? Is that strange? I have thousands of CDs at home from every genre imaginable...but somehow music from this age seemed the most fun and carefree. More melodic and memorable. I think I should have been born between the 50s - 60s

Perhaps I will be Elvis this Halloween. Yeah, that will work.... I'll be the Asian Elvis. Uh huh huh.

Having fun?

There's something about running your own business that makes "work" seem fun.

I'm just starting to realize it. I'm doing essentially the same things I've been doing for years...but now there are moments I sit back and genuinely feel like this is all cool.

I guess maybe because it's like a video game. You start off with a character who has to struggle from the bottom, but you know the end-game. One day your little fantasy character is going to go off and shoot some big ass weapon at the final boss and everything is happy ever-after.

My business feels like the little character right now. It's new, but it has life and with each little success it's advancing ahead. Ever call from a potential customer feels fantastic.... I may not have landed the job yet, but they're finding my baby business to be worth a phone call. That's a happy feeling.

I won't lie....getting paid feels a lot better then that. But I've had those feelings too! haha.

I'm beginning to understand why people can claim they've had fun working. Perhaps these are all people who have struggled for themselves.

The only thing that absolutely SUCKS is the tax paperwork. UGH.

One of my best friends is expecting a 2nd child!!! YAAY. His first child, let's call him "Little E" is the cutest little thing but he's a bundle of energy right now at 3.5 years old. I pray my friends don't lose their minds with 2 kids! Chances are the 2nd one will be opposite of the first right? Hahah. They'll be fine. I'm finding out my best friends are all ending up to be the most responsible parents I know... I'm proud of them.

Yesterday I was at Baskin-Robbins for a quick dessert. In walked this family with 4 or 5 kids. The parents were both huge, belly's sticking out of their shirts. None of the kids had shoes on, a couple of them didn't have a shirt on. None of the kids were being watched, they had what looked like a 3 or 4 year old who tried walking out into the street a couple times, yanked on the neon "Open" sign, threw cups of water all over the tables.

I was just watching in fascination. How does a family like this function? How do these parents survive raising these kids, and what are their future prospects? I don't want to prejudge them, but they didn't seem like the brightest eggs in the basket. Here I am struggling to pay my own expenses here in Hawaii and this guy who looks like he's on welfare is raising 5 kids? Ice cream shouldn't have been their priority. Get those kids some shoes!

I'm glad my friends are all more responsible then that.

Christy sent me socks yesterday heheh. So sweet. She's either telling me she loves me, or she's simply saying I have to cover my stinky feet up. I'll assume the first....life is better that way.

Blooooooood

No, I'm not a blood thirsty gothhead....

I gave blood today, I didn't take any. A whole pint in under 4 minutes.

The lady did pretty good, she was one of the good ones that can find my blood vessel right the first time...all I felt was a little pinprick and it was relatively painless.

One time I gave blood and I felt like the nurse injected a steel blade into my arm. OUCH! I wanted to crack her on the head hehe.

God I hate pain. I hate blood too. I always look away...I can't watch them stick that thing in my arm. Today I was kind of curious...I was tempted to look at the tube draining my blood away but I thought against it.

How embarrassing would it be for the nurse to come back and see me passed out on the table?

Anyway, I did my part for mankind. Somebody upstairs should be nice to me!

Musing...

Random thoughts....

I got a new stapler set from Costco the past week. I was so excited... I know. It's sad when you get excited over office supplies huh? Well, when you work by yourself at home these little triumphs mean a whole lot. I get home...RIP open the package to try out my stapler on some of the proposals I had printed out. NO STAPLES! ARRRGH!

I make good coffee. It's Kona coffee...LION. Only the best baby! Damn thing can't keep me awake though. That caffiene thing is full of shit. But the coffee is certainly better then what you can get in a lot of those instant coffee vendors down the street. Is it better then a Grande Vanilla Americano from Starbucks? Hmmm...it's very very close!

I've been looking around for a good intro-level professional camera lately. I know I know, that's a contradiction in terms isn't it? But I need something I can grow into for my business but I know I don't know enough about photography yet to fool around with a $2000 cam. The one I've been using is so pathetic. It's only 1.3 megapixels...these days even those cell phones have better resolution then that. Probably developed by horny Japanese business men looking to take shots of random women. HEY! That's what I've read, don't shoot the messenger!

I'll wait until I get paid for a large project first.

Christy. My hottie. She's a little naughty. She makes me laugh...I think she'd give one of my best friends, BD, a run for his money trying to out-joke her.

I got a potential referral out in Waianae. That might be cool although I'm such a towny. Waianae has the reputation of being Hawaii's version of Compton. I don't think I've ever been out that far into the west coast side of the island.

Knight's Realm

I guess I should be posting sites that I've been finishing huh? DUH!

I got this one done about a week ago. It was a favor done for a bunch of friends at my dentist's office. It was fun but definitely challenging.... they wanted a lot of fancy features for their little online group to be able to meet up in and discuss stuff. (e.g., share pictures, chat, debate history, share recipes, distribute newsletters, etc.)

Something like that would have costed us thousands if we were to create from scratch so I suggested an open source system for it. Turns out it worked out really well although it did give me a few nights of hair pulling to make it all work. They seem very happy.

It has everything from a full forum, a shoutbox, a chat module, polling system, calendar, etc. It's pretty fun to play around with although the backed code is pretty intimidating. I'm not a programmer so this feels like quite an accomplishment.

From a design standpoint, I feel "ok" about it. It's not revolutionary but I managed to work around some of the limitations of working within this pre-structured environment. Had we the budget, I would have loved to have made this from scratch.

Anyway, check it out if you want to. www.knightsrealm.org

Rewards

You know, there are some rewards to starting a business like this....stuff I normally would not have imagined. Of course we all want to start out own thing for the obvious reasons: promise of wealth, to avoid following someone else's orders, to have your own time, etc.

But there are subtle things I find very rewarding most of all....

One thing I find is really cool is that some of my clients have ceased feeling like "clients" to me and they feel more like friends. You might think, "shit Raph, that's no big deal" but it is to me.... I've always felt there was business, and there was personal. Hard for me to get to that level where I can see my clients as people I could just hang out with.

But now I'm getting to know some of them and it's fascinating the lives some of my clients have.

I have one that used to be a professional equestrian who escaped Hungary as a child in a box!

I have one who climbs the extreme mountains of Hawaii by himself to take photos. In some photos he's standing on nothing more then inches on the ridge of a tall mountain.

I have one who used to be married to a Hollywood star and once turned down Elvis for a date!! Hahah. That's hilarious!

I have one who used to be a state congressman and used to play Hawaiian music professionally during the wars in the 70's.

I have one pretty client (I think she should model) who could kick my ass in martial arts.

I have one who dances ballroom with his wife....they must be good since they're asked to demonstrate their dances on a regular basis.

I'm having so much fun learning about these new friends of mine. That's been one of the amazing rewards of all of this. My little life seems so pale in comparison to all the things these amazing people have done. No longer are these people the intimidating executives or agents of some big business, but they're what I would consider friends.

The other cool thing I find rewarding is to know this business is taking on a life of it's own. I feel silly saying so, but when I write a company check it feels great! It feels legitimately like this business has life. "IT'S ALIIIIIVE!" My baby business.

So far so good!!!

Ongoing report about my honey: Christy has been the best. She's gorgeous! Damn why can't she visit me sooner? She spoils me though...which is kind of cool. I never felt spoiled before. I mean, in past relationships I've been given rewards that made me very happy. But this time I feel like she's treating me way better then I deserve. Awesome!

Yeah I know...it's not like I'm not trying my best to give her what she deserves. But she hasn't asked anything of me but my time. Is this girl real? hahah. I'm damn lucky.

On to another subject. Fruit Snacks --- how can this little package be worth "3 servings"? Bullshit!! What kind of idiot opens this little bag and splits it into 3 snack sessions?

Lasik

My girl.... let's give her a name shall we? I don't own her, I probably shouldn't say "my girl" now should I? Let's call her Christy.

Anyway, Christy had lasik done yesterday. She called me and said it was pretty irritated before going to bed. I had heard it feels like a small rock is in your eyes. But it should only last for a few of the first hours and it should be ok today when she wakes up. I hope so. I worry for her.

I've always wanted Lasik too. I think I may have planned for it this year had it not been such dramatic turn of events lately. As it stands, once everything is in a better routine, perhaps I may consider getting that done maybe in a year or two. I want braces too. Somehow I got these huge mutant teeth that are half the size of my head and they are all crowded up front... damn mutant choppers.

Braces?! At my age? Well... I figure I got perhaps 40, 50, years ahead of me right? I guess it doesn't hurt having it fixed now. Better late then never right?

Braces and Lasik.... should put me about $6k under. OUCH! But I look at it like this... for half the price of a car, I'll be fixing my life in a permanent way. A car depreciates.

Work is going ok... had some lumps to iron out with my former company. I mean, I like them and all...but not everything is eye to eye. There were a few policy things I never agreed with for a few years into it. Perhaps it was just me rejecting leadership? I don't know. Don't care at this point. Just gotta look forward!

Work pace is ok. Although I have to find ways to avoid distraction. If it's not coming from TV, it's easy to loose focus as soon as I get a phone call or IM from someone. Comes with the territory, I'm not surprised there.

What is a little difficult to work around is when I'm somehow asked to do favors for friends and family during the day. Somehow self-employment seems to register as "Raph has a lot of time now". I guess it's understandable...my time IS more flexible now. But it's a hard balance....I WANT to do things with friends and have fun. I mean, that's the whole FUN part about working for myself. But on the other hand, I have to discipline myself not to fun when I can't afford to don't I? UGH.

I think I'm getting it worked out though.... I take whatever time I need to do fun things with friends and family. But I spend almost any other time I can grab working. Nights, weekends, mornings. BAH.... I hope I get a good routine worked out eventually. People tell me it should get easier.

Never really put my logo up anywhere...I suppose I should eventually.

Painful project

I've been helping a friend of mine with a project for one of his clients. He's been a little overbooked with work and so I'm just helping him with the overflow. Figured I owed him a favor anyway.

So this site is a template site... what a pain in the ass!! The problem is that it's set to do things only a certain way and it's taken me more time figuring out this system then I would have just designing a site for her from scratch. Bah, whatever.... I guess I'll just plug away at it. But at this point I have to put that in the backburner for now and concentrate on my own clients.

I've been thinking of my "relationship" with my long distance girl right now. What do you CALL this kind of relationship? We're not really together...yet we DO care for each other. We haven't really committed ourselves to each other, but yet we care enough to feel saddened if we heard that the other were to be dating someone else. What is this? Just "special" friends?

I suppose that is all we are. I'm kind of stuck in this wild whirlwind in my head....she's at once the best thing in my life right now, but yet she seems like such a distant destination. All at once I feel like she raises me upon the highest mountain, but at the same time I'm purposely pushing myself down a bit to protect myself from the possible fall. I feel it's unfair to her.

She's probably feeling the same things.

I guess all I can be is hopeful and be happy for the moments. That's what she tells me...and she's always right. So far...

Weird health....

I've been feeling a little bit weird lately. For the past week my body can't seem to get enough sleep...no matter how much sleep I get the night before, I wake up feeling this cloud over my mind and my eyes are burning like I didn't sleep a wink.

It doesn't seem to go away whether I sleep more or not. One night this past week I actually let myself sleep a full 10 hours and it didn't make a difference. I have no idea what this is...I've tried exercising more, drinking coffee, eating more, eating less.... nothing works.

I DID have one or two nights of bad sleep though. This last Wednesday night I slept at 12am and then I dreamt I was working on a project proposal due the next day...and somehow, the more I thought about it in my dream, I found myself wide awake and worrying about that same proposal. UGH. So I didn't fight it, I got up and started working... 3am. How sad.

The good news is that I got the proposal to my client on time and the initial word is that it "looks good". I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

So far things are promising. I've got a good pace going...I have 2 projects I am working on this month, with a few tiny ones that trickle in every week or so, and I've received at least a verbal confirmation that I've gotten accepted for Projects in November. Not bad!!

But I've learned a long time ago never to celebrate until I have money in hand. You really can't count on verbal promises....anything can happen.

The best part about business so far is being able to have a business budget now. I'm able to invest some of my profits so far into equipment, insurance, and some "entertainment" business meals. That's satisfying. It's far better then spending my own savings that's for sure. I'm still not out of danger. I could still fail if I'm not extremely careful...but it's been hopeful.

My girl is keeping me happy. I really can't say much more then that. As if anyone cares? OK OK, I will say it's a long distance relationship. Yes...it sucks. Chances are stacked against us from the start. But the nice thing is that we've both been in this situation before and this time we've decided to try things a little different. Perhaps it will work? I'm hopeful...but I know how painful it will be to fail in it again.

She's coming to visit me in February. I can't wait!!!

Bye Grandma

My grandmother passed away today. She was my "Ma Ma"...chinese title for my paternal grandmother. She was 94.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. I never knew my Ma Ma too well. Having grown up apart from my father's family here in Hawaii all my life, I must have spoken less then one full conversation with her my whole life. I may have only been in her company less then a few hours if you add all the dinners we've had cumulatively.

But I still loved her. As I did my grandfather, who passed away some 4 or 5 years ago as well. They are where I came from.... they are a part of my history.

While I'm not breaking down in grief, I still think they deserve mention and recognition.

My Ma Ma was a tough person. Even into her 90's she was still a strong & positive person towards the people around her. I admired that. She laughed a genuine laugh. I could tell that just in the little times I've spent with her.

The last time I had dinner with her was maybe 4 years ago... she told a joke (can't remember what it was) and everyone laughed. Can you imagine that? 90 year old comedian. I was proud of her.

As far as she was away from me...as distant as she was. I hope she somehow knew she was an inpiration for me. May I always be as strong & happy as she was.

I never got to say goodbye. But I will sit here remembering her. Love you Grandma.

Knock on wood

Hey, I'm not complaining at all....it's been very busy so far this month. I got work lined up and maybe more on the way. This is kind of cool!!!

But I STILL need a good business plan and a good printed portfolio. Some might say, "Why? If you're getting work that's what counts!" I wish it were so easy.... I need a vision to guide me. I have to get past the cycle of landing a job >> finishing a job >> trying to land another job again.

I'll have to set aside time to do those things.... I must!! There is a Small Business Development Center here in town I have to visit again. They have this industry book there I want to look through for ideas.

Well, I better get to work!!