Gym Antics

So Burmuda keeps doing the strangest things down at the gym....

I once was driving down to the gym and caught him walking out. Bare chested & walking his strange walk where his arms defy gravity. Funny that he's bald up top but his chest was covered in fur. He should graft some of that stuff up to the top of his head.

He once sat next to me in the next curling machine....I had my earphones on listening to my music. Suddenly I hear the most aweful blood-curdling singing all of a sudden and find out it's Bermuda himself singing to his own stuff. He's like singing as if the world was his oyster and everyone in the gym deserved to listen to him sing his country western music or whatever the hell that was. It could have been a chant to summon the demons of the abyss for whatever I know.

I've since seen him sing out loud like that more then once. Everyone always glances around like "what the hell is that?" whenever they hear him.

I see this other guy lately now I call Santa. He's looks like Santa because he seems like he's exceeding his 50s and has a full bushy white beard. But he's maybe 6'3 and always wears some kind of big basketball jersey that says Kobe or something on the back. I think he has a training partner that comes with him.... he doesn't bother me that much but they're always talking damn loud to each other too from all the way across the gym.

I hear all this while I have my own music in my headset that's how loud these suckers are. Damn attention whores.

Gotta love it.

When It Rains It Pours

Hit another week where there are multiple clients needing me to do everything at once. I hit these types of weeks once in a while...it's unavoidable as there are inevitable client changes and delays that often break the well-planned schedule I had for them.

So here we are....crunch time. I'm going nuts.

I can only remind myself that I've traditionally done very well under pressure like this. It's just very hard seeing that while I'm hip deep in the sheep dip.

A by-product of times like this I become harder to work with though... I get more snappy with people I know. Not good I know but my tolerance level gets thinned out. That's how I accomplish things. I guess it's just as well I'm working alone these days....

ARRRRRGH. When is my vacation!!!?

Cleaning

I hired some professional cleaners to come help me clean my bathroom. For months now I had been slaving away trying to clean my bathroom....you know, the usual mildew buildup and toilet rings. I've purchased everything imaginable for these things; bleach, 409, tile cleansers, etc.

Got on my hands and knees many times trying to scrub the stuff off. But it hardly helped.

Finally I saw a biz card in our lobby for a guy who's the owner for a company called "Spotts Cleaning & Maintenance". Brazilian guy named Frank owns it with a partner. Gave up his career as a registered nurse to try to get this business running.

Another Seinfeld reference...have you seen the one where he hired a cleaner to come to his apartment and he was surprised how thorough he was?

Well, get this:

-- they wax my floors!
-- they folded the tips of my toilet paper like those hotel rolls!
-- they lined the bottom of my medicine cabinet with non-slip absorbant liner!
-- they re-grouted all my bathroom tile!
-- they hand polished the inside of my toilet bowl!
-- they organized my medicine cabinet items by object size!!
-- they took apart my light fixtures and polished them!
-- they scrubbed my little bathroom trash can!

I'm amaaaaazed!!! Short of serving me room service and sending me a brazilan masseuse they couldn't have impressed me more!!

They were awesome. I'd highly recommend them albeit a little expensive...but they surpassed my expectations. Spotts Cleaning and Maintenance 383-5843

Toasty

No words can describe....

Comfortably busy

I read somewhere that when you're working on your own, you should always stay "comfortably busy". Meaning you don't go crazy and overdo it with work all the time, but always stay on your toes with things to do for your business, because there is ALWAYS something to do. So I've been keeping that in mind.... balance! I'm like going zen or something.

OH........MY......... GOD. I know it's not necessarily a masculine thing to say so, but this hamster is so damn cute my head is about to explode. Another cheery way to start the day. I've had the habit to enjoy my morning coffee with a good dose of happy cuteness on Cute Overload. It's eeeeevil.

I never had a pet hamster but I know growing up we've had a few pet mice here and there. Pet mice are good because they're not too demanding and they don't make any noise. The crappy part about them is the constant need to clean the bottom of the pen a lot.

I guess that's unavoidable huh? Give me a non-pooping pet.

While you're at it, get me a tree that can survive with just regular watering alone without all that dirt changing and fertilizer crap that comes with it. I almost picked up a fake tree the other day at a sidewalk sale. The only thing that prevented me from doing so was thinking about how old I was where I actually considered spending well earned money on a damn plastic tree.

Business Cleanup

I'm slowly taking baby steps to improve my business...

It's likely I will have spent about $500-$700 on accounting fees lately...but in the end, they've helped me sort out my Quickbooks and offered me training on how to get that sorted out. All this accounting is crazy. But as you can tell from my Tax tirade, it's best to get the accounting stuff in order to potentially save money in the long run in tax problems. Quickbooks is a nutty program...it's the accounting program of choice but you damn well have to be an accounting expert to know how to use the damn thing.

Luckily my accountant told me just the details I needed to know and I'm good enough to follow instructions. As I get better with it, I'm hoping the time I save not having to mess with my accounting stuff will save me down the line. It's all about opportunity costs.

I set up a online project management system today called Basecamp. I really like it so far. There's a Free version you can set up your 1st project in but any more then that you'd have to sign up for a monthly account. The cool part I really like about the system is that it allows me not only to set up my TO-DO lists and milestones in a calendar, but I can have my clients keep track of where I am.

I can ALSO have my project vendors look at the same thing so we can keep track of each other's progress. So far it's great. Well worth the $12/mo I signed up for if it saves me time tracking things. Cue the Jim Carrey voice "I like it a LOT".

It's going to save me the trouble of having to constantly answer my client's concerns "where are we? When will I see xxxxxx? When will yyyyyy be complete?"

Now I just need to find something that will send out "gentle" payment reminders to people. "HEY! Where's my money?!!" hehehe.

Taxes

Paid quite a bit in taxes this month. It was all estimated taxes for the money I've earned since I started business. It's possible in April I will have to pay more...I have to make sure I have money set aside for that. But I can't imagine how they can bleed me dry any more then they have this month.

I paid over $2k this month in taxes. OUCH. But I look at it this way, I have to have earned money in order to be taxed right? Silver lining!! OK OK, I'm trying very hard to make myself feel better. Now if only my clients would pay me on time. I should operate like the government and impose a huge fine for being late!

This is what we have to pay.... GE, federal and state taxes. Then there's insurance & medicare. Then most likely all that is so confusing you need to pay an accountant just to help sort out what you need to pay everyone else. SUMMAMABEETCH.

Just like I've heard before...we don't PAY taxes, they TAKE it from us...the whole time I'm clawing, scratching and screaming.

Wandering mind...

I saw this logo the other day down at Ala Moana Center. One of those little vendors they have near the Centerstage area. I like this logo. Well balanced, good color, good weight.

I don't know where I picked up this way of thinking (it could have been from dad) but the way I judge balance is by imagining that the logo is a physical object I can set down on a table. Will it stand up by it's own weight? Is it balanced?

This one is questionable. The "heavy" bold leaf and the tilt of the "F" will likely make this logo feel like it's weighted to the right. Plus the words "Honolulu" adds to the right. So by my own standards this one isn't balanced...but I think it gets away with my rule because the leaf is very bold and it really does counter the right side of the image.

This logo I mainly took just because it's something I would never have attempted. But I think it works. I know one of the rules my art school training had taught me was to try not to mix up too many fonts in one design. In this "Shabu Shabu House" logo they mixed it up. Are they trying to emphasize "Shabu Shabu" or "House"?

I'm not sure. But it's certainly something I have to keep in mind. I guess sometimes you can pull off something like this.

Anyone noticed Zippy's logo? Since when did they have that round "Z" thing? I don't think they had that when I was younger. Personally, I don't like this one at all. That looks like an "L" it bugs the shit out of me. I'm not sure what the designer was trying to evoke on this one. It feels....old. Maybe that's it....they wanted to portray Zippy's as being old? Traditional?

Bah, they lost me on this one. The rest of the Zippy's logo is the one they used since I can remember. It's ok...very 80's style font but it works for them. Just get rid of that butt ugly "L"

OK. Enough logo talk. HEY, this IS a business site for my business ok? I gotta talk shop sometimes.

Talk about Shabu....here's the boiler that my dad has at his house. It's pretty old school, you have to put charcoal on the bottom and it basically draws the heat up the funnel and conducts it all around the pot. I bet all my physics friends are crying right now.... maybe I used "conduct" wrong. Either way, the sucker is hot, that's all you need to know.

We had fish balls (bunch of eunich fish swimming around out there now?), beef, tofu, vegetables, & shrimp. Deeeeelish!!

This was the burn left over on the wood underneat the pot. I thought it looked so cool I ended up taking tons of pictures of it. In HI-RES this thing looks cool....perhaps I will make this into a cool close up poster or some kind of design someday.





Dad's MaPo tofu recipe. OH MY GOD this is the best thing he makes. If they mention dad's making this.... I'm inviting myself over. Dad even has the actual mapo tofu spice from the China area that invented this dish. It's like his secret stash that he uses for the genuine taste. It can get really spicey if he wanted to though.

Sheeezus I'm hungry now..... signing out. Gotta feed my face.

Referral Program 2006

I sent out the following email yesterday to a bunch of people:

Dear Valued Customers & Friends,

I hope you all had a very happy Holiday Season! I hope I get the chance to speak to each one of you again sometime soon.

Here I am, my first quarter running my own business and it has turned out to be a healthy quarter, more then I can ask for as a new business owner with much to learn & accomplish before I can get Lowe Studio LLC where I want it to be.

In no small part, it's because of the loyalty & help I've received from all of you. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you all. I hope that this good relationship I've had with each of you will continue on through this year and many more.

To kick off the new year, I've decided to test some of the ideas I've had for my business, beginning with with my 2006 Referral Program in appreciation for the wonderful word-of-mouth I get from my clients.

Effective immediately, if you know any businesses or professional individuals that may need my design services (e.g., business cards, website design, brochures, ad design, logo design, etc.). Please pass me their contact information and I'll contact them right away. Or have them contact me through any of the sources below and have them mention your name.

If this leads to actual work, I'll take 10% of the project total and apply it as a business credit to your account. Perhaps you need me to help update your 2 year old website? Help you get a shopping cart to sell that cool crafted towel holder you made over the holidays? Update your business cards with your new cell phone number? Draw a sketch of your pet chihuahua for a new tattoo? The possibilities are limitless...I'll be here to help!

I think this will be a great way to continue building my business, while giving back to the people who've helped me the get this far.

Thank you for being such great customers & supportive friends!

I should have added.... "But that's not ALL!!.... buy now and get this handy backscratcher free!!"

Not sure if it will work but I thought I'd give it a try. I'm very convinced word-of-mouth is 10x more effective then any advertising, especially here in this small island. So part of my strategy of business is to pour a lot of my resources and energy towards fostering that relationship between me and my clients.

It's part of the reason I've often did MORE for my clients then they expect. I kind of look at that lost labor time almost as an advertising expense in itself. I'm hoping if I keep this up, it will work out for me in the long run.

I checked out a similar organization lately who's sole purpose is to network business professionals called BNI. I like the idea.... once a week you meet with a set group of business people for maybe an hour or so just to network. They have a set schedule where you spend anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes telling the others what's going on with your business.

Before you know it, you'll obviously start becoming very familiar with these people and their businesses, and they will in turn know your business very well too. So we become a network of people who will then have a much easier time passing referrals together.

The cool thing about it is that each chapter of BNI, they design it so that only 1 person in each industry can be eligible to join. That way, you aren't competing against another individual in the same group. If you sell roofing equipment and there is another guy there selling the same thing...TOUGH, you gotta go find another chapter to join.

As a designer, I'm told I'm in pretty high demand in a lot of chapters as they always need designers to handle work within the chapter members or for businesses that they might have referrals for.

I think it's a good concept I'm likely to join. But I'll have to wait till after my vacation.

Christy is really into investments. She studies a lot about international funds and has surprised me that she's got a pretty high tolerance for risk in these things. I have to learn from her I think....my mutual funds have been pretty unexciting. It's been sitting roughly at the same level for the past year. PFFFFFT. If I wanted my money to just sit like that I'd put it in the damn bank. I gotta get up with the program.....

Morning thoughts

Projects are doing ok. Now that I've closed of the Law Office of Wesley YS Chang site I can concentrate on the 2 other main ones I have before my vacation next month. The law site had a minor trip up the other day where everyone could see the site but the office themselves....I thought, "Oh my god what did I do?". Turns out it was their internal network and not my issue. Whew!

Tiki's Grill & Bar is coming along...I feel some momentum now and I'm hoping that can pull together by the end of next week. It's a pretty far out design and like all of my projects, I'm trying to push my limits a bit further on this one to see how it turns out. It's not the design so much that's unusual about this site, but I'm really being super nitpicky about the details of the content. Almost every piece of text I'm taking time to make sure it looks perfect.

I'm really starting to get the hang of CSS stylesheets more and more in my designs. For those not in the field, CSS is just another one of those trendy ways of programming websites these days that's getting a lot of attention as the "only way" to program future websites. I used it a lot in the law site, but it's taken a little step further for Tiki. It still won't be 100% CSS because there's a whole lot of graphic involved and I've still yet to learn how to separate that content from the text data itself. I'm more involved in weaving the CSS into my traditional code.

I have a Pacific Fitness Alliance site to start to get together before vacation as well. Whew! Busy!

I saw my accountant yesterday. Or at least another gentleman in my CPAs office to help me with my Quickbooks. There's nothing "Quick" about quickbooks...this guy once even taught classes in Quickbooks and he stumbled here and there in the tutorial. But he's helping to train me how to use it better and I hope soon it will be more 2nd nature to use it as a tool for my business.

I'm finding my CPA is conservative when it comes to business writeoffs. They are reluctant to let me document things that might be questionable when it comes to taxes...which is good and bad I suppose. Oh! Don't get me wrong, I don't want to cheat the system, but little things have been scrutinized.

Take, for instance, they saw one receipt I had documented as "Coffee for business" on my ledger. It was something like $2.50. They told me that's a grey area that would most likely be something the IRS would consider as personal purchases rather then business. Other things like lunches and stuff they said if I had a non-client with me in any of those meetings, it would be better off not listing these as writeoffs.

That's pretty conservative as opposed to the accountant my programming buddy has where he's been encouraged to write just about anything off as a business expense (e.g. clothing, video games, cable TV, etc.) The good thing for him is that he can get away with it and get more back during taxes...I guess my only consolation is that a conservative accountant will prevent me from getting in future audit trouble. I don't know if I should be wishing my buddy gets audited to feel better? hmmmmmmmmmmmm...... nah, that's cruel hehe.

My girls coming soon. She already picked up her tickets. Picked up all her gifts she got for my parents and my friends...how sweet of her. While having her come visit is one of my most anticipated events coming up soon, I have a part of me that fears having her come because there can always be a chance it wouldn't work out and that would be an end to all this euphoria we're both having now. Real or imagined euphoria. Well, nothing I can do about that, she's proven she loves me and I can only have faith in that so far.

I know it's better we spend time together and finding out if it works, rather then having 2 souls trapping themselves into a relationship that's make-pretend..... well..... I feel inside that this has a good chance of working out. So far I think I have a good amount of healthy hope about this, while keeping realistic about the possibilities.

Well, better get to working......

Freelance

Another article for my own personal reference...but it's a pretty interesting read for those thinking to go off and to their own business. I encountered a lot of this issues myself and luckily I handled most of these pretty similar to what these articles suggests:

Steps to becoming a Freelance Designer

About Going Solo

Maintaining Motivation

Ho boy are these so true!

New Hobby

I bought a couple new cars for myself today. A '51 Mercury and a '70 Mustang BOSS. Pfffft. I wish!!

Well, I actually did. Of course they're only 1:64th scale...about the size of a HotWheel. I was hanging around KayBee Toystore today for a sidewalk sale (don't ask) and somehow I just felt like getting myself a little toy just for kicks.

Then I happened upon these things called BigTime Muscle. They're about $2.50 - $5.00 each. They're BADDASS!! I couldn't resist. I had a big weakness for toy cars when I was younger and I felt the that old flame ignite again. I think I found a new hobby...

The site they have is pretty cool actually. Jada Toys. Apparently they do all kinds of trendy street vehicles in die-cast.

They're pretty solid too. It's die-cast completely throughout the thing, rubber tires, interior. They're about as solid as HotWheels vehicles USED to be back when I was a kid. Not the inferior crappy stuff that HotWheels puts out now.

Now I want to find a few of the other favorite Hot Rods I really like. Ebay didn't turn up too many of these I wonder how hard is it to find these things? OH!! I must find em!

If anybody spots these around let me know!! I know I've seen them here and there before in the past but now that I got 2 of them I want at least 3 or 4 more of them hehe. Damnit if I can't afford a real hotrod I want to at least play with these toy ones.

Dream a little dream....

Besides, from a design standpoint I think these cars are a work of art. Whether it's the real thing or just these little toys.

My brother and I had a serious discussion once about getting a couple of hotrods sometime. I was suprised he was into hotrods too but apparently we share that admiration of muscle cars in common. The real things aren't too expensive actually. We might actually seriously get into these someday.

Anyway, I told my girl "Hey look babe, I got me these COOL toy cars!!!"

She wasn't impressed.

Cute Overload

Every once in a while I pull out this photo. It makes me laugh every time. It's gotta be a classic.

I found it again surfing a great site that was sent to me earlier tonight by my friend Robert. Oh my god I laughed at so many of these cute animal photos. Check it out. http://www.cuteoverload.com/

Oh my stomach hurts....

Law Offices of Wesley Y.S. Chang

AAAAAAAH! Another website is complete. I love this euphoria feeling after another project can be checked off my list.

This one was the law firm one I had been talking about for a couple months now. The Law Offices of Wesley Y.S. Chang.

I'm pretty proud of this one. Not that it's all that revolutionary or anything, but it's the first site I've done that features a lot of my own photography! In fact, one of the very reasons I had bought my camera a couple months ago was for this job.

All the photos found on this site have been either taken by me or my bud Andy Kauffman, there are a couple of them offered by my client. I pretty proud of my photoshop enhancement work on some of these as well. Nothing was left untouched on this one.

From a pure labor standpoint I lost money on this project though. But I knew that right at the start going into it. They didn't have a big budget for this but I found it a good opportunity to test my theory that as a professional, it's always good to do more then what your clients expect. So I had decided I would spend a lot of extra time to do this right.

Did it work? Yes and no... I think overall my clients are happy. But I noticed an interesting effect.... when I first jumped into this project they didn't want much -- not even expected photography.

But once they started seeing the design, all kinds of extra requests come in. It's like if you wanted to buy a Geo Metro but someone told you that you were getting a Mercedes SLK....then you think, "OOOH! that would look nice with a sunroof and silver rims!"

So that's what happened here. I ended up doing staff photos and everything for them. Which in the end, I didn't mind because I had my first experience doing portrait photography. I'm pretty proud of how they came out too. I used my new camera and my dad's tripod which is literally as old as I am. (....er..... 20ish years or so *wink*)

Aaaaah. I'm so glad it's done though. I put a lot of detail into this one. Illustrated map, search engine, even an "easter egg" section on the homepage that leads to the photography section just for kicks.

Well...on to another project.

My mind is numb....

...from working the past 10.5 hrs. That's it...it's 10:30pm I'm putting my things down.

I gotta jam on some projects before my vacation next month. DAMN! I just remembered I got one more small task to do. So much for calling it quits.

I'm feeling like it's do or die lately with the projects. Tiki's Bar & Grill is coming along with the design, but because I want it to look very polished it's growing to be quite a broad and challenging project.

The Law Firm project had been waiting on approval. I had used building shots on their site and at the midnight hour they suddenly paniced and felt it safer to ask the building management to use those photos I took first. In retrospect I guess I should have asked as well, but not having done my own photography that much I guess I wasn't used to that procedure...besides, they were my original photos and in a way they were used because the building looked nice. If anything, they promoted the building. Anyway, I should have that up by the weekend if all goes as planned.

The site I'm doing for Peter Apo, former state congressman, has suddenly come up again after having sat dormant for 3 months.

I got a Fitness Alliance site to do before my vacation....pretty challenging one because it's like a huge thing that's potentially going to involve some world-wide alliances.

And then I might have another project for a scale distribution company too. WHEW! Just taking it one day at a time.

I'm starting to take a photo journal of the designs and logos that I catch around town. Some are better then others. The Cheesecake Factory one is....MEH. I would have gone more Willy Wonka-ish with the fonts. But everything they do in that place is pretty polished.

Best thing there is the lemon-herb roasted chicken. It's so good I think the chickens themselves ask to be cooked that way.

I really like Quicksilver's signage. It's got this free-form thing going on. Very much my style. I don't remember that they always had this look....I've only noticed it maybe within the past year or so. Unless I've been horribly unobservant till recently?





Tenkaippin. OK, the logo ain't all that in my opinion but they serve a pretty good ramen there that has a pretty thick chicken stock in it. Soup isn't as good a description for it...it's more like chicken gravy it's so rich.

Perhaps the chickens who don't get to be lemon-roasted get tossed in big pots to be destined for Tenkaippin ramen gravy.

Left-brainers

I know I'm most likely a left-brainer...so I'm generally better at math and figures then I am at creativity. How did I get into this business then? Well, I don't know the science behind it, but it's possible that you can exercise parts of your mind so you can essentially become better at it over time.

I think they say your brain essentially fuses its system of nervous system what-cha-macallits together in the first few years of your life. (obviously mine didn't fuse well enough in some areas) So I don't think I've suddenly become more right-brain dominant by practice.

But I've noticed right-brain creative thinking has become more easy for me over time, and vice versa, I've become more "stupid" or more uninterested with the logic / number side of things. I'm sure in some parts, this is wishful thinking...there's probably a self-fullfilling thing going on where I somehow have let myself become more stupid with numbers and shit simply because I think I should, rather then any real science behind it.

I couldn't be more uninterested with numbers, computers & programming these days. If I could do what I do without a computer next to me I would. This is so much of a flip from my elementary school days where I thought the computer was the best thing since McDonald's chicken mcnuggets. Codes and programming was everything at the time and I used to program Basic scripts to do my math homework for me. GOD what a geek. I'm ready to bust out a pair of broken glasses and a pair of pocket protectors for my pens already.

Now I'm just less and less interested with that stuff, and quite frankly I've forgotten a lot of the things I should have, after having worked in the tech filed for almost a third of my life.

But I think there is something to it. Even when I've observed my own signature over the years it's definitely evolved over the years as I've felt I've exercised more and more of this creative side. I can write full sentences upside down with ease I found out the other month, I can visualize full designs in my head before I can actually figure out how to do them, and I'm ever more concerned with the getting the results of a project rather then dwelling on HOW it's done. These are all right-brain dominant roles.

Anyway, case in point about brain dominance, my own best friend recently gave me a comment in regards to design the other night when he said "Dude, I'm the last person you should ask for design ideas". This isn't the first time I've heard this from a programmer. These are all very analytical thinkers.

While I understand the reluctance to think creatively, I think to a certain degree that's selling themselves short. To me, there's a whole LOT about art that involves math and left-brain thinking. I think even a full left-brain thinker can distinguish between what looks good to him or her can't they? Or to further clarify, the left-brain thinker probably has an opinion of what looks good to themselves, but they don't trust that the rest of the world agrees with their opinion perhaps?

A lot of art involves math. They may not call it that, but skills such as alignment & composition all involve the artist trying to apply rules of math towards visual objects. When I look at a design, I see rules & lines much as I would looking at a geometry problem.

Look at photography for instance they preach the "rule of thirds" where things generally look better applied within a imaginatry grid on your photo. It's all math.

This all may have made an interesting research subject in college.