Posted by on Aug 20, 2009 in My Business Adventures, Personal, Photography | 0 comments

It’s been too hot to think lately. A couple of near storms around the Hawaiian islands this season has come by and blocked our tradewinds. If you’ve never been to Hawaii….basically all year round we have weather that is near ideallic.

But the one-time you don’t want to come here is when we don’t have our tradewinds. The humidity rises and it’s just to sticky and hot outside to do anything. I couldn’t even think yesterday, I had to drive down to work at a Starbucks for the air conditioning.

The day is better today. The winds are back and it’s feeling a lot more comfortable. I figured it be a good day to just collect my thoughts. Read on if you’re so bored to death with your day you want to know more about mine!

iPhone

I think in the past I might have posted about how much I hated my last phone? Well, my contract finally ran out. The day it expired I flew down to the nearest AT&T store and picked up the iPhone.

I’m not going to dwell on it. I’m not exactly an early-adopter of this product. There are 20 million other iPhone users out there.  But now after using this for about a month I have to say I really love it. It’s improved my ability to do business by a good margin.

If you’re at all hesitating, like I was, do it. It’s worth it. The Palm Pre is a close contender, but what makes iPhone great is the apps they have online.

The Design Business

Work is brisk. So far I’ve been very lucky. Despite all the gloom and doom almost everywhere I turn (people are losing jobs daily. Heck we’re even have mergers for our TV stations), I still have regular business.

The one trend I’ve noticed in my business however is that my clients are having a harder time paying everything up-front. I’ve had to work out special payment plans for some of my projects.  Of course, I’ve had a couple of deadbeat clients who just disappeared without paying at all.

It’s made cash flow a little trickier lately, but I’m hanging in there.

Family Life

My wife and I have reached the point where we have to submit papers for her to lift any restrictions on her permanent residency. We’re supposed to do this 2 years after we get married.

We don’t foresee any problems, but like everything else in this process, it’s expensive. $600 just to submit the application. It’s going to go off to some office, sit on some desk for a while until someone looks over our material for 5 minutes and then slides it by.

You know, I’m all for immigration, but it’s a little frustrating getting raped by all the fees doing the process legally.

Kingston is doing alright. I’ve been taking him swimming in our pool these past couple days because of the heat. He seems to love it, he’s always trying to push off of me to kick and paddle in the water. I don’t think he has a healthy fear of drowning yet.

Photography

I had one of my photos developed in the Mainland by a company called MPix. I had this done as a Standout. It came back looking really nice. The colors are accurate and vibrant. There is just one little ding on the bottom of the black frame that doesn’t bother me, but might have been an issue had I intended on selling this. Overall I was happy with this company and will probably order more someday.

I added it to my office wall. One day I’d like to have enough photos to consider actually trying to sell these. But for now I’m content just having them grace my wall.

I registered for a small 5 evening Photography class over at Pacific New Media. That should be fun. Anybody want to come join me?

Well, that’s me in a nutshell this month. Nothing spectacular eh?