hvirring.dk

Whether you’re an independent consultant, a footloose technology contractor or a freelancer, keeping track of time is vital to your business, which is why I started looking for a good time tracking solution when I began working on my own this month. I found a few options that looked good on the surface, and decided to give “myHours.com (Time Management, Timesheet, Time Tracking online – myHours.com)”:http://myhours.com a try. After using it for four weeks I can only say, that if you’re looking for an (online) application to keep track of your time, you should definitely try out “myHours.com (Time Management, Timesheet, Time Tracking online – myHours.com)”:http://myhours.com. For me it’s got just the right set of features. It did look a bit too simplistic to me in the beginning, but after using it for four weeks now, I’m very happy with the simple, non-bloated application and hope they’re going to keep it this way (adding a drop of “AJAX (Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications)”:http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php wouldn’t hurt, though).

Finally, I just have to get this out: Boy am I happy not having to enter my time and expenses in some half-assed SAP implementation any more. What a relief it is!

Yes, I’ve taken the plunge and decided to work as a free agent / freelancer / independent contractor / whatever you want to call it. As of today I’m officially “registered (Central Business Register, CVR)”:http://www.cvr.dk/Site/Forms/PublicService/DisplayCompany.aspx?cvrnr=19080684 to do business under the name “productive.dk”:http://productive.dk.

This will be my much needed escape from the corporate rat race and should (fingers crossed) allow me to keep a better balance between working life and family life. Tough as it was deciding to quit a well-paying consulting job, I’m much looking forward to once again enjoying and being passionate about the work I do.

An export of my “Firefox”:http://getfirefox.com “Adblock”:http://adblock.mozdev.org filters is available “here”:http://productive.dk/pub/adblock.txt.

After a quick shot at installing “Debian”:http://www.debian.org from the seven (!) downloaded CD-images, I decided my time was too valuable to pretend being as geeky as Debian apparently requires. Let me just say, that installing Debian 3.0r2 had a very 1998-ish feeling too it. Instead I decided to give “Fedora”:http://fedora.redhat.com Core 2 a try, and what a difference. Everything installed without a hitch from the “DVD-image”:http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu, and so far I have been able to use all of my hardware, including the integrated Intel network adapter, Matrox G450 graphicscard (in DualHead mode), and my USB-mouse (all of which did not work with Debian, without downloading and compiling modules).

I just stumbled upon an essay today that completely blew me away: “Great Hackers”:http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html by “Paul Graham”:http://www.paulgraham.com. Here are two parts that I could totally relate to:

bq. _After software, the most important tool to a hacker is probably his office. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. But hackers use their offices for more than that: they use their office as a place to think in. And if you’re a technology company, their thoughts are your product. So making hackers work in a noisy, distracting environment is like having a paint factory where the air is full of soot._
…
_This could explain the disconnect over cubicles. Maybe the people in charge of facilities, not having any concentration to shatter, have no idea that working in a cubicle feels to a hacker like having one’s brain in a blender. (Whereas Bill, if the rumors of autism are true, knows all too well.)_

But hey, “go read the essay yourself”:http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html and then send the link to your boss. For the completely clueless manager you may need to buy the book: “Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age(Buy from Amazon.com)”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596006624/hvirringdk-20.