So it’s about 6:15am in the morning and I’m poking around the interwebs doing a little late night early morning reading from my RSS feeds when I stumbled upon a post I felt compelled to comment on.

The post, titled Quit your job!, was posted over at the 37signals blog. I’ll let you read it on your own but I must say I agree 100% with their point.

Life is too short not to love what you do, and it’s much, much too short to wait around until someone hands you a billion dollars.

People who know me, know that I am- or at least I try to be- quite the entrepreneur. If I had a principle that try to live my life by it would be something very similar to above. Why on earth would I want to work for a giant corp pushing papers or just being employee #913 when I could pursue something of my own, something that will truly make me happy. Now I understand, that some people just aren’t cut out to run their own business or their own venture. Some people do indeed like the organization and work flow that large companies have to offer. Not me.

Life is short. Do something you’re passionate about- something you can look back when you’re 70 and say “you know those last 30 years were great”. Have no regrets. Worst case scenario you’ll end up back at your desk job.

Anyways, I just thought that post was too good not to link to.

I know there has been a lack of fresh content in the past weeks and I apologize. The good news is I have a bunch of article ideas and drafts sitting around just waiting to get some attention. The bad news is over the next 2 weeks I will have virtually no time to get to it.

So what might be eating up all my free time you ask? School, marketing, design, development, and life - unfortunately almost in that order. Since this is my last semester of school (whoop!), time has been getting pretty hectic as I attempt to finish things up.

With that said, once I get through the next 2-3 weeks I am very excited for what lies ahead. Over the past month I have really been getting back into the designing (and developing) scene of things - and I am loving it! I think I finally found a healthy balance between marketing and design/development that keeps me passionate about both and constantly learning. Once school is done I will welcome my new free time with open arms and put much of it into diving into to new projects and taking on new endeavors.

That is also why I am so passionate about the industries I am involved in - web design, development, search engine marketing - they are always evolving. Nothing excites me more than sitting down and devoting time to learning something new (within my interests of course). Perfect example: Django. I have been dying to learn Django, I just haven’t had the time.

Regardless, after the next 3 weeks some smooth sailing should be due. I’m really looking forward to having more time to spend on polishing my design/developer skills, testing new markets, creating new projects, and of course occassionally leaving the computer and enjoying life - I think my girlfriend would agree with me on this.

Although I have been slammed over the past 2 weeks with school I did manage to sneak in time to devote to some new projects, a few of which you should see being released real soon … so be on the look out!

I have so much lined out for the next 3, 6, and even 12 months it’s crazy. I can’t wait…. now back to studying :\

Just upgraded my Wordpress install to the new 2.5. So far it seems great. Still getting used to the new admin interface, but all the new features they rolled out are bound to be helpful.

If you haven’t upgraded yet do yourself a favor, backup your files/database, head over to wordpress.org to download the upgrade, then simply follow the instructions. You’ll be up to speed in no time.

Now I’m off to upgrade all the other Wordpress blogs I admin.

Over the past week I’ve been hearing several iPhone rumors popping up among fellow geek hangouts. First Kevin Rose mentioned on Diggnation that a next gen iPhone is around to corner, featuring 3G and video chat. Next, MacRumors claimed that Apple has already placed their order for the next gen iPhone from Asia, to the tune of 10 million! Finally, last night Kevin Rose posted a Twitter update with another round of details.

Combining all the rumors together- they all, thankfully, point to 3G support. With 3G support they will likely have some sort of video chat capability due to the nice boost in data transfer speed. What might not be so likely is the GPS built in, which is what KR reported in his latest Twitter update. The rumored release date is sometime in the late May to June time frame.

I’ve been holding off on switching from VZW to ATT and getting an iPhone for this exact reason. Hold off on your upgrades for a couple more months - 3G is gonna be hella worth it!

I run VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro which allows me to run Windows XP inside of OSX. Before switching over to VMware Fusion at Christmas I was using Parallels. After using both applications, VMware Fusion is better, hands down.

Point being, setting up shared folders with Parallels was pretty straight forward. To get things to work with Fusion I actually had to do a little research.

After I had setup a shared folder with VMware Fusion I couldn’t find it in Window XP. My Network Places wasn’t showing anything and no shortcut was created on my desktop. The fix is simple however!

1. Pop up the run dialog (Start->Run or Windows Key + R).
2. Type in \\.host and press enter.
3. Your shared folder should appear.
4. Now just create a shortcut on the desktop for easy access.

Profit! That’s all there is to it. Maybe this can save you a little time and frustration.

I often hear horror stories from fellow designers and friends who experience the “click of death” or some other form of hardware failure. If they’re lucky they can usually dig up a backup that is a few months old. The sad truth is that most of them are more or less completely screwed because they either don’t have any form of backup at all OR it is so old - so out of date - it is no help.

What is even worse is I am in this same category myself. When it comes to backing up my information (any of it at all) - to say I do a piss poor job - would be an understatement. I randomly backup different folders and files on my computer as I remember. If my notebook went up in flames right now, I would cry. Like a little school girl. Literally. So much work and information would be lost forever; I really can’t even begin to think how I would ever recover.

Today is a new day though. I am in the process of rectifying this problem. Last night I finished constructing what I consider a “fail-safe backup solution”. How fail-safe is it? Well I’ll go over the schematics after the jump, but I think it is pretty damn fail-safe. About as fail-safe as you can get without implementing some type of corporate solution. Read more for the details.

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