Again, I ponder the purchase of a little dinger. I managed to remember breakfast today, but 100 calories worth of fat-free yogurt doesn't take you far. I spent hours ignoring hunger pangs before I glanced at the clock and realized it was 1:30 and that it was okay to eat again.
So, yesterday was the big annual physical. Bleah.
For those concerned (or just too lazy to skim past this bit), I have no health issues. The worst thing my doctor could come up with was that I need to lower my "bad" cholesterol by 2 points. And my overall cholesterol by 15. Aside from that, I'm pretty darned healthy. That, of course, didn't stop her from giving me an EKG (should never have mentioned those occasional bouts of "faintness") or scheduling me for a follow-up thyroid ultrasound and a chest x-ray.
Before I forget, I was glad to hear that the blood tests showed that my thyroid hormone level is a little low. Although I didn't remember until the Doc mentioned it, the aforementioned "faintness" is precisely what I experienced back in the late 90s that inspired me have some blood work done and the low thyroid issue diagnosed. So, the "faintness" that I've been experiencing for the last couple of months (and that was bothering me a bit more than I'm admitting) is 95% likely to be connected with my need for more meds.*
In other news, Bernie emailed this morning and asked how far along I am on his project. I wrote back, reminding him that his last communiqué asked me to wait until we talked more before I got started. (Reason #1 why He Used To Make Me Crazy--he never remembered what he told me to do and then got aggravated when I did it.)
FWIW, he also emailed by copying my last email to him--so I know he received news of my (increased) hourly rate, but he didn't say anything about it. (Reason #2 why He Used To Make Me Crazy --he's perfectly capable of arguing about my hourly rate--and/or the hours the job takes me--after the fact, when I'm wanting to be paid.)
And, in typical Bernie fashion, he dropped into the conversation the info that my 'contact' on this project actually lives in another country and I need a microphone and an internet-based calling program in order to communicate with this person (Reason #3 why He Used To Make Me Crazy--the strange assortment of freelancers he's accumulated to do the ongoing work he's too cheap to hire an employee for.) as I work with the guy to decide how to revamp the website--something that was not in his original request or factored into my bid. (Reason #4 why He Used To Make Me Crazy--project creep.)
Sigh. Not only do I have to put in four hours Saturday morning for both 'Nut and Gidget Co jobs, but now I need to plan 10-15 hours a week for the next couple of weeks for Bernie Stuff. That's another vacation day down the tubes, because I'm going to have to take Monday off to get through it all on a timely basis.
I wouldn't have to use up my vacation time if I just worked in the evenings, but it seems unlikely that that will happen.
Or, you know, I could work during the weekdays, instead of blogging.
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* I suspect that many of you have long thought I needed my meds adjusted. Heh.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:39 PM | Comments (4)I do seem to spend a lot of time moaning about how I'm just so over it all these days, don't I? Sorry 'bout that. I certainly don't want anyone to get the idea that my life is a wasteland or that I'm drowning in a sea of dark despair* or anything.
Diet, Day Two: So far, so good. 28 hours into the program and I've only cheated twice! *sigh* I'm going to tell myself that a slice of cheddar cheese and six crackers aren't that bad.
Six-Month Frugality Plan: 16 months and going strong. Three more cc payments and I should be essentially debt-free! (Aside from a not-inconsiderable chunk of change I owe the R.C., whose savings we lived on during the Great Unemployment of '07.)
In fact, aside from the midnight patio-party-hearty group living just outside my bedroom window, I don't have any real problems at the moment. (Granted, that may change after my annual physical next Wednesday.)
As we all know, trauma and turmoil make more interesting blog material than peace and prosperity. Sadly, as today's high point so far was the moment when I ate a cracker, I'm trauma-free.
I have to keep my hands off of the 'Nut campaigns for a while. I'm not only caught up, but so up-to-date that I just realized that I've spent a significant amount of time this week trying random weird things just to see what will happen. I should back off, before I actually break something.
Although, of course, the fact that nothing is actually broken hasn't prevented a handful o'Nuts from contacting me this week in a panic over various imagined problems. One person couldn't see their ads at 4:07pm yesterday, when they were ego-surfing. That wasted 90 minutes of my morning today. Another 'Nut screamed that they hadn't had a lead in a week. When I emailed back, pointing out that they've gotten seven in the last four days, they just said, "thanks for checking." I mean, what's that about?
In other sad news, Bernie did not reject my proposal out of hand. In fact, he didn't seem to choke on the number of hours I quoted for the job at all. This worries me. He wrote today to approve the proposal and ask my hourly rate, so I provided it. We'll see if that chases him off.
If it doesn't.... Well, I guess I can tell myself that $600 is $600. And that fixing the unholy mess they've made out of this client's campaign will teach me a lot about Webstrainer.
Gidget wants me to focus on improving the stats on The Gidget Co.'s client accounts. As though that's not what everything I do it designed to do, but one location in particular is complaining. As so often happens, this client, a member of Senior Central, already has the highest-performance campaign of any of his group. Sheesh. Basically, there are no locations among either the Senior Centralites or the Woofmen who are spending as much money as they should be, so I'm going to have to try and figure out how to get around that. And how to drive leads when they're not using any measure that counts leads, so I can't tell what's working, or when.
Anyhow. What I'm saying? This weekend looks like there's going to be a lot of free-lance working and very little playing. Frugal, yes. But not all that fun.
P.S. I'm sitting here, starving of the hunger and wondering if my determination to lose some weight will keep me on the Diet Path until lunch time, when I notice that it's 1:30. Maybe I need a little dinger to keep on my desk, so I'll know when it's time to eat?
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* Paraphrase from, IIRC, Helen's Babies.
Today's 'Nuttery so far includes one guy wanting month-by-month report of all the searches people have used to find his campaign this year. 3k+ lines of data that it only took me ten seconds to decide to pass along "as is." I can't find myself getting excited about spending two hours formatting data that's of no use to me.
Another 'Nut called to complain that he's not seeing any data in the dashboad his outside agency gives him to use to monitor his campaign. You'd be impressed by how kind I was when I explained that it's an outside agency and he has to call them if he has questions.
NewBoss Anais IM'd and then came over in person to argue about our monthly spend. First, she had "spend" confused with "budget." Then she had a number in her head from last year--before we lost ten locations and the national campaign was slashed by 60%.
I think, though, that most of the communication confusion was caused by my complete inability to care.
My weekend was uneventful. But frugal! I spent no money, except on food.
But I did spend $30 on food. Fresh fruits and a few ready-to-eat treats. I decided that the Six-Month Frugality Plan would probably survive a single indulgence. I mean, one must eat, right? Anyhow, unless there's some kind of wild and crazy emergency, I should be done digging myself out of credit card debt in 90 days. (A mere 18 months after the debut of the Six-Month Plan!) (Although - $2,500 worth of work still needs to be done on my car, so that's probably another hit the card will have to take.)
We had something of a storm Monday night. As of Tuesday morning, 25k+ people were without power on the western side of the city. Many folks woke up to piles of marble-sized hail. Tornados, wind, rain, and all of that.
I, myself, was awake for the first round of sirens and for the start of the rain, but then a cool breeze swept through my room and I fell into the comatose state that passes for sleep with me. (I'm not a complete moron - I got up to check the weather strip and saw that the storm was on the west. Since we're very far east, I figured we were reasonably safe.)
Bored, bored, bored. I spent Monday, yesterday, and this morning rewriting 'Nut ads. I'm sick of ads.
I got Bernie's first account analyzed Monday. It was pretty funny. I mean, when he told me they were "managing" the campaigns by reviewing the website statistics, I knew I was going to find some problems, but I did at least expect to find campaigns set up by someone who had the ghost of a clue. (I studied data for three hours Monday evening and I still don't understand what they were trying to accomplish in some parts of the campaigns.)
Anyhow. I did a write-up and submitted a proposal to him for 25 hours at $25/hour. Since I know his limited imagination can rarely go beyond four hours for any job, and paying more than $10/hour gives him ulcers, I expect this proposal will be sufficient to get me off the hook.
I mean, I don't precisely want to burn the bridge. I just--want traffic kept to a minimum, you know?
Now I have to go rant about a story I saw in today's news.
Howdy, folks! What's new with you?
Mmm? Yes? Really! Mmm-hmm. You don't say? Well, gosh. Wotta story!
Me? There's so much going on here I can barely organize my thoughts to complain about it all.
Here at the Argonut Café, a previously unnamed 'Nut is about to close their doors. Yawn.
After hustling for two weeks to get it all ready, I sent out six-month performance reports yesterday. Within an hour I'd heard back from eleven 'Nuts whose combined requests for more detailed data and explanations are going to take me, at a conservative estimate, 16 hours to produce.
(Sigh. When I say, "I think you should do X because of Y" they should just email back and say, "Okay.")
I just had my second call (one of the Bowery Boys) and the guy had zero interest in reviewing the numbers he asked for or discussing the information he made me prepare. His idea was that I was going to walk him through looking at his campaign, so he could decide what keywords he should have. As I tried to explain, three times, the keyword list is not "fixed." Words rotate in and out constantly as we try new words and delete nonperforming words. What I wanted him to concentrate on was markets--which of the markets he currently advertises does he want to keep advertising. He didn't want to talk at that level, which means the two hours I spent working up all that data was time wasted. (Not to mention the 30 minutes for the phone call.) (If he didn't want all of that junk, why did he ask for it? Getting older by the minute, people!)
I've sent follow-up data to four other 'Nuts and am waiting for them to decide when they want to talk on the phone. The remaining five--I'm losing my enthusiasm for this project, so I'm ignoring them at the moment.
Further, in the good news/bad news department?
Another heretofore unmentioned 'Nut has a friend in need of online mktg expertise and is going to share my contact info. (Hey, a small, one-time job is still a dab of income!) Sadly, the project is too small to run through Gidget's company (if it comes to pass) because it's about $50 or $100, but from little acorns....
Gidget is getting 'scoped tomorrow in another effort to identify the source of her ongoing aches and pains. As soon as she finishes, she's on a plane to her mother's bedside as the relevant medical authorities say that this time, it really might be the end.
As we agreed on the phone earlier today, "expected" is not the same as "okay."
I tremble to share the next piece of good?/bad?/good? news.
It's Bernie. He's ba-a-ck! Apparently choking on the sheer volume of new work he's got and in need of my personal expertise in the mktg arena.
Or, not.
Because while he mentioned Webstrainer and whatnot, what he kept providing details about was using open source software for website optimization (SEO) which is a different color of elephant entirely. (And one where, in The Gidget Co, Gidget would handle words and I'd handle interface/tech.*)
Of course, Bernie's not likely to pay enough to hire a "company" when he thinks he can get me, for ten cents and a baloney sandwich, to do the same work. (No, we didn't discuss payment yet. It's tacky, to say the least, to discuss payment before you've actually heard what the work is.)
From what he said, "choking on work" isn't much of an exaggeration. If only half these projects reach the reality zone, that's enough full-time work for three or four people. (Or maybe five or six.) I know he has one employee (although what her actual duties are these days, I do not know) and himself. He mentioned two free-lancers, both of whom I know to be very good but who presumably also have other projects. And then there's me, with a 40-hour (50-hour) a week job and 15 hours a week on top of that for The Gidget Co already.
And. You know.
Bernie.
The man who nearly drove me psychotic when I worked for him--bidding twenty-five dollars for a five-hundred dollar job and then complaining bitterly when he had to cut a fifty-dollar paycheck to cover my hours. The man who hired me with the promise of reinstating (soon!) the 20% salary cut he handed me with my new job, who then laid-off the programmer/network administrator and expected me to magically grow that set of skills, and then moved his office halfway across the state and expected me to commute, all the while not only not delivering on his salary increase promises but hinting that I should be willing to take another pay cut.
Yeah. Him.
Why is my professional life full of people fixed in the belief that if they just ignore reality hard enough, it will change for them?)
And! As I mentioned last week, Gidget may have rounded up our third major client already and if she has, then I don't have the time or the energy to take on another 15-hour a week free-lance project--at least, not until I get out of having a full-time job.
The big question, as it always is with Bernie, is whether or not he's pitching these jobs to the clients for at least as much money as it's going to cost him to do the work. We're lunching tomorrow, and I do intend to ask him, point-blank, if he can afford my services.
But, you know, depending on how much of it actually comes to fruition, I might actually be in a position to wave bye-bye to the 'Nuts, come September 1.
Will we all be glad or sad if I no longer have a cast of coworkers to abuse?
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* It's occasionally sort of odd for me to spend so much time with people who think of me as a "tech person." Who think of me as someone "not good with words."
Mostly, it's because they think of me as a "tech person" and it's a little scary to realize how little someone has to understand technology for me to look like an expert.
I thought we'd start on an upbeat note for a change.
And now for something completely different....
This week's theme? I'm a waste of space. My brain continues to be over the Argonut's campaigns and other problems. NewBoss Anais asked if I'd be willing to discuss some stats with a 'Nut one day next week and I offered her a million dollars if she didn't ever make me talk to any of these people again.
The electricity they spent having me in the office and my computer running this week? Was money wasted.
I talk a lot about how I've improved the performance stats for these campaigns, but not much about the bottom line. The bottom line is that the campaigns aren't pulling enough leads to be worth the money spent on them.
At least, that's what the 'Nuts keep saying. When I point out that they're getting double the number of leads they got this time last year, they dismiss that as irrelevant, claming that this year's leads are no good. And that last year's leads were fabulous. I can't figure out if they're suffering from The Good Old Days syndrome or if the kind of lead our business model relies on really is thin on the ground this summer?
And I'm finding it increasingly difficult to care.
I had occasion to need a list of our "best" ads this week, so I ran a report of all the ad variations I've tried this year. Excel choked on the result, so I trimmed it to just ads in campaigns currently active. I wound up with a spreadsheet having 59,000+ ads. Which I subsequently boiled down to 120 "best" ads and another 94 "worth trying again" ads. My head is so tired.
I cannot think through all this hair. Fortunately, I have an appointment for Monday.
(Whoops! I was sitting here, working on a new Gidget client's account and Jason came strolling over to ask me how things are going. I wish I'd heard him coming. I'd have combed my hair or something, in honor of the occasion.)
Gidget, it turns out, is gallstone-free. The ulcer is still a viable possibility. She's giving her stomach a bland diet, and hoping for the best while she works to get her latest two projects underway.
One of our clients, hereinafter referred to as the "Woofmen" because I'm obnoxious that way, is starting up a second arm next month. Services similar to what they already do, but different enough to justify a stand-alone business model. Once they roll out, that's the third client leg (lots of body parts today) we've been wanting!
The other client, hereinafter referred to as "Senior Central" because invention is failing me at the moment, wants to branch out into "social networking" in a big way and, later this year, is going to pay Gidget to manage their overall "social network" presence.* * (I, of course, will be doing the actual work. I'm not sure Gidget would know a social network if one invited her over for tea.)
Fingers crossed for these two projects, folks! They're the last building blocks needed in The Gidget Co.'s "we just want to pay our bills and fire our crazy bosses" concept. Between these two and the "increase in the cost of services rendered" notice Gidget delivered to Woofmen last week, we are this close to our goal!
Yesterday I lunched with Gidget and Vela. I shared what little 'Nut gossip I've gathered, Vela dissed her crazy new company, and Gidget bemoaned the incestuous tangle of business relationships and politics (turns out that a VP of Senior Central runs a PR agency on the side and this agency handles the PR for Woofmen) that's currently causing stop-and-go traffic jams on her road to financial independence. No matter where you work, there will always be Issues.
Today's lunch indulgence was a mélange* of smoked turkey, 1/2 slice of cheese, dill pickle slices, and brown mustard. Without precisely being back on a diet, I'm making an attempt to cut down on the fat and increase the nutrition in my diet. Should I find myself in danger of starving to death in a couple of hours, I have six crackers I can eat to keep body and soul together until dinner time.
No, not my most scintillating post. My head is broken. Even if you're borderline obsessive-compulsive, I maintain that there are times when your brain just can't deal with any more bits of stuff, and this is one of my times. If I have to spend one more minute trying to figure out how to raise some statistic from 0.99% to 1.01%, I may run mad.* * * (This, yes, is why you're getting two blog posts from me this week.)
Boring story short--there's a pair of Eastern 'Nuts we'll call Tom & Jerry. Tom & Jerry were part of one of the shared marketing cooperatives with another 'Nut until they decided it was a conspiracy to steal all of their leads. Two weeks ago they asked for info on their new campaign's performance, I sent data showing that it was improving every week, and they requested a conference call for a more in-depth discussion. Today, an hour of my life I'll never get back again, boiled down to, "it looks good."
Why, I ask (in vain), why do people feel that wasting the precious hours of my life by forcing me to read them simple lines of text is okay?
I provide ten lines of data. For each line, I include the analysis, "This is from X. This number is up. Up is good." Or, "This number is down. Down is good."
How can they have the nerve to call me up and say, "What does it mean that this number is up? Is that good?"
I hate people.
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* It might not be. But it's a good word.
* * Don't even get me started. "Success" at social networking has to be achieved before you try to make a buck with it. Unless you have the world's sexiest new teenager product. Why can I not get anyone to understand these things?
* * * I mean, I know how. But it involves running two reports and breaking the resultant data down into four groups, each of which has about fifteen subgroups and then you check the numbers individually and in context with each other to decide which bit of what to change and I just can't face doing that one more time this week.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)Sometimes I reach pretty far for titles, yes.
The administrative staff population here at the Argonut Café is on strike. The four young (so, you know, not me) women who took on most of the work from laid-off employees have found their spines and, as of this morning, are no longer performing maid services. Those members of the staff who find themselves unable to reach the extra six inches required to put their dirty dishes in the dishwasher instead of dropping them in the sink will now find themselves facing an ever-growing mound of food-encrusted glass and tableware.
As Tyro said (and I agree), the staff all have plenty to do with their actual jobs and anyone too enfeebled to put their glass in the top rack of the dishwasher should probably be considering full-time disability. Also? "Female" is not synonymous with "mother."
Tyro (heretofore mentioned as one of the few National 'Nuts who actually liked Jason, on a personal level) is adding an additional level of strike-ness to her personal list. She's no longer cleaning Jason's office (I didn't know she did). Not because of busyness (although she has lots of that) but because he was so rude and unprofessional to her the last time they had an extended conversation that she's no longer speaking to him except on purely professional topics.
He didn't have that many people here who actually liked him, as near as I can tell. I don't think he could afford to lose one. (OTOH, I'm not even sure he's noticed he lost one.)
Another Argonut Afield is leaving the fold. As far as I know, this one isn't taking our toys and building his own sandbox. He's just leaving. Granted, as Tyro and I also discussed yesterday, what we're losing are the weak locations who thought "franchise" meant "no-stress success," it's still painful to lose another location.
In other Armageddon news, the daily storms continue apace. Mornings and early afternoons are lovely. Then banks of black storm clouds roll in, the wind starts whistling, and deafening rain batters the city. It's actually kind of nice. (1) The nightly news is no longer full of whining about low water reserves, and (2) it cools the air down, allowing me to sleep.
The other day, we had so much rain, so hard and so fast, great armloads of rocks were floated out from under the hedges and trees to accumulate in the streets. (I'm guessing, maybe, 3-4 wheelbarrow loads outside our building.) In the storm drains, the high-water debris line averages about four feet above stream banks. People in "garden-level" apartments or unlucky enough to have ground-level doorways are getting flooded.
The emails are coming in. People seem concerned at the long silence.
My apologies. Not dead--just busy. Working for Gidget as new clients keep coming on board, struggling through end of month reporting for the 'Nuts, facing yet another 'Nut News deadline, and a touch of food poisoning (Monday and yesterday) that just had me feeling ick.
So, on a more (or maybe less, take your pick) cheerful note, what's new at the Argonut Café? Well, I'm still light on gossip because I never know what's going on, but Gidget* attended a party of Vela's a couple of weeks ago and found out that our controller, Fun Bobby, is seeking new employment. Rats deserting the sinking ship* * is one thing, but when the Money Man starts packing for an exit, that's pretty serious.
NewBoss Anais came to my desk to talk about the S'Swest 'Nut and his Nor'East 'NutNeighbor and I told her, "I'll do whatever you decide. I'm over those two." And she said, "I'm over them too.
The S'Swest 'Nut (see June 10 entry for a reminder of this situation) actually let me manage his campaign for two whole weeks before he made me shut it down because it "wasn't doing anything." (Apparently improving performance by 400% in two weeks is nothing.) Now he and his his Nor'East 'NutNeighbor are being forced (by Jason) back into a marketing marriage and since they're both more interested in blocking the other's business than they are in getting leads for themselves, I'm doubly over them.
Y'all remember PeaNut? Well, add PeaNut's name to the list o'Nuts who are taking our toys and going off to play by themselves. For those of you keeping score, that's four locations who have quite illegally taken our (comprehensive) training and our business model and gone off on their own, leaving tens of thousands of dollars of debt owed to the Argonut Café. PeaNut, if gossip is correct, owes more like hundreds of thousands.
Anyhow. I don't have massive plans for the upcoming long weekend. I'll probably work on Gidget's campaigns all day Friday, by way of a change from working on 'Nut campaigns. At some point, I plan to go out to lunch (a usual "payday weekend" treat. And I indulged myself in a little Amazon.com splurge, so I have two new seasons of Corner Gas* * * to watch. (Hooray!)
Aside from that, I'm just plodding through the days.
Sneaking in bits and pieces of extra work for Gidget during the day as she continues to find herself unable to tell Vela, "You gave me $400 and then turned around and handed me a $4000 job. This does not entitle you to $4000 worth of our time."
Forcing myself to the computer at home late in the evenings to slip in the odd half hour or hour of work on Gidget's campaigns. I really should put in at least 16 hours a week on them. There are eighteen of them now. I mean, the 34 'Nut campaigns require about 50 hours a week, at a minimum, and they're not "new" and in need of major adjustments on the fly. I do have evenings and weekends, of course, but I'm having a certain amount of difficulty making myself put in the time. I may have to allocate an hour or two a day, as soon as I get home in the evenings, before I have a chance to get too relaxed.
As much as I love Gidget, I have to admit that money is part of the issue. Carving 16 hours a week out of my "free time" for the grand sum of $100 a month doesn't excite me. I know we're currently on "introductory" terms with these two new clients, but I had a heart-to-heart talk with her about charging people for what a service is worth.
"Start as you mean to go on, because you never get a second chance to lay the right foundation."
It seems to me that I can hear the echo of my voice saying that over and over and over again but no one listens.
Anyhow. Short week and I just lost 30 minutes of it typing this, so I'd better get back to analyzing data.
________________
* Gidget, frighteningly enough, got the flu last week. And now her doctors are saying there's "something wrong" but that they don't know what it is. She's got me, her family all worried again. Months have gone by but she cannot be said to be actually "out of the woods" yet.
* * The rat in this case is me. I'd desert if I could get out of here.
* * * The RC finally expressed a mild interest in seeing the show and I showed her the first episode last night. She wasn't impressed.
I don't think I never figured out how to describe it to her. It's sort of like Andy Griffith only Canada instead of the US and for the 21st century. Gentle, you know? Edgier than AG (my Favorite Show Ever) because it's a more sophisticated world, but the same, essential gentleness. Possibly she was expecting that something would, I don't know. Explode. Or at least happen. It's very much character-driven, and you have to give a show like that some time.