Eldergeek

As of today I am officially retired from WSU, and I couldn’t be happier about it!

I’ve finished cleaning up my websites, and I’ve moved most of them over to my new hosting provider.  I think this is a win-win situation for me as well as my customers.  This provider offers some utilities that will help me keep my websites secure and running efficiently.

They have a very affordable backup system that gives me all kinds of flexibility on scheduling backups of my websites.  I’ve always had local backups of my copy of the sites, but this lets me backup directly from the production server copy.  I’ve had several customers ask me about that capability, so this is a good thing.

They also offer a free version of a utility that is supposed to significantly improve both security and performance of my websites.  Who can argue with that?

I absolutely love having the time to take proper care of my customers and their websites.  And I’m as busy as I can be with new site development as well as maintenance work.  I have a ton of things I can do to develop this business, to improve the services I provide, and to grow myself as a professional web designer.

Working pretty hard for a retired guy, and loving every minute of it!

I’m a fairly organized person.  My house is not as clean as it might be, but it’s organized.  If the power goes out, I can put my hand on a flashlight in the dark.  Because I know exactly where it is.

I’ve decided that Netpalouse needs to be better organized as well.  As I spend more and more of my time on this business, organization will become more and more necessary.  I’m already seeing my workload grow, and I worry about losing my reputation for quick turnarounds.  I can’t let that happen.

So I’m a geek.  What else would I do but go looking for software?  I needed something that would help me manage multiple projects, keeping them organized by dates and priorities.  Something that would let me keep up with my growing workload, and keep my customers happy with my work.

This weekend I found Podio, an online project management application.  I think it’ll do the job.  I get to it through my browser, and it has apps so I can run it on my Android phone and tablet.  It’s very easy to configure, so I can tell it exactly what data I want to track on my projects.  And the best news is that it’s free for companies with less than 5 users…  that’s me!

Podio was bought by Citrix last year, so I’m expecting it to stay around for a while.  If I can learn to use it consistently, I’m hoping it will keep me organized and productive.  And with any luck, that’ll help me keep my wonderful customers satisfied.

I’ve worked for the IT department at WSU for almost 26 years now.  I’ve only been a professional web designer for 12 years.  But that is what I love to do.  I have always tried to highlight my IT experience, because I believe it gives me points, both technically and professionally.  There are a ton of “fly by night” web designers out there, and I think I offer my customers a more serious, responsible approach.

But it has gotten harder over the years to put time into Netpalouse while I worked full time at WSU.  I’ve done a pretty decent job of keeping the business active, but I haven’t spent enough time growing and expanding, building and learning.  There has always been this feeling that I could do better by my customers if I only had more time.

Well then, more time it is.  Early next year I expect to hang up my career at WSU and focus full time on Netpalouse Web Services.  It will be interesting to see if I can grow this business into something that will keep me busy.  I like being busy, so I’ve got my work cut out for me.  Netpalouse has grown consistently (but slowly) by word of mouth for 12 years.  Let’s see if I can learn advertising and promotion well enough to turn it into a full time profession.

It’s what I love to do, so I may as well do it full time.