Category: Freelancing

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Culture Freelancing

On internet success

What is it about the nature of The Internet that makes internet success seem so attainable?

Is it the open/egalitarian nature of the internet? Literally anyone can start an open source project, youtube channel, blog, store, whatever.

Is it the fact that, as developers, we know the inner workings of the tech behind the latest hotness? Theoretically we could build them ourselves, right?

Is it the humble and approach demeanor that internet-successful people need to maintain in order to become and grow their personal brands? Being able to tweet at (or email) someone with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers and getting a reply (sometimes in real time) is incredible.

A few years ago, I found out that a successful podcaster that I’d been following from her earliest days as a podcaster, actually has an agent helping her to land podcasting gigs. I really wonder how often comparable machinations are happening behind the scenes of internet success?

 

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Freelancing

Want to do Lunch?

Working in a real physical office, with real physical humans has many terrible aspects. I mean, this premise is the entire concept of The Office.

However, one of the things I do miss is going out for lunch. I miss the excuse to spend money on good food, I miss the escape from everything else and I miss the face-to-face interaction. As a freelance web-work with a good chunk of my clients in other timezones; client lunch meetings are few and far between and leaving my desk in the middle of a busy day to take myself out for lunch seems like a chore.

I’d like to propose some kind of a regular freelancer/web-worker lunch situation. I’m not too sure how to get the ball rolling exactly. When I’ve mentioned this to local freelancers in the I’ve been met with disinterest. So maybe it’s a bad idea or maybe I just failed my charisma check that day. I can’t possibly be the only person in this boat, can I?

In any case, if you’re in the Winnipeg area and you like the sound of this idea, hit me up on twitter or leave a comment on this post.

Photo Credit: Visitor7

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Freelancing

I’m Looking for Work

Sorta.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my employment status in a public forum. So for the record, I’m open to take on freelance projects. Being a freelancer is kind of like the Schrödinger’s cat of employment. You can’t tell if you’re really employed or not until you open the box… maybe that doesn’t quite work.

So, at the this very moment I am comfortably busy, but not too busy to take a break and write a blog post. Next week, I can’t be certain that I’ll be just as busy, even though all signs point to yes.

If you know of any interesting projects, please drop me a line or hit me up on twitter.

In an ideal world, I’d prefer to work on medium scale projects, with a team of my choosing. But is this state of quantum employment flux, all comers welcome.

Categories
Freelancing

Freelancing: Paying for Dental Care in Canada

I have once again found myself in a situation without medical insurance coverage. Fortunately for Canadians really only means that I am without dental ((and optical and some prescription drugs)) coverage. For whatever reason, our utopian government funded health system does not cover dentistry.

So I once again started the futile process of searching for decent dental insurance plans and have once again come up empty handed (( To be honest, I didn’t look that hard. Most of the providers do not readily offer rates or quotes online. I can’t be bothered to call anyone, it’s 2016!)).

There are two main problems with the state of dental insurance. First, you can’t just get dental insurance, all of the providers want to bundle in other coverage, like accidental death & dismemberment, ambulance coverage, etc. While I’m sure having those types of insurance might not be a bad idea, bundling them limits my choice as a consumer and certainly affects the monthly price.

Which leads me to my second point, the price is insane! The lowest price I could find for my family of 4 was in the neighbourhood of $350/month ((Remember, this includes a bundles of services I just don’t care about)) or $4200/year. Even if the insurance covered 100% of the dental bill, I would be hard-pressed to spend that much money on dentistry in one year! It’s totally insane.

I would much rather pay my dentist $100 – $200 per month to cover 100% of my family’s dental needs, than pay an insurance company some enormous amount of money to maybe possibly cover 60% of some procedures, but only on the third Tuesday during a full moon.

With traditional-post-WWII-American-dream style careers few and far between, it’s time for insurance providers to modernize.

Or better yet, add dental to our provincial health care coverage.