Daniel Farrell

I’ve played with a few different web projects this week. As you can see if you are visiting my site instead of just reading the feed, I switched my theme. I’m using the a tweaked version of the wp-andreas09 theme. I’m also using the new Wordpress widgets now. They make switching around your sidebar(s) a matter of drop and drag instead of editing your theme. I also wrote a widget wrapper for the flickrrss plugin so I could still use my flickr photos in the sidebar. I’ve also experimented with the flash satay method of embedding flash. The videos on here now use FlowPlayer with this embedding method and my blog is standards compliant again. I’ve been in some discussions with the author of FlowPlayer to see how to work out any kinks in it.

Future projects include: making a video plugin for Wordpress that uses the FlowPlayer work I’ve been doing, making some stand-alone web software to manage and display videos/movies on a website, get back into creating a web-based ticketing software for my company, and finish up a new wordpress theme that I’ve been playing with. Should be fun.

Well, I’ve been a slow blogger. I feel like there has not been a lot going on. We’ve been hanging out with beerble people some, going to ADR some, etc.

The only thing really out of the norm has been a presentation my boss Jeff and I did this past week at a user’s group meeting. I’ve put a post with a bunch of links from it up on the company blog. The presentations went well, we talking about regular maintainance of your systems and then emerging technologies. I had not done any public speaking in a few years(since my ill-adviced couple months as a pastor) but I still feel that I did fine. I don’t know that we will be getting clients from it, but it was worthwhile just to meet people.

As Alicia wrote, I’m back in Richmond. I survived a crazy week of work that included an almost 16 hour day on Wednesday. There are still loose ends left over from it, enough to keep me busy during the beginning of next week. It was nice to see my family and come clients. I didn’t get to hang with many friends. I missed Scott entirely because he had to work(next time!), but did get to have dinner with Leslie. I had some nice time at a few client’s sites. The C&T Mortgage crew is always fun.

In other news, we got vanity domain names. We picked up danielfarrell.com and aliciafarrell.com on a special from Yahoo domains. Right now Alicia’s just points to the simplepilgrimage website, but I’m working on mine as a work thing(see next part).

I had a little epiphany about work while driving home. Brad and I joke about how our boss Jeff always just refers to the business as himself. All the rest of us answer the phones “Kite Tech, this is Daniel” or the like. Jeff just answers is “This is Jeff Kite.” He’ll sell a job and we’ll get out there and say we are from Kite Tech and they will look confused… then we say we work for/with Jeff Kite and they know exactly who we are. I’ve always thought it was funny. But the genius of it didn’t hit me until I was driving home. People generally have at least a little distrust of impersonal corporations, but they can trust people easier. And what is the difference really between Kite Technology or another company? The difference is the people. Jeff sells himself and that sets him apart. People know his name, they have his cell phone number, they can reach him, he’s personal. So I’m gonna switch gears a little on my sales work here. At least for a while, instead of being Kite Technology’s Richmond office, I’m going to be Daniel Farrell, computer consultant. I’m not ditching Kite Tech, just changing the focus. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve come once again to the realization that I am very much in need of discipline in my life. My professional, spiritual and personal life are all suffering from my lack of discipline. So, starting today I’m making some specific life changes to discipline myself. Here is what I have so far:

• Waking up early and getting ready early
• Doing a fitness program
• Praying the Lord’s prayer at set times during the day
• Reading my bible for at least 30 minutes every morning

I’ll hopefully be able to add some specific work disciplines as well. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about fixing things vs creating things. During my day job I spend all my time fixing things. But lately I’ve gotten a chance to create a website and am working on another. It is like a breath of fresh air to be able to be creative. I bought a couple of books to help me learn to program in Ruby to enable more creativity. I’m looking forward to it!

Speaking of looking forward… I’ll be back in Richmond tonight and get to see my beautiful wife again after 3+ days apart.