It has been just over a week since I set off as a freelance developer. So far so good. It is also time to start billing clients! My first step, though, was a quick meeting with my accountant/tax guy. I have an LLC for the business and got some pretty good advice right away for how to track my expenses, understand revenue, pay myself, etc. He recommended getting some sort of software that he could then log into to view. This would be useful for our quarterly meetings, and for tax time.

I did some research and picked FreshBooks as my online billing tool. (affiliate link) There were a number of favorable website mentions of it and a number of my peers on twitter also recommended it. I have to say I am rather impressed. I picked the free package, but will likely need to upgrade at some point. The monthly fee is low enough I don't even need to think about it.

Right off the bat I easily added a couple client accounts, gave them login access to review their own account status. Made some projects and was able to start adding timesheet information right away. The interface is clean and simple, and there are a number of options to change the look and feel to match my own branding. Right now I really don't have a brand so I kept the nice clean look it already had.

Timesheets, how I loathe timesheets! Truth be told, it really isn't very bad with this tool. I am not sure how well it would work if you had say, 300 clients/projects to manage. But I don't ever expect to do that. The interface is clean and easy, and the summary tools are ready to know where you are on a given project hourly total, how many hours you have billed today, this month, etc.

One set of features I really appreciated are the invoicing options. I have some clients whom I need to invoice on a recurring basis a fixed amount. That was incredibly easy. I can see the status of the invoice, if the client is objecting, has marked it paid, or has even viewed it. Clients can log in, view the invoice, the time sheets for each project, etc and post their questions/thoughts. Other clients have fixed price projects of x number of hours, others still I bill at my standard rate, and one I have negotiated a special hourly rate. Every single example here was very easy to set up. I have only sent out my invoices via email, but there were options to save as PDF, snail mail, or even have them pay online via PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout and a number of others. I would rather get checks as my invoices are larger, and I don't want to pay the % for cc processing. I can see why the online processing would be handy for others though.

I also started recording all my expenses. This will probably be the most tricky for me, as I am not all that great with paperwork. So far I just set up a different bank account, put ALL business expenses on that account, and save everything related to a receipt in a binder for review later. My accountant has informed me that tracking expenses is critical, due to how us freelancers are taxed. FreshBooks has a system to track generic expenses vs project specific expenses, which will come in handy for the times when I need to travel.

I have also looked into inDinero for my general business money management tool. It has an integration feature with FreshBooks, which is very handy. inDinero also connects directly with PayPal, and many banks, which helps reconcile records. You can then send your accountant their own login and presto! It still isn't clear to me if I need it though, as Freshbooks does so much of what I need. It may not matter though as I use a smaller local bank (which I love) and they do not sync with InDinero quite yet.

So far what I thought that this whole billing/time tracking/paperwork trail process would be the worst part of being a freelancer, however it has been super easy. Hopefully there are no surprises down the road.

My projects thus far have been simple ColdFusion programming/support. I am chatting with a few people about more interesting work, where I would get to delve into new aspects of CF 9, HTML5 and Flash/AIR. I hope to set aside more free time after RIAUnleashed to work on Adobe AIR development for Google TV. Speaking of which, I got a Google TV. I plan to make a blog post about it in the next few days.

Just watched Inception and found myself with a few questions regarding the ending. These are spoilers people so DON'T READ unless you have seen the movie. Really.

Regarding my opinion on Inception: I love movies that make me think and want to discuss. So from that end I enjoyed it. I didn't like the uselessness of the female architect (she could have rebuilt the place at will right?). A few minor plot holes maybe, but overall fun and I was engaged the whole movie.

Questions:

Ok so at the end we see the top spinning. Is it about to falter? Does it go on for ever? Two contradictory items of evidence for us to ponder.

1) In the real world, or what we are to think is the real world, the top does in fact stop a few times. It shouldn't if they are not in the real world. Or maybe the top means nothing at all. Just a made up construct. Cobb is the only one to actually use it after all.

2) In the end the kids haven't aged at all and they seem to be wearing the exact same clothes. Are they doing the actual same pose as the dream sequences? Very unlikely to be reality.

So, does the fact the top proved reality before (by falling) but the end it doesn't - mean that he was still in limbo, but a new version (having dealt with his two ghosts)?

Did the movie just cut out too soon and the top was going to fall over (it looked like it could)?

Was this just a metaphor for accession to heaven?

My opinion is that in the end it was a dream. Or at least not reality. Metaphor for navigating through purgatory to get to heaven for committing suicide? Or something along those lines? Or was he actually fine until he got to limbo at the end, in which case he rebuilt it after his wife died to what he wanted.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I took a quick trip down to Florida.  We opted to use the new airline called Skybus.  Since it is a new airline I thought I would write up a quick review for others who may be thinking of using the airline and worried about it in some way.

One thing to note is that Skybus lists their airports based on big named cities nearby.  That means that Boston, MA is actually Portsmouth, NH and Fort Myers, FL is actually Punta Gorda, FL.  30 to 50 min away.  If you are not prepared for doing a bit of traveling once you land you may be in trouble.  This may not be true for every city.

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Margot at the Wedding is basically about two sisters dealing with each other for a week before one gets married.  My first thought about this movie once it was done...  "I am utterly  thankful that I can't relate to this movie in any way."

The movie was fun and disturbing, like many movies I watched this weekend.  However in the end there was nothing endearing about either sister, their bizarre love/hate relationship and inappropriate behavior to their children.  I gave my wife a big hug when it was done.  Thank goodness she is sane and doesn't treat people like that.  Thank goodness she has a nice family.

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I walked out of a movie theater for the first time ever tonight.  Actually it wasn't a movie theater, but a Music Hall, which was showing a bunch of new movies as part of Telluride By the Sea.  I have gone to this yearly Celebration of Cinema every year that I have been able and try to see most if not all the movies available.

I'm Not There is a portrayal of Bob Dylan's life told through six different actors.  Some disclaimer here.  I don't really care for Dylan's work.  He is a fine enough guy.  I have seen him perform live and understood none of it..  I like some of the earlier stuff, but in general it just doesn't do much for me.  I know nothing of his life or history, etc.  So I wasn't planning on watching this movie, however the preview sounded really interesting.  A very creative way to approach the subject at the very least and it has gotten some good press.

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I have the pleasure of living in Portsmouth, NH.  That means that once a year I get to attend Telluride By the Sea, Telluride Film Festival's little seacoast cousin.  At Telluride By The Sea we get to watch 6 select movies that just recently were shown in Telluride the week before.  These movies are often some combination of provocative, moving, troubling and beautiful.

Last night was opening night and they showed Into The Wild.  My quick review:  I liked it.

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Last night some friends of ours gathered around for a fun experiment.  A blind tequila taste test.

We gathered 6 different tequilas ordered below in price.

1. Pepe Lopez Premium ($9.99)
2. Jose Cuervo Especial ($15)
3. Hornitos Sausa ($19)
4. 1800 Silver ($19.99)
5. Don Julio Blanco ($36.99)
6. Patron Silver ($48.00)

We bought a lot of little dixi cups of various prints, and served to seven people a small sample of each.  Turns out those little cups leak after a short period.  I don't recommend using them.  We randomized the distribution so people were drinking a different tequila than their neighbor so as not to be influenced.  This requires at least one person to be running the taste test and not partaking (me and friend Jess).  Get a handful of people to sit down and focus.  We then wrote each score down against each tequila, also noting the person.  This way later we could see the persons favorite vs the group favorite. 

Something like:

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Following many others I made a Simpson's character.  I opted to build something that doesn't look like me in any way.  I do wish I had the tshirt though. On another note, I saw Transformers last night.  I liked the action, but the story was really really bad.  So many holes, bad dialog and a pointless romance setup.  The movie itself was long. There were numerous scenes that could have been removed to help.  I enjoyed many parts though.  We all laughed several times (not sure we were supposed to for a couple of them).  The action scenes were great.  Turns out if you decapitate a megabot he dies.  Who knew.  At any rate in thinking of earlier films by the same director I liked on the whole The Rock and even Independance Day better.  Transformers had big battling robots, which is super cool, but the D - story still brings it down.  So sad.  That said, I will probably buy it on DVD when the price is inexpensive.  It should look good on the projector and that kind of fun action is great background movie stuff when I am working on a project.  Story be damned, I guess I like fighting robots.

First a bit of backstory.  I have no TV.  No Stereo.  No home theater.  Instead i have a few PC's with Media Center installed on them.  I use them to watch tv, record tv, play music, etc. One really handy thing you can do with them is share the media with an extender.  For me, the extender is the xbox 360.  So how does the Panasonic PTAX100U LCD Projector fit in? 

If I have an xbox 360 i need to display it somewhere!  Plus I always wanted a big screen display.  So I went to my office to get our projector, connected it with a ceiling mount to my xbox 360, and presto I am streaming tv and such from my pc to my projector to an 80" wall space.

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