We’re back from our two week holiday to Yorkshire, East Sussex, Wiltshire, and Lancashire.

In those two weeks we clocked up over 2,115 miles in the car, and I dare say we added a good portion of those miles while going up and down dale and around in circles in spectacular Herriot country. We loved our time in Yorkshire and are already planning to go back soon.

East Sussex was great, that’s where I was born and spent my formative years, and is where the majority of my family is. I don’t see my family anywhere near as much as I’d like, so it was very nice to have a few days to visit. Even though we had 5 days in East Sussex, time seemed very short and I wish we could have spent more time there. Did however have time to get a new tyre for the car as somewhere along the way we’d picked up 4 punctures in just the one tyre!

We spent a glorious day at Longleat where we saw the fantastic house, Lord Bath’s amazing murals (an open mind required), and some wonderful wildlife in the safari park. The cheeky monkeys stripped off with my rear windscreen wiper rubber and ran off with the rear wash nozzle, so there’s yet more expense for the car. But they had a hard time getting to the sticker on the inside of the window!

It was then up to Liverpool, where we visited some family and friends in Southport and Crosby, but just like the rest of the holiday time seemed too short and soon we were enjoying a very pleasant last evening dining outside a restaurant in Liverpool’s Albert Dock as the sun set.

And so to Monday morning and my first proper day on the new contract, which has been very good and surprisingly productive, with all software installed, dev environment set up, source checked out and built and some time spent familiarising myself with the application. I also got started reading the requirements specification for the project, it definitely looks as though I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for the forthcoming year!

Now it’s back to trying to schedule my spare time to enable me to continue to develop CaseDetective as well as have some semblance of a family life and time to relax. I’m going to experiment with a few ideas on that front, I’ll post about it as and when I have time! 😉

I’ll be out of the office for the next two weeks, which unfortunately means much reduced support during this time.

I should be back in the office and answering email etc by the 4th of July.

The last week or so has been pretty exhausting for two reasons.

First was the release of CaseDetective 1.1.1, 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 to fix up little problems found in CaseDetective 1.1. There’s still one user with a problem that I simply can not decipher, it makes absolutely no sense and no one else has seen it. I’ll maybe have to see if I can get a CoPilot session going to fathom it out.

The second is that since Tuesday last week I’ve been getting steadily more and more ill until Friday I finally came down with a really nasty cold. I was totally wiped out all day Saturday and Sunday and then started to feel better and better yesterday as the day wore on. I missed all the really nice weather we’ve had over the weekend, but at least I didn’t miss the football!

Today I feel much much better, still full of gunk, but should be OK for doing my first day of consultancy at the new contract tomorrow.

My new client wants me to go in for a day to meet various people and generally settle in so that I can hit the road running when I come back off of holiday.

Bit of a shame that it’s tomorrow they picked as it’s Mandy’s birthday and we’d planned on going out for the day, but she’s going to see her Mum and sister instead and we’ll do something on Thursday if it’s OK out. So hopefully it’s going to all work out well.

It’s taking me ages to write this as my attention keeps veering off to the Brazil vs Croatia match on my second monitor (got to love EyeTV), so I’ll stop fighting the temptation and wrap up this little update post. Speak to you soon.

On Friday I had an interview for a year long contract (240 days over 52 weeks). To be honest I didn’t think I had any chance as I knew I was the third candidate to be interviewed and was being interviewed on the Friday afternoon before the Monday that they had to have their decision made (so the agent told me).

Guess what, I only went and got the bloomin’ job!

It was the most relaxed and low key interview I’ve been to, although that doesn’t mean much as I’ve only been to a couple of interviews in my entire working life, and only one for a contract, usually I get my jobs through recommendations.

The two guys that interviewed me were really nice, friendly and easy to talk to, in fact I thought I’d blown it because I rambled on too much a couple of times. The whole thing was more like having a chat about this and that to do with what they do, what I’ve done, what I thought about methodologies and so on.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I left the office at about 3:30pm and drove home. When I got in I started telling Mandy about the interview, how nice the people and their new offices were, that the project sounded really interesting … when she cut me off and said “have you not listened to your messages?”

“No”, says I, “I’ve been driving.”

“Your agent called, you’ve got the job! He called your mobile, left a message and then called the house.”

Turns out my agent left the message on my mobile at 3:45, just fifteen minutes after I left the interview. Now that’s a quick decision!

I won’t say where I’ll be working, I’ve never talked about clients on my blog, probably never will, plus I have no idea whether they have any policies about that kind of thing.

I’ll be starting on July 3rd, which gives me two weeks to get the wrinkles ironed out of CaseDetective 1.1, and then I’m off on holiday for a couple of weeks.

It’s a real relief to know I’ve got the job, one of the worst things about the last few months has been not having the disposable income I’ve become accustomed to.

Finally I can satisfy my iTunes addiction again! 🙂

Yep, you read the title correctly, I’m looking for a contract.

Although the next release of CaseDetective is nearly ready for private beta test, I’ve recently had a bit of financial bad luck come my way in the form of a tax bill that means I need to start earning some dosh much quicker that CaseDetective alone can (or ever will I suspect) manage.

I always knew that CaseDetective was going to be a bit of a slow burner, and thought I had enough money in the bank to last a full year without even a penny coming in, but this tax bill was larger than expected and has basically wiped out my business account.

Personal finances are still fine though, we’ve got plenty of money in our personal accounts to last us the rest of the year as planned, it’s purely the business account that has got a bit low when I’d expected it to stay pretty static apart from the last couple of VAT bills and my ongoing wages coming out. Alas, I hadn’t planned on last year’s corporation tax for the dividends I’d taken, and had forgotten just how well I payed myself two years ago!

So, it’s back to contracting I go, if I can get one.

Because I have extensive Informix 4GL/SQL/SPL experience over the last 10 years, obviously I’m looking at contracts in that skill set first, it’s always done me well, and without blowing my trumpet too much, I know I’m pretty darn good at working with Informix. It’s unfortunately pretty slim pickings out there for Informix 4GL development though, so it may take some time to get a contract in that area.

I’ve now had approx 2 years experience with REALbasic too, and I’m keen to see if I could pick up some work that requires it or could be accomplished with it.

If I had better local business contacts I’m sure I’d be able to find lots of little companies looking for custom applications to be developed, that would be a nice way to make some extra cash now that the big stuff for CaseDetective is done. I’ll have to look into this a bit more if I can’t get a full time contract.

I may expand the IMiJ Software brand to also accept custom development projects and small contracts over the internet, I’m sure there’s a huge number of companies small and large out there that need that one little app built to fix that chink in their process, and with REALbasic and my many years of business and systems analysis I could no doubt meet their requirements on Windows, Mac or Linux in short order.

There are a few companies and individuals out there that advertise custom development with REALbasic, I’d be interested to hear how well they are doing, and whether they are getting plenty of work to keep them busy and in profit.

I guess it goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway, if you know of anyone looking for a bit of development done and is looking for someone talented, efficient, thorough, personable, handsome … 😉 Well, you know where to send them … no, not somewhere else smarty pants, to me!

Anyway, enough of the rambling, must get back to finishing up those last couple of small things on CaseDetective that seem to be taking forever, and I promised someone I’d post a sneak peek this week of a new feature that I think will help them out a lot, so I’d best be off for now.

Oh, and before I leave off, just to confirm that I’m still developing CaseDetective and have no plans to stop doing so. I have a list of features as long as an Orangutan’s arm that I and my customers want implemented, and I will do so as quickly as I can. CaseDetective will continue to be developed and supported, it’s still a huge part of my long term plan to become primarily a developer of software for the masses, as are other projects I have in mind for the future of IMiJ Software.