A blogger I'm not

Daily updates? Naw. While I can talk a blue streak when necessary, blogging is just not my thing. Blogging as a marketing strategy would probably be some kind of sick hell for me. But thanks to Scott Kane, Richie and MikeW for rattling my cage every now and then.

So where am I in the process? I'm coding/testing furiously. Here's a couple of screenshots of what I'm doing.






This is the original spreadsheet with macros that calculated seats available, search by enrollee and produced a csv to import into a Word template that produced itineraries for each enrollee.












And this is a portion of what I've done so far. I'm translating the spreadsheet into an Access application (for now). I'm keeping a list of future improvements as my temptation is to want to add everything to vers 1 and that's just impractical. For now I'm going for KISS.




Back to the day job. I'll update again in a few days.

Indecision will be the death of me

First, thanks MikeW for giving me a gentle nudge to keep participating. Procrastination is a bear, but it's brother Indecision is even worse. Let me back track over the last 3 days.

Day 1 - looked up some game engines to build my dice game with and downloaded some images to use as the di. My initial plan was to make a simple Farkel game for the desktop. Unusual little (drinking) game that is fun to play for all ages. I felt coming to a decision and getting these prelims down was at least a decent start.

Day 2 - Ruminating. Should I do a card game (Tonk, BidWhist, Spades combo) because that's what the engine is built for? Made some attempts to create dice images and failed miserably. Searched for dice images and didn't find anything that was satisfying.

Day 3 - Said forgetaboutit....real life is wanting to interrupt. But isn't that the case in every endeavor? I mean, life doesn't stop just because I'm developing a product. So I decided I needed to take the night off and 'grow a pair'.

Day 4 - Ahhh....what I have finally decided is this: Stop waffling, pick a product that I already have partially developed AND I know who I'd be marketing to. My product will be an Event Scheduler. Simple, clean, easy to use, easy to build bigger and better versions later. I first built one of these for a small community college secretary. After she used it and raved to other co-workers the little app got utilized across the campus for various functions. She also raved to businesses that also showed interest. So there you have it. Finish the Event Scheduler before June 30 and offer it on my site.

Whew! Hold me to it! My mantra moving forward is "No Waffling Allowed".

So how are you doing?

Getting ready to get started

I'm excited and rather timid at the same time. Produce a product and have it ready to sell in 30 days or less. I have an idea that's been burning for a few years. It's possibly a small niche that has been ignored by good quality solutions. So here will be my stab at it.

I got into this idea from first joining the Thirty-Day-Challenge and then finding that Patrick McKenzie is open to folks working and blogging along side him. What I like to call 'camaraderie programming'. Bouncing ideas tends to spark new ideas. And other people can sometimes help me keep focus on what is important.

So, starting June 1st I'll post as often as I can to let you know what my experience is like. Come back, wish me luck!