Hoping The Phone Doesn’t Ring

It’s a curious business I operate in. When I fix someone’s computer, the first thing that enters my mind when I leave their house or they collect it is: “I hope the phone doesn’t ring”.

It’s simply a case of fear that I’ve made a mistake. Normally I want the phone to ring, because it usually means a new customer is on the way. But, at those specific moments, the phone ringing would mean I hadn’t fixed the problem I just thought I had.

Until yesterday, this had never actually happened to me. But I guess it was bound to happen eventually. It seems that my diagnosis of a problem was incorrect. Sadly, this means me now having to take time out of my day today to make amends, at no extra cost to them.

The big issue though is that I’m still not certain what the problem is. There is one other possibility, but it requires me to turn into a serious PC Tech to diagnose it… and that is learning how to use a multimeter. This is a device that apparently will help me test the voltages being delivered by the power supply. I have one already, but have never really figured out what the hell to do with it.

But today I have to, otherwise I’m going to look a fool. The only other way would be for me to lend them a working power supply and see if it solves the problem over the period of a week. That would mean going back next week, which is very inconvenient.

Apart from this snag, the PC world has been treating me quite well this week. I’ve had quite a few customers and even sold a new computer. This has to be something I keep working on as I want this to be the real future of my business. It’s the bit I enjoy most and is the most convenient for me. Maybe if you’re reading you might want a new computer! Don’t be shy, just e-mail me. I do fantastic deals :-)

Anyway… things aren’t too bad for me at the moment, especially if I can resolve this problem today. I felt pretty good last night until the dreaded phone call. Worse was the fact that the customer only phoned me a whole 24 hours after they’d taken it away. So I was, legitimately, thinking all was well.

That’s the problem with intermittent faults. They bite you on the arse when you least expect it.

Meanwhile, my cleaning job is boring me to tears and giving me physical problems in my back and shoulders. I need to stop it, but I need the cash. I’ve set a limit: no more than two more weeks of it.

And the house move? Progressing slowly… but it’s definitely going to happen. Very exciting…

Searching

This time tomorrow I expect to be safely ensconced on train, zooming southwards to a potential new home.

Well… it might be a little to early to say that. At the very least I’ll be on the lookout for a new home.

My plan to form a bigger business venture with a business partner might happen, or it might not happen. It all hinges upon us both finding somewhere decent to live that isn’t expensive. In fact, cheap enough that a six month tenancy will be worth the gamble.

So far we’ve not made all that good progress using the internet. We have found a couple of properties, and even booked in for some viewings, but it is a shame that in two cases we have since been called up to say that the property is gone. One of those in particular was something that looked extremely good for us.

But nothing beats actually getting out there and searching for yourself. Most of the work will be done in the space of six hours or so on Saturday. It will, no doubt, be a tiring experience. There’s certainly a lot of ground to cover, as there is more than one potential town on the horizon that we could live in.

It’s an exciting time for me… I’m having some doubts about whether this is a good idea… but every time I have them I realise that I have no other real option. Staying here for the rest of my life is not doable. And, the more I work for other people, the more I want to work for myself, and make it happen properly.

In theory this could all go very quickly once we’re committed. There is no time like the present, after all. I don’t really know how the logistics of the move will work, but in any event it’s not something I need to worry about now. These things will come together somehow.

The key to it will be hitting the ground running. Once I’m settled down I’ll have to think hard for ways in which to make the computer repair/retail thing really take off. I’ll be more willing to leaflet and advertise to wider areas once I’ve got proper transport available, which can only help. Right now I’m terrified of the phone ringing and the customer saying they’re in a place 15 miles away… because I either have to turn them down or it turns into a big travel commitment.

But that’s all for the future. Who knows, it might not even happen. After all, in the past week, I’ve actually been really busy with my business and other things in my life. So much so that I was starting to feel quite good about myself again.

But I knew today would come, when there are no calls, and once again I’m sitting here… waiting… for something, anything, to distract me. Hoping that that something might earn me some money.

And that’s no good.

And that’s why the search is on.

Sleep Deprivation

It’s not something I’ve been used to – but my life is now in such a state with a constant stream of night shifts that I am beginning to feel rather run down.

This morning as I was walking home from work – a 45 minute journey that I chose to do because it was sunny and warm for a change (after weeks of rain) – I was talking to a friend on MSN on my mobile phone.

Now – this is normally a difficult experience at the best of times due to texting replies very slowly compared with the usual qwerty keyboard entry with several fingers all at once. But this morning I made a mistake nearly every word, and seemed to be going even slower than ever.

Worst of all, and all those who’ve been sleep deprived will know, you get into this rather strange state of watching yourself making a mistake, knowing full well that you’re making it in the process, and still doing it anyway. And then it turns out to be very funny indeed – because everything is hilarious when you’re massively tired.

This persisted for the entire duration of the walk. I did it to try to save me money (might as well as I desperately need it if my plan to move out is ever going to happen) but also because by walking back it means I can take a detour via a McDonalds… as Monday mornings, my last night shift for four days, are usually celebrated with the consumption of an Egg McMuffin. 99p of pure stodge. Yummy.

But lo, upon my arrival home, there was a clutch of things to be done. Two things involving my business – one of which was finally getting rid of a computer repair I’ve been working on for two weeks that has suffered from problems at every turn: broken motherboards, suspected broken CPUs (that weren’t broken), incompatible memory despite the motherboard saying it supports it, and reformats and reinstallations galore.

Sadly though, there were two things I was meant to do this morning and totally forgot due to my sleep deprived situation. First was bagging up the newspaper returns and leaving them on the step. Not done. No returns. No credits. £3 wasted. Goddammit!

Then second was calling up my workplace to tell them about something I forgot to tell them about. Now there seems no point in trying to tell them as it’s probably been resolved, but no doubt with a large degree of confusion caused by my foolishness.

But fuck them. They haven’t paid me properly and there are no wage slips, breaking the law. I owe them nothing.

Then – finally, the worst piece of news hit my inbox at 9am this morning. My plans to move out are in disarray as the place I wanted to move to doesn’t have any flats available in my budget range. Surprise, surprise.

Stuck here. For many more months. The thought chills me to the bone.

Tick Tock

Time advances forward once more – and there is a surprising amount to report. How rare.

The major development is that last Sunday I was convinced by a friend to take part in his 28 mile “Yorkshire Three Peaks” challenge that he was doing with three friends, until one of them dropped out. I, foolishly perhaps, decided to step into the breach. The challenge is one week today, May 15th, for charity, of course. I’m a little bit excited, but also nervous. I’ve hiked before, but never that far…

So to try to prepare myself for the challenge I did a 5.3 mile round trip walk yesterday. A walk which went nowhere, but at least the weather was OK for it. By the end of the walk my feet felt a bit sore, but strangely they only started hurting as soon as I stopped. This morning I feel fine, which is a very good sign. Some time early next week I will have to do a 10 mile walk. If only I was actually going somewhere interesting rather than walking around urban sprawl. I suppose I could get the train out into a more rural area, but that has two problems: a) I’d probably get lost, b)  trains cost money!

After discussing all of this with my friend, we then moved on to the thorny issue of work. He has recently been made redundant from his job as a web designer and developer. I discussed the possibility of us working together on a business venture. He’s interested, but we really aren’t sure what the overlap is. I can do some web coding, but I’m nowhere near good enough. Meanwhile, I’m good at fixing and making PCs, and he doesn’t really do that kind of thing. In the end, it’s very likely to be a case of “so near and yet so far”.

In any event, we will try to discuss something during our 12 hour excursion next Friday. But for now, he has at least supplied me with a small profit as I made him a new top-of-the-range PC. And comparing it with the offerings from PC World, he still saved about £100 to get the equivalent. Custom PCs are where it’s at if you go to the right place…

Talking of business, I’ve actually had a few customers the past week. The bad news is that none of them came through the classified ad I paid £33 for. An error that will never be repeated. Google Scamwords isn’t much better. In fact, it’s worse due to its zero conversion rate. But at least I’ve covered the loss from customers elsewhere, most of which come through referrals of friends or off my internet site, both of which cost me nothing. Hmm.

Though next week I intend to try the final strategy of putting flyers through letterboxes in this local area. It could work. I’ve been told by a friend who ran a similar campaign that he got nearly all his customers in that way. Fingers crossed. It won’t cost much either as my parents have kindly volunteered to do some of the photocopying in work. Good stuff!

And then there is a new front I’ve tried to open up – something else to do. At first I thought a part time job would be good. But now I think I’ll put that one on hold, at least until I’ve completed my return to the world of politics. I’ve, perhaps stupidly, volunteered my services as admin and general dogsbody for the local campaign of the political party I’m a member of. At least it will get me out and about, mixing with other people (potential customers?) – even though most of them are old fuddy duddies. And, you never know what doors it might open…

That’s enough for now. Time to resume staring at the clock.

Bomb Site

It’s not been a particularly exciting week. What, you expected me to report something else? Don’t forget we’re in a recession. This could carry on for years.

And maybe it really is a recession after all. I have long doubted that this particular recession, the first I have ever lived through with any kind of sentience (the last recession in the early 90s I was too young for), was actually causing harm to real people. After all, mortgage rates couldn’t be any lower. Unless you’d been made unemployed, the vast majority of people seem to be enjoying “a good recession”.

With interest rates so low, there is no incentive to save. That is deliberate. Even the VAT cut, though only a small amount, was an indication that the government wants us mere citizens to spend.

But none of that seems to be filtering through to me. I get visitors to my site, but they tend to disappear as quickly as they arrive. Some of these visitors have been enticed to my site via Google Scamwords, which costs me in a region of 10 to 40p per visitor. But I can safely say that not a single one of these people have been converted into a sale. That’s a very poor return.

Meanwhile, I am running a classified ad in the local papers again. And once more, not a sausage. Do you think someone is trying to tell me something?

Amidst all this wreckage of a failing business, I still do have the odd bit of work. Fortunately, I still have some friends (much to my amazement), and word of mouth is the best form of advertising after all. So this week, I spent my time building a computer for one such friend. It was an entertaining experience, filled with my usual mistakes and cut hands from cheap PC cases and badly soldered motherboards. But the net result is indeed a small profit, one which helps make up for the tremendous failure that is classified advertising.

In the midst of this work, however, my room, which doubles as my “business” “office”, was total carnage. I should have taken a photo when I had the chance to illustrate what I mean, but it was a significant mess. Tools everywhere, screws all over the place, wires, boxes, components, and me kneeling in the middle of it all trying to make sense of what I was doing wrong. The misery was nearly compounded when my computer, that’s this one I’m on now, decided to freeze when I opened the case to test a fan. I must have knocked something, and then it wouldn’t boot, freezing at the BIOS test stage. Fortunately, it came back to life for no apparent reason.

But, when you’re building a computer, it is a necessary evil. I am certain there’s nothing I can do about it, because I’m normally such an organised and disciplined person. The wreckage was such that I had to leave it there overnight, which nearly caused a disaster when I stumbled from the lightswitch to my bed in total darkness…

Fortunately, it’s gone now, and in its place is a completed machine, one that I’m very impressed with. Frankly, I should be given the price my friend was willing to pay for a top-spec computer, but still I can’t help but suffer a pang of guilt about making money out of my friends…

Here’s hoping for a better week to come.

Not The Apprentice

The Apprentice is one of my favourite TV shows. I’m no fan of reality TV, but I like this show in particular, not for the unique blend of arseholes they manage to bring together every year, but for the fact that I’ve always liked business, and it’s intriguing to see how people rise to the challenge they set.

Of course, there’s always an element of schadenfreude in that we can’t help but watch and think “Oh, how could they make such a silly mistake!” – and I always sit there wondering if I could do any better in their position. Probably not. I find it amazing how basic mistakes are made all the time, ones that if they had just spent a little longer to think about it they wouldn’t have occurred. But the fact that they happen all the time makes me think that it’s just part of being human to make silly errors – and so perhaps we shouldn’t laugh at them too much.

The reason this whole philosophical musing has come into my head this morning is that I am contemplating how on earth I managed to make a £58 loss from a computer I’ve made. I bought all the parts for the damn thing about two months ago, made it and thought I could get rid of it at a profit. I haven’t. No one’s interested. Either it’s “the recession” or no one likes the specifications of it. But I think it’s a decent machine and well worth £200. Unfortunately, no one else agrees.

So I stuck it on eBay and got a little over half of that. But when I take out the costs of postage, of PayPal and eBay fees, the loss is not good at all. Sir Alan Sugar would not be pleased. “You went out there and lost me money!” he might quip, while poking an accusing finger at me.

I really want to be able to sell PCs alongside PC technical support. Mainly because PC building is easy, but also because it’s interesting to me. A regular sale of just one PC a day would be enough to provide a basic income to allow me to get some proper business premises. There are 60m people living in the UK. Most of them are being conned by buying PCs from PC World, Currys, Comet or whatever. My PCs are so much better quality. The price is roughly the same, sometimes a little cheaper, sometimes a little more, but I have no doubt the components are better than the rubbish PC World, et al put into their computers.

There must be one person in the UK every day who would buy a PC off me. The tricky part is convincing people to trust me. And that’s not easy when you invite them to buy with PayPal.

The perils of business. I’m trying to fend off despair by the fact that I actually had a customer the other day, but I need to generate more to tide me over. To that end I’ve run the classified ad again, and now that the weather is improving my thoughts are turning to getting out there and sticking flyers through letterboxes in this local area. It can’t hurt.

But still I’m waiting for a genuine break. I would have thought by now that something would have turned up via my network of friends and acquaintances. Perhaps they really are as useless as I think they are.

At Least I Have Hair

Things have ground to a halt around here lately. The school holidays have begun, which has led to the inevitable transformation in the weather from good to bad, and the customers have dried up. Maybe that’s because I’m not doing anything to bring them in, but that’s more to do with the fact that I can’t decide which advertising strategy to waste my money on next…

So last week, in order to try and kickstart things, I went to have a meeting with my “business partner” and very long time friend. He says that he will join me in business if I can prove it’s worth it. He has a paying job, you see, and it’s not something he wants to throw away. Fair enough to him, he has a lifestyle that needs cash. Lucky old me doesn’t – though I more than pay my share around here with the housework I do.

Anyway, I decided to meet this friend for another reason too… because, on reflection, my last blog post was rather depressing. It was a stark realisation that my social life is precisely nothing at the moment. So, a catch up with an old friend would work wonders in comparing our lives.

Unfortunately, he comes out top in almost every department. He has a job, he has money, he has a long-term girlfriend, he is saving up for a deposit to get his own house/flat, he has lots of friends that he meets regularly, he doesn’t spend most of his day on computers or moping around the house…

But there’s one thing he doesn’t have which I do. In abundance.

Hair. I can’t believe it, but every time I meet him he has less of it. The old thatch on the roof is seriously thinning, and in a few years time I can’t see him having anything on top. Fancy that, having an egg in the nest before the age of 30. I suppose, at the very least, he doesn’t have grey hair. It’s just madness though, so I have to count myself lucky that, apart from a little thinning at the corners, where a receding hairline is beginning, I am blessed with a full head of the stuff.

After I had recovered from the shock, we spent some time discussing what to do. I came to him for help really… I rather hoped that he could spread the word about the business in his work, and I might get some sales. Sadly, it hasn’t happened yet, but he assures me he has told everyone he knows. I suppose spending £200-400 on a computer is a big commitment that requires careful thought… but dammit, I need some business!

But in any case it was nice to catch up with him and we got some good ideas together for some progress we might be able to make in terms of drumming up some business. He’s a very good friend like that, always creative and full of possibilities. That’s why we would be perfect in business… we complement each other well.

Argh, this just has to work.

What Happened?

I’m finding it rather hard to accept that the past week went by so quickly. But it did, just like every other half-term. My parents were both off last week, as were all my brothers and sisters and my nephew. So the entire family were all either not in school or not in work. 

And somehow, because they were all hanging around here all week in some form, that made the week just disappear. Even though I can’t remember that much of what we did, apart from trying to sell stuff on eBay. 

But at the same time, I think it also felt so quick for me because I had stuff to do. My work has once again dried up, but from Tuesday to Friday I had actual, real paying work. And now I have been paid, it’s back to sitting here waiting for the phone to ring or trying to dream up a new vision for the future.

I guess this is what self-employment is like. You live on your wits, waiting for work, which could come at any time. And then sometimes you’ll get work and it’ll be too much. Oh, I wish that would happen right now. I could do without another couple of weeks sitting here…

Though there’s not actually much chance of that at the moment. It seems everywhere I turn there’s something going on. The latest activity has come from the direction of my football team. Last Tuesday there was something of a crisis meeting at the league my team is a member of. The crisis is being caused because the league leadership intend to form a new, independent, league, and assume that everyone is happy to join in. Not so fast, said I and a couple of allies. We want to derail it. And that’s made us very popular indeed…

Today is the next crisis meeting, but this team the teams will be meeting with our local FA with a view to working out a solution to this problem. In fact, if all goes as I think it will, then I could end up volunteering to be a central organiser of the league, or at the very least a member of its management committee. Our goal, we think, is to topple the current management. We think we can do it once we put the full facts out to counteract the gross lies being told by the league secretary. 

So that means today is also going to be full of action. Well, tonight, as the meeting is at 7:30pm. But I can’t wait, as we’ve been worrying about the future of our local football league for months now. It seems we may finally be approaching an endgame.

The problem is that today is Pancake Tuesday. And, you know, it has been five years since I lived at home on Pancake Tuesday. In all those years, I’ve been living away, and I’ve never really bothered, possibly because I probably won’t ever be able to make a pancake as good as my mum. So why would I bother?

But today I am at home. And there will be pancakes made. 

I think it’s going to be a good day.

And that, my friends, is what happened.