I'm contracting now, getting leads off CraigsList and concentrating on short-term assignments. The time is coming for me to make it into a business ... question is, do I make it part of our existing business, or make it a separate, independent concern?
These contracts are fun. I did one back in December where I had to write a C# "proof-of-concept" app that took streaming input from a webcam and displayed that in the same window as a playback of recorded video.
This newest contract was for a quickie revamp of a ecommerce website, changing it from shopping cart to strictly informational. And when I say quickie, I mean I started working on it last Friday, with a drop-dead finish date of Monday morning. It was VB, ASP, and HTML,and it's caused me to pull more than one all-nighter this last week.
I like the variety, but it would also be kinda nice to have a semi-permanent gig. This last company mentioned additional work on another of their websites ... we'll see what they say after I give them this week's invoice ...!
Well, good luck!
I wonder if I'll be in your shoes in X number of years... when there are little kids running around, or not so little ones. Currently I'm loving my job but I won't be a working mom so things will have to change. My experiences of the last week or so are making it really really obvious that I can't afford to miss a major worldview shift, like the one from procedural to OO. I just won't be able to get back in without series retraining. Just keeping up on new languages, that I can manage, but if I let myself get ten years out of date I'll never work again.
I haven't the slightest idea what you jest said... ya'll scare me...