I was reading a post on Web Worker Daily about the different ways for managing your ToDo lists. this looked like an interesting topic for me as I'm searching for a better way for managing my ToDo lists. now, I'm depending on Microsoft Outlook with the Plaxo plug-in. the Plaxo plug-in synchronizes my contacts and ToDo lists with my Plaxo account. this saved my data allot of times as I used to forgetting backing up outlook's data.
after reading the post, I did a check on RememberTheMilk and Voo2do to see if one of them can work with me.
 Voo2do : looked like a a good light project management application.
 RememberTheMilk : is very clean and user friendly with a web2.0 style.
but maybe I will keep using outlook for more time. take a look at Zirr.us too.

 I was always thinking that freelancing is a very nice thing. you will wake up whenever you want and work in the night instead of starting your work at 8 a.m . you will get allot of money as you are your own company. but .... that's not every thing as there is a dark side for every thing.

I can talk about the 2 most boring points:
1- you will have to search for work always on freelancing websites and interact with allot of annoying clients. I can say that 90% of my clients don't pay on time and can change their minds 10 times/hour. after looking at my time records for my work for this year (2006), I can see that the average gab between the date of finishing projects(every thing finished and tested by the client) and receiving my money  = 27 days. isn't it annoying to get your money after one month ?!!

2- working at home. I don't go out at all and this is the most annoying thing. also I'm now studding from home, so there is no chance to go out. walking in the street  and watching all those people every day is a nice thing.  when I was younger I thought that staying at home and not going to school is a wonderful thing. but now I can see that I was wrong.

so now I'm searching for a good PHP/Web Development company any where in this world to work with. I was searching for real PHP/Web Development companies here is Alexandria but I didn't find at all. maybe all the programming companies here are working with .NET .
so.. if I couldn't find any good PHP company here , I will move to .NET . I'm already studding .NET and C# 2.0 now and I think that my experience of web development using PHP will be helpful with .NET too. what I know till now is that if you want to apply for a  job as a junior C# Developer you have to know

- C#2.0
- ADO.NET (maybe LINQ after that)
- ASP.NET
- MS SQL Server
- XML.

I don't know if this new things like ATLAS (they changed the name as I remember) is required now or not.

one second, I forgot to till you about another annoying thing ... Mazen (my young brother). he is standing beside me and started crying as he wants to play some games. I will give him the computer now and I hope that he will play FIFA 06 so I can play too.. hehe lol
c u.

I have received a new mail today from the customer support at the TE-Data company. this got me angry, do you know why?!!
2 months ago, I have sent them mail to know more about their hosting planes as there is no enough information on the website. I thought that they will replay after 1 or 2 days but for my surprise they phoned me after 30 minutes max. the support guy started answering my questions but from what he told me , I can tell that he don't know any thing about web hosting. I didn't write all my questions in the mail so started asking him about other things, but he couldn't answer me then he asked if I want him to send me e-mail contains detailed answers to my questions and a list of prices. I told him "this will be nice".
what?? did you get it ?!!
he sent me the mail TODAY. after 2 months. and this was the worst support mail I have ever received from a company. it's not formated well and didn't answer any of my questions. also there is typos in the mail (ASP.net was written ESP.net).

this was about the support. now let's talk about the prices.
they have a very expensive web hosting service. and the registration price of a .com domain costs 350 EGP which equals 62.5 USD .I can register .com domain from godaddy just for 10 USD .

bad support and high prices. dropping this company from my list will be a wise decision .
now let's analyze all that to get some helpful  points :

1. use a qualified people to support your clients.
2. be professional when answering  questions or sending emails.
3. study your market to provide the best prices and services.
   (there is a big hole between this company's hosting service and the other competitive companies like link.net)

I hope that I didn't forget any point.

yesterday, I went to meet that manager (which I won't tell you his name) who hired me  to create a new programme for one of his customers.
If you work as a programmer so you know that there is no normal customer knows what he wants to get from the program at the first time. that's not a problem, the programmer can set with the customer to help him  knowing what he want to get from this program. but you (the programmer) can't do that when you are delivering the finished program.

That's what happend with that manager,
I went to meet him in his office and he told me that there is things in the program that's he told me about and I didn't do it.
ha?!!, I didn't believe what he said, I have all the papers which can tell that he didn't tell me about this things before. every paper was writen by his hands.

Put yourself in my place and tell me what you can do with that ? and don't forget that you are very very sure that you didn't forget creating any feature that's you was told about. and the program is delieverd to the customer.

I can't argue that I did a stupid thing by delivering that program simply to him. I did that as I was told that he is a trusted man.

His talk about the missing features isn't the only thing that's making me angry.
I was devloping this program ( a web application ) with PHP5 and using a framework called CAKE .
he told me that using an opensource code in the program can't give his company the right to register this program as its owned and created program ( so using opensource code is bad !! ). he was saying that if he tried to register this program here in Egypt in the Smart Village, they will tell him that using any opensource code in your program don't give you the right to own the copyrights !!.
I didn't believe this talk as I have seen many companies using opensource code in its applications without any problem at all. and so why we are using all this opensource licences?!!.
maybe the smart village don't know about this things !!.

so now I'm that geek guy who don't create a full programmes (as he didn't know the new features that the customer will request in the next morning ) and using opensource code !! lol .

The manager was so cold and he is very good with marketing, so he was trying to make me believe that it was my fault when I forgot the missing features and when I used opensource code !! . so he will forget about all my faults and will give me the chance to add the missing features to the program. Do you believe that ?!

no no, I'm not that easy to play with. I was very cold too and told him "I don't have enough time to work on the program again. so I will leave the company and I'm sure that you will find another programmer who can add this missing features ".

you have to know that I was the only programmer in that company, so all the programming work will stop and the company will lose alot of money till getting a new good programmer who can understand the code of the program, and finding that programmer in that city (Alexandria) isn't a simple work.

you can Imagine the face of the manager, he did a very stupid thing by depending on one programmer. If that programmer gonne, so alot of the work and money is lost.

by the way, I didn't tell him about giving me the money of the program and I didn't take any mjoney from him , but I'm satisfied as I did the best revenge.

From this I can learn that depending on one employee is a very bad idea. so if you are creating your new software compnay:

• you need at least 2 programmers.
• use some of that extrem programming practices like : Collective Code Ownership and pair programming.
• set the coding standards [ it's a most ].

you can do that too with your designers.

That was my day, maybe not that best day but I have learned many things I think.
also I did a wrong thing by not getting any money from that man.
maybe it would be better if I told him to give me the money of the finished work or just a part of it before telling him that I won't continue with that company.

any way, Thanks to ALLAH.

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