More Technical Issues, Outsourcing, Christmas Decorations

Hey everyone. It’s Sunday here and I hope everyone’s having a really great day. The weather here in Arizona is 80° and sunny! I absolutely love living here. Temperatures in the 80’s at the end of November is our reward for tolerating 115° during the summer. 🙂

There’s a few things that I’m getting done today that are really important to me.

I got up this morning and started working on going through the applicants that I’ve gotten from Odesk. My goal this weekend is to find someone to outsource some of my Squidoo lens stuff to so that I can get building lenses, and my business, faster than what I’ve been able to do. Tiffany Cowen and I started looking at our schedules this month to see where we can find more time to find a balance and still grow our businesses. I know she had talked about outsourcing and the fact that she’s a lot like me in respect to not wanting to pay someone to do what she knows she can do herself.

I’m the same way. But as I’ve been evaluating my business and where my time constraints are, along with how I might go about being able to build my business faster, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way it’s gonna get done is if I outsource.

This is a big step for me. I’ve gone through most of my entire life, at least as an adult, getting things done myself. Basically, if there’s something that has to be done, I do it. I’ve always had a really tough time asking for assistance from other people. And yet I’m one of those people that get really frustrated when people don’t ask ME for help. LOL

Yes, it’s an independence issue, or at least I prefer to look at it that way rather than as a personality flaw. 🙂

Anyway, I posted a job listing on Odesk on Saturday. Today is Sunday, 2pm my time, and I’ve already received 18 or 19 applicants. Since this is my first time ever posting out there I don’t know if it normally works that fast, so I can only assume that it does. I’ve also sent requests to three or four people that I found in their contractor listings that I think would do well for what I’m looking for and am waiting to hear back from them as well.

In the meantime, today I’m working on putting together the exact instructions so that when I do find a contractor, I’m ready to simply send them the instructions and they can hit the ground running. I’m guessing that they’re still going to have questions, but at least the basics will be handled before I get back on the truck.

I also did a video today using my phone discussing a lot of this information. I was really happy with the fact that the lighting was much better today, that I was able to keep the phone stationary because I’m at home, and I managed to get it recorded the first time. Then I went to upload it.

I couldn’t do it. This stupid netbook that I’m still working on doesn’t have an adapter for my media card and the file itself is too large to upload the Gmail. So then I went to my boyfriend’s computer since he has a full size one here at the house, and he doesn’t have an adapter either. My son is at work until about 10 o’clock tonight I believe. I called him and he has his laptop with him that has the adapter. When he gets home, I can use it to upload from my media card to his laptop to my external hard drive. Of course that sounds much more complicated than it actually is. However I’m going to head out to Samsung’s website and see if I can find the software that I need to actually upload directly from my phone to my computer. Worse case, if that doesn’t work, I’ll come back tonight after my son gets home and add the video to this blog post.

The other main thing that I have on today’s to-do list is to get my Christmas lights up. I absolutely LOVE Christmas lights. If it were up to me, I’d have them up year-round. We’re one of those families who decorate with so many lights that you can find our house from miles away. We have blow up snowmen and Penguins and icicles and basically, we just cover the entire outside of the house with as many lights as possible. 🙂

It’s always tricky getting decent pictures once it’s all up, mostly because lights in the dark glow so the pictures get really funny. But here’s one from last year.

So, I gotta go get stuff done. You guys have a great day. Hopefully I’ll have my video uploaded very soon. And I’ll talk to you guys later.

Until then…

UPDATE:  Well, the Samsung thing didn’t work but I got my new laptop early. I’ve spent the past day and a half NOT liking Windows 8. There’s a definite learning curve I’m thinking and I just don’t have the time or desire to go thru it. As a computer programmer, the more “user friendly” they make home operating systems, the more frustrating it gets for me!

I’ve managed to locate the parts of the system I gotta have to do the basics so I managed to get my video uploaded!