what happens when life ends and work begins
Journal - Photographs - About
...March
Shipped! 02/29/00 I haven't showered in two days, I haven't shaved in a week, I can barely keep my eyes open without serious pain, but damnit the alpha is live. We're one day late from our three day late deadline.
Fake It 02/29/00 14:35:33 ings0c: alpha, bah. 14:35:38 ings0c: all you need are powerpoint slides.
Late 02/29/00 Missing deadlines pisses me off. So much stress builds up and I justify it by thinking that upon meeting the deadline I will be able to sit back and relax... That never happens though.
Alpha 02/28/00 Been pretty boring here. Just lots of work. The Alpha goes live, well, today, with luck. I'm going to take a nap.
Stickers 02/25/00 Did you know you can buy 10 gross plastic made-in-Hong-Kong trinket frog toys for $30? That's amazing. We are printing stickers, you'd be amazed at how hard it is to get even quotes back from some of the print shops in town.
Invasion 02/23/00 We let a few people take a peek at the product. They seem to like it. This is a good sign. We are letting even more people use it very soon, but no, not you.
Youth 02/25/00 After seeing all of the other companies lined up and looking pretty at the VC competetion dress rehersal this morning I've realized two things: the people involved are young, very young and business people are stupid about their cell phones. Five cellphones rang during the presentations, that's really pathetic. The average age of the people presenting was 40-50.
Fears 02/22/00 There are times when you've been working and thinking probably too much. This is one of those times. I've been questioning lately whether our product will actually be as cool as I have previously thought. Probably. When starting your own company you will question yourself, oh boy will you question yourself.
Advisory 02/20/00 "So, we're wondering if you'd like to be on our advisory board?" "What does that involve?" "Saying smart stuff, and mentioning us every now and then." "Cool!"
Dead (also) 02/19/00 We have the second casualty of the startup: my wrists. I guess wearing out my mouse should have been a sign, but I now drift to sleep with a dull ache pulsing in my wrists.
Job Title 02/19/00 Recently we took job titles as we're going to be printing cards soon. The title I chose, and invented is a good one for anyone who's job centers around solving problems: Solutioneer.
Java 02/18/00 Problem: java doesn't work on my mac. It works on every other mac in the office, but not mine. Attempted remedy: reinstall netscape, install an old netscape, install MRJ, reinstall MRJ. Outcome: java still wont work but now I have eight copies of AIM.
Compete 02/15/00 Status: Accepted. One of ten (or some other similarly small number, but I'm pretty sure 10 is right).
Droppings 02/15/00 You always hear about how influential names are in the business world... it's part of the public conception. Meetings are made and broken with the mention of a name. The thing is, I didn't believe it until now. Our meeting went well.
Early Bird 02/15/00 If it's true that the early bird gets the worm then tomorrow should be a good day for us. Meeting with a VC firm here in town at 8:30 in the morning. WOAH! It's 3:43am, I've just finished smashing (or hiding) the bugs in the demo. Bugs always appear right when you need to show the product to someone. They're annoying like that.
Dead 02/13/00 We have the first casualty of the startup: a Macally two button mouse. It was brand new! I think I used it to death.
Status Check 02/13/00 DSL has been installed (yay), notification for the VC competetion is this week (!), our production schedule is working out quite nicely (though there are impending deadlines), we've been changing things on the site (if you don't see anything different, well, then you aren't looking hard enough),the first investment check has arrived (small, but much needed), and some really cool people have agreed to help us out with design stuff!
Time 02/12/00 "All of the clocks are set to different times," I told her as she interviewed me, "we just haven't bothered to set them yet." Time is not told so much by the hands of a clock as it is by number of times you've listened to the CD playing on repeat, or the hunger in your stomach, or the rising of the sun...
Cash 02/11/00 From the business plan: "Deepleap will not be profitable before the end of 2000." So, you know, at least we're being realistic.
Script 02/11/00 We hashed out a third draft of the business plan over lunch/dinner tonight. Upon leaving the restaurant a man asked me if I was reading a script. "No," I said, but after thinking about it, script is the perfect description for a bplan. Especially appropriate because business is just as fake as any stage production.
Lockdown 02/11/00 We set v1 feature lock earlier this week, I am hoping to set a temporary lock on the UI tomorrow so that I can finish implementation across all platforms. In preperation, the last three hours have been spent playing with a total of less than fifty pixels. I am still not happy with the results.
Bandwidth Realism 02/10/00 I can't decide if sharing a 56k modem for the office is good because it forces one to be realistic (and ever mindful of bandwidth 'cost') or bad because everything is just so damn slow. Either way, it would be nice to have a choice. The DSL install had failed numerous times.
Crazy Taxi 02/10/00 I delivered 17 passengers to their destinations in one round of crazy taxi. So far that's my all time high. Lately I've been in a rut and playing video games hasn't helped. It might be time to break out the optical illusion coloring book.
Mockup 02/09/00 Never show anyone anything before you're done with it. Mockups only incite the spewing of countless points which you're aware of, but havent implemented yet. Of course, this is completely impratical advice.
"While you were away" 02/07/00 We dropped an investor, got a fax machine, had a botched DSL install attempt, received a bit of notice, and re-arranged the office.
Going Public (in a sense) 02/04/00 We've posted a notification page. Sign up so you can get all the news about the company as we release the product, &c.
January...