Cody's Tumblelog

The Low Information Diet

The Media Fast

• No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, podcasts or non-music radio.
• Music is permitted at all times
• No news websites whatsoever (CNN, NY Times, etc).
• No books, except the 4HWW and 1 hour of fiction reading before bed
• Limit TV to 1 hour of pleasure viewing per day (comedies etc.)
• No web surfing unless it’s necessary to finish a task for that day

From The Four Hour Workweek

Rules of Freelance Pricing

Are you a photographer, designer, programmer just starting out? Here are the essential (and infallible) rules to pricing your work.

1. Always cover your costs - How did you pay for your equipment? Do you ever want to buy new equipment? How about rent, phone, internet? Your wife/parents will only support you for so long before telling you to get a real job.

2. Always base your estimates in reality - You know it takes more that 2 hours to design a web page. The only person you’re screwing over is yourself by not being realistic with your time.

3. Always account for unbillable time - Email, phone calls, tech support, etc. It all takes time and nobody wants to be billed for it.

4. Always make a profit - Profits allow you to enjoy your time when your not working. Remember what that was like?

5. Raise your rates periodically - Everything costs more over time. It’s called inflation. It affects you too.

6. Forget about what other people are doing - Nobody else has your costs, skills, experience, etc. If they want to each Mac & Cheese for the rest of their lives, that’s their problem.

Why A Lot of People Think This "Coalition" Is Bad

If you didn’t vote Conservative in the last election, here’s the view from the other side:

1) Nobody voted for this alliance. Sure in total the coalition parties got more votes, but that wasn’t an option on the ballot six weeks ago.

2) The Liberals and NDP (who will hold the real power) were the second choice for a majority of Canadians. That’s the same way we got Ed Stelmach.

3) The economy and markets (who value our dollar and investments) prefer strong governments. These aren’t exactly good times. The last thing we need is for our purchasing power to drop.

4) To maintain control, the Liberals will have to keep “socialists and separatists” happy. Not sure what your defination of socialist is, but the Bloc are indeed separatists.

5) A large part of this coalition has never governed. Most of the qualified MPs from previous Liberals governments are gone and the NDP and Bloc have never held power.

6) The optics of this are bad. We just barely got over an election. The Liberals were handed one of their biggest defeats ever. But now feel qualified to govern.

7) Just cause it’s allowed in the constitution, doesn’t make it democratic. Let me introduce you to the Senate.

If anything, this story highlights why Canada needs some of serious electoral reform.