Corporate America is an interesting place. People are expected to be loyal to a company but why would one be loyal to a company? Companies are soulless entities, ran by nameless and faceless executives on a board. At least 95% of the time Steve from the mailroom won’t be a golf buddy of the CEO.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to be loyal to the people in the company? The ones you come to work with and see everyday? The people that fail when you fail and succeed when you succeed?

People need to be loyal to people. When things go right many people before me and after me did what they were expected to.  When things go wrong it is everyone’s job to help catch it and fix it. The ones around me are the ones I need to trust and depend on. When we do this everything goes well, when we don’t you end up with an endless blame game.

I am loyal.  Loyal to my family and friends. To my bosses and coworkers. I will do what I have been called upon to do and do it to the best of my ability.  If only everyone around me could agree to do the same.

In the end I guess I shouldn’t be mad at Corporate America.  I should be mad at the people that can’t return the favor. But what should I expect most people are who they were in highschool just in an older form.

Well it’s been a while since I had might site.  Issues with Godaddy aloud my domain name to expire and get scooped up by a domain squatter so for now I had to make a trade to get mindofq.com.  This one is even better though since I always hated having the in my domain name.

Well I had my first interview for Decodeforme.com. It was an interesting experience. One that I wouldn’t like to repeat.

The interviewer was great. He asked all short of questions about the system and how it worked. Why it was important and about exit strategies. All of the usual questions one would ask. He also seemed very understanding when I didn’t have much to say.

The fact that I didn’t have much to say spoke wonders to me. I have no interest in selling people QR codes or desire to worry about making millions in an exit. I would rather worry about creating the lowest point of entry for QR code decoding possible and let someone else worry about the “important” things.

So from this point on Decode for Me will be going through some changes. As of now it’s a Me Too QR code tracking company and that doesn’t interest me. From now on it will just as it’s title says Decode and I will be looking for a business partner to run the front end while I worry about the back end. If any one is interested in my thoughts I would be more the glad to share.

So in the end the interview was very eye opening and I owe the journalist quite a bit for this revelation and if I ever get a chance to meet him I will be sure to shake his hand and tell him thank you. But until then I am off.

More details to come on the direction of Decodeforme.com.

Well folks it’s a new year and plenty of New Endeavors. Lets first start with updating from the previous post.

I had my chance at rocking the old school with some ASP classic but at the end of the day me being an ASP rock start wasn’t worth sacrificing my family. Family comes first after all.

Decodeforme.com is doing Awesome. I have two marketing firms on board so far and after this week I will have one more on board and hopefully some help from an old friend but we will see next week. I found a few more bugs in the system with the help of unsuspecting users. Issues with Emailing from live, gmail, and Squirrel mail have all been resolved. The script was failing to resize the QR codes due to my web hostings sub par memory limits.

We are currently looking for funding or local partnerships to help push the next wave of changes forward. Still trying to get a local partner to no avail. Hopefully that will come with the new year. The next wave of changes will actually push decodeforme.com into usable territory. As of now it’s only use is processing soon it will come with a suite for generating QR Codes as well which will ease the transition for our current clients.

Last week my family and I moved into a new place. It’s a nice home and a great land lord but you can tell he isn’t used to renting to people. He’s very hard to get a hold of. Either way we will be calling it home for quite some time. We will be cleaning the old place this weekend and doing a house warming party the following week if all goes well and my short pay check doesn’t bite me in the butt.

I still have the ontrix.com rebuild on my plate but that will hopefully be done next week and I have a quote out on a music billboard mashup web site. The mashup site would be a great project but since I have raised my prices in the new year it will probably fall through. That’s okay though since freelancing doesn’t appeal too much to me any more.

As for the new year we are going to settle into our new home, work on my sons web page, and continue trying to push QR codes through the central valley. Wish me luck, it’s going to be a long and adventurous year.

Welcome back my 5 loyal readers. Things have been busy on my end.

Decodeforme.com launched and has been a mixed bag of nuts. I have had a few inquires but nothing too serious as of yet. The biggest issue so far has been getting people to understand what QR Codes can be used for. This comes to some surprise as I now see them every where I look.

My son’s web site is still in the planing stages but that has alot to do with me having to continue to do mass amounts of freelance work after hours. Hopefully that will be coming to an end soon and I will be rocking it old school with some ASP Classic. Not sure what I would do with all of my extra time though. More details to come in that in the next few weeks.

The biggest project that I have now is the complete rebuild for Ontrix.com. It will be WordPress based and have a few custom plugins to help support multiple authors and create niche mini-sites. Should be pretty slick when done. The Owner even said I could sell the plugins on Code Canyon once they are done so hopefully that will bring in some extra cash.

Other then that I have been furthering my education in Database Normalization and Design. It’s a pretty fascinating subject and not too hard to get a grasp on. Some of the things I have read about I have been doing for years now but never knew what the processes were called. Better to dive in head first then be scared off by the big, bad, scary programming name and never try. Chalk that up to some good teachers through out the years (thanks Vern and the original Laurel Springs IT Department)!

Well I guess that’s it for now. I will try to start posting on a some what weekly basis so there is at least some reason to come back. Maybe actually write an article or two instead of using this as a journal. Probably not but it’s a thought.

Where’s Durban is coming along. I have almost finished the QR decoding web app and its close to fully operational. Currently there are some issues with spam filtering and MetroPCS but those should be resolved before a full launch. You can try out the tech demo by going here: http://www.decodeforme.com . The app is capable of decoding all QR Codes but is currently set only to fully process those stored in it’s data base so to test it you will have to use the code on the home page of http://www.decodeforme.com . If any one is interested in the app or in it’s commercial applications you can e-mail: sales@decodeforme.com and some one will get back to you with in 24 hours.

The first scavenger hunt should launch after the spam issues are resolved as well as any carrier hiccups. We are also trying to get some local businesses on board to offer discounts to those who find the QR codes in their stores. We will see how it all works out…

I have come to the conclusion that blogging and personal branding isn’t for me. I don’t have the time nor the energy to try and keep people engaged in what I have to say. I am a normal guy with normal problems. Between work and everything else I already neglect my family enough as it is. From this point forward I will focus on my family and my projects. If I post I post and if not oh well. I doubt my whole two readers will mind (Thanks Mom and Dad)…

Wheresdurban.com and my sons web site will be mine focus for the coming months. Starting with these two projects I will be trying to get my family more involved.

My sons site will be pretty much his own content with me doing the programming and all the web design. Hard to say what will come of it as he is only 9 but who am I to discourage him. Hey if he starts now he might be the first 10 year old multimillionaire in Atwater. Making me a Millionaire by association.

As for Where’s Durban well that is going to go from a site where you post pictures of Durban and morphed into a geo location Game. I figure we can start local and move from there. Once the site is up and running I will post more info. It should be fun either way.

Let the good times roll…

I have read or listened to (I am a little crunched for time most days) to dozens of books, all of which try to explain how to create a personal brand. Each one explains how you should be honest with your audience and be true to your self. I have put a lot of thought into this. My only question is what if you are a great guy but seen as an asshole by most of the world? After much thought, for the good or the bad, I have decided to find out. Let get started shall we?

Hello free world! My name is Q. I am a graphic designer and programmer based in California’s central valley, a technological waste land with not much to see. I am a father and husband who would give the world to make sure his family is safe and taken care of. But at the end of the day I am a pain the ass. Blunt and straight to the point. My bosses and customers keep me around because I get the job done. Trust me it’s not for my sparkling personality. This is who I am and these are my thoughts…

Is that a good starting point for a personal brand? I guess we will find out.