The hot tub got installed today! Yay!

The hot tub requires 220v wiring, which I don’t have in the back yard! Doh!

I called this electrician guy I found on craigslist and he is going to come out tomorrow and install 220v wiring. Preliminary cost estimate: $225. Gotta love paying for upgrades to a rental house. But I doubt my landlord will cover it since it’s my hot tub. I am getting a pretty good deal on the rent anyway, and my landlord is cool, so it’s OK.

In other news, today was Conference Call Hell, but I got a lot done. We’re signing a contract for 10,000 email customers. Craziness! I also landed a fairly large dedicated server contract today, so at least things are humming along on the sales end. I am also getting lots of calls about our office space for rent. I have a feeling we might finally sublet the other half of our office in the next 30 days. That would be a godsend.

I have tickets to the Giants/Reds game tonight, so I’m headed out! I will have pics of the hot tub up once it’s actually functional and not just sitting there like a lump in my back yard. 😉

I had an interesting weekend. C moved out here to start a new job, so I spent a good part of the weekend with him. One of the highlights of my weekend was the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where I finally got to do the Tactile Dome. Wow!! If you live around here, go do the Tactile Dome. It’s this hilarious tunnel-like thing where you bump your way around passages completely in the dark and have to feel your way out. There are lots of fun textures all around — everything from animal fur to bubble wrap to the air mattress room — “You’ll know when you get there,” the guide told us. I ended up falling down a slide backwards: “waaaaagh! It’s a slide! Shiiiiit!” It was great. If any of you do the Tactile Dome, I fully expect you to call me first. I’ll go with you. 😀

I went to two very different parties this weekend. I really enjoyed one and I didn’t really enjoy the other one. The first one I went to was great fun! It was at a friend’s house in SF. He recently bought his own house (well, it’s part of a really big house) and he invited a bunch of his friends, including me, over. One of the things I liked most about the party is that, while I didn’t know anyone there, they were all really friendly people. I was equally impressed by my friend; he made an effort to introduce everyone and was a great party host. At the end of the night, there were a bunch of us sitting around in a circle in his living room talking politics and other fun stuff. I had a blast! Also, I noticed that the crowd was a bit older, which helped a lot. I really do tend to get along with older people (half of my friends are over 40) rather than people my age, a lot of whom seem to be intent on hitting on other people and “getting some” rather than enjoying the company of others, indulging in good conversation, and just having fun with friends.

The second party was less cohesive. First of all, there were more people (around 50), and it seemed cliquish. I invited 4 friends of mine to the party and we ended up hanging out together most of the night. There’s nothing really wrong with that; I enjoy their company, but I didn’t really feel like people there were interested in making new friends. There was a lot of “hooking up” going on — in fact, at one point, I went upstairs to get my car keys and stumbled upon two people making out on a futon. This is a total turnoff for me. I mean, people can make out at their own places. Why do it at a party?

I sat out by the pool for a while (it was freezing cold!) and listened to some conversations, but they all seemed to be the typical “OMG did you see that guy?!” conversations. Really bored, I declared I was leaving. We piled 5 friends in a compact car and drove off to IHOP for some food. IHOP was great and we had a great time making fun of our waitress, who couldn’t seem to get the hang of the word “marinara” (she kept saying “marinated”) and who gave me Dr. Pepper when I asked for root beer. We ate the very average food ($40 for 5 people?!) and went back to the party, which had already died down. We headed back to San Jose in 2 cars.

The biggest problem for me at the second party was that there was no effort made by the hosts to intermingle the groups. There were no board games, no cards, and not even much fun discussion (although there was a group of us in the kitchen who had a pretty good time.) Each person who lived at the house seemed to have invited their own group of friends, and each group didn’t really mix with the other groups. I know I don’t go to parties to hook up with other people; I go to have fun with my friends and meet other interesting people. Maybe I’m just not a “big party” sort of person…

At 6:20PM tonight, we posted the payment that pushed us past our goal (in fact, pushed us even past my extended goal) for June’s revenue target.

I spent some time adding up all of our expenses, and when I finally hit the AutoSum button in Excel, I was shocked to see a much lower number than I thought! We achieved our largest profitability margin yet for 2005, even with a ton of one-time expenses added in. We still aren’t quite out of the hole, as we have a lot of debt to pay off, but it looks like we should at least be meeting our monthly expenses from now on!

Whew.

Gotta love the end of the month. 🙂 The end of the month is when we do an all-out rush to meet our revenue targets. We’ll definitely make our target for this month, but to be profitable, we need to make a bit over that. To clear all the hurdles before midnight June 30, we’re going to need a lot of customers to pay. I think we’ll make it, but I’m going to have to make a lot of phone calls between now and then. 😉

Since my personal financial situation was bothering me, and since Simpli should free up some cash in the next month or two due to several cost-cutting measures (none of which will adversely affect our customers), I decided to give myself a raise starting 8/1. This will make Simpli less of a burden and more of a fun job. 🙂 Besides, as someone pointed out at the lunch meeting I went to yesterday, all my debt should be encapsulated at Simpli, so in case the company fails, I don’t have a lot of personal debt that I need to pay off as well. That’s a valid point; although I don’t see Simpli failing, I still shouldn’t strap myself into a lot of credit card debt, and the salary raise will help me pay off my personal credit card debt more quickly. With that and a new roommate, I should have ALL my credit card debt, including the stuff at very low interest rates, paid off before the end of the year. Then I can start accumulating money on the upside. That’d be nice. 😉

As I expected, it’s been a tough week. With C leaving, Brandon and I have had to hurriedly interview candidates for our new open internship position. (Not that an intern will replace C, but like I said in my previous blog, it’s much more cost-effective that way for now.) We’re also preparing for some big changes at Simpli, which is why I’m getting ready to lease some phat Cisco equipment. I’m not quite ready to announce those changes yet since they haven’t been finalized, but I will announce them here once we sign everything and get all the details hammered out.

I’m still fighting off depression. It comes up and hits me in the face just about every hour. Right now my biggest worry is financial. Simpli is managing just fine, but it doesn’t allow me very much of a salary, and that’s really starting to get to me. Having so little money to myself is making me feel trapped. It got so bad earlier this month for me that I took some contract work. I did regret that (I just couldn’t work 12+ hours for Simpli and then do hours of contracts), so I’m no longer doing contract work. Again. Until I check my personal checking account balance and realize I have no money to spend, so I do another contract…

I’m also feeling trapped at Simpli in general. I’m coming up on my 4-year anniversary of starting Simpli, and while I do feel proud of how far we’ve come, I’m tired. I want to relax. I want to go out and have fun. I want to explore the world. I’ve been working full-time and then some since I was 17… doing contract work and then eventually moving to Simpli full-time.

Tonight I had to go to the datacenter when a customer had a server issue that required “eyes” (it was hung on boot), and as I badged myself in at 10:30PM, I started wondering if I was pushing it too hard. I know very few people who put in as many hours as I do on a regular basis. Even when I’m not available via IM, I’m on the phone with customers. I got awakened today at 7:30AM by a business call, for instance. Downtown San Jose was full of people having fun and relaxing with their friends, and that didn’t help my mood.

I need a break.

I realize that if I keep pushing myself so hard, eventually something’s going to snap. I’m trying desperately to put the brakes on before something really damaging happens (as it has for me in the past when I can no longer handle the stress.) Still, I feel like I’m endlessly speeding up; I’m going faster and faster, trapped in a collision course that I can do very little to prevent. I yearn to get in my car and just drive down the coast; to turn off the cell phone and actually sleep in without RIIIIING! waking me up. I wish I could actually take a shower without hearing the phone ringing and thinking “Oh, shit, I wonder if that’s a client calling.” (No, really. I can’t even take a 20-minute shower without the phone ringing. Sad but true.) I am so far behind with responding to emails that I wonder if I will ever catch up. Oh, Simpli is doing OK. But I feel like I’m being dragged behind a truck and my head is the one hitting the endless potholes.

Hopefully we will eventually find some investors (I’m behind on those emails too; sigh) or some big customers and that will help me pay myself what I deserve to be paid to manage this company. When I was working at Sun, I got paid about 60% of what the person sitting next to me doing the same job I was doing got paid due to a “fluke” in their system. (Long story.) I made less there than the BART driver whose train I took to work made. And Simpli pays even less than that job. Even though I can expense gas money, etc., I don’t have any more money than I did working at Sun, and I wasn’t making enough there to survive either.

I can only pray that it gets better soon, because I am definitely not motivated to keep working right now.