BoldUlysses.com

Bartering services is a tricky thing, I’m finding out. I do Web and graphic design and tutoring on the side to supplement my day job’s income, and recently connected (through my car community) with a pair of guys who run a car restoration outfit and car care products retailer. I e-mailed them asking if they needed help with their websites, since the ones they had up looked pretty bare-bones. I do “cold e-mailing” from time to time and don’t usually get a response, so I was pleased when they wrote back, interested in working out a deal.

They’re relatively cashless, and my car needs a little work here and there, so we’re in the process of working out a deal whereby I provide them Web design services and they tackle a few projects my car’s been needing… But good gravy, it’s hard to come to an agreement.

First of all there needs to be agreement on the value of the services provided. When dealing in cash the process just ends there, since everybody wants money; that’s the advantage of it. But to barter services we both have to be in agreement about the nature of the services provided as compensation, too… And there’s the rub. There’s one thing I want for my car, quite badly: the bumper conversion mentioned a few posts down. And they’re unwilling to tackle it, for a number of reasons. So I’m disappointed about that, and conflicted as well, since I really do want to design their websites—it would give me a chance to “make a name for myself,” as it were, in the car community I frequent, among other things. But I don’t want to sell myself short. I’ve done Web design for quite a while now and know how these things can balloon and spiral out of control.

So we’ll see what happens. The ball’s in their court at the moment. I sent them at e-mail last night relenting from my dogged pursuit of the bumper swap, or at least of having them do it. I hope we can work something out.

I’ve been revamping the company’s website.  I don’t mind this a bit, since I was the original site’s designer a little over a year ago and I like web design in general.  The owners had a number of requests and comments about the current site, many of them focusing on the usability of the portfolio pages.  So I’ve been busy redesigning that interface.  It’s a fun challenge in usability, trying to balance the look and feel of the site with a design that’s intuitive and simple to use and also communicates clearly.  It’ll all be online soon enough, assuming too many tasks don’t jump ahead of it on the priority list, or I don’t have another setback like I had this afternoon, when I accidentally overwrote a beautifully-crafted CSS file.  If the free utility I downloaded isn’t able to retrieve it from the browser’s cache it’s going to take me a few hours to recreate it.  Sigh.

The inevitable, relentless buildup of DCFC’s "Transatlanticism" is going through my head.

We’re inching closer to deciding on a church.  I swore we’d never be "church shoppers," but it sure feels like that’s what this is.  I wonder if the people we judge unfairly as such are just going through the same ordeals we are in looking for one?  Granted, much of it is self-inflicted, but on the other hand, a lot of it is borne out of a good desire to be cautious before committing, out of respect for the gravity of that commitment.  Much of the waffling, it will be said, is my fault.  I actually committed too quickly to the first church, without taking the full measure of my family’s considerations into account, and then was led entirely too much by my emotions in the ensuing months, going back and forth in my mind between a couple of options.  Diane and the kids didn’t know what to expect from me, and that wasn’t fair to them.  But the good news now is that I think we’re getting more involved with one church in particular, one with rock-solid theology, methodology and a thriving community with lots of families.  They’re hosting an ice cream social this Sunday evening, and we’re planning to attend.  Hopefully we’ll make some new friends.