Slaughters.com

I've been doing 1099 indy contract work on and off for the last year. I think I'm going to give it a real go. I'm building up a new website dedicated to the consulting services I offer, centering around the Drupal CMS. It's not finished yet, but have a sneak preview: DevBee.

I do custom Drupal development work as well as general development using Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, etc...

I'm in the process of setting up a site dedicated to my new business. Meanwhile all I've got to show is this little page.

While I have many years experience developing web applications, I've been doing direct consulting work for less than a year and don't yet have a very large client base. For this reason, my rates are currently much lower than those of more established contractors.

A while back, I got into a heated discussion on a new Sony audio player called the HD5: HD5 doesn't play mp3s!!! The device claims to be an MP3 player, but in fact, it doesn't play MP3s at all. It will convert MP3s into a proprietary Sony format and then play them, but if you copy actual MP3 files to the device, it will not play them. I specifically wanted an MP3 player in order to manage my music the way I want to. I will not have anything whatsoever to do with audio files that have been crippled with "Digital Rights Management" (DRM). Unfortunately, most consumers are not aware that any time they buy music from Itunes, Microsoft, Sony, or many other distributors, they are buying music files that are crippled with DRM. You may look at this whole DRM controversy and say, "who cares?, it plays on my device." This may be true for you right now. However, if you ever find yourself involved in of the following tasks, you may change your tune:

Sonic Impact has released a $30 audio amplifier (the Class T Amp) that is comparable to audiophile components that cost ten times more!

I am ordering one of these little wonders straight away and will report my experience.

Running Windows doesn't have to be a nightmarish experience, but it usually is. I loathe Microsoft and most of its products, but at the same time, I have to live in this world that is currently dominated by Microsoft technology. One of my hobbies is making this unfortunate plague called Windows as painless as possible for those in my circle that have the affliction. Those that follow my few simple, common sense tips are not bothered with freezes, unwanted popups, adware, spyware, viruses, etc... It's really not that difficult to make a Windows computer behave as reasonaby as can be expected for such a horrid product.