First off just need to apologise for not updating the front end of the site when I post. I keep forgetting, it's as simple as that. I may set up a cron job to run it once a night so at least if I forget it will still run

Anyhow, I was hoping to be on top of my work by now but I'm still not fully there. Client delays and having to start new work as agreed with other clients means work keeps overlapping leaving me in the middle getting crushed under the weight. Okay over dramatic I know, it's not so bad, but it feels it every night when I'm stressing in my dreams about work and then wake up exhausted, dragging myself out of bed whilst the rest of the house sleeps for another 2 hours.

I turned two jobs down a couple of weeks ago. One was work which I wouldn't have done myself anyhow and hired someone else to do the job and I just don't have the energy to rely on someone else to get work done on time with me running in between client and developer. The other was quite a large project which was urgent, again not something I can cope with at present. Luckily I know a couple of good guys I can pass the clients on to when needed. I then reassessed my work and the idea of actually growing the business more. At present both myself and Dave work pretty much fulltime, or what seems like fulltime should I say, however the money coming in doesn't reflect this. So I'm starting to document everything I do during the day to keep a track of what's being done and when. There's 3 of us here and I want the 3 of us to be working full time or at least 30 hours a week before even considering looking to employ someone. To be paying out a decent hourly rate means that I need to be turning over double what I currently am so we need to see why the work is taking so much time compared to the money paying for it (my bad quoting no doubt!) and get it to how it should be. With that in mind I've now got a few new sites that have come in over the past couple of weeks to start planning for. Loose ends are being tied up on other sites so things are clearing down a little especially as large projects are coming to a close and only smaller ones (bar one) are starting up. If I plan to grow as a business I need to not turn down work unless it's just not financially viable.

On top of all that I'm trying to redesign my business site as the current design is a bit old and boring now. I've got a more modern design in my mind so it's just a case of trying to put it on paper and call on Dave to help me with the CSS! I've also got work to do on other personal sites as well as another business which has been in the works for a few years now and is hopefully going to see the light of day soon. So just a few things to be keeping busy with…!

It's been a long week of driving all over the place, doing business dealings and not getting much sleep. I'm completely confused this week as to what day it is (it's Thursday I know, but it doesn't seem like Friday tomorrow – but I'm not complaining!). We spent the first two days of this week driving up to London and learnt you cannot reach Edgeware by car during the week! We've had two new jobs through this week, one confirmed and one I'm waiting on. I had to turn down two jobs the other week as we're so busy, and if the work involves a large input from me then it just won't get done at the moment. I want to clear down everything that's on at present and then try and start afresh. However the two new jobs don't need much input besides the initial agreements, and the latter I'm quite excited about as well as it's working on an Extranet for a school. It's different to the normal website and a really good change of scenery, plus some parts will be a good challenge. So I'm trying to spend this week and next tying up loose ends to narrow down my work to just a couple of main sites.

Right now business is on the borderline of too much for us but not enough to hire anyone else. From the start of October I'm going to start charting my hours to make sure I'm definitely working 8 hours a day and not letting myself get distracted. The downside is getting phone calls from clients or having to spend mornings writing out quotes or replying to emails, it all takes time and to me it's less productive than working on a website. However it has to be done else ties are lost and no more work comes in!

Also a new business that I've been working on for a few years now is starting to see daylight again as connections are made again and fingers crossed that we can possibly finally launch the business early next year. If you want to keep up with information on that you'll need to visit my AIS Blog however.

Still it's friday tomorrow, so I'm hoping for a quiet weekend to leave me to get my work done

Further to my post I hate cars, I got my car back yesterday. Yes it was washed – most expensive carwash in Liverpool however at £1250! That's 2 new rear tyres, a new exhaust, 2 new suspension coils (at least it doesn't bounce so much now!), a full service, fluid changes etc. And it doesn't stop there as I need something fixing on the back lights as someone's bodged them up previously somehow (he explained it to me but all I heard was £30 each!). At least now everything on their check list has been ticked as green (ie. good). To be honest I think the only thing that's not been changed or fixed on the car are my windscreen wipers which were bought brand new before the MOT last week!!

I'm estimating I've just paid out about the equivalent of 50% of the car's worth. So I guess that will put back the idea of buying a second car until after January (when my tax bill is due ). However at least the car is now all top notch again, handy as I'm off down south today to my parents as I have meetings in London on Monday. Still… bloody cars eh.

UPDATE: I've noticed whenever Fasthosts servers go down (and it's quite often) this page gets a major influx of visitors looking for answers and help. So here's a couple
1. Leave Fasthosts! I've seen more people have problems with them than ever! I wholeheartedly recommend SiteHQ, which virtually all of my client sites are hosted on.

2. If you really want to contact Fasthosts then try their Sales helpline on 0870 888 3600, their support section may work at https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/support/ (but I'm guessing their site is down if you're reading this!). Unfortunately I can't login to get their technical support number as I don't have an account with them! (Thank God!!).

— Original Post —

A while back I wrote about my ordeal with Fasthosts Tech Support and how they cleverly informed me that a client's site didn't even exist on their servers and that all servers were up and running when the next day the client's site reappeared after we'd assumed it had been deleted. Have to say that post pulled in hundreds of visitors a couple of months ago when Fasthosts had a major outage – I wondered who was attacking my site!!

Anyhow, now it's the turn of 1 and 1, one of the other major UK hosting companies. Another client had a site off me and it went live last March. I managed to get into their admin section and work out how to change the domain's nameservers just fine. I thought this was a doddle, all those people complaining about 1 and 1. Once the site was live I set to work on transferring the domains. Step 1 – work out where to do this. I spoke to a friend who said several years ago he had to download a form from their site and fax it off to them. Okay, fine, not a major issue, however I couldn't find the form. In fact I couldn't find anything about domain transfer away from 1 and 1. I did find one page in their FAQ but it wasn't linked! After a bit of hunting and clicking on the right buttons I finally found a page explaining it all along with a link to their Contracts section where you can transfer your domains away and cancel your contract.

So since March it has taken until today to get the domains IPSTAG to finally be changed. During this time I've requested transfer about 4-5 times per domain. My client has phoned 1 and 1 several times and emailed them several times asking for email addresses to be updated. Turns out the main stumbling block was because at some point the client's details had been updated and instead of reading the outbound (second part) of their post code as 1NN it was entered as INN (all UK postcode outbound parts always start with a number) and never noticed by their call centre staff. Apparently this wrong password meant they couldn't change an email address elsewhere (makes perfect sense I'm sure). And even then since getting it all finalised and looking correct on Friday and re-requesting the transfers it still takes a human being to process the transfer. This is a very large company and they can't have an automated process?!

When it comes to 1 and 1 tech support it's worse than Fasthosts as you call a centre which is not in the UK. I'm sorry, I'm not Xenophobic but when there's a service which someone is paying over the top for and then to have to speak to someone who you can barely understand, oh and their on hold music is even worse! I found with 1 and 1 the only way to get a decent answer is to use the email support@1and1.co.uk. Perhaps whilst you're with them you're fine, but come to leave and regardless of whether it's a good business trick or not, putting up too many hurdles in the way of a leaving customer is only going to frustrate them more!

That said I've still not finished the job as I still have to ensure the contract is now fully cancelled!

Where did the summer go? It's now September and yes, it's still raining. Actually I think we've had more sunshine in September already than we did for the whole of August, however that was just on the 1st. It's been pretty overcast since with just the odd glimmer of sunshine showing on occassion. Dreary weather also brings dreary moods. Dave and I have been working solidly for a few weeks now, including weekends. Today by lunchtime I was just so fed up I couldn't be bothered any more! Despite having numerous deadlines I was just so fed up with it all that I really couldn't concentrate.

Anyhow, what's been happening? Well I'm hoping to get back to blogging more often now. I've hooked up my old laptop, put on the basic programs I need (Windows, Firefox, iTunes) and am pretty much using it when I'm upstairs in the bedroom. No it's not to replace my PDA as that will continue to be used, however I can type faster on this and I it means I can sit and blog, and catch up with a few other sites whilst winding down from work. Yes strangely enough despite needing a break from work I don't always need a break from the computer! Plus blogging allows me to clear my head of the day to day things which I've missed doing these past few months. So expect more postings