I had a nice chat with Susan’s friends, Kelly and Michael, from Bard last night at work. I tricked them into taking the Myers-Briggs test (INFJ and INTP respectively) and talked about pro wrestling with Kelly who is apparently a big fan of the ‘sport’ for reasons I still do not understand. He was surprised that I was so uninterested in pro-wrestling since I hail from the state which produced one of the most famous wrestling dynasties in the world, the Von Erich family. I had heard of them and their family curse and had seen Kerry Von Erich’s autographed photo on the wall of Herbert’s Taco Hut throughout my childhood, but that was the extent of it.
Kelly also offered to work on the idea I had for the Trillian Pro plugin which would allow you to blog your instant messaging chats on the fly. If you’d like to work on your own plugins you just need to know a little C++ and read the SDK (Software Development Kit) provided by the studio. I do think it is a good idea for something that many people will use. I may even dust off the amateur programming skills if no one else wants to. I can always ask the roommate/programmer in the next bedroom for advice since he is always the most patient of teachers when I don’t understand what the hell he is trying to explain. I program the way many other men attempt to work on cars, I usually know enough to make a mess than I have to find a friend to help me find my way out.
This gives me the idea to have a business where you match up clients with domestic and overseas programmer/contractors in order to fulfill low-level programming projects…like my project. Custom programming or something. I am not looking for a commercial product but I would definitely invest small amounts of my own money to have something cool and useful made. The hard part would be making acquaintances with cheap (relatively speaking), international programmers. This is what the bartering system would be good at, putting people with diverse skills together for mutual benefit. On the other hand, maybe I should just put in the work to learn more about programming. I’ve done it off and on since I was fourteen, but I never took to it the way some people do.
By the way Susan, you really need your own website. Let’s work on it!