My thoughts on what constitutes a project have changed since I’m no longer working for someone else. In those days, someone else defined projects, usually the customers of our computer systems. Nowadays, my projects are varied and seem to not have much to do with computers anymore.

Last year I built a raised garden bed for Nina. I liked the result and figured out a number of things I could do to improve on the design and to reduce the amount of work to make one of them. That turned into a project to build several of them that I could sell and we actually set up a “store” at the local farmer’s market. They didn’t sell very well, for a number of reasons (mostly they’re too expensive for a farmer’s market). The idea branched into some related gardening projects and I think we’ll do something a bit different in the coming year, still advertising the big garden beds, but having small planters and potato boxes and the like available there to sell. All in all, this was a great project.

One project did have to do with computers. I approached a couple of cities in the area and got the opportunity to build a websites for the cities. One of them is still a work in progress, but it’s been a lot of fun. I do get paid, but not nearly enough to be real compensation. Mostly, the cost is to get them to understand the work isn’t free and they’ve got to do some investment themselves. The websites were for Georgetown and Montpelier. I think next year I’ll try to do several more now that I’ve got some of the learning curve finished. These were fun projects.

Sometimes a larger project actually becomes several smaller projects. Getting my ham radio license and then getting set up to be able to use the license would be the overall project. Building this antenna was one of the smaller projects. It took several days (I could build one now in a day) doing the research, buying the materials, and figuring out how to actually do the construction. The antenna is made out of 1/2″ copper pipe. It’s called a J-Pole since the antenna is kind of in the shape of a  “J”. This one is tuned for the two-meter ham radio band (a set of frequencies above the FM radio band) and works quite nicely. It sits in the front yard just outside the computer room window until I can get some coax threaded up into the attic and can move the antenna up onto the roof. This was a fun project.

I’m sure there have been a number of other projects, they just aren’t coming to mind at the moment.

Nevertheless, there is a “best project”: The raised garden beds. It was the start of a new hobby and a lot of fun.

Ta ta for now!