Jem

Thought this was really interesting. Wish I'd read it a year ago before I started working with my juniors. I feel so inept at times because I can be impatient and rude without even meaning to be. I regularly get paranoid that I'm not teaching anything other than bad habits.

Will be interesting to see how long I can keep up the "just don't type" advice...

That was my initial reaction. I certainly could not imagine a situation in which I would voluntarily abandon my children to their father so that I could go and live in another country. But I then began to wonder if there's more at play here - physical and emotional abuse, for example, can make even the most devoted of mothers do things that they ordinarily might not do.

I am trying to remember that we only have the parts of the story a) the mother and b) the Beeb want us to actually read.

Lone parent of 2 kids (5 & 2) juggling a full time job and freelance on the side just to make enough to cover the bills and mortgage (which I'm trying to buy my ex out of).

Yeah, I know tired.

Don't have any advice, but you're not alone, and it's certainly not restricted to the SF location.

I work with web/mobile. My job is still very boring at least 75% of the time. E-mails, admin, client contact, delegation of jobs to staff I'm responsible for - and that's before we get to the boring parts of the job itself. We can't all be working on brilliantly exciting stuff all the time.

Sharing your personal experience isn't patronising. Telling the world you're shocked at how hard people make it out to be based purely on your single personal experience IS patronising.

You're right, of course people have been having kids and working single "the beginning of time", but that doesn't change whether or not they find it hard, does it? Playing "who's got it worse" top trumps only serves to alienate those who ARE struggling at a time when they most need support.

And I wasn't offended, for the record.

Seriously - could your comment be any more patronising? Just because your experience gave you the impression that this "working or entrepreneurial parent" lark isn't as hard as it's made out, doesn't mean that's the case for everyone.

I went self-employed the week after my 2nd child was born, working from home around my two children. I was profitable in my first month and every month after that until I stopped nearly 2 years later. It was one of the best learning experiences of my working life so far but it was also HARD. Really, really bloody hard.

GoCardless or Paypal - i.e. services that have my info stored and don't require me to go find my card details.

The last line of my comment was tongue in cheek, sorry if the ";)" didn't make that clear.

Thank you, it's proved very useful as a dumping ground for my thoughts over the past few months!

It's not too late to have your "party days". I am 28, I have 2 children, a mortgage and a full time job (as well as freelancing on the side). At the beginning of May I ended my 12 year relationship (manipulative, emotionally abusive ex) and jumped head first into a proper social life for the first time EVER. If I can do this whilst juggling being a lone parent / working 2 jobs / etc you have no excuses. :)

So go out to bars and have fun (who says you have to go with friends?!), date more, travel, take a class, swim in the ocean, jump from a plane, write a bucket list and do it all! Whatever, just make sure you seize life and get on with it.

Oh, but before you do all that, let me know how you manage to make enough to cover your bills in 8 hours so that I can jack in the full time job and spend more time with my kids ;)

Heh, this piece reminded me of the 'magic poo soup' treatment for poorly guinea pigs. The dropping of a healthy guinea pig, stewed in a little water and then fed to the sick cavy, can be almost 'miracle-like' in its cure of gut stasis and other gastro issues.

Moment of 'aha' as I suddenly realise that thing I do which I assumed I was alone on is actually a common/real 'thing' :)

Actually, I agree with you. It brought to mind when Facebook does that creepy "you probably know these people" thing based on knowing X and Y and going to Z school.

I gave it the data, I know I voluntarily handed it over, and yet I still pause and think "holy crap" sometimes.

What sort of maintenance? Server maintenance is the host's problem, software / upgrades etc I charge for. 10% admin fee is just setup and email creation.

I tried getting the client to do it when I started last year and it was a pain getting data/details etc from them. Now I charge it at cost + 10% admin fee, invoiced with the project they're paying me for (and will then be invoiced at yearly intervals in future; I use freshbooks.) I'm not in the business to make money from hosting so don't see the point over-charging.

Not data in itself or indeed proof of anything I guess, but I bought Brennan's book & immediately put my prices up (not double, but I'm working on it). So far so good though.

Thanks a lot :)

Thank you.

I think my son is about to drop down to 1 nap so I totally get it!

If it weren't for my partner going part time to help in the afternoons I'd be working all night long anyway, which is obviously not a feasible long term solution & can really take a toll on your sanity after a while.

Don't get me wrong, if I could afford it I'd have certainly taken time off work (so if you can afford to do so, do it!) but I know I'd have got bored quickly if I'd just completely given up work.

The support site? It's http://wahmweb.co.uk

This reminds me of the prat that decided to teach me a lesson in PHP security by exploiting my first script & deleting my entire website when I was 15. :(

Lesson learned, and it got me into PHP security, but I can't help but feel there are nicer ways to go about giving such an important lesson...

I believe that's fairly typical of reddit humour, yes.

Apologies if it wasn't clear my response was tongue in cheek.

I love that Reddit humour is prevalent on even the most serious of AMAs.

I can't log in though, which is slightly annoying. Would be interesting to see the traffic stats for this once it's done.

Sorry for the 'vanity' submit, but I was hoping by dropping the link here I could get some advice on how to proceed with the info I found (detailed in the post).

I tried contacting Michigan police specifically regarding the creation of the fake seminars in an attempt to sell tickets to events that don't exist, but it's hard to get through to them because I'm not based in the States.

I've reported some of the fake profiles to facebook.

Any advice welcome.

Some people prefer to actually parent their children, no matter what time of day it is.

Google has always denied that this is possible. The recent coverage on negative SEO seems to show otherwise.

I've seen it mentioned in the Terms of Use of certain companies (thinking Fox.com) that people are not allowed to link to the company website going back to the 90s, but I've never actually seen anyone try to enforce that.

I don't know whether I find it scary or hilarious.

eta: the Fox terms haven't changed much: "If you are interested in creating hypertext links to the Site, you must contact Company at terms@fox.com before doing so."

Totally agree. You're describing how I started... for a kid wanting to write a web page over 10 years ago you were lucky to have access to lissaexplains.com & w3schools.com. Nowadays you've got stackoverflow, smashing mag network, nettuts etc - not to mention a whole shitload of resources offering free code / designs / icons, ready to roll stuff like wordpress, etc.

Exact situation but in reverse. (Windows but only because I refuse to use Mac OS and I need Photoshop.)

I tried GIMPing it under various Linux distros for a while but it's just not comparable.