Home Office Site

I have been looking for a way to incorporate forms into my business management. My priorities include privacy, efficiency, ease of use. I want to be able to tell a worker that they can go to a defined page and enter information that I can accumulate and use elsewhere.

Well I’ve tried out more than I bargained for. I don’t have much of a budget, but I will be willing to pay a small amount eventually….at least if the forms create more business.

The two I have looked at the most are Zoho Creator and JotForm. Both are free until you want more…..I haven’t gotten to the point of choosing more.

ZoHo is going to deserve a long dedicated post of its own…..it is downright amazing all of the free services offered by this site. I have already used it for formatting and submitting an excel sheet into a blog, for instance. I have created a online job application form with this also.

Now I have finally started a Google Payment account and want a form program that will integrate with Google the best. I am leaning towards using Jotform, because it is so clear what I am will get for $9 a month. You wouldn’t believe how many companies I have eliminated from consideration because they bury their pricing information…….on the assumption that if they loop you in with a free trial you will jump on board. Me….I get pissed off that they will waste my time by surprising me with the cost after I’ve delved into the program for a day. I just don’t give those suckers a second look any more. If you can’t be upfront and easy about what you charge I don’t want to deal with you. I don’t have time, thank you very much!

So JotForm is the one I will try for payment…..to be continued. Gotta pick up my high school freshman. Be right back!
love and peace

Alright….I know they have a suggestion routine…I have been there and done that. So here is my public plea….

All I’m asking for is a very simple way to search my email with a date range in mind. That’s all. I can’t be the only person who has needed to find an email and our major clue for the search is the time frame we either received or sent it in. How hard could this feature addition be? If I look for something I sent to myself  in February of this year I have to dig through page after page after page of emails to get to that date. A simple calendar based search box would be wonderful. If not that why not set it so that you can set up a filter with a filter category being a date range?  I could delete the filter after it was of no use to me.

Please? Pretty please????????

I loved working at home. Really I did. I home-schooled, had kids interrupting my phone calls and didn’t care, had everything in one place…..if I needed to stop what I was doing, I stopped.

I realize that must sound chaotic to most of you, but it is exactly what I loved about working at home. I am sort of a schizoid type and distraction ready. Thrive on distraction was my motto at the time.

So why do I write about “home office site” stuff when I don’t work at home any longer? Well…..I sort of still do. Just that I feel like I am always working no matter where I go. And I’m not saying that in a negative way. My view is that our life’s work is our lives, and I try to make the most of it where ever I am. I would not be able to be sane in my outside paid job, otherwise. I once told the woman who hired me that I would be dedicated to the position as long as I could blend my “outside” life with it and it with my outside life. And I do.

I manage two kitchens, have two office locations, supervise a staff fluctuating between 12 and fifteen people at two locations, manage several contracts, manage more than one type of business, manage a family ……(my youngest started high school this week – sigh – the other three are in the beyond of college land), I’m on the steering committee of two separate organizations, I’m politically active and sing with the Raging Grannies, I try to keep up with the remains of my “working at home days” business of managing several websites, write for three blogs…..and it isn’t as much as it sounds simply because I meditate every morning, practice Reiki, and stick to the plan of blending it as one whole instead of all the separations implicated by the many uses of commas in this big long run on sentence I have just written. Take out the commas and it is still one who sentence. If I didn’t see it all as some whole shape that fit together I would not be able to pull it off, or be happy with the fact that this journey is what I enjoy and what I love waking up to.

Anyhow, I carry my home office site with me wherever I go. My car resembles my frizzy hair in style. I have at least three carry-all bags. One of them is I swear an old diaper bag from the Goodwill store. Nice weird tan/peach shade, well padded and compartmentalized. Perfect for my laptop. The other’s are soft $10 satchels from Staples. And I carry my office online at my server space. More on that later.

$10 buck satchel from Staples

Right now I’m at one of my EcoCenter Office Space that the Center for Sustainable Living allows for me to use in exchange for Food Works supplementing some catering needs. I’m here because my fourteen year old daughter needs to be fourteen and hang out downtown with friends and recuperate from the first week of high school. Blending. That is what I do. Working at home because home is where my heart and mind are. Wherever that may be.

Peace be with you.

donna