The End of My Beginning
September 30th, 2009It was just over five years ago now that I stumbled into something that would set me up for the next stage of my life. Today, that something is gone. Not gone completely but gone from my life.
Back in 2003 I was the stay-at-home dad to two very young children. Things weren’t great financially here so I went looking into ways I could earn some income from home. Eventually, I came to know traffic exchanges.
A traffic exchange is essentially an “I’ll look at your site; you look at mine” way to get your website shown to people. Some time later an opportunity arose to get one-on-one training for operating one of these. I decided to start up my own. This one would be different in that a portion of revenue and activity at the site would be given to a different charity each month.
Well, that wasn’t much of a success (aside from what was donated) but the piece of software it ran on - the LJ Script - helped me launch a career.
This LJ Script, written in PHP, had its issues. The code was ugly. It had a lot of bugs, and it wasn’t easy to fit a proper design on it. So I went into the code and started looking around. Yeah, it was ugly. I didn’t know the language PHP at the time, but I was familiar with a number of other languages as I had started programming sometime back in the 1980s.
PHP was rather easy to pick up based on my knowledge of other languages so as I was in that code trying to figure out what it was supposed to be doing, I fixed bugs, improved some things, and got to know that particular script very well. And to be fair, the code I was putting in there was ugly too in the beginning.
My knowledge of the script came in handy when other people using it started to complain about the issues they were finding. I simply stepped in with “I already have the fixes for that,” and all of a sudden I had myself a business.
“LJ Fix” I called it (a little play with the script’s name) and everyone wanted it. Hey, what rational, true business person wouldn’t want their business to be running properly? The people who sold and developed the script were very slow with getting any releases out so the people came to me instead.
In fact, the script’s so-called developers don’t seem to be moving at all still. Yes, there have been a few releases since I started working on it, but there are quite a number of those bugs I worked on way back then still found in the latest version.
So now people are coming to me wanting the bug fixes, and they’re wanting new features added, and they’re wanting other improvements. It actually took me a little while to figure out what I had. I was just going about my way and helping some people get their code in order (for a reasonable fee).
The fact was I knew the script better than anyone else (still do). I had built the largest collection of modifications for it. Everyone recommended me to new owners. Life was good (well, my personal life wasn’t good but that’s another story). I was King of the LJ.
After my divorce (see above re: personal life) I felt fortunate to have this built up enough for me to have it as a full time business. I was working with some pretty cool guys (and gals) and had my first truly successful business.
But the code was still ugly. The more of PHP I learned, the harder it got to work on this monster. I started saying no to custom work just because I didn’t have the desire to do it any more. Do you have a job you just don’t want to wake up for? That’s about where I was. I wanted out.
Eventually, I was back to part time with my LJ Fix as I went to explore other avenues. In January of this year I began working for a local business doing PHP. I’ve learned a ton being there and I’m enjoying it. I have plans for the future and I feel stable for the first time in quite a while. Life is good (no, really this time).
So, thank you LJ Script, and thank you LJ owners. I wouldn’t be where I am now without you.
But LJFix.com is not dead. No, it lives on through Josh Abbott, a man who has already built up a similar service of his own. I’m sure a number of you LJ owners have worked with him already.
It’s a little sad to see you go, LJ Fix, but our time together is over. Have fun in your new home. Don’t bother to write.
