Mike Rundle's Weblog

Best Designer of the Year!

I just learned that I won Best Designer of the Year and 9rules won Best Site of the Year over at Marie Cox's Artypapers.com! I've won other awards in the past, but being marked as the best designer from all of 2005 really takes the cake, I'm extremely touched and honored.

New Year

2005 was a big year for me, and I very much appreciate all the support that my readers and friends have given. This past year I graduated from college, took a full-time job, quit a full-time job, moved with my girlfriend to a new state, and am now doing really well with Business Logs and 9rules.

We've got some amazing things in store for 9rules this coming year, maybe even in the next week or two ;)

Happy holidays everybody.

Personal Goals For 2006

For the past 4 years, I've been making lists of my goals for the upcoming year. Since I'm accustomed to the year starting in September and ending in May (college time) I normally make goals for that span of time. I guess this year I should adjust my personal calendar to match the rest of the world considering I've been out of college now for about 10 months. So here are my personal goals for 2006:

Be healthier. This is the de facto goal that includes eating less junk, working out more, and just being a bit more active and all-around more health conscious. I've been working from home since June, so the routine is bogging me down a bit. I gotta change that.

Execute 9rules Strategy. The guys and I have big plans for 9rules for the upcoming year, and my personal goal is to contribute to the overall plan the very best I can. Without giving too much away, we have some really great stuff coming next month, and we honestly can't wait to tell everybody. Normally we leak screenshots or information to our friends and whatnot, but not this time. It's totally hush-hush.

Have a Steady Income. The world of consulting has its ups and downs. Sometimes I make five figures a month (not as often as I'd like!!), sometimes I make zero figures for a month or longer, it's completely flexible. My goal is to execute some sort of plan where I know what kind of money I have coming in for longer periods of time than just "a few weeks" or so. This would help out in estimating what kind of car I can buy soon ;)

Better Time Management. Working from home has a ton of advantages, and one of them is setting your own hours. Right now I'm writing this at 3am while finishing up some 9rules stuff, so obviously I don't work the normal hours like normal people. Some days I'll work from 11am - 5pm, then jump back from 11pm - 2am, and some days I'll work from 9am on through the whole day, it totally depends on what's going on. I probably wouldn't *have* to jump back on after my girlfriend is asleep if I managed my time better during the day, so that's my goal. Better day-time management.

Purchase a house, or be in the market looking for a house. Eleni and I are moving down to Raleigh at the end of February and we'll be renting. By this time next year, when our lease is almost up, I'd like to be in the market to purchase a home. The housing market down there is so amazing right now that I'm confident that we'll be in the position to do so. Let's hope all goes well!

Get the ball rolling on Pieceful. Pieceful.com is the project I started back in the summer, but didn't get very far due to lots of work and whatnot. I can't give out any specifics, but I can say that the idea/concept really blows my hair back, and that's very difficult to do. As soon as 9rules starts paying the bills and consulting work can halt, work on Pieceful will commence. I can't wait.

Make a million. This isn't really my goal for 2006, but I might as well strive for it. Being a millionaire was originally my goal for by the time I turned 30, but last year I fast-tracked that goal and now I want seven figures in my bank account by the time I turn 25. Two and a half more years to go :)

So what are your goals?

Test Post

I don't really expect Typepad to work anymore, so I'm writing this test post to see if it even publishes.

BTW: Everything is now all restored, sayeth the Typepad leaders, but the permalink on my previous entry shows a 404 showed a 404 five minutes ago. Nice. Looks like all is restored..... I'll get you next time, Gadget!

Couple Interviews

If you want to know a little more about what I've been up to lately, I've actually given two interviews the past few weeks (and one more next week):

Ben asks about blogging and post-college entrepreneurship and David asks about 9rules business strategy and what differentiates us from other networks.

Next week David's publishing another interview with me where I talk about social interaction, blogging, and the two-way web. Good stuff!

Another himike In The Toilet!

Bahhh!!!!!

I've already got a new one open in Photoshop :)

Agency.com Anniversary

When I used to work in Chicago (back like 3 years ago, wow I'm old), I'd have to go downtown occasionally for meetings with clients and I remember most of the meetings were in this really huge office building about as downtown downtown as you can get.

I remember my very first meeting in that office building I went to the wrong floor, and I ended up at the Agency.com offices. I ended up making my way to the right area and was at the meeting on time, but after the meeting I went back to my desk and checked out what Agency.com was since I had never heard of them before. I saw they were a global design firm, tons of great clients, offices everywhere, had a nice portfolio, and I wrote them down on the short list of design firms I wanted to work at after I graduated college (which, at the time, was two and a half years away.)

I spoke with a bunch of my colleagues at Streams about Agency.com, and since they had been around in the dotcom days, they let me know that Agency.com used to be a really huge entity, but since the crash they had shrunk a lot and cut a lot of employees and were now floundering. That was basically the last time I thought or talked about Agency.com.

Just tonight I was at some random design site and I saw they mentioned Agency, so I decided to check their site out since I hadn't been there in years. Their site is now all in Flash and their new logo doesn't really do it for me, but at the bottom corner of the site they have a link to their 10-year history which documents the Agency.com rise and fall and rise again.

I'm not really sure why I wrote this entry, but I do know that thinking about that meeting and landing at their floor really brings me back. Good stuff :)