The root of the problem, of course, is discounting the time spent on learning, the time spent working through problems with libraries, etceteras. The "debugging is free" stuff is probably not a great idea either.

When I look at it over the last week-and-a-half, I've spent more than 60 hours on various aspects of the project (not to mention the other few projects I've spent time on), but I can only bill for 27 using this discounting scheme. Since the rate is already our cheapest rate, I'm effectively working at 50% of what we've set as the lowest rate at which we can keep the lights on. (And that's with Tim, Ken and I accepting half wages.)

Sure, I make up for it somewhat by working longish hours, but that's not a great strategy long-term.

Maybe just have to decide to bill every hour, regardless of what type of work is being done. But somehow it feels wrong to ask someone to pay me full-price to learn something when much of the value accrues to me, rather than them. Still, have to do something to get out of the poor house.

Anyway, the SIP demo is AFAICT, basically done. They're doing the demo tomorrow, so I suppose we'll bill tomorrow evening. There are some Cinemon errors I suppose I could work on, but again, without agreement to share the cost of that, it's just not making business sense to continue working on it.

Blah... I hate money posts. Ignore this.