MusicSinFronteras

In the two years I was in Mexico Patrick was my only paying client and he was very generous. 

I designed his new logo and built a very feature rich site for him. After I had sent him several theme suggestions he picked one called OnAir2. That turned into a bit of a disaster because I found the theme was priced at only $19 at one site and $69 at another so of course I jumped on the cheaper price and bought it, only to discover that it was only an HTML version, not WordPress. Totally useless. 

We then bought the right version and requested a refund of the wrong one; however, after numerous follow-up emails I don’t know to this day if Patrick ever got the refund. The developer of the theme proved to be very difficult to deal with and i struggled to use the theme. 

After far too many hours of struggling with the theme and getting no support I recommended to Patrick that we give up and I would start designing the site from scratch all over again using a better theme. He hesitated knowing just how much extra work that meant for me but said it was up to me, so I rebuilt the entire site using another theme. 

After building what I thought was one of the best sites I’d ever done Patrick decided that it would be too much work for him to keep his site updated and he wanted to go back to just using his Facebook page. Obviously I was unhappy that all the work I had done now amounted to nothing but it was his decision, not mine.  


Kelowna 8 Ball Association

This was one of the very first sites I did for a sports organization. It was one of my best. It had an opening header GIF of a stick hitting the cue ball. It had a complete members list with their contact information, which proved particularly useful when team captains had to find a spare. I also had all the weekly stats from games and this took hours every week. I also had sponsorship for all the bars that were in the league. 

When I left BC in 2007 I tried to get someone to take it over but no one wanted the job. 


The Mexico Today Group

This was going to be the parent company for all the domains I registered for every town and village around Lake Chapala. 


Prism Career Networks

This was when I lived in London, Ontario. I applied for a government funding program to start a business and this was in support of my application, which was approved. I received monthly funding for just over a year. I also went to various seminars in St. Thomas which were very helpful. 

The site was based on my experience with the True Colors program and offered a number of very unique ways to assess your skills to determine what career you were best suited for. 


Palm Travel

This was a local business in Boquete, Panama. They didn’t have a website when I met them so I did one for them. Before I had a chance to meet with them to discuss the site the business closed down. 


Okanagan Manufactured Home Owners Association

This was the forerunner to what became the Canadian Manufactured Home Owners Association. 


Hello Boquete

Well, this one goes all the way back to when I made my first move trying to find a cheaper cost of living. It was also another attempt to create a network of city guides. 

Hello Boquete was my first but I also registered domains for a number of other cities, such as David and Volcan and planned many more. 

Other than the renovation of Vista Grande building this website occupied my every waking hour. 


Google

This was a massive build that included every single thing you could think of for both individuals and business to be online, from long before Facebook, to email to photos to security to games and much more. Some apps were free with the option to add more services at a premium. The most fundamental change was what I called at the time authenticated email. Again long before Facebook it meant that anyone who wanted to contact you would first go through a verification process. You would receive a notice that the person wanted to contact you and you could accept which added them to your verified contacts, or reject it and you would then never receive another email from them. No more SPAM. It was truly revolutionary. 

I sent the whole proposal to Google but never heard a word back. Instead over the next few years Google started adding many of the apps that I created. I should have made a fortune but didn't get a dime., 


The Canadian Manufactured Home Owners Association

This site was the sequel to what I had originally created as The Okanagan Manufactured Home Owners Association. At the time there were thousands of mobile home parks under threat of evictions, especially those on Native land. The laws in BC were pathetically weak and the most a home owner could get was a year's rent if they were evicted. Many people had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in buying their homes and doing extensive renovations. The newest home that had been moved into a park next to where I lived was right on the beach and apparently cost close to three hundred thousand dollars! Tenancy only came with a thirty day notice so just imagine these new home owners getting their notice after spending that amount of money. 

I formed the association in the hopes of better representing the owners of some eighty thousand homes in BC, all of which were under the same threat. Many of the parks in the Okanagan were on prime land right on the lake so developers were itching to build condos where the manufactured homes had stood, many for decades. Just as I got the organization going there was a tragic story of a park that was kicking everyone out, many of them in their eighties who had lived here for decades and spent a fortune upgrading their homes. 

Part of the process was to lobby every level of government to adopt what I referred to as the Colorado Model, which had been in place for years and a huge success. Instead of treating manufactured homes like vehicles as they had always been going back to the days of the "mobile" home, instead they were given a transportation permit to go from the manufacturer to the site. Once properly installed on the permanent foundation and hooked up the utilities there was a licensed inspector who then issued a building permit and the home became just like every other stick built home. The owners paid school and property taxes just like everybody else, which had always been a bone of contention with "mobile" homes. Any renovations, such as adding on a garage or deck would require a building permit subject to the same building codes. 

The biggest part of this concept was that developments were built on what's called Land lease, which means that there's no cost for the land in the price of the homes. People like the government would grant ninety-nine year leases for these developments and there would be considerable tax advantages if it was private land. Because the homes were considered permanent structures and not vehicles I got CMHC to agree to offer traditional financing. I then contacted WestCorp in Edmonton who agreed to do all the infrastructure, roads, sewers and son on  for a share in the property management company. I then got a local manufactured home builder, Chaparral Homes, to agree to provide a model home, plus they agreed to give a ten percent commission on sales. I even contacted the WestBank Indian Band who had just done a major land swap with the government to build the new bridge across the lake and they were open to meeting about the concept, mostly because under the Indian Act they are not allowed to sell any property, so it made perfect sense to them. I then contacted local government, both the City of Kelowna and the Region and they both agreed to the proposal. During the time of all this work I did, aboiut six months, there was word that the Provincial government was going to develop a park with a thousand units. I thought that my timing could not be better, but I was SO wrong. 

I submitted a detailed proposal to Rich Coleman, who was the provincial Housing minister at the time. His response? He didn't want to do anything that would threaten the development of manufactured home parks in BC, this despite the fact that there was not a single development proposed other than mine. The whole thing dies overnight, thanks to him.     


Breakers Billiards & Bistro

Back when I played in the Kelowna 8 Ball league which had a number of bars from what was then Westbank to Vernon Breakers was by far the best bar to play in. Their tables were the best of the best and it was a real treat to play on professional tables.