Sunday, October 31, 2004

Filing

Ran across these 'to good to throw away' thoughts when i was filing today:

How important is the truth?

Life is about spinning facts which surround you into a story you like to tell yourself about you. (1/21/2004)

Imagination + Courage = Thinking outside the box (4/3/03)

At O'Reilly Conference: Homeless people with laptops; weird glow on faces of people attended seminars in dark rooms.
It's the decision that's expensive

To Boot from a GRUB prompt, type:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda2
boot

Brandon's remote copy solution:

tar cz * | ssh kim@216.37.37.31 "dd of=file.tgz"

A School is a Marketplace of Ideas
A Teacher is a Broker of those Ideas
A Student is a Trader, Not a Consumer

Not HOW but WHAT is the most important question.



Friday, October 22, 2004

Political Debate

The Hancock County Farm Bureau held it's first annual Meet the Candidates night last night. I got the questions on Tuesday and studied like it was the SAT. Aside from one question, I planned to get a B+. (I have a regular job, right?)

The event was taped and broadcast on radio. The other candidates were all courteous, reasonably intelligent and genuine. The other Libertarian, a young man of 23, was very nervous, but he didn't throw up. It was over in an hour. I got to answer two questions: How I felt about all day kindergarten? and How should schools be funded? During the scripted part of the evening, the moderator asked the questions and the candidates were called in turn to respond. Boring.

But the exciting part was after the scripted program. An audience member vigously disagreed with my asertion that we are getting less for more from school investments. A woman explained that property taxes forced her to go bankrupt.

If I hadn't thought this politics stuff was serious before now, last night changed my mind. This is serious business.

Friday, October 01, 2004

Entrepreneur Diary #2

Tom called and turned down the job. After a very lengthy interview process, I really thought he'd accept our offer. We were probably $10K (20%) lower than his target, but he seemed really interested in all the things we were doing. And the money was going to be there in the next 6-12 months. I guess it was really just about the money.

This highlights what a hard job entrepreneurs have. They have to compete with incumbent businesses in their market, struggle to make investments with paybacks that stretch for months or years into the future (where their competitors already have begun to see a return,) defend themselves against start-up costs of all kinds including a rash of government friction costs (including compliance, risk and unexpected expenses) AND compete for talent with competitors and the negative image of being a small/start-up company.

You have to wonder how small businesses EVER succeed and WHY entrepreneurs even try. It must be about FREEDOM. It is no less a primal force in business than in life