Tuesday the 16th of May, 2006 | Business | Personal |
Recently I’ve been dealing with my fair share of issues, both personal and business related. These issues are really putting a damper on my attitude until today. I decided that these issues were nothing more than speed bumps. Speed bumps are designed to slow you down, not stop your momentum completely. As is with life, there will be times your emotions want to bring you to a complete stop. Use your brain, deal with the issue and move on.
Monday the 17th of April, 2006 | Business | Ideas | Personal |
If there ever was a business that the Internet couldn’t take over with its low prices, free delivery, super-selection and ease of use, it would be the local hardware store. How do you emulate a business that requires bringing in broken parts that need replacing or browsing the shelves for that lightbulb item that will solve all your problems? It’s such a comfortable feeling to walk into a local hardware store, tell the guy at the door what your problem is and have him say, “I’ve got just the thing for that!”
Friday the 7th of April, 2006 | Personal |
This Sunday I’ll be running my first Marathon in Paris, France. Afterwards, I’ll be spending a few days in Burgundy enjoying some nice wine. Wish me luck...and hopefully I won’t break a leg.
Stay tuned for pictures from the race…
Friday the 24th of March, 2006 | Must Read | Personal |
This is a poem from the depression era. If you fall on hard times or run through some rough spots in life or business… this poem should make you feel a bit better.
The People Yes
The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.
The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time.”
The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
“They buy me and sell me...it’s a game...sometime I’ll
break loose...”
Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.
Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.
The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?"
Carl Sandburg, 1936
Monday the 6th of March, 2006 | Customer Service | Management | Personal |
Friday night my family went out for my mother’s birthday at The County Line on the Hill. Two tables down was a family with a child that was screaming bloody murder. It sounded like the cook was slaughtering a pig right next to our table. The family didn’t do anything about it, as a matter of fact the father looked like he was instigating the whole episode. It also didn’t seem to bother the family that everyone in the restaurant was staring at them.
Eventually, I had enough and called the manager over to complain. “Yeah, they’re being real rude.” That’s it, that’s what his response to our complaint was. We suggested he ask the family to take the child outside until she calmed down, “I’ll see what I can do.” A few minutes later another manager came over to inform us that they didn’t take direct action anymore. Apparently, they recently asked a family to take a child outside and instead they walked out on their bill.
Let’s go over a simple rule of Management 101. If you don’t have the backbone to deliver bad news, demote yourself. I also can’t get over the fact that no one apparently did anything when the other family skipped out on their bill.
Saturday the 17th of December, 2005 | Articles | Business | Personal |
Why are people so comfortable with saying that something is impossible? I had a disagreement with a friend last night because I told him about some enzyme I’d heard about that scientists are injecting into mice to help them live 30% longer. He said it would never happen. A few weeks earlier I was discussing the possibility with a medical school student about rigging a video camera to a blind person’s brain to help them see. Again… impossible.
I don’t like this word, impossible. Personally I think it should be banished from the English language and removed from Webster’s dictionary. Seriously, is anything truly impossible? Does the existence of this word help our society in our ongoing struggle to push forward? Look at the Egyptian Pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the Roman Aqueducts. I’m sure when the blueprints for those engineering marvels were first introduced there was a fair amount of skepticism, but they’re there.
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Wednesday the 14th of December, 2005 | Personal |
I was out and about quite late last night and ended up at a diner that didn’t close till around 4am. The cook was an older gentleman who was in his 60’s and hailed from Greece. My buddy and I spent 45 minutes listening to him talk about his country and his life since leaving it. He gave us the pros and cons, the ups and downs. Even though it was late and we were tired, we couldn’t help but crave more information from this man. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he shared with us information we wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere else but him. No matter where you obtain your information, you are in the most basic form, having someone tell you about something. An academic may write about the climate of Greece, their GDP and what kind of food their culture produces. But do you really care about these things or would you rather have a simple man tell you how great the roses smell?
Monday the 12th of December, 2005 | Articles | Business | Personal | Posima | Tools | Web Apps |
After 13 months and 2 days of torture we are finally launching this application. “But Chad, I thought you were joking this whole time about actually having a website in production. You mean it wasn’t a cover and you’re still living with your parents at 24 for a reason?” I can understand your skepticism, I have been planning on launching next week for what seems like forever. I have to say that even though the past year has had its ups and downs, this process has taught me more than what I learned in all my years of schooling. Call it a Masters from the University of Hard Knocks. Anywho, I’d like to thank all my friends and family that helped me from point A to point B. I’d like to name names, but there are too many and you all know who you are.
Without further ado… Welcome to Posima. We are an all in one website management system. We provide the design, content management tools and if needed a free domain name while using the service. From what I understand, this is the first service of its kind. No one else has ever provided everything a user needs to go from nothing to a fully functional website in mere hours without having to know any code. Sure there are blogging tools out there, but people/businesses who want a website want it to look like a website...not a blog.
Bits and pieces of the posima.com site are still not quite finished. The application is done and fully functional, but the features and support sections of the site are still works in progress. The gallery page will come into its own once we obtain clients, so check back from time to time to see what people are creating. I’ve setup a demo account for everyone to play with and see how the site works. Comment and let me know what you think. Here are the login details:
username: demo
password: demouser
More goodness to come soon,
Chad
Thursday the 1st of December, 2005 | Personal |
As a young adult there is some stigma about being an entrepreneur. Society thinks you should go to school, make the best grades possible and get a degree. For your years of hard work you get the privilege to begin your climb up the corporate ladder for some faceless corporation...don’t forget to start on the bottom rung. Whether you’re happy or not, everyone else is pleased with your decision which appeases you.
I followed part of that track but quickly realized it wasn’t for me, so I began to draw the brushstrokes for what became Posima. I received a lot of pushback. I know my friends and family wanted me to succeed, but I could tell they were uninterested in my endeavor not believing it would amount to much. I quit my job for the final phases of development of the program. Shortly afterwards I had dinner with my parents. Mother says “So how many customers would you need to make $60k a year?” I do a quick calculation and give her the number. “Great, once you hit that number you can find a real job!"..."A real job?” She looks confused and says “Well if that money will always be coming in then it’ll look great on your Resume and then you’ll be able to get a nice job.” I’m staring at her confused. “If not, then what will you do?” My father replies, “Go back to school.”
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