Business/Economics
Anything to do with business and economics, kind of like what would qualify for CotC
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Thursday, April 06, 2006
It’s 10:30, Do You Know Where Your Blogger Is?
Or husband, depending who you are.
Why yes, he’s just leaving work!
At least the money is good. May as well get it while I can.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Great Moments In Regulation Indeed
I am working on Carnival of the Capitalists entries for this week, and one of general humor interest just has to be shared.
CotC will be at Jotzel this week, put together by Rob with some help from me. I’m writing up as many entries as I can between late last night and this morning before I have to leave.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Hey Look, A Post!
So today we’re going to a get-together at Chili’s in Burlington at 2:00, for which we are getting ready now, followed by a stop at the giant Barnes & Noble in Burlington, which shares a parking lot with Chili’s, to use our $75 of Christmas gift cards finally. I got up just before 7:00 this morning and instead of blogging I did still more work. Tonight I’ll try to help with this week’s edition of CotC, which I am theoretically co-hosting.
Tomorrow we’ll probably go to my grandmother’s, since it is the Sunday closest to my and my mother’s birthday Monday. Let us eat cake. I may or may not try to fit in some work at the office. Monday or Tuesday I have to return a computer to Wilmington. I also should try to do billing this weekend so I can rescue cash flow.
Meanwhile, the newphew’s computer we rebuilt yesterday is balking about having an OS reinstalled. I forget what AMD it was before, but it was low end at the time, in an Epox motherboard. Since the power supply fried the motherboard, we got an AsRock combo board that takes either of two CPU types, a Sempron 3300, and 512 MB of 400 MHz RAM. I had kicked in a hard drive, external bay (which died), power supply, and the RAM, plus a special 2 hour round trip to get parts, labor and expertise helping, and hours of time in which billable work could have been done instead, in return for help he’s been giving me (which ironically his computer problems took an unexpected bite out of, setting me back, but there’ll be more for him to do coming up). I also built the original computer. At the time I had intended to give each niece and nephew a computer around the time they turned 14, but after the first two I stopped being able to afford it. There’s a bit of parental balkage at paying for the CPU and motherboard, which I was hoping to turn over immediately because my cash flow is dry. It beats buying a new computer, or having to pay someone to fix it. Anyway, the machine acting up got out of hand enough that I will need to commune with it again, and make certain no parts are bad. I seriously doubt it, but at least I’m already planning one return.
Without my nephew’s computer, billing and other unbillable work to keep things rolling, and the run to return the computer with the bad drive, I am looking at enough billable work, if nothing new comes up and I don’t start the next major project that is jumping up and shouting “me, me! Look at me!” before I am done, I have an easy seven consecutive days of work lined up neatly if I only do eight hours of it each day. Deb’s going to get really used to having me out of the house day after day.
So, like, see you now and then in this space. Sometimes. Maybe.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Still Poor
Nope, didn’t win Mega Millions last night, but hey, neither did anyone else.
Not that I would be posting it here right away the next day if we had won, but it would be kind of fun to blog about it once the details were handled in the aftermath.
Of course, if I always had as much billable work as I do now, the “still poor” post title would never apply. Well, at least not after a couple years of that, to catch up.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Murphy’s Out In Force
I’m at work with my nephew today, with overlapping major projects, plus his computer in which the power supply died and took out the motherboard.
Nothing is going right. Nothing has gone right since I got up, really.
I had spare parts that would match the dead motherboard and, if needed, AMD CPU. They were in a machine we built, that died, that we rebuilt, that kind of worked but ran too hot in the particular case, that was put aside for future reference and not touched since months ago.
Turns out it was in the room near the inventory that got stolen last fall, and I never even realized it was missing. Not a great loss, but it really made our day not to have the parts. Well, it means the value of what was stolen just doubled or so, but still, it was a troubled set of parts pretending to think about being a working computer.
That’s going to mean buying a motherboard and, in a fit of sensible “may as well because we’re not sure the old one is good and it’s reasonable to upgrade,” a CPU too. And further delay having the computer working again.
Well, then we started setting up a new computer for the big client’s bookkeeper, the idea being since we’re upgrading accounting software anyway, fell swoop it. Got XP all configured and on the network and the internet, activated Windows, started installing software and the screen went black.
Turned out the video is just fine. It simply stops producing any when the boot process turns itself over to the hard drive, which is SATA, and which appears to be detected just fine. By this time we’re already running even later than we were initially.
Even as I am typing this, the second of the new machines we are trying keeps having trouble reading what’s on install CDs. But hey, the video still works.
Staying in bed: It’s a Good Thing. Some days.
Norman Borlaug Turns 92
This is the 92nd birthday of one of the greatest men in history. You would think that Norman Borlaug would be a household name everyone knows, kind of like George Washington or Thomas Edison.
Why write more when I can recycle? My 2004 Norman Borlaug post, “Billions and Billions Saved,” is a good place to start.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Done
Hooray! Except for transcribing a couple of the forms with crossouts, and printing the “other expenses” 1065 attachment, and of course making photocopies and filing the returns, I’m done with the business tax returns.
Even better, I completely redid my depreciation table spreadsheet so the expired items from 1998 and 1999 no longer appear on it and it’s more usable. I originally lumped together all the 5 and 7 year items and (now fully depreciated) listed property, then had to segregate it to get the numbers to plug into the return.
Now I just need to fix everything about how I handle inventory so that is friendly at tax time.
Sadie is going with me today while I drive to the bank, the office to make copies of K-1 forms, Burlington to drop the K-1 forms off, Woburn to get parts, and back to the office. She’ll love that, and maybe Deb will get a nap.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Fun
Today is my big push to get the 1065 and associated forms prepared. Yay.
And no, I will not file the Massachusetts return elecfuckingtronically. Find to your surprise that this is required, try looking up “well how do I do that” and find that it’s a ploy by the state to make you pay money to file your tax return. I figure they just assume everyone pays to have a return like ours done by a preparer already, so no big deal. Jeez.
Anyway, angry digression aside, this is why you can expect me to be scarce today and for that matter probably tomorrow.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Doh!
Some time back, we ordered Firefly, and after a while started watching and got through all but the last three episodes.
Tonight, after a month or so away, we tried to watch one of the episodes on the last DVD in the set before Deb had to sleep to synchronize with Valerie and attempt not to be too sleep deprived.
We got the menu for the second DVD.
In fact, it was the second DVD. Our set has two of those. Doh!!
So we will be testing out Amazon’s exchange policies for people who may or may not have their receipt and didn’t learn there was a defect until 2+ months after the purchase. Yay.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
I Love Good News
The cost of adding Valerie to the health insurance? Zero. It’s already a “family plan” and covers multiple offspring for no additional money.
Maybe they really are cheaper by the dozen. Not that we’ll ever find that out.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Extortion Made Legal
Via James Joyner, NTP’s abuse of patents at Research In Motion’s expense has been settled, well, at RIM’s expense, to the tune of $612.5 million, keeping the world safe for BlackBerry users.
This strikes me as the Kelo of patent cases, though apparently there are already rules being implemented against submarine patents; ones that surface after being hidden long enough to be infringed unknowingly. The whole concept of infringement on a patent nobody ever made an effort to use starts to look silly.
Not Just Lawyers
Exactly. The same is true of doctors, the artificial shortage of same, and the AMA. If we ever socialize medicine because “the free market doesn’t work,” let’s at least not fool ourselves that it’s a free market that was tried.
Monopoly occupational licensing or cartels do not a free market make.
Ironically, though this started out as being about lawyers being overpaid, and I am comparing the lack of a proper market in the medical field, I would venture that most doctors are not overpaid. Heck, neither are most of the dozens of lawyers I know.
Rest In Peace Harry Browne
Harry Browne, perhaps best known for his Libertarian runs for President, has died. I knew his name and outlook from having read How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World in my early twenties. As I recall, it ran counter to the idea of there being an organized Libertarian party or attempts to get into office by same, but I could be misremembering that part. The thing I most remember and carried with me from the book was the concept of “the previous investment trap.”
Via Glenn
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Annual Blog Survey
BlogAds is doing its annual survey of blog readers, as it did in 2004 and 2005.
If you are so inclined, go fill out the 2006 political blogs reader survey and put Accidental Verbosity as the referring blog.
Overall it’s a good survey; thought-provoking and not too time-consuming. I find the media usefulness and percentages question a bit clunky, in that it holds you to 10% increments. If you get 90% from logs and the rest from newspapers, TV, radio, and word of mouth, you have to answer 60, 10, 10, 10, and 10, or else decide one or more of the minor sources can be dismissed entirely.
Found via OTB, who was my referrer.
Still Poor
We played Mega Millions for the huge jackpot last night. Somebody won, but alas, it wasn’t us. Guess I’ll just have to keep working for a living, and the IRS will just have to keep waiting like a pack of slavering hellhounds patiently for me to accomplish the near impossible feat of catching up.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Business Question of Sorts
Much of what I do is tech support, which I frequently compare to being a doctor.
I like best fielding questions by e-mail, then going in person if needed, or calling if necessary and expedient. E-mail gives the opportunity to address easy things painlessly, in the best compromise between avoiding icky phones and wasting time in person. It makes getting more information, invoking incremental troubleshooting steps or questions and learning the results or answers, simple and efficient when time isn’t the right kind of factor to need a call, when there is the right ambiguity, and when e-mail itself isn’t the problem.
With the big client that is the main point of my existing business, that fits perfectly: I charge for time the way I would with anything else.
My question has been how best to apply a web and/or e-mail based tech support model to small, irregular customers, smaller businesses or even home computer users. That wouldn’t be the only element of the service, but I’d want it to be a major one.
As someone who might ever need support, how would you feel about being able to e-mail (or enter on a web form) questions or requests for help with problems to a locally based support person/service and get relatively timely answers, steps to try, a call, or arrangements to come in person?
What and how would you be willing to pay for that kind of service?
Obviously I do this now with an established client, and when I bill them they pay be. I can depend on it. I am wondering whether I should use a retainer-like fee up front, or if that would be off-putting. On the other hand, it could be a service only to those who have established themselves as clients already. On the third hand, it could be something payable per incident or in “packs” via an online payment method or less formal pre-arrangement.
I could imagine discounting the e-mail service as compared to in-person or even phone services. I’d rather exhaust the troubleshooting that can be done hand in hand with the customer before I clearly need to go there, and have them learn things in the process. I like to see people know more and more, thereby being happier and more independent in their computer usage and needing me less and less. There are always new people who can use help, new things otherwise knowledgeable people get stuck on, and plenty of challenging things most people will never handle themselves.
So, perhaps this is crudely asked, and too much question in one jumble, but how would you approach the nuts and bolts of this service model, or what would you expect if you were to use such a thing? I’d like feedback before I ponder further or make any decisions.
Update:
Crossposted at Jotzel as Questions of Marketing and Method in the Ask Jotzel section.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Fiber Optic Comes to the Masses
I meant to post that we got a call from Verizon last week, fielded by the machine, that turned out to be about FiOS. It’s now available here, and as a DSL subscriber, we get priority. Never thought I’d see the day when fiber would go “the last mile” to the home.
My only question, besides things like cost, was whether we could get it wired into an apartment. Even if it would be an issue, we have a cool landlord who happily allows satellite dishes, and it’s really no different from cable being newly wired into existing places.
It appears that it would cost us $5 a month more than the DSL for 5 Mbps, which is the lowest speed. The highest being 30, for which they want real money. Well, except that “real money” is what I would have to pay to get a 128k or maybe as much as 256k fractional T-1 at the office. Makes me wonder if FiOS will become available there… Yeah, right, where it’s the same company as rents out the T-1 lines to the local connection providers or directly to businesses for huge bucks.
We’re probably going to wait; let it be better established and all, perhaps even more competetive in price if that’s possible, before we go for it. Plus it requires you to have their techs come in an set it up for you at your computers, which I always feel weird about. But then, they’re changing over your phone service and everything, as I understand it, and opening the possibility of TV service via fiber too.
I love technology.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Alchibah
Jeff Soyer is working on a most fascinating blog group participation project, in which participants will play the roles of Alchibah colonists. It’s an interactive science fiction story. Some of you may be interested in signing up, even if you aren’t regular readers of Jeff’s blog.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Mmmm… Grapenut Ice Cream
It’s February 3rd, the dead of winter. The local ice cream place can not only justify being open from 10:00 Am to 10:00 PM each day, but also does a steady business.
Yep. That’s New England.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Ronning From Reason
When Fonzie and Happy Days did it, we called it “jumping the shark.”
What shall we call this whole new spectacle; “pulling a Bailey”? “Running from reason?”
This kind of thing is something I would never have expected to read - well, the punchline anyway - at Reason Magazine.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Speaking of Happy Birthday…
This is the fascinating story of the song “Happy Birthday to You,” originating with a tune written in 1893, which in a fit of legislative madness remains under copyright until at least 2030.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Dedicated to Clara Peller
Last night I was at the office, rearranging things and emptying the room we are giving up. To reduce my jellybean consumption, I decided a little real food was in order.
Hormel makes a bunch of different microwavable “meals” that are on the small side of “meal” and the medium to large side of “snack,” and that don’t need refrigeration at all. They’re great, assuming you don’t mind that they’re not like Best Food Ever. Into that great I incorporate cheap, of course. $1.94 Each at Wal-Mart. In my big stockup run several days ago, I bought several for the office. Otherwise my options if I need to eat while there are popcorn, candy from the vending machine, or takeout. It’s that last one I particularly prefer to minimize on account of cost.
Back to last night. One of the flavors I’d bought was teriyaki chicken with rice. I decided to try that one.
Heated it up, pulled off the cover, and after sufficient cooling time, dug in.
It was beef.
I swear. Beef.
The color was way darker than pictured. The meat had the color, flavor, texture and grain of beef, perhaps like what you’d find in the beef pot roast variety.
It was teriyaki flavored. It was quite tasty, if a bit unexpected because it wasn’t chicken. Weird.
So it was that I ended up at Hormel’s excellent site finding out whether there was a beef version that could have wrapped in the wrong outer package.
Nope. Which makes it one inexplicable mixup.
One cool thing I learned while I was there: Manny’s is a Hormel brand. That is our preferred brand of flour tortillas, except for Deb’s homemade ones, which blow the store bought ones away. Which seems strange, as they are just flour, salt water and shortening.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Some Whine With My Breakfast
From 12/8/05 to 1/11/06, 34 days:
Electric $140.08
Gas $234.64
It was cold in December. Glad it’s warmer now! But damn, do the washer and dryer really use that much electricity? Maybe the air purifiers do?
By comparison, the 27 days 10/11/05 to 11/7/05 were $80.72 gas and $70.52 electric. I can’t find the one that fell mostly in November, but the combined total for the two was $390.59, including any credits and adjustments not reflected in the base readings.
Hey, it’s almost a pattern! Each month has been about one and a half times the preceding month. How sad the warm January will ruin the pattern. Plus we’ve done some sealing of heat loss.
The disturbing thing is that these are low utility rates. In Stoughton the equivalent usage would have been more money.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Yay for Saving Money!
Boo for having to move things!
Once upon a time, our big client had spare conference rooms in their building that were not contiguous to the rest of their space and were seldom used. We started working for them, had no office yet, and so ended up renting a large hunk of spacious hallway plus two conference rooms, one of them containing a large conference table they gave us. A third, smaller, “landlocked” room was within our space, still used for storage by the big client.
After several months, we had a more temporary client, Marine Optical, for whom we were doing a substantial software project. So my partner and the guy he was working with from the other company could have a quiet place to work, we added that third room, increasing our rent $200 a month to $1001.50 (a buck a foot).
A few months later, my partner got a day job, that room gradually morphed primarily into space where we stored old computer stuff belonging to the big client, Marine Optical refused to pay us the last $20,000-odd when the work was complete enough for their staff to tweak and deploy and then went bankrupt (one of those business lessons you learn; all the signs of it pending were there), and we’ve been paying the extra $200 a month ever since. It always irks me because it was largely for the benefit of the company that stiffed us and my now former partner, and subsequently benefitted the landlord (ignoring distinctions like realty trusts) who was being paid for our use of it as much as it did us. Of course, my blood pressure goes up every time I think about that 20 grand stiffing, since essentially I absorbed the brunt of it and neither I nor the business have ever recovered. It’s also made me leary of the accrual method as applied to revenues.
But I digress.
The big client has decided to remodel. They use the entire third floor and part of the second floor. The third floor is reception, conference rooms, offices and cubicles. The second floor is offices and storage space. They are turning the second floor, which is the floor we’re on, into reception and conference space, leaving some storage and a couple offices that make sense to stay there. The third floor will be all offices and cubicles, except for the largest conference room. I’m impressed with the plan, as it makes a load of sense.
Seeing this, I detected a golden opportunity to ask them again (I did once before, right after it turned out renting it was a mistake) if they’d like that third room back for storage, or maybe our conference room back as additional conference space. It’s the chance I’d been waiting for.
This was the answer to their storage prayers. They’re more aggressively outsourcing file storage now, but there are things they have to keep in-house, and quarters would have been extremely tight.
I just have to move everything out of that room, into what has become rather cluttered quarters, though it’ll all work when some planned purging is done and things are organized better. I figured I had until the first, but they’d love to start moving stuff in this weekend.
Thus what I will be doing the most of for a couple days, maybe into Saturday. But damn, it’s worth the $200 a month. Woohoo!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Up
Glad that didn’t take long. I pay for most of what I have with Hosting Matters by check, and I’ve always noticed they take a very long time from when the check has to have arrived in the mail to the time they credit the account. It appears they simply don’t empty the mailbox more often than every few days. When it’s just hosting, that’s fine. When they provide the domain registration, as with AV, the cutoff is absolute. Which is why I mailed it enough ahead to guarantee our domain wouldn’t be suspended this year, beyond any possibility. I even notified them last week that it was presumably already sitting there waiting to be credited, days before the cutoff.
I’m pleased they got their mail yesterday and took care of it, as we planned to hold out however long it took for them to recognize they were sitting on the payment, and taking any time past yesterday or maybe today would have been infuriating.
Hosting Matters is just amazing. Billing is their one weak point. We’ll try to mitigate that by moving the domain registration for AV away from them. I also still have some to move off of Network Solutions, so I’ll hardly notice one more.
At least yesterday was such an “interesting” day that we barely had a chance to notice and fret about the outage…
Monday, January 23, 2006
Down
As I write this, accidentalverbosity.com is down, though our hosting remains accessible via http://hecate.hmdnsgroup.com/~jaysolo.
I wrote a check to Hostin Matters on the 11th, mailed it within the next couple days, and it should have been on the desk of receivables by the 18th or 19th. At 8:00 AM today, the 23rd, the domain went into suspension, exactly as I was trying to avoid.
I love Hosting Matters, but they have always been slow to credit payments. I suspect maybe they don’t even clean out the mailbox regularly, and that’s the cause.
Sigh…
Friday, January 13, 2006
Yay for BJ’s
Hey, why write only about bad experiences? Though my experience with the bank (which was followed by another negative experience the next day, in which Bank of America convinced me they - as opposed to the specific branch - are evil and best avoided) inspired a useful business decision building upon the recent planning I have been doing. So it wasn’t all bad.
Yesterday late afternoon, on my way back from errands in Quincy, I went for a much needed BJ’s run at the BJ’s Wholesale in Stoughton. I ended up spending $235 on a big cartful of stuff. Not that overflowing a cart is hard, considering how big the bundles of toilet paper, paper towel, and Kleenex are.
That would have been $240.
Why wasn’t it? The cashier saw a couple of the things I had, pulled out two coupon books, and handed them to me so I could rip out the coupons to use while she scanned everything through. One was $2 off a $9.99 item that was already a major bargain, and the other was $3 off I forget what exactly.
How cool is that?
I still spent more than I’d really planned, but there’s more to the yay for BJ’s story.
I am down to a couple pairs of jeans that fit me and aren’t excessively holed. Clothes shopping is never exactly a priority here, but I knew I needed to do it soon. On a whim, I decided to check out what they had for pants. In addition to Dockers and other name brand not-jeans for $19.99, which sorely tempted me, and name brand jeans like Levis for $22-something, they had off brand jeans for $14.99. In my size. Looking decently cut and adequately made.
I grabbed a pair; figured it’d be worth a try.
They fit perfectly. Better than anything I currently own. We’ll see what happens after some washing and wearing, but it looks like I’ll be back there at some point to rescue my clothing situation on the cheap.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Even Abnormal People Can Be Troubled
An article I could have written, that says things I have said:
What do normal people do about their computers?
Link received in e-mail from a friend of mine who was astonished by this bit:
I don’t use an anti-virus product at all, and have not for years. They just slow down the system and get in the way when I try to install my own stuff. I’ve never gotten a virus, presumably because I know better than to execute one.
But I’m not normal. Given that you’re reading this, you’re probably not normal either. What works for us does not work for folks who just want the computer to be an appliance, not a working tool in a career.
That’s been me. I didn’t explicitly set out to avoid AV software on my machine, but I ended up that way, and share his sentiments about having the system slowed. Norton seems to have become increasingly a problem rather than a protection.
Interesting piece, anyway. I find myself pondering the question of what normal people do regularly, because I am one of those who rescue them. How can you justify spending several hours making a machine that’s nearly disposable in cost function correctly?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Your Hours Are Your Hours
Yes, I am talking to you Bank of America, or at least your Easton Five Corners branch in Easton, Massachusetts.
Open until 4:00 PM means open until 4:00 PM by the standard, official time as obtainable from time.gov, not the time you decide to set your clocks to so the girls can count up and be out of there all the sooner.
I know, I should try to be earlier. I shouldn’t be rushing up to your door at 3:57, but shit happens, and you are fucking open until four o’fucking clock, dipshits.
Thank you for fucking up my day tomorrow, assholes.
And let’s not even get started on the dork in the big old white pickup truck who couldn’t drive and cost me time getting to the same place he was going.
Red Tape
I am having a fun day, dealing with red tape.
I moved out of Quincy at almost the end of 2003. Since Quincy never got word of that, they tried to bill me for excise tax on the van. The first I heard of it was in early 2005 when I got a pay now or a warrant gets created notice at the Stoughton address.
On February 1, 2005 I paid $120 for the $100 bill, adding $20 because it wasn’t going to get to them before the “pay by this date or it will be $20 more” date.
I never heard from Hanson, which was the place of garaging of record for the Sentra when I lived in Quincy. I finally got around to checking on that and clearing it up today. Not a big deal.
However, in the process of that, I learned that I am on record as still owing Quincy! This led me to look up when I paid it and when it cleared in the check register, and to try to find the associated paperwork or notes I took at the time. Well, I emptied an entire box of paperwork and paper and desk supplies, so that’s good, but nothing. I called Quincy knowing only that I allegedly still owed it per this other person, what check it was, and when it cleared.
So Quincy’s tax collector tells me of course it’s paid! As I am about to hang up because I am all set and the other tax person was hallucinating, she tells me I need to come pay $20 to get a release, so it’s no longer on record with the registry and tax computers as unpaid.
What!?
It’s paid and credited, or it’s not. What the fuck? Totally new one on me.
I guess I’m going to Qunincy today. Sadly, I have other reason to go to Quincy too, but am not really prepared to do so at the same time. Perhaps I can wrangle that, but I don’t think I even want to try. Heck, might be better to do it all tomorrow.
Sigh…