Back when the family was away and I had more time, I started the upgrade to MT4.1. Between poor documentation and outdated documentation on the part of MT and my web host, I had the wrong idea about what my problems were with the upgrade. Once I got current information from my web host, all I had to do was remember how I got MT2.x running manny moons ago when I switched from Greymatter to MT. So I finished the upgrade when I don’t have a lot of time to get everything squared away. I hope to have it all squared away soon, time permitting, so please bear with the ongoing state of flux.
I wrote this last May in draft form and have finally gotten around to finishing it. How quickly the conventional wisdom changes, now everyone knows we are in a recession. Of course you should “raise as much money as you can, enough to last you for a few years until the recession is over” is also part of the conventional wisdom. As my Uncle John would have observed: it’s generally accepted, so generally accepted it may not be true at all.”
May 9, 2007: Report from Silicon Valley
So we are starting to pump a little hot air back into the bubble every week now. The streets of Silicon Valley witness young entrepreneurs looking for department store Santas venture capitalists to listen to their list of needs and make their dreams come true. It’s “not as nuts as 99” but not as sane, or dour, as 2003. Roger Macnamee blogged for the better part of 2004 on “The New Normal” with this as his inaugural post:
Wake up and smell the coffee. This is not your father’s economy. And it’s not the boom that inflated our expectations and then exploded. But it’s also not the doom and gloom we’ve been mired in for nearly three years now! So, wake up. Pull yourself together. Get on with it. With what you ask? With the rest of your life. It’s a bright, fresh world full of opportunities. I know that runs counter to many of the opinions all around us, but it’s true, and I can show you why. It’s true for the investor, the entrepreneur, the CEO, the unemployed, and the human being seeking balance. This blog will be dedicated to insights and discussion about life, business, and investment in what I call The New Normal.
Please join in!
Now I regularly have conversations that remind me of 1997-2000. I am routinely admonished that “the old rules no longer apply” and advised that successful firms spend much of their treasure on PR social media and viral marketing (regular marketing is a waste of money since viral marketing is free). YouTube’s 1.6 billion dollar exit is the exemplar burned in 10 mile high neon letters into the back of everyone’s retinas.
This is not a lament nor a longing for the early 90’s (or early 80’s), now is the best time to be alive and an entrepreneur. It’s a wish that more firms would aim for creating value for their customers.
I haven’t noticed what station my alarm clock radio is set to until this week. Normally when it goes off, I have it back off in 2 seconds. But now that the funWife is away, I don’t have to worry about waking her, and with her and the kids gone, I don’t have to worry about missing my time in the shower and messing every one up. So I’ve been a little slow about turning the alarm off, and it turns out it is set to KHITS 96. And no wonder, they play my kind of music, and they have all the old (and I do mean old) DJs from KSHE’s glory days.
I am not a talk radio guy, and while KHITS is not talk radio, morning personalities all talk way too much for my tastes. I foolishly listened to J.C. Corcoran this morning, and at least he wasn’t threatening to commit mass murder or doing black dialect while mocking a black man because he missed the Super Bowl halftime show. Today, the liberal J.C. was apparently reacting to a Pew Research Center survey that says that decidedly more journalists self identify as liberal than conservative. Now I happen to think that is a “well duh” kind of result, but J.C. was a mite riled up.
I came to full consciousness when he was saying the media were only liberal in comparison to fringe right wing bloggers. Ahh, another convenient whipping boy, the fringe right wing blogger. Then after he had exhausted his spleen, he went on to claim that the job itself caused a certain empathy and understanding because you got to go into rural areas and see real live bigots like some lounge singer at a Holiday Inn who had a dancing black mannequin named Leroy (not that people in the big city would ever hear bigoted comments on the radio), and see real bad poverty, and travel a lot, unlike most people who live in big cities. So the job itself would just naturally make you a liberal.
I especially liked how the two explanations are contradictory – the first was that journalists are only liberal in comparison to rightwing nuts, and the second was that the job itself makes you a liberal. I didn’t wait around for another possible explanation, because the most obvious one, that liberals discriminate against conservatives in hiring, was not one I was going to hear pass the lips of Mr. Corcoran.
So I’m enjoying reading The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business, 2007 (via Joe Sherlock) And then I come across the answer to an earlier post about Circuit City’s novel approach to cost cutting — firing the highest paid, i.e. the best, salespeople:
Since I’m not one of the people being fired, I can be detached and think that this will provide a nice economics case study in cost cutting. Arguably (i.e. I’m leaving wiggle room for later) it will be used as a case study in business school – but I will leave it up to an excercise for the reader to decide if it will be held up as an effective, an ineffective, or a disastrous way to cut costs.
And now, the rest of the story:
In a cost-cutting move, Circuit City lays off all sales associates paid 51 cents or more per hour above an “established pay range” – essentially firing 3,400 of its top performers in one fell swoop. Over the next eight months Circuit City’s share price drops by almost 70%.
I think, unsurprisingly, disastrous is the final answer. I guess companies will go back to laying off the bottom performers instead of the top.
Men and Women, Scene 537
Mar 18
So we parents are standing around the buses getting ready to take our kids off to the Tetons last weekend. My son graciously came up to me early, said “Let’s get this over with now”, and gave me a big hug. His friend had done the same to his mother, and then they got into a contest over which parents they could lift. Boys. So after they trooped on the bus, and then back off to get their picture taken, and then back on, the parents were talking. The moms were all worried – did I pack everything, what did I forget, I hope they don’t get cold, how are they going to handle the snow, what will they do on the long bus ride, did I pack enough snacks, fret fret fret. The dads were all envious – what a great trip, wish I was going, what a great time they are going to have. Ah, the division of labor – someone to worry, someone to enjoy.
Today’s Quote: On Plans
Mar 17
Most plans are just inaccurate predictions.
———— Ben Bayol (probably in response to his wife’s complaints about the typical male’s lack of planning)
Home Alone – Kevin’s Story
Mar 17
My wife and daughter are off looking at colleges in the Carolinas, my son is off in the Tetons going to school, and I’m at home all alone except for the dog. Let me say he isn’t much of a conversationalist but he sure is happy to see me. Back in my bachelor days (a long, long time ago) being home alone was normal. Now it’s weird and creepy. Not to mention a lot of work.
Today’s Quote: On Comedy
Mar 16
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
—————– Carol Burnett (she must have had some hellacious tragedies based on how funny she was)
Bonus punchline:
I saw it in the window, and I just had to have it.
Not-Hillary’s Kitchen Sink
Mar 12
If these are Muslims for Peace, one wonders what Muslims for War would look like. Anyway, Prime Minster Anders Fogh Rasmussen (and any Dane, for that matter) is always welcome at the funHouse.
Everybody’s linking to David Mamet’s essay Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’ for good reason. Did you ever think you would read:
I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.
in the Village Voice. No doubt liberals and conservatives are having heart attacks.
Eamonn Fitzgerald writes about his visit to an exhibit in Venice:
Overall, it is well worth seeing, especially if you think history repeats itself and particularly if the weather is bad.
When I finally get around to writing about my visit to Venice, the prose will be much worse but the pictures far superior.
Do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? According to Carpe Diem, the Brookings Institute’s research says the college educated are getting richer. Good news to my mind as the wife and daughter are about to imbark on a weeklong trip to visit colleges over spring break.
Tom Maguire is a master at both the long and the short form blog post; this time I’m linking to a masterful short post. Bonus, it’s shooting Krugman in a barrel. Not much sport, but plenty of enjoyment.
Steve Boriss reports on differing standards in journalism between the US and the mother country: “Are you really that acquiescent in the United States?” I guess we’ll have to recall all those “Don’t Tread On Me” flags and replace them with “Go Ahead and Tread on Me” flags.
A Spectacular Fall
Mar 12
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Although it’s like getting Al Capone on tax evasion – his other crimes are much worse but at least he got got.
St. Louis had our own version of Eliot, without all the other baggage. George Peach was a prosecuting attorney who by day crusaded against the porno business and by night was in bed with them. Yeah, he too was a Democrat. Mr. Peach was like Gary Hart – he all but dared the local newspaper to investigate him. As I’m not a psychiatrist and don’t actually know the people, you wonder is the dare from a desire to get caught so they can stop or just arrogance.
Oh well, one can hope that New York gets a better, less self-aggrandizing governor out of the resignation.
