Category Archives: Business

Getting It Up

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Locally renowned entrepreneur (and my old friend) Ernie Epplethorpe is starting another new business, Excellent Ernest’s X-Ray Emporium. He sent me a copy of the message he spammed around, partly so I’d know what he’s up to and partly in case I wanted to bid the job. (I didn’t.)

Website designers: I’d like to create www.excellenternestsXXXemporium.net. I’ve been working on it myself but have started to realize I might be better served getting grants for the business and hiring a designer. If you are interested (and are seriously affordable) please call me. Thanks!

No sooner had I responded to that message than a new client did show up in the dooryard. A local dipswitch manufacturer named Dudley Donato is moving from his garage operation to a shared new building in the county industrial development park in Puffin Center. Mr. Donato needs to install some new packers and to scale up his order fulfillment technology since most orders are either for one or two switches or for one or two pallet loads.

Dudley Donato’s Dependable Dipswitches and Excellent Ernest’s X-Ray Emporium. Really. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

We’ll have new equipment on Mr. Donato’s dock by the end of February.

I told Mr. Epplethorpe that we’re not cheap enough but I did advise that he would be well served by concentrating on his core strengths and hiring (somebody) out to do the jobs he doesn’t want or can’t do.

That’s Business Startup 101.

There’s a caveat, though.

Mr. Epplethorpe, despite the grandeur of his newest corporate name, is a sole proprietor. Here’s what I asked — and told — him:

Are you working the requisite 80 billable hours/week? If not, are you working 80 hours/week on something that will lead to something billable? Are you motivated enough to do it yourself?

If those answers are no and no and no, Are you a good enough HTML jockey and are you also good enough at marketing? If so, your own time might be better spent on webwork than on other activities.

New business owners have a perennial problem. When there is enough time, there is never enough money to do a job. When there is enough money, there is never enough time.

We’ve all seen the new “Coming Soon!” restaurant in town not open and not open and not open while the owners slave with spackling and paintbrushes and oven wiring. Not much money coming in the doors when the doors aren’t open. The best argument to plan for outside help is this: excellenternestsXXXemporium.net has yet to go live and Mr. Donato’s dipswitches are switching on and off already.

The Great Female Vocalist (rock/pop/country singer-songwriter) of last week just finished submitting a new song to the Library of Congress. “It is so easy now that everything is done electronically,” she told me. “Some artists have ‘people’ to do this stuff. I am my people. Hey, I think I’ll have a company party tonight.”

It was a great party.

Ya Just Can’t Count On…

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In real life my business provides I.T. and web support. HarperCo is the “offsite” I.T. administrator for a number of businesses and is the site developer and host for a growing list of clients. (As an aside, we got here by accident. I’m a mechanical engineer, for heaven’s sake — I spend the rest of my time designing widgets and telling companies how to run their businesses. But you teach just one computer course, see …)

So.

This weekend proved the old adage that when things can go wrong, they will. I probably should have titled this You Can Always Count On…

Subtitled, A Cautionary Tale.

I hope Bad Things really come in Threes.

First up, my new UPS. That’s Uninterruptible Power Supply, not the nice guy in the brown shorts (I still want to race the truck, but that’s another story). We had a little power outage Friday. Then we had another. And another. The battery symbol my new UPS went from fully charged to empty and the Battery Charge indicator bar flashed about a minute after the power went out the first time. It happened faster after that. I took it back to the store for an exchange.

Nice store clerk: “We have a 14 day return policy.”

Moi: “No, the receipt says returns can be brought in through today.”

NCC: “Oh. Well, we can’t take it back without a box.”

Moi: [Uh oh. That means it’ll go back on the shelf] “But we have a box. You exchange this one for one that works, I put this one in the new box and give you that box.”

A five minute task took twenty-five minutes, partly because it took a few for me to find the one remaining replacement in the store. The new UPS box looked like it had been opened but the packaging inside seemed mostly untouched so I’m cautiously optimistic. (And I took as much of the wrapping as I could so the returned item doesn’t look “new” on the shelf.) The charge indicator indicated a full charge almost immediately and reports about 36 minutes uptime with the current load which should be about right. I’ll test it when I’m not on deadline pressure.

Next comes Windows Vista™. My friend Missy arrived next door for the winter. Brought her Vista™ equipped laptop and her wireless router (“WiFi”). I had worked some magic last year and it worked with no problem. This year Windows connects to the router but in local mode only, meaning Missy gets no Internet access on her couch. She can connect fine on her network up north. And the problem persists whether wired or wireless through the router. We tied a string directly to the cable modem and the Internoodle snapped right in.

Sounds like a router problem, doesn’t it?

Well, no.

She has the same problem connecting to my router next door even as other computers run through it.

Hacking the Registry™ didn’t work. Apparently it’s a fairly well known issue in Vista™.

I love computers.

Meanwhile, number 3, out on the Innert00b. One of my clients gave me the go-ahead to change web hosts. This is not a huge site — it has about 3,000 files and requires around 25MB of storage — but it is mission critical for the agency that owns it.

Changing registrars and hosts is pretty automated. Get an AUTH-CODE from the losing registrar. (All registrars have a bot to deliver that. Happens all the time.) Click a button at the gaining registrar to pull the domain name. (All registrars have a bot to do that. Happens all the time.) Wait for the losing registrar to approve the transfer. (All registrars have a way to do that. Happens all the time.) The whole process generally takes 5-7 days.

We’re now in day 11.

It took five days just to get the AUTH-CODE from the losing registrar. (our-old-host-dot-com has a bot to deliver that.) Got it. I clicked the button at the gaining registrar to pull the domain name and waited for the losing registrar to approve the transfer. (our-old-host-dot-com should have a way to do that. Happens all the time.) So we waited. And waited. And waited.

By about the fourth time we asked our-old-host-dot-com to comply, my blood was pumping well. Good that my Blowout Preventer was operational.

Turns out that the contact address for the domain name was not set to one of our addresses but to sales@our-old-host-dot-com. They also listed their own phone number, a number that is no longer in service. I wonder how that happened, since our-old-host-dot-com registered the domain for the site owner.

“Not our fault,” they said.

Really good that my Blowout Preventer was operational.

I kept waiting.

I was finally able to sneak in the back door and change the contact address to one monitored by a human. OK, monitored by me, but I was watching it. Got the gaining registrar to resend the approval form. I approved it and Bob’s your uncle, right?

Well, Bob’s not my uncle.

The site was dark this morning. Actually, the site had a big Your website has been suspended banner this morning.

The our-old-host-dot-com customer service manager and I have gone back and forth most of this morning. The good news is that I’ve cancelled the transfer with the gaining registrar and the customer service manager has added time to the current plan “to ensure it does not go offline during this transition period.” The bad news is that this simple, automated process was fouled by a simple bad call more than five years ago. Our-old-host-dot-com used bad contact info in a legal record.

There must be a moral in this morality play.

And there is: Don’t step on the sand burs. They hurt.

Rats. The moral is simple. My mom was right. Your plan never survives first contact with the enemy but human intervention usually fixes the problem. You can count on that.

BE IT Resolved…

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I grew up (professionally) in the Dark Ages1 when employees set their own performance goals for the year and enshrined them in a “P.D.P.”

Liz Arden and I talked about that a little this morning. “I don’t make resolutions,” she said.

Neither do I. It struck me as odd since both of us are hardwired to achieve goals. We Floridians did make a few resolutions for next year, though:

  • Make sure the body you bury at sea doesn’t walk ashore.
  • Do not eat giant African snail mucus.
  • Do not wear an underwire bra to a federal detention center.
  • Learn CPR. And carry a sidearm.

A Tampa alligator snatched a Jack Russell terrier from its owner. The man shot at the gator which let go of the dog. The catatonic pet wasn’t breathing until the man revived it with CPR. Hope he had some extra pooper scooper bags. Resolved: teach Cardio Pet Resuscitation.

A Miami attorney was stopped from visiting her client because the underwire set off the metal detector. Guards wouldn’t let her in after she took it off because she was braless! Resolved: find a better class of jailers.

A Hialeah man convinced his followers to drink the juices of smuggled African snails as part of a religious “healing” ceremony. Several became ill, lost weight, and develop lumpy bellies. Resolved: find a new weight loss ceremony.

A couple who paid $8 for a box of bones at a yard sale found their Halloween decoration was a real dead guy. And a family buried a deceased relative at sea; the body resurfaced at a Fort Lauderdale beach. Broward Sheriff’s deputies are conferring with the Coast Guard to figure out what charges they can bring. Resolved: pass a new law about cutting the feet off relatives and selling them in garage sales.

“In business we fill out the form at the beginning of the period and file it,” Liz said. “Spend the year doing our jobs. At review time, we sit down, pull out the form, and look for all the ways what we really did met the stuff we wrote down.”

And that’s why resolutions don’t work.

288 years ago, more than 100 years after 102 English reprobates and separatists set foot in the New World, Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards prescribed reading his 70 resolutions at least once each and every week. I hope he was able to do so; it’s the right prescription for keeping them.

Happy New Year, everyone!

1 “Management by Objectives is a process of defining objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they are in the organization…

“The essence of MBO is participative goal setting, choosing course of actions and decision making. An important part of the MBO is the measurement and the comparison of the employee’s actual performance with the standards set.”

Black and Blue Friday

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My 25 year old dryer and 15 year old washer were still running when Sears ran its Black Friday ad last year. Brand new, low water use, high efficiency, front loading, stackable washer-dryer pair for $579.98. Regular retail (does anyone pay regular retail for appliances?) price on those particular models was $1,399.98. “At least four per store” the ad said.

Key West has a very small store and it is an hour away. I figured four pairs would be the most they ever had.

Hmmm. I wonder if it is four pairs or four appliances? I didn’t want to get up at 0:dark:30 and drive 55 miles for something I didn’t absolutely need right then.

Why should I have expected any different? I called the store and the appliance department manager treated me like an annoyance.

I want a nap.

After the short wait programmed into the auto-attendant phone system, “Darrell” answered. I asked if he had the advertised washer and dryer in stock.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m in the shipping department.”

I asked the expected question about why a call to the major appliance department would be shunted to the shipping department.

“Because I’m the appliance manager but all my people are on the floor with customers.” Ahh, Sears.

Oddly, I was a customer.

Darrell spent about 10 minutes refusing to help me and asking for my phone number so “someone could call me back.” I do not respond well to stonewalling so I spent my part of those 10 minutes demanding that he treat me like a customer and give me the info I wanted. I got nowhere but I did leave my number with him.

He also refused to let me speak to his supervisor; he then refused to let me speak to the store manager when I asked to be transferred.

“You know,” I said near the end of the conversation, “if you had simply looked up whether you had the product in stock instead of being a dickweed (actually I probably said ‘instead of jerking me around’), you would have had a happy customer in me and would have had time to take care of two or even three other customers.”

I called the store back to speak to the Sears store manager. I had to leave my number on voice mail. I’m still waiting for that call back.

I need a nap.

OTOH, a saleslady named Ann did call me 45 minutes later.

“We had four pairs in stock,” she said. “I know we sold two right after the store opened but I think there are still two left.

Ann explained that they were giving customers a ticket that let them buy the appliances and that the sale rules said they could not do a telephone sale. Sort of no tickee no shirty, and you must be present to win. She put me on hold to check.

They did have two pairs left; Ann advised driving down right then. Key West is an hour from my little house but I loaded up and did just that.

The store sold one more pair while I was on the road. I got the last pair.

Ann tried twice to sell me a new pigtail and vent but I demurred. I wondered why anyone would buy either, since most retail appliances today are replacements.

“Our installers will not use an existing cord,” she said citing liability. “If yours is even a little bit frayed and your house burns, we would buy you a new house.”

Loading was interesting. The dryer was the first box out the door. The stock boy rocked his hand truck back steeply and laid the bottom front edge of on the tailgate. He rocked the hand truck up a little and we lifted it right onto the tailgate.

Oops.

The box was two-three inches taller than my truck cap. No problem. He popped it over on its side and we pushed it to the front of the bed. The second stock boy brought the washer; the two of them laid it down on its side and popped it in without issue.

So here’s the bottom line. Ann at Sears was very nice, very helpful and deserves the little bit of commission they paid her. I got the washer and dryer I wanted. My 25 year old dryer and 15 year old washer experienced some … issues over the winter so I put the new ones in service and moved the old ones elsewhere. And I didn’t have to take Harvest Gold. Or Plum.

This year was different.

My UPS has been talking back lately so I’m thinking it’s time. Electronics don’t last as long here as in gentler climes. Office Depot had an APC 1500 VA UPS on sale for half price. No shipping. Big batteried UPSes are expensive to ship. I set the alarm for 5:40. Ayem.

Pink and purple sunrise and me without a camera phone. It was not red enough to take warning but I did watch. Not a sight I recognized.

Got to Office Depot about 6:20 and was dumbfounded to see the parking lot full. As in seriously full. Had to drive past many cars to find a parking space.

I did (eventually and with the help of a personal shopper) find and buy the UPS I wanted. Long lines at the checkout, mostly because the cashiers were hard selling extended warranties. Everyone was helpful and very nice. No Android Tablets. None of my other gimmes.

I also looked at a Ryobi cordless tool bundle in the Home Depot flier and didn’t even bother going there. Ditto the wrapping paper at Walgreens.

I thought long and hard about the wrapping paper. Then I thought long and hard about the lines. Inertia and the fact that I don’t actually use wrapping paper, particularly here, won out. About the Ryobi, if this year is anything like last year, the store was sold out in 10-15 minutes. It is the new 19.2 volt model which matches nothing I have. Drill, light, circular saw, vacuum. I would use the drill and light but can’t see much use for the circular saw or vacuum.

Back to the UPS. The Office Depot parking lot was full but, after writing that, I realized that “full” in a small town is a whole lot different than “full” in Miami or New York. Here, there were three or four or even five peeps at each of the three or four open registers. I’m really really really glad I didn’t find anything I couldn’t live without at Brandsmart up in the United States.

We Fed Them KOOK a COLA but They Drank the KoolAid

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“It’s the economy, stupid!”

We’re back! There is no inflation. The Cost of Living has not risen yet again and seniors get stiffed for the second year in a row. I wrote this column in April but there have been developments:

The Associated Press reports that “the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in monthly benefits.

“It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.

“Based on inflation so far this year, the trustees who oversee Social Security project there will be no cost of living adjustment for 2011.”

Cost of living is by definition the cost of maintaining a certain living standard.

Employment contracts, pension benefits, and government payments such as your Social Security check can be tied to a cost-of-living index, typically to the CPI or “Consumer Price Index.” Federal law requires the Social Security Administration to base its Cost of Living Adjustment on the consumer price index changes in the third quarter of each year (July, August and September) with the same quarter in the previous year. Remember that.

The CPI reports the average price of a lot of stuff — what is called a constant “market basket of goods and services” — purchased by average households. According to Bloomberg Business News, the CPI wonks add up and average the prices of 95,000 items from 22,000 stores and 35,000 rental units. Those prices are weighted by assuming that you distribute your spending along strict percentages. Housing: 41.4%, Food and Beverage: 17.4%, Transport: 17.0%, Medical Care: 6.9%, Other: 6.9%, Apparel: 6.0%, and Entertainment: 4.4%. Taxes are exempt from the CPI totals so when your property tax or sales tax or income tax or ObamaCare health tax or gasoline tax or telecommunications tax or blue cheese tax rises, it doesn’t actually cost you any extra.

In calculating the CPI, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a formula that reflects the fact that consumers shift their purchases toward products that have fallen in relative price. Although this substitution game means the BLS reduces what we pay by “living with” store brands instead of name brands, BLS says my analysis is incorrect. Their objective “is to calculate the change in the amount consumers need to spend to maintain a constant level of satisfaction.” As long as the BLS gets to define “satisfaction.”

Where, oh where is Mick when we need him?

The Social Security Administration writes, “Since 1975, Social Security’s general benefit increases have been based on increases in the cost of living, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. We call such increases Cost-Of-Living Adjustments, or COLAs. Because there has been a decline in the Consumer Price Index, there will be no COLA payable in 2010.” Or 2011.

Did your cost of living go down?

  • Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup costs between 80 cents and $1.29 per can in most markets today. Do you remember when it was 40 cents? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • A five-pound bag of flour costs about $2.49 in most markets today. Do you remember when it was a buck? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Gasoline prices dropped in the third quarter but its cost is flying upwards again; it will be over $3 before I get back to Florida this year. Do you remember when it was $0.999? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • According to USAToday, health insurance premiums cost about $13,375 per annum in 2009. (And despite the new law, insurers say they do not have to cover kids with pre-existing conditions.) Do you remember when a family policy cost $2,500? I do. But your premiums will still go up. And, of course, the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Milk costs between $3.50 and $4 per gallon in most markets. Do you remember when it was $1.75? Or $1? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
  • Property taxes on the Vermont house are $3,869.96 and $3,892.26 on the Florida house this year. Do you remember when they were each $900? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.

The AP report continued, The stagnant Cost of Living Adjustment is “not seen as good news for Democrats as they defend their congressional majorities in next month’s elections.

“Last fall a dozen Democrats joined Senate Republicans to block an effort to provide a bonus payment to Social Security recipients to make up for the lack of a COLA this year.”

I wish stuff didn’t cost so much but even more I wish our “leaders” didn’t lie to us about stuff costing so much. Oddly, I still cannot vote myself a raise.

Bob reminded us last time this appeared that “taxes don’t go into the CPI” so I updated the list to include property taxes. I didn’t include the little increases in government programs “recovery” on the phone bill or the increasing number of cities and towns implementing local sales tax “options.”

44 million Americans subsist below the poverty line because the cost of things we buy has skyrocketed past our incomes. Guess how many of those Americans depend on Social Security?

It is likely that Medicare Part B premiums will remain frozen at last year’s levels but premiums for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program, will rise.

Federal law requires that the Cost of Living Adjustment be based on the CPI changes in the third quarter of last year to the third quarter of this year. Well, Ollie, some of the items in the CPI haven’t changed much, so seniors are now behind the same eight ball as they were last year.

Except their taxes, insurance premiums, drugs, heating oil, and cable TV subscriptions are all going to cost more.

Good thing there is a sale on cat food down to Price Chopper, isn’t it? Mmmm. Cat food.