Career Moves

Real life is interfering with my blogging. Choices must be made. Time managed. Decisions decided and obstacles derided. There's a lot to do and no time to lose, and I'm just soooo damn damn tired, I just want to snooze.

Sorry. Composure! There, all better.

Tough quarter, Q4 07. Don't want to go through that again. Business is down all around and no less so right here. Pulled together a resume for the first time in a year that starts with a "2" and went job hunting. Got out the big gun, which these days comes in the form of a Toshiba laptop. Job hunting is now virtual! Who knew?

Virtuosity makes the hunt appear easier, but I am not deceived by appearances. If it's easier for me to submit 5 or 6 applications a day, then it's easier for all those underemployed losers I'm competing against, too. Too bad for them. I am all over this process.

I hope.

So, I've got a promising lead. Good face to face with the recruiter. Said he's recommending me. Yay! (How do you spell relief?) Waiting for the interview with the actual prospective employer. Trying to go through the company website, which is extensive. And slow as molasses. It won't even fully load on my PC, and I have a T-1. So I'm reading a competitor's website to hopefully get a grip on industry issues I'm going to be an expert on next week when I meet these people. Let's hope I get them right.

Sweet irony is dropping by, of course. Just when I'm ready to abandon this entrepreneurial adventure I've been on for over four years, business has a significant uptick. My CPA tells me that this is the downfall of entrepreneurs, we are ever hopeful. An uptick could mean it is finally all coming together after years of hard work, long hours, worry, risk, big changes, small changes, indecision, strife, exhuberance and stress, lots and lots of stress. Maybe this is really it!

This irrational optimism is what allows a new entrepreneur to abandon a perfectly good job to try to get rich with that business plan typed up when the boss wasn't around. And irrational optimism is what has kept me in business for well over a year after any purely rational businessperson would have called it a day, turned off the lights, and gone home. So, why give up now? Just when I have an uptick?

Why indeed? No small rhetoric there. A real question that begs a real answer.

The answer my friend, is as wispy as the wind. Because it is a very personal answer in a very impersonal context. Entrepreneurs, like me at least, are not always real businessmen. I'm not. I thought I would get really rich doing this, and getting rich sure sounded good. Well, I'm not rich yet. Not even close. It's been up and down, and pretty exciting at times. But I'm tired of the smallness of it. I may change my mind next week, but this week I'm looking to get into a large organization where someone else can worry if we run out of paper towels or toner. Where my phone is just on everyday because someone else takes care of it, and if my laptop crashes I don't need to pull out my own credit card. I'll have fancy business cards with someone else's name on them. And nobody will threaten to sue me personally. These are not rational business reasons. But they are my reasons for today, and I'm going with them.

Until I change my mind. Which I may very well do.

See you at Wal-Mart!

Charity, Not

Mark O'Connell, former CEO of the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, received nearly $1.6 million in cash as a pension supplement. Along the way, the nonprofit's chief executive also secured a seven-figure retirement perk for himself: nearly $1.6 million in cash.
Federal tax filings show the United Way paid the lump sum two years ago to supplement O'Connell's pension, which already promised him roughly $106,000 a year for life. In his final year, he collected about $446,700, including a car allowance and $70,200 in unused leave. His last three years' earnings approached $1.2 million, not counting the lump sum.

Keep in mind, dear reader, that our well paid Mr. O'Connell is only the CEO of the Atlanta United Way, not the national organization.

This is outrageous and should be a scandal. This is not something that happens in a vacuum. This can only occur as a result of a corporate culture that views charity as an industry where it is appropriate for executives to seek to "drive their personal wealth" as my MBA friends like to say.

Well, it is not appropriate. It should not be legal. It definitely should not be tax exempt.

I stopped supporting the United Way 20 years ago when I found out then that it's CEO was making $400,000 a year in the mid 1980's. I was making $14,000 a year as a Naval Officer and was asked to contribute, and was also directed to ask the sailors under me, who made a lot less than that, to give to the United Way. It was a contest among commands to see who would give the most. When I saw that the CEO was taking all that money, I was pretty steamed.

But over time I saw all sorts of celebrities endorsing the United Way. So I wondered if it had mended it's ways. The answer is clearly no.

The United Way should be sent on it's way.

Changing My Mind About The War

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 30 — Hundreds of demonstrators in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, poured into the streets on Friday demanding the execution of a British teacher who was convicted of insulting Islam because her class of 7-year-olds named a teddy bear Muhammad.

So, Dear Reader, what are we to make of this?

Bear in mind (sorry, couldn't resist) that the poor teacher has now been convicted, and is in a Sudanese prison. On your list of places you don't want to be, where would "Sudanese prison" fall?

The Sudanese government, trying to have it both ways, says that the judge gave her a "light" sentence. What a hero. But we are not told what "light sentence" means. Apparently, she could be "lashed" as a part of her sentence, but it is not clear if this was a part of the sentence or not. Lashing is generally done with a stick or wooden rod. And it hurts real bad.

Seeing these stories about our friends from the religion of peace, I am not finding peace in my heart. I am feeling that I have been naive. Maybe they are very different from us after all.

Consider in contrast our last batch of global enemies, the Communists. Westerners more or less relied on the Reds as being much the same kind of people that we were, "deep down." In those cold war days, American young people could backpack through Europe without worrying that some Communist terrorist was going to kill them just for being American. But this Muslim (Moslem? Islamic? Moorish?) terrorist bunch, with their fondness for sawing off people's heads, brings a whole new dynamic to the table. And it's not good. The Communists had real power, and were reasonable, from their perspective. Our new enemies, not so much.

I've met a good many Arabs and Muslims, and they all seemed as OK as anybody else. But something has gone very wrong in their world when a crowd gathers to demand that a teacher be executed for naming a toy bear Mohammad. Or is it Muhammad? This is insulting to Islam? If Big Mo were alive today (as he allegedly is, having bodily ascended into heaven), would he really be insulted by this? The whole story is that the kids actually named the stupid bear anyway. So why aren't they in the dock?

This type of bullying is what makes people like me mad. And bullying it is. I'm as certain as I can be (from here) that the fact that the teacher, Gillian Gibbons, is a non-Muslim woman plays a big part in this fiasco.

She's British. The Brits shouldn't put up with this. I'd like to see the Royal Marines bust her out. An old fashioned jail break! I'd like to see us help.

Related old movie recommendation: The Wind and the Lion, starring Sean Connery and Candice Bergin. An Arab sheikh, on horseback no less, kidnaps an American woman and her children, and President Teddy Roosevelt sends the Marines to rescue her. Good stuff.