Really Smart Guy

It occurred to me in passing yesterday (Merry Christmas) that the English rules around "its" and "it's" represent an absence of abstract thought on the part of linguistic rule-setters.

I, for instance, see nothing logically wrong with this:

The refrigerator is cold. It is cold because someone has set it's temperature control to the lowest setting.

I just read this twice.


http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html


A few parts I found particularly compelling:

What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people.

The only way to make something customers want is to get a prototype in front of them and refine it based on their reactions. 

To make something users love, you have to understand them. And the bigger you are, the harder that is. So I say "get big slow." The slower you burn through your funding, the more time you have to learn.

The most important way to not spend money is by not hiring people. I may be an extremist, but I think hiring people is the worst thing a company can do. 

As with office space, the number of your employees is a choice between seeming impressive, and being impressive. Any of you who were nerds in high school know about this choice. Keep doing it when you start a company.

During this time you'll do little but work, because when you're not working, your competitors will be. My only leisure activities were running, which I needed to do to keep working anyway, and about fifteen minutes of reading a night. I had a girlfriend for a total of two months during that three year period. Every couple weeks I would take a few hours off to visit a used bookshop or go to a friend's house for dinner. I went to visit my family twice. Otherwise I just worked.

10. You know how you used to sit in those big company meetings and wonder when the rest of the room would catch up, why you were there, and how all these idiots could be making so much money while you were stuck in (wherever)? That doesn't change when you're the CEO. You just wince more, because you realize you're paying for all of their time in a more direct way.

9. Suppliers never seem to have the work ethic you do. No matter how much you trust them, no matter how much they are being paid, and no matter how critical the deadline, they'll probably be late.

8. Customers and clients don't pay on time. The single biggest surprise I've had as a small biz guy is not necessarily clients who pay late, but clients who steal -- take delivery of product or services and then file for bankruptcy right afterwards or otherwise dispute the bill. If you're going to have problems paying, at least call to proactively inform and then don't take delivery. My firm can use those resources somewhere else. Right?

7. Everyone suddenly thinks you're rich. Actually, I made far more money when I had a day job and did investing and contract work on the side. Like 20-30x as much when you factor in the pain of making a payroll in 2009. It doesn't matter if it's a business expense if you have no income to write it off against.

6. Creditors want you to co-sign on everything. What? Why did I bother incorporating, then? So I could write personal checks to the company for two years, ruin my own credit going for broke, and then still need to co-sign?

5. Investors and creditors value your life -- er, firm -- on last year's sales, but you need their money to make good on next year's promises. Except, of course, if next year's projections are less than last year's, in which case they use those numbers and discount them even further. F*** you guys.

4. Holidays. They no longer exist. Well, sorta I guess. You do have a few minutes for an annual blog post on Independence Day.

3. 100 hour work weeks. That whole work-life balance thing? The recommendation from all the gurus that you turn off the blackberry once in awhile? Sorry, I took a call from a client just now. You were saying?

2. The only women you meet also happen to be partners, employees, investors, suppliers, or vendors. I apparently don't mind dating salespeople, but "it's complicated" is an understatement.

1. Everybody hustles/hates/targets you and no one appreciates you. I totally get why presidents and CEOs go completely grey within their first 2-3 years. (pluck) I wonder if that's how this guy felt.

As part of my company's efforts to live the dream of becoming completely based in the cloud, I went ahead and moved my personal blog (this one) to blogger.

To do this, I used the GData API and wrote a quick Wordpress plugin that queried wp_posts and submitted them as new blog articles to Blogger via Google's API.

Couple of things I found out:

• The GData Blogger API has an upper limit of 50 posts within any single rolling 24 hour period.


• It's a pain to submit comments via the API.


• No one else has ever tried to do this. Most people want to get their data out of Blogger and into Wordpress.


• Customizing Blogger's UI is a pain also, but mostly because I can't use standard web tools and have to do it all without server-side scripting and jump through hoops to use JavaScript.

Originally Published 2003-09-16 15:40:37

I might just have to write some. No one but AvantGo could find a use for a jpeg-to-jot conversion tool. But, hey, where there's a need, eh?



I'm thinking... parse through the jpeg pixel by pixel and create a jot "stroke" for each pixel, monochrome only. Kind of an inefficent approach, but it's the simplest algorithm in terms of development time. I can't believe some linux geek hasn't already done this, but then again, no one else on the planet uses the scribble input tag, now do they? :-)



Kind of a geeky project... When I get finished with the 20 conference calls I have this week, anyway. Oh yeah, and my billable on-project work.



Sigh. How do people with real responsibilities do it? Oh yeah... they don't work out, they don't have second jobs, and they don't date hot chicks.



I definitely have nothing to complain about.

Originally Published 2004-07-28 11:54:13

Are you talking about the deductions you made because the credit card statement didn't match the expense report on some of the meals?



I pay tips in cash an awful lot of the time. Is there any allowance for that? No, I don't have a receipt, yes, I paid them out, and no I'm not risking my job and integrity over $20-$30.



I don't want to fight about this and I don't want to delay $1200 in reimbursements over such a small amount, but you know how I feel about this. It's extremely lame. You spend all this time pouring over my report and verifiying literally pennies (which certainly costs more than $20-$30 in labor), then cause me all kinds of frustration... the business sense of this eludes me.



If there's anything you can do to make this right, I'd be very appreciative. If not, it's fine, I'll just make sure I don't pay out tips in cash any more. And roll my eyes after selling all my SY stock.



Johnny



--

May S.

07/26/2004 03:10 PM



To:

cc:

Subject: Expense Report ER00150465 - Meals





Johnny,



There has been a change made to your expense report. Please go to eTrip and open the above document. Double click on the line that is zero out. Click on the "notes" button to view the comments made. You can use the scroll bars on the side to navigate around the "notes" section.



Please feel free to let me know if I can help you in any way.



Regards,

May

Originally Published 2004-06-28 15:47:36

In 5.3 and 5.5:



avantgo.currentServer.user

avantgo.currentServer.password (readonly)

avantgo.currentServer.serverAddress (host/ip)

avantgo.currentServer.port

avantgo.currentServer.secure (boolean)



These were all avantgo.preference.xxx pre 5.3.