Tersosity & Verbosity

Could he be any more clueless?

Here’s a new and different idea: Companies offering debt-related benefits, as opposed to the more traditional emphasis placed on retirement and other things. Because yes, it is distracting (remarkable that link is from 2002, when the good times still rolled and only a few of us were stressed out about the glaringly obvious housing bubble problem).

Advice for marketing in touch times.

These sound about right.

Too funny, Bill Gates in a Tandy ad.

12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them.

Interesting Erica Douglass post on being worth more than you think, setting a baseline and sticking to it. I’ve been having related thoughts lately, exactly the opposite of where I had been and could be taking my attitude in this time of being beyond broke and completely without paying work. While there’s consideration of marginal revenue and zero versus non-zero, there’s also consideration of what it means to accept $10 an hour work, versus accepting $100 an hour work that’s moderately harder to find. And frankly, people are going to be less skeptical about hiring the likes of me for the latter than the former.

Good post on rules of thumb, some of which are familiar to me. I didn’t know the interruptions thing had a number attached, but I knew it was bad. I can seldom do much of substance without being free of interruptions. And I have to keep my self-sourced interruptions under control. I think part of my ramping up process that means the first lump of time I sit down to do a thing barely touches it is that it serves both as a thinking and mood altering phase, and a clearinghouse for things I’d do to derail myself, be they small tasks or ticks or what. The estimating one is well known, too, and soundly ignored by most.

What does one charge as an appropriate rate to migrate a blog, from MT to WordPress or otherwise, for a blogger?

It’s an interesting theory I could be inclined to believe. More troublesome is my impression when I learned in college about FASB and how it all works was that it’s an arm of the SEC in all but name, sometimes grabbing some wiggle room, but buying that room by largely doing whatever the government wants, before the government can impose the same rule more heavy handedly. Kind of like giving the nice man in the Italian suit your spare cash because you know he’s armed and usually humorless, rather than waiting for him to show that he’s armed and insist you go along. And if you don’t make him insist enough times, maybe he’ll go easy on you the time when you really can’t spare the cash. I don’t follow FASB at all closely, since losing any interest in being an accountant for a living, but it’s cool having a bit more insight into the process than your average person.

Credit Card Ghosts, including somr interesting links to factoids and statistics about credi cards.

I’ve always had trouble battling imposter syndrome, which ties into my trouble charging a lot and accepting too little income, as I discussed with the recruiter yesterday. Not that it helps for what’s a good income to change so dramatically over time. What was a great income in 1978 is live with your parents or in a car money these days. What was good money five years ago needs to be higher by an amount equal to the entire good annual income of thirty years ago. Crazy.

But yeah, I suffer from lack of focus, but not lack of ability or potential. I only think I’m worthless much of the time. Probably a good reason for people not to shoot me down when I do get cocky, because that may be annoying, but the quashing of it contributes to fear that I’m no good and unwillingness to tout myself even if I have a solid idea otherwise. Even the people who chip what they are willing to pay have contributed, because to me there’s a direct correlation between your cheapness and my perception of not being worth anything.

Just talked with a recruiter who apparently found me on Monster.com, and had a very favorable impression of him. I’m not a fit with the specific opening he had in mind, which would have required Foxpro background, but I’m going up to Burlington Monday for the quick get to know you meeting so it’s easy for them to send me out if they do come up with matches.

This means it’s time to update the resume, which is on my to do short list anyway, because they’re asking me to send an updated version in Word format, and references. It’s silly it’s not changed to speak of since I finally had something worthy of uploading to Monster.

I was going to tweet this, but Twitter is acting up and won’t take anything from me, and this allowed for a longer bit of text. I am so close to just “tweeting” here, since I can post so easily. Even from the Blackberry if needed.

Apart from cost and fussiness, depending on model, I actually like the compact florescents, and what they did to the electric bill. At least, until the electric usage we were getting billed for nearly doubled for no apparent reason. One of the things I don’t like is that you can’t or couldn’t, put the new ones in covered fixtures, requiring old style in some cases. I mentioned that to someone the other day and surprised them, as they’d not read the directions/warnings and used them that way without apparent issue. At any rate, I can completely understand hoarding incandescent bulbs for various reasons. It should be up to the market to encourage the switching, not government decree.

On an amusingly related not to my consulting fees post the other day, here’s a post on how to sell overpriced services. The dressing part feels tongue in cheek, even though it’s tried and true advice I first saw decades ago, and so not me. The part about being right up front is something I’ve flirted with and lately come around to wanting to do again, though in my situation there may be a balance between every scrap of marginal revenue being vital and it being worthwhile to make the most of what work can be landed at real rates, allowing focus on clients willing to pay realistically.

Sounding sensible? Apparently it can happen.

This is good post on determining consulting fees, even if it does date back to January. I famously have trouble with pricing, which may be tied up somewhat with self-esteem and excessive desire to please others on my part, and ironically it’s probably low pricing that’s left me with a lack of business and prospects. Obviously you can’t sell to those who can’t or won’t pay a given amount, and competition is ever a factor, but in all reality I need to charge $100 n hour and put in plenty of hours in order to earn realistic income from a support the family perspective. That should be a powerful incentive not to charge $50 to spend 6 hours updating a web site, or $80 to spend 4 hours, or $112.50 for 9+ hours on a POS system update underpriced and misleadingly described. Or you would think.

Who’s who and reunion for the famous picture of Microsoft’s early employees.

Via Dan, this is an amusing, lengthy article in which Bill Gates e-mails complaints about Microsoft end user experience to his own staff, which apparently was something he did regularly. I have to agree in general with Dan about Vista.

Apparently text messages are private from employers, per the court.