Tuesday, September 23, 2003

I realized just the other day that there are many people with many different abilities out there, but it's the assholes, the stressaholics, the worryworts, who make sure things get done. There are skills to be applied to problems, but without the problem solvers, nothing gets executed, nothing gets done. We fret and worry and get ulcers and mouth sores and try to make sure the i's and t's are there to get dotted while the rest of the world tells us to chill out, relax, not to worry, when we, our stress, our sin eating, is what gives them the wherewithal to say "don't worry, be happy" in the first place. There's a part of me that daily, and sometimes I do, just wants to give it up, go back to the frustrations of accountability without authority, trying to do what I know is the right way to do things within the confines of working for someone else who doesn't know how well it could be done. But this is what business is about. Problem solving. It's not as if I will reach some stage in my life when all my problems are solved. All the business in the world at my finger tips. I think the thing I miss most about Elizabeth is working with someone who executes like no one else, who understands what it's like to every morning wake up with the crushing understanding that everything could fall apart today without the execution of a few important calls, a few important directives, a few important follow ups, that 99% of the people in the world avoid like the plague because it involves the burden of taking personal responsibility for work. Not just doing work. People will do work happily forever. But owning responsibility for it, thinking about the impact within the project or company or world view is another matter entirely, and something that makes most people overestimate their own value. I think that's one of the things that is most challenging in finding a business partner, or life partner, - finding someone who sees the things that you see, that understands that the real work is not the job, that while you can have a map with nice little pin points on it, you have to be able to react to terrain and conditions constantly, make sure you know where you've been, where you're going, how to get back, what routes make the most sense, remember how to react and respond, and document, and plan, and proceed with measurable intent, beyond day to day production. That person doesn't have to share the same skill set, just the same drive, the same demand for not just pencil pushing, but actually resolving problems.  11:19:30 PM

If software development will eventually be similar to automobile or building manufacture, where once the architecture is in place, the requirements gathered, in some standardized form, the different components are simply sourced out and pieced together, I wonder if the automobile industry will ever get to the point where consumers can essentially build their own - ordering the desired chassis, cab, engine, etc... customized within a set of parameters, almost obviating involvement by the mass marketing machines major automobile manufacturers are. Consumers could almost go directly to the parts makers, and the successful money makers would be the custom automobile builders, almost like the direction of open source software today - money would be made on services, not on the "hard" components, with the "hard" components forced to compete on a much more customer oriented field, rather than relying on marketing to compensate for inadequate product. 12:58:10 PM

I dreamt last night a dream so real that I actually took notes, taking out my memo pad and writing that this must be what it feels like to go to superchurch, full of power and performance but leaving you with nothing during those dark questioning moments. There was a service and then dialogue asking people to express their views about gays in the church. And then the bishops, seven or so of them, gave a performance worthy of Cirque du Soleil, each wearing monumental mitres, singing and dancing, three of them with their heads completed shaved, their skin painted silver. And after the show, the lights dimmed, and hooded figures with shovels came out to sweep the barren landscape, as if to demonstrate that years from now, none of this would matter, that to dust all of us would return. One of the performers, the ash sweepers, the street cleaners, gave me her car keys surreptitiously, telling me to move her car so people wouldn't be looking for it when the shit really hit the fan. Her name was Kim, and she wrote down her phone number, which started with a 414 area code. Later, during the coffee hour and Sunday school, I was distressed to be unable to find a bathroom with a door. There were a number of urinals, blocked off with folding screens, but no place to go in true privacy. Dad was on the scene as some sort of mediator, just watching and waiting in the narthex, making sure everything was okay. Mom was around about to engage a Seabury Western seminarian in dialogue. Later, I rode with a priest and his family from northern Illinois,  forget the name of the town. They were concerned that one of the more liberal bishops, the one who wore the huge mitre with a Rams logo on it, was presenting to their church later that week. This reminded me of the dream I had last week, when I was staying at Aunt Jane and Uncle OC's and had to replace a special non-heat generating lamp they kept near their wine cellar, one that cost over a hundred dollars a bulb. 9:49:48 AM

I wonder if shopper preferences vary enough from grocery store to grocery store to merit putting different items in different aisles. When I go to the Schnucks on Clayton, it's like I'm an Italian speaker in Madrid - I know enough to get by, but it takes a lot of translation. I guess eventually the system of grocery stores as we know them will become more or less obsolete, once our children's generation or our children's children are shoppers, creating a customized online shopping experience, taking automated just in time inventory into the home using smart appliances. But the poor, just as now, will be relegated to the dirty, grimy stores, with old, limited product selection. I wonder if it would make sense to develop a smaller chain of grocery stores, catering to young, busy, mobile professionals, who want to have a predictable experience from store to store. I was also thinking tonight on my drive home about just how powerful a business model Microstrategy has. If only I'd had the cash to buy when they were down to $2 a share. I think, as technology becomes more and more decentralized, and I believe that Microsoft is too monolithic and too rigid to stand the next generation of software, especially as consumers become more and more sophisticated and open source subsequently grows in brain and market share, the companies to watch are the ones, like MicroStrategy, who have figured out what to do with all the information we generate in our day to day lives. Especially as that information analysis becomes more granular, say in identifying the specific buying patterns for a small retail chain. The savings in transfering inventory alone make it worth it, let alone the increased inventory flips. You could conceivably open a small chain of grocery stores or hardware stores or even discount stores and be competitive with the mega-chains just by knowing precisely the buying patterns of your specific demographic, down to the neighborhood - buying large to get pricing advantages, but stocking small and specific at the store level. One of the things that excites me most about the Zoo Web project, built on the Bryan Consulting CMS, is that we will have real time measures of how people are using the site and, most importantly, can fairly immediately shift site structure and featured content according to usage patterns. We should eventually be able to predict usage following paid and free media, and channel responses accordingly. I'd love to get them to pay us on retainer to keep on top of what's going on with the site and modify it accordingly, but it's going to take some time for their Web revamp to pay off. Delivering Earth Share brochures today, I was thinking about all the marginal and positively insane people involved in community organizing. Without sounding too conspiratorial, I wonder if there may be some truth in insane people blaming the government for their madness, even if they don't recognize as such, claiming radio waves are making their socks burn up. Or government agents are moving their chairs. Or making their wireless doorbells stop working. I can't find the site where one of those folks being hounded by covert covert mind control experiments takes pictures of holes in her pantyhose. I hope she hasn't been taken in. Maybe they are overly sensitive to all the stimulation in society. Maybe they can actually feel and sense the constant bombardment by radio waves, carrying messages beyond b-flat blackholes, the cacaphony of all the wireless and satellite and microwave transmissions that weave our modern web of existence. A web so complicated that my wireless doorbell has ceased to function, all the waves interfere with one another so. I guess I should check my underwear drawer. Just in case. 12:28:06 AM