The Ultimate Airstream Work From Home Rig For You, Amigo
Look at this baby from Airstream. What is it going to take for me to put you in this ultimate WFH rig?
02/9/21
Category Archives: Uncategorized
01/13/21
Blizzard of 2021 Austin By God Texas
We had a blizzard this week. It was gigantic and it was threatening. We were snowed in.
We had massive drifts of snow triggering harsh reactions.
Today, it is 60F +/- and winter is over for the year.
But, it was Hell on wheels whilst it lasted.
But, hey, what Hell do I really snow anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car — brrrrrr!
12/9/20
How Does Texas Do It?
Texans voted for a constitutional ban against imposing a state income tax in an election held in November 2019. The situation until then had been murky on the issue of a personal income tax relying upon something called the “Bob Bullock Amendment” which allowed the Legislature to set a personal income tax, but only if voters approved it via a statewide referendum and if the new revenue was used exclusively for school property tax cuts and education programs.
Which leads us to the question — how does Texas fund itself?
07/10/20
Breathing Life Back Into A Company
If you are the CEO of a startup, a small business, or a medium business, you are currently dealing with a unique situation — how do you re-invigorate an enterprise that has been rocked by three distinct issues:
1. COVID19 on a personal, human scale;
2. Externally imposed economic and workplace restrictions and impacts based on COVID19; and,
3. The public backlash from racial issues related to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. I will call this last one the Black Lives Matter issue.
These things taken together are likely to have created a negative impact on your company at the individual, granular level and at a business survival level.
There are a few companies who have prospered in the COVID19 environment, but who are still impacted by the BLM impact.
I think that most CEOs would agree that there will be changes, perhaps huge changes, on the other side of these impacts. That is, of course, if y’all survive to emerge on the other side.
06/2/20
Antifa — Strategy And Tactics
Today, we find our streets filled with a much better tactical terror unit in the modern version of Antifa. They have dramatically improved their game in the last five years.
It is time to see Antifa for what they are — a well organized street gang that employs violence as a primary and first use core value to achieve their self-proclaimed political mission. They are, indeed, a domestic terror organization.
05/26/20
Fear V Danger — Perspective
Fear is an emotion. Scary things create fear. How we deal with fear and scary things is within our control. Sometimes, it takes real will power to control fear and to deal with scary things.
Dealing with scary things is part of adulting. Not everybody is good at adulting. Not everybody wants to be good at adulting. Life is a swirl of choices. One of those choices is to be an adult about scary things.
Danger is a measure of risk. What is dangerous to one person — jumping out of an airplane, as an example — is not dangerous to another person. It is an acquired sense. You can mitigate danger through prudent action.
If you are a startup CEO/founder on your first company, everything is dangerous, risky, scary, and fills you with dread — fear. Sorry, that is normal.
If you are a startup CEO/founder on your sixth company, you are perfectly comfortable with the danger — yawn, been there, done that, hold my beer, on second thought go get me another beer — whilst it is not nearly as risky on No 6 as No 1, and it is not scary and you have no sense of fear.
You have learned how to deal with these two impostors — hat tip to Rudyard Kipling and that beauty of a poem, IF. Well played, Rudyard.
Glad I could be of service, Big Red Car, you lyrical bastard.
05/12/20
Trusting the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Far away and long ago, my company was the landlord to the FBI’s Austin By God Texas office. This brought me into close contact with the men who worked there. I judged them to be good men.
There are a lot of peculiarities when you build an office for the FBI — wouldn’t be smart for me to discuss them. You get to know them very well and the way the offices, the conference rooms, the reception area is built teaches you something about how they conduct their business. Amigos, they use a lot of technology. A lot.
05/7/20
Cheat From Home — Online Learning
Higher education has a new problem — how to administer and proctor tests in an online learning environment. How does online learning deal with cheat from home?
How does a professor ensure that her students are not cheating as they take those tests and final exams?
All of you engineers with your open book problem solving exams can just STFU with your superior attitudes and admonitions about how engineering is taught and tested. Yes, I’m an engineer and most of my exams were completely open book.