My father sent me this picture. A kilometer long water bridge? Umm…I’m no expert but I think that’s cool. More details here.

Some entrepreneur advice from a non-entrepreneur.

We all get excited about cool tools or ideas for cool tools. You don’t want to be so emotionally attached to an idea that you make excuses for it and blind yourself to reality. On the other hand, you need to be emotionally attached enough to see it through. It’s a tricky balance.

My take? I’ll take a clear problem and an unknown, or challenging, solution any day over a cool solution in need of a real problem. The worst situation is when you dream up a cool product and then start searching around for a problem to solve with it just because you think it’s cool.

Solve real problems. Don’t create products or businesses and then search for problems to solve with them. Find the problems real humans are experiencing, get excited about them, then solve them. Get excited about the real problems missing sound solutions instead of solutions missing real problems.

It’s a far more sustainable business model as well as it allows you to outgrow the solution you find today. As opposed to desperately clinging to that cool whatchamajig you dreamed up years ago while your market’s long gone.

Okay, how many different ways can I say that…..Oh, and having said all this, I’ve never done either so I wouldn’t listen to me.

To be clear, I don’t know the answer or I wouldn’t be asking. Does buying health coverage make sense if you work for yourself and live in Canada? It’s the math I have trouble with. Let’s say it costs you $300 a month to buy health coverage for yourself and your family.

Unless you’re having a particularly ill month, rarely will you ever draw $300 out in using it. My guess is that we have drawn maybe $1000 a year out in health expenses.

So, wouldn’t it make much more sense for our family to be placing $300 a month into a high interest account to use for health expenses? Obviously this means we’re gambling we’ll be healthy enough over the short term to build a health ‘nest egg’.

It just seems like, based on the averages, even a year into it we could realistically have over $2000 saved for health expenses. In a healthy year, that could be closer to $3000. Again, that’s gambling I don’t need a few crowns this year.

Thanks for a surprising Christmas gift I received, things sound significantly different in the office this year.

Oh how this will change the conference calls…..

Jamie Johnson is an incredibly rich kid. He’s heir to the Johnson & Johnson vault of cash. He’s in his mid twenties and makes movies, primarily about being rich and what it’s like in the inner circle of the obscenely rich. His current project is titled “The One Percent“.

Jamie’s a trust fund kid. He’s part of a family of people who spent a large part of their energies coming up with ways to keep the money they have. Trust funds, off shore accounts, whatever it is they do. People this rich are less concerned about earning money then about keeping the airplane hangers full of cash they already have.

Contrast the Johnson family with Warren Buffett, Warren not Jimmy, currently the second richest man on the planet. While I haven’t heard this first hand, the rumour is that Warren’s stated he will NOT leave his money to his family.

What’s the point? Both Warren and the Johnson’s are part of that infamous one percent who possess 99% of the world’s wealth. In the case of the Johnson’s, they have every intention of keeping it in the brood.

I find it fascinating that Mr Buffet is planning the exact opposite. People like Robert Reich will tell you how the former can impact a society. Societies who feel they can never access that 99% of wealth are ripe for anarchy and literally ripping themselves apart at the seams.

I think I had a point but I’d rather leave it at that…So, no point, or it’s your turn to come up with the point….Any point I find seems to make me feel like either a capitalist or a communist, neither of which I consider myself….

I don’t recall being told NOT to draw on the children.

Hey, whiteboard’s aren’t cheap.

Cathy at HyperStrike sent me a stack of 30 day free trial promo cards. If you’re interested, contact me.

In a conversation with a client a few years back, they lamented the failing of their personal relationships with clients. They complained customers were no longer loyal, that personal relationships didn’t last.

I brought up the idea that maybe people are no less loyal today. In the past they viewed relationships as being between organizations when the truth is that organizations aren’t loyal or disloyal, organizations don’t have relationships. Those people had relationships with people in those organizations. Turnover within those companies has increased, making it rare that you’re dealing with the same individual over time thus making it difficult to maintain those personal relationships.

The client went on to blame some of these lost relationships, or failure to build new ones, on technology. They blamed the fact that they don’t see clients face to face as much or even talk on the phone. They tend to deal far more over email or messenger. Note that every person in the room from this client had a blackberry strapped to their waist and thumbed away at it during every break.

I asked why they used email and IM more and their response was that it’s faster. Some clients even demand communications over email. To me, this is yet another example of a non-decision controlling individuals. Whether they realize it or not they’ve decided to leverage other forms of communication over phone calls and face to face meetings. Why, because it’s perceived to be faster. Is there a tradeoff? Clearly there is, and it’s one they’re now complaining about but one that they either ignored or didn’t truly understand at the time.

I brought up the idea of banning IM and email within an office. Personally, I want my people to have every opportunity to get to know each other. The speed of these communication methods isn’t worth it to me. I want my people talking to each other as much as possible.

What about moving towards a process that says we always want to see the people we talk to? If I need to communicate with someone then here’s my ordered list of methods:

1. Talk face to face.
2. Talk on the phone.
3. Email or messenger, as a last resort.

If it’s at all possible to talk face to face then do that. No emailing a co-worker across the office, get up and go talk to them. If that’s not possible then move on the next, a phone call, etc… Do I always adhere to this? Not even close, it’s an ideal.

I’d have to wholeheartedly agree on Tim’s seven truths of good code…

“Good code, yes, has grace and beauty. But what makes it worthwhile is that it’s easy to work with. It’s easy to add to good code. It’s easy to take away. It’s easy to make changes. It’s easy to fix bugs. And bugs are rare. Good code does what you want it to, usually the first time. Good code is a joy, not a burden.”

“But the projects in trouble are those whose developers do not pursue good code. They may not even know good code. And they neither ask for counsel nor accept it.”

Oh, and good luck to Tim who recently quit his day job.

It’s official. I sold out for a windows mobile device. I don’t think I have a real need for a mobile device of any kind but it all happened so fast, we were young, it was a crazy time, we were all experimenting.

Anyway, hyperstrike is sending me a Dell mobile device in exchange for a 15 minute phone interview, they’re calling today. I think that means I’ll be featured in their November newsletter, this could get ugly. As everyone knows, I really am the poster boy for fitness.