Chore time

Serpentine,
originally uploaded by Greg Gladman.

I was wondering why people didn't turn to the ancient device of stilts when it comes to doing something productive such as cleaning out gutters, cropping tree limbs, or knocking out wasp nests. I know there is the obvious product liability concern, but it is not as if they are necessarily much more hazardous than the usual alternatives (ladders are especially common sources of injury), and if the kind of work being done is mostly in one place, rather than walking down the street or whatever, steps could be done to help stabilize the worker. Perhaps a harness around the midsection could be added, either rigged up to the work area or with a long third attached as a sort of seat could be arranged to create a stable tripod. The advantage is that the person would be more mobile and could move (with care) more efficiently than one who has to move a tall ladder from place to place.

10 tips for those let go from finance

With the number of high finance executives being downsized from Shearson Loeb Rhodes Pierce Fenner and Smith Mae Mac and the like, it is time to think of ways in which the affected workers can make a positive step forward in their lives. Here's the list I came up with:

1. If you were an experience in Structured Investment Vehicles, get yourself to Detroit and see whether they might be able to use you in a new line of concept cars of the same name.
2. Employers are probably completely swamped with resumes from your colleagues right now, trying to figure out whether all the acronyms are real or made up. Hire yourself out as a resume reader to help filter the good ones from the bad.
3. Contribute a foreword to a new published edition of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
4. Take your skills offshore to bring the home of universal homeownership to the common Chinese citizen. Learn Mandarin first.
5. Don't you know there's a crisis in the health care industry in this country?! Get a set of scrubs on, pull on some surgical gloves, and learn to do something useful, anything!
6. If you are still occupying space in an office, open up an account at Etsy and sell the crafts you make from leftover office supplies.
7. Form a monastic order with your coworkers, roam midtown Manhattan begging for alms and doing good works. Call yourselves the Mad Mendicants.
8. Get yourself to the State of Alaska, where all citizens are granted an annual stipend from the state, making it the ideal socialist paradise. And IT folks: while you're up there in the frigid north, you could make a living running computer datacenters with natural rack cooling provided by the Arctic air, and piping the warm air to heat dwellings. Ample diesel supplies to power the backup generators are available as well.
9. Entrepreneurship may be a good option. See the picture for one concept.
10. Appear as a contestant on a new reality show for mortgage insurance specialists forced to live by their wits and set in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. One challenge could involve defrauding the local denizens of their swine and roots. Attire: formal business wear.

Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in

I know I have been scarce lately, but I swear it is all for a good reason.

It's hard to see when it's all moving so fast,
originally uploaded by milkfish.

In the middle of April, I received an email out of the blue from a former colleague of mine from when I was working software tech support/quality assurance. It had been at least a year since we'd had contact, and he was checking to see whether he had my correct email address. I wrote back telling him that he'd found me, and that things were still pretty much going the same for me since the last time we'd met.

Turns out that the same was not true for my friend - he'd left the old company to work for a computer startup nearby, and was wondering whether I might want to get together sometime. One thing led to another and when stopped by to visit I found that there was a grand total of three engineers from the old company who, along with an experienced financial expert, had set up the new venture to produce something new in the field of computer datacenter virtualization. They were looking for people who they were comfortable working with and willing to entertain the idea of a little risk to join their startup.

It turns out that although I had been fully planning to keep the franchise running for the remaining two years of my contract, the idea of jumping on board a tech startup was just the kind of chance I was positioned to take right now. Everybody there already wears more than one hat: the roles I was considering in the company include setting up the in-house virtual datacenter, technical documentation, and product release management. There would be some travel, too, plus a few more bucks headed out our way than I have seen for the last three years.

Sure, there's a possibility that things are going to come crashing down in a way reminiscent of the last tech bust six years ago, but in my reckoning it is not far out of line as compared with the chance I would be taking by not changing jobs. Although I am just about certain that I could make a go of my current business, it seems to me that with all things considered, it's better to take heart in hand and to switch. How's that for an idea?

So, I've decided to close down my onsite furniture repair business and am closing out my ongoing commitments to customers. I have already started working part-time at the new place while everything gets sorted out, but hope to begin working full-time by the end of next month. I have been really channeling a large share of my excitement over there the last month or so and I kind of hope to be able to spread some of that around before too long.

What matters

The volume of work has been very high for the last few weeks, yet, paradoxically, the money trickles only very slowly in. And on top of it all, this stretch of days with the thermometer steadfastly below freezing (meaning that the dishwasher is out of action) is an extra challenge which brings me up short every time I have to trek out to the van to pick up this tool or that, or to lug all my heavy temperature-sensitive materials into the house at the end of the day. So, it's hard to keep on scintillating as much as one would like.

Angry shapes at war,
originally uploaded by milkfish.

Now and then, however, one finds some random bit of beauty or grace clear out of nowhere, and it's good to pause with one's worrying and slogging through the petty annoyances for a moment.