What My Plans Look Like

People often ask me what I'm planning to do.  I could lie and tell them I have it all figured out, but that isn't true.  I know a direction, a possible target, but getting there is so hard.  Have to love this little picture, it shows my truth.

Pay Every Employee a Commission?

My mother forwarded me this blog posting.  I have written here, that I believe in giving everyone a piece of the company, stock options, or something.  That is great when you are planning to grow your company big, but what if you are going to keep it small?  This article is a small case study about how well profit sharing works.  Everything changes when everyone has a piece of the action, I believe it is the only way to go.

I don't know how I'll do the next company, but you can bet there will be a tie between the company and the people that work there.  Stock options, profit sharing, something.

Of course, your comments are welcome.

Worst Performers the Happiest?

Or how bad management ruins companies.

From the WSJ the other day, Bad at Their Jobs, and Loving It.  I know it is more stressful to care, but the worst performers should be driven to perform or get out.  If you work at a place where this article is true, shouldn't you be looking for a new job?

Twitter is Public - Fire Me!

I was reading about this webpage - Fire Me.  I keep telling myself, whatever I write here is going to be public information forever.  Glad I don't really care. :)

I used to work with an idiot, but he told me that before you send a nasty email, and your finger is quivering over the send key, don't send it.  Wise advice.  Now extend that idea to everything you type on a computer, and you should be OK.

Boom goes my hard disk!

I had all sorts of things to write about, and my hard disk died.  Called Apple, there is a recall on the hard disk, so they replaced it for free.  Great, but if they had told me, I could have replaced it before it crashed and killed my productivity for most of a week.  Would have been easy to take my personal data over, without messing with the backups.

BTW - Apple support is great.  Local computer shop, they get a disk FedEx, replace it, back in your hands in 3 days (maybe 2 if you chase the shop, they can't call, better to have marginal service :)).

Trip report - ACBL's NABC Nationals in St. Louis

My father and I just spent 6 days in St. Louis playing duplicate bridge, had a great time, thought my few readers would like a trip report. 

We stayed at the Chase Park Plaza, it was cheaper then staying in the hotels next to America's Center, where the games took place.  It is a grand hotel, near the Central West End, and Forest Park.  Recommended, at least at the price I paid.

Restaurants in St. Louis we tried, after researching on the internet -
Pappy's Smokehouse - great BBQ, go early.  You can get steak fries, but they aren't on the menu.  Hard to imagine that 17th Street and Bandana's can't be as good, but they aren't close.  We got there at 11:25 and waited for 20 minutes.  At 11:45, the line was over an hour!
Brinco's Mexican - next to Pappy's.  Very good and reasonably priced.
Brasserie - Central West End.  Lower end French.  The salad with poached egg and onion soup were great.  The floating island dessert is just too much.  Recommended.  Take me and let me pay would be my advice. :)
Pi Pizza - Central West End.  Thin crust was pretty good, but not world class.  Would try thick before I started going somewhere else.  Good salad.  Quatro's is better.
Tortillaria Mex - Central West End.  Not as good at Brinco's, but in that trendy date neighborhood.  Food is OK+.
Mango - Downtown.  Very good Peruvian food.  We ate lunch there 4 times and really enjoyed it.  Lunch was $50, so kind of pricy.

It is amazing what a great tool yelp.com is for finding restaurants.  My results are much better then using the concierge at a fancy hotel.

We played a bunch of games, came away with 15 gold and/or red points.  We learned a lot, found there are things you can do in the club games, that the better players at the nationals punish you for... Oops!  :)

I'm sure we will do it again, it was fun.

What I have been listening to lately - The Avett Brothers

I have tickets to see them in Nashville on May 18th.  Looking forward to it.  I like how they switch the lead singers, seamless switching back and forth, higher and lower.  Reminds me of "The Band."

1 in 3 Counties dying off?

Here is the article.  I guess if you are against population gain, this is good news?  Might be time to forget about tourism, and try to get more immigrants to move to Southern Illinois?

Is Quinn trying to do the right thing on the SIU BOT?

We have read letters from the Poshard supporters, we have read about the SIUC results.  I have been asking myself, is Quinn trying to do the right thing?  Let's review -

• By almost any metric, if we are judging SIU's performance, almost all of the upper-level SIU administrators should be fired.
• The reason Poshard wasn't fired a couple of years ago was that he engineered a political event, with the help of the Blagojevich appointed BOT members.

I appears to me that the BOT has been a political boy's club, and not a body that serves the best interests of SIU, for many years.  The political coup they pulled, didn't solve any problems, or help the university.  If I was on the BOT, you can bet that Poshard would have been fired by now.  How can you do as badly as he has done, and keep that job?

Don't know Quinn, don't know his motivation, but replacing the political members of the BOT with people who might put SIU first, before petty Illinois politics seems right to me.  They are on terms, there is nothing that says they have to be reappointed.

What do you think?  Should Poshard be fired?  Is Quinn trying to do the right thing?  Feel free to comment anonymously.

Bitter Pill - Time Magazine looks at US Health Care

60% of US bankruptcies are from health care costs!  Time Magazine's cover story this week analyzes 7 bills and sees where the money goes.  It makes me so sad, it is so broken.

The 13 Things You Should Never Say At Work

My pet peeve is "No Problem."  Worth a read.

Just Saw "Traces" at Shryock - Fantastic!

I always had season tickets to all the shows at Shryock, but not with it this year.  Went on a whim to this show.  Got a good single ticket, at the last minute.  What a great show.  Tip of the hat to the performers and the Shryock folks that booked it.  Need to figure out what is coming and get tickets.  What a blast.

Everything is on the Internet somewhere, so here is a little sample of what you missed -

From the Joke email pile

Southern Illinois in the winter, 55 degrees yesterday and 37 now?  Just got this a few minutes ago -

I get this poem every winter & every winter I love re-reading it.
It's a beautiful poem and very well written.


A poem by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

SHIT
ITS COLD

The End.

Sitting On Top - my buddies claimed that Wendler was a great Chancellor?

I was sitting with the good old boys at lunch a couple of weeks ago, and one guy showed up late.  He sat down and ordered, he always gets a Reuben sandwich, which is good at Quatro's.  Not long after ordering, he announced that Walter Wendler was a fine Chancellor of SIUC and he doesn't know why he doesn't still hold the job.  There were some nodding heads from other people, but I was shocked at his opinion.  I announced, in my typically shy way, "I thought that Wendler sucked."

After the torches were extinguished and the pitch forks put away, we started to talk about why we thought what we thought.  Their argument was that Wendler is a Christian Conservative, a gentleman, a fine fellow, a man of well measured thought and excellent manners.  My argument is that Wendler, as leader of SIU had a simple job, that was to write the master plan, man the bully pulpit to support that plan, and try to steer the bureaucracy that is the SIU administration to have the best results possible.

So, I asked my friends, "did any of you believe that Southern at 150 was a good idea, or even possible on the day it was published?"  The answer all around was no, everyone knew that Southern at 150 was rubbish.  So, Wendler was a terrible Chancellor and I think they now agree.  Still a man you would be happy to call your friend, but who cares?

There are two reasons I write about this now, first, I see the new Chancellor has thrown Southern at 150 into the trash (where it has always belonged) and is starting again.  Don't know if she will write a plan that is possible, that the people who work at SIU might support, but it can't be much worse then Southern at 150.  Second, I found an old DE article about my blog yesterday.  From the end of the article -

"He may be one of those people who wants to keep it the way it was 20 years ago," Wendler said.

 I have to admit, yes Uncle Walt, I wish SIU was as good as it was 20 years ago.  I wish the Football team was playing in the old stadium, and that money had been spent on the mission of the University.  I wish the enrollment was as high.  I wish the standards for grades were as high.  I wish the students were that skinny.  I wish the graduates were as employable.

I have written here about my failures, and I'm going to write more about success and failure.  In Carbondale, SIU is the big fish and this is how you make a big fish fail.  I don't see Poshard doing better, but maybe Cheng will?

Of course, your comments are welcome.

Wow, those guys are big

Caught this article about Yao Ming (retired NBA center) and JJ Watt (NFL Defensive Player of the Year, 6'-5" tall and 295 lbs) meeting.  It is amazing how big Ming is.  I'm 7" and 120 lbs smaller then Watt, and he looks like a child.

SIU is failing - a suggestion, follow the money.

I have written about SIU Carbondale in detail, in the past.  I'm not planning to start dealing with them (much), but a little comment.  If you spend all your money on fast food and milk shakes, you are going to get fat.  If you spend all your money on drugs and booze, you are going to get stupid.  If SIU spends all its money on football stadiums, basketball arenas, and administration buildings, they are going to lose students.

Research universities are about teaching students and research, not about sports and administration.  As soon as SIU starts spending their free money on the things that actually drive their business, things should start to turn around.  I'm not expecting it, until Poshard is fired/quits to explore running for governor, but maybe then they will stop messing around and do what is right for the "University?"  You can always hope.

Of course, your comments are welcome.

Comments, I forgot about them.

In the old days, when I had hundreds of readers, I got lots of comments.  Lots of good stuff in the archives of the blog, I had forgotten until I reviewed it a couple of days ago.  Now that no one is reading, I get a comment anyway.  As you know, if you see it pulled out, I'm going to make fun of it. :)

Talking about an old post on the American Tap the commenter says -

Sorry man...I call your bluff. It is now 2013 and nothing has been done to fill this "hole". Local shops like Booby's and El Greco are gone...You also forgot to mention Brad's relationship with henery's daughter. Kinda crazy but the only reason I saw this post was somebody told me Henry has been released on bond...What a scumbag!!! 

As my now, 6 year old post says, it was the right thing to buy the American Tap and take it down.  Booby's died the death of a burned out owner, with no clue how to make a decent sandwich, or to several better competitors in their market space (you can choose which story you like).  El Greco's is closed today because the owner got an offer to sell the building he couldn't refuse.  I'm expecting it to reopen soon.

Brad and Henry's daughter?  He should be so lucky.  She is cute and the story is she is smart and nice too.  I hear nothing about them being a couple.  I know it is crazy, but I feel story for Henry.  Sounds like a juror broke the rules and cheated him of a fair trial.  Don't know if he gets off if the rules aren't broken, but that isn't the way the US Court System is supposed to work.  If he is found innocent on retrial, he isn't getting those years in prison back.

Back to the idea of restaurants closing - who cares?  Service businesses come and go.  We should cry about SIU losing students and factories closing.  There will always be a better restaurant opening and killing off the old places.  That is capitalism and it is a good thing.  I'm good with the American Tap land being empty, when it is needed, someone will buy it and build.  That is capitalism at work.

A thought about raising a daughter

My oldest child is my only daughter, she is off at college doing her thing.  I guess we all miss our children when they move away, and I miss seeing her.   I remembered that when she was very young, maybe 3, I decided that I would going to play only female singer/song writers for her in the car.  Let creative women be the soundtrack of her childhood.  Since I drove her around a lot, headed toward half the rides before she was 8, and most everyday for the next 8 years after, she heard the songs I programmed for her constantly.  There was a revival of pop/rock woman singer/songwriters in those years, and we listened to many of them.

The day she turned 13, I picked her up from the Rec Center after swim practice and played her a male group - The Who's Greatest Hits.  She said, "this is really good, did you just get it?"  She didn't know that in my 6 CD changer, I kept a CD just to play for her.  I told her the truth, I had owned it for years.

I had seen this Funny or Die bit before, but I recently stumbled on it again.  Reminds me of Susan Boyle, but that was a real surprise.  We listened to Jewel quite a bit, and this whole Karaoke gag reminded me of those days.  We saw Jewel in concert, and she really can hit all those notes every time.  The Who song I played for her first was "Won't Get Fooled Again," that is good stuff too.  Funny, once my daughter didn't drive around with me anymore, I stopped listening to the collection of women singers.  Makes me wonder if I would still like them.

Often you do the right thing, the result is good, but no one knows what or why you are up to.  You just do it, knowing that the result might or might not be related to your acts.  You don't do it because you want to be thanked, but to make the world better.  Children make it so easy to do the right thing for their benefit, much harder to reach out to others in the same unselfish way.  Maybe, we should be trying harder to act unselfishly, for the greater good?

Undercover Karaoke with Jewel from Jewel     

facta, non verba

I recently found my old iPod Shuffle in the bottom of a moving box.  It was something I took to the gym with me, several times a week, for a few years.  It looks pretty beat up in the picture, but it works fine.  It was still clipped on the very robust headphones that are required to survive the gym 5 days a week.  I had forgotten the quote on the back of this iPod, "facta non verba" or Deeds, Not Words.

As I start my second tour though Carbondale, attempting to help with economic development, I need to remember this lesson.  Everyone can talk, only a few people do.  That is my goal, to do something good.  It wasn't that I didn't try last time, I just didn't succeed.

As I start thinking about starting a company again, there is a little tingle of excitement, of danger, of possibility.  Unfortunately, those are only words, the deeds to make it go are much harder to come by.

Of course, your comments are welcome.

Local Company goes KickStarter.com

Grit, a new headphone company based in Southern Illinois, has launched on KickStarter.com.  My ears don't work with those ear plug things anymore, but I think I might buy one anyway.

Take a look.