MichaelDLilly.com

Dude: hey man, whats up.

Duuuuuuuude: MAN me too!

duUude: come on man!

dude dude: would you shut up and listen to me

-dude- : Jim Lenon spit out of the car into the wind, you are behind him and your window is down.

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What is it about working 16 hours that just hurts into your bones…?

I couldn’t hardly peal myself out of bed this morning.

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What a flipping week.

But who would I be to complain, ’twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.’

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6:30 – pull into work, bearing I replaced a week and a half ago in my Explorer blows out.

6:50 – realize I left my power cable for my laptop at home

7:15 – Dad explains his morning is sucking pretty bad too, we agreed we were not jealous of the other’s situation.

7:45 – I see that what I stayed till 6 last night to do didn’t work.

8:00 – say screw my blood pressure, had a small cup of coffee and a muffin.  Coffee was bueno, the muffin was blue berry and awesome.

9:30 – Di’s phone won’t take calls.

10:00 – I ask Steve if his birthday wish was for Murphy to give me some crap.  He says no, but that he did go to REEEEEEED Robin – hummmmmmmm.

10:05 – I thank God that even though today is kind of in shambles I am still amazingly in a good mood.

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Mike: magic 8 ball will I be home before 8:30 tomorrow?

8 ball: cannot predict that now.

Mike: are you sure?

8 ball: as I see it, yes.

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True story.

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Steve’s drivers license is now yet another year older then he acts

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Fed and watered after a looking day… Sprawled out on the couch with the wifey… Cool breeze through the window…. Advil dulling the headache… I am doing just fine

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Guy Kawasaki (not Robert Kiyosaki), published an article I found very interesting, perhaps motivating even.  Here is the article, check the site for the others he has written in this series.

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Monday, August 18, 2008

Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur.

1. Focus on cash flow. I understand the difference between cash flow and profitability, and I’m not recommending that you strive for a lack of profitability. But cash is what keeps the doors open and pays the bills. Paper profits on an accrual accounting basis is of no more than secondary or tertiary importance for a startup. As my mother used to say, “Sales fixes everything.”
2. Make a little progress every day. I used to believe in the big-bang theory of marketing: a fantastic launch that created such inertia that you flew to “infinity and beyond.” No more. Now my theory is that you make a little bit of progress every day–whether that’s making your product slightly better, increasing your skill in one small way, or closing one more customer. The reason the press writes about “overnight successes” is that they seldom happen–not because that’s how all businesses work.
3. Try stuff. I also used to believe that it’s better to be smart than lucky because if you’re smart you can out-think the competition. I don’t believe that anymore–this is not to say that you should strive for a high level of stupidity. My point is that luck is a big part of many successes, so (a) don’t get too bummed out when you see a bozo succeed; and (b) luck favors the people who try stuff, not simply think and analyze. As the Chinese say, “One must wait for a long time with your mouth open before a Peking duck flies in your mouth.”
4. Ignore schmexperts. Schmexperts are the totally bad combination of schmucks who are experts–or experts who are schmucks. When you first launch a product or service, they’ll tell you it isn’t necessary, can’t really work, or faces too much competition. If you succeed, then they’ll say they knew you would succeed. In other words, they don’t know jack shiitake. If you believe, try it. If you don’t believe, listen to the schmexperts and stay on the porch.
5. Never ask anyone to do something that you wouldn’t do. This goes for customers (“fill out these twenty-five fields of personal information to get an account for our website”) to employees (“fly coach to Mumbai, meet all day the day the arrive, and fly back that night”). If you follow this principle, you’ll almost always have a good customer service reputation and happy employees.

I hold these truths to be self-evident and hope you can use them to kick butt and change the world.

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I think my favorite point was:  Try stuff, as the Chinese say, “One must wait for a long time with your mouth open before a Peking duck flies in your mouth.”

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Friday night: wasted trying to fix my blog which is still a little in shambles.

Saturday morning: ordered Nate a new mac.  Remoted my Brother-in-law’s new mac to get things set up for him, more to do on that still.  Strike up a conversation with Martine @ LCC who was an interesting fellow and quite talkitive.

Saturday noon’ish: split for the Great Wooded North.

Saturday approx 2 pm: Mike and Di arrive at awesome cottage near Higgins Lake, to a downpour with trimmings of thunder.  Mike and Di realize they (mostly Mike) left bathing suits in Mason.  Mike proceeds to get soaked by the rain…twice…  Watch Jim and his in laws load the boat, again in the rain.  Once back to cottage after about a half hour rain stops.

Saturday evening: boat ride, because the rain stopped silly.  A very good time indeed.

Saturday night: games and cake, with two horrible rounds of “happy birthday” to Jim Lenon.  Followed by a fun night of Sequence and Apples to Apples.

Sunday morning: buy swim suit for Mike, docked boat, Lenon boys swam, played some catch, yada yada.

Sunday afternoon: parted ways w/ the hosts.  Went to West Higgins Lake dirtbike trail, TONS of good memories there.  Di and Mike went for a walk down the trail a ways.

Drive home, uneventful and smooth.

Mix copious amounts of food in there and you have the weekend in a nutshell.  It was a GREAT time!

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Someone from my union just created a dummy account on gmail and sent a pretty honest evaluation of my Union Board to the entire union.  Some of the points good, others perhaps a little silly, some that I disagreed with.  But ultimately it will be for the good, basically it was begging for more transparency from our board, which we do not have for sure.

Its funny, I dislike politics.  But we are all surrounded by politics, to the point of practically swimming in the mediocrity.  Sad but true.  Given the election coming up, the letter from my fellow union member made me think.  They renewed my sickness, my disdain for the puppet masters.

Its a good thing God tells us to respect our leaders, because he knew if he didn’t tell us to there is hardly a chance we would have done it on our own…

Tags: Politics, Union, Work.