Politics and Healthcare Pisses Me Off

It probably shouldn’t, but lately all the political and economic crap going on has been pissing me off. I watched Sicko a while back and while I’ve never been a big fan of Michael Moore, this one pushed my buttons. This is probably because I was out of work at the time and on Cobra. The best thing that happened to me this year seemed to be that Obama forced companies to pay for 65% of the Cobra costs for people they laid off for the first half of the term of the Cobra.

Honestly, at the time that this happened, I was wondering how long I could go without finding another job. I was really worried that my savings wouldn’t last – MOSTLY because of how expensive the healthcare was. On top of that, I’ll tell you another story that broke my heart over healthcare several years ago.

For a brief time, I served as the Interim COO of one of the companies that I worked for. It was a sort of transitional time when a new company had bought the company that I worked for and the new CEO was not yet ready to assume the responsibility. In that role, I had to obtain new vendors for payroll, healthcare, etc… so I just brought in a PEO that did ALL of those things for us. It was simple, relatively inexpensive, and I needed it done fast.

So, it comes time to switch the healthcare of the employees and the vendor comes in and presents the options to everyone, etc.. and I don’t remember the exact cost, but it must have been around $300 PER PAY PERIOD to cover you’re whole family. We were paid twice a month at the time, so the total cost must have been around $500-600 per month. I don’t remember the company’s percentage of the cost, but it was likely 50%.

So, I’m sitting in this meeting with all of the employees. On my left was a technical support guy that was probably making around $35,000 per year – maybe a little more, but he was an entry level guy so it wasn’t much.

While we’re sitting there, the lady presenting this explains the plan, the cost, and the amount that is being charged PER PAY PERIOD. So, after this is explained, this guy to my left starts scratching his kids off of the forms. I was completely perplexed by what he was doing, and I kind of looked sideways at him and asked “What are you doing?”.

He said, “I thought that the cost was per month. I can’t afford to keep my kids on the insurance if the cost is every pay period.”

I’ve had a lot of bad days, but I still consider that one of the worst days of my life. At that point, I resolved that I would build a new company that would pay 100% of the cost of health insurance for every employee all the way down to the lowest guy on the totem pole.

So, at this point, I’ve done that. My new company BlueWave is paying all of the costs of healthcare for it’s employees, including mine, but I’m still pissed because I’m looking at the NHS in England and most other countries and I’m thinking that if we can’t do that here, we’re really stupid. What’s keeping us from doing it ourselves and covering everyone? The big healthcare and pharmaceutical companies.

Who do you think is spouting the FEAR and DOUBT about national healthcare? They are! Why? To protect their profits and their company. You can’t blame them really. If I was running one of those things and I had never done anything in my life but worked for one of them, I would be scared to death at the prospect. Wouldn’t you?

But think about this: If we just sit here and don’t do anything about this, how many more people are going to “scratch their kids off of the forms”? Can ANY of us really live with the idea of sick people being denied help? I can’t do it.

A while back, I had wanted to form a new political party to try and bring some “regular” people into congress and get rid of (at least some of) the Democrats and Republicans.

I would like to see a national healthcare system. You’re opposed to government run healthcare? You think it doesn’t work? You’re wrong. Plain and simple. We already have it – in the form of Medicare/Medicaid and here in Texas as CHIPS for kids too – but guess what – not nearly enough people are covered by it. Do you think those people that are on it are getting sub-standard care? You’re wrong. Ask some of them – if you know anyone that has it or has ever been on it. They’ll tell you that you’re wrong and that it works.

I’m not going to get into any other political ideology here other than I believe that there are only two solutions to this problem:

1) Elect 100% new congress/senate over the course of the next elections.

2) Eliminate “PAID” lobbying and campaign donations by corporations completely.

My original idea for a new political party was “The Common Party” because I wanted to create a party of common people and help to get them elected. Recently I was thinking about “Vote Them All Out”. This idea has apparently already been thought of and they have a site, etc… but their idea isn’t exactly what I envisioned. They want to amend the constitution to block corporations from being treated like a person – I don’t think that’s the answer – but they’re pretty close. They want to make corporate lobbying illegal at least. I think that would be a good thing.

So I recently signed up for the Houston Tea Party site on Facebook (at the invitation of a friend) and started checking that out, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out EXACTLY what they’re trying to do or how they’re trying to do it. Maybe one of them can explain it to me. It almost sounds like they have similar goals, but it’s just not completely clear to me.

I guess the bottom line is that I’m still trying to find the organization that lines up with my ideas so that I can help regular people get elected to congress so that none of the incumbents win. I’d like to see people sign a contract that they will support universal healthcare, reducing spending, etc… before they are supported by such an organization.

I’ll keep looking and if I find it I’ll let you know.

Social Media – WTF?

So, I’ve been on Facebook for a few months now. My profile is here: http://www.facebook.com/cjonesmo. Now, I’m really enjoying this, hearing from tons of old friends and knowing what’s going on with them, etc.. I’ve added around 110 people to this thing and it keeps getting bigger. Last weekend was my 20th highschool reunion (I know – dating myself here), but it was a blast and really great to catch up in person and then see people put up pics, etc.. on Facebook. Very nice – and now I understand why people are into this.

So, I started to check out some other social media sites on the web and ran across Mashable which is a site that dubs itself as the “Social Media Guide”. It’s pretty cool and contains a lot of stuff on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, even WordPress, and other social media sites that are hot right now.

So I’m looking through this and start thinking about twitter…hop on over to the twitter site and I’m thinking about creating a BlueWave twitter and Facebook account…but I try to create one for me first and – low and behold – I already have one. Guess what? 1 Tweet from back in November that says “Working As Usual”. No Twitter Friends so no-one really saw this anyway. So, I posted a 2nd Tweet – “Looking For a Job As Usual” – which no-one will see either and I just started wondering who is going to want to follow my tweets (or BlueWave’s tweets for that matter)?

I guess that the Facebook crowd may want in on this. I don’t know how many of my friends from FB are on twitter and if they’re not, I’m not sure I could entice them to join to receive the equivalent of a FB status update….which they already get. Am I really going to post to both of them – and if I do, would I have anything DIFFERENT to post on one or the other? Twitter would be a shorter version of the same thing, I guess.

Now, I just never got into twitter myself. I never really even liked the idea, frankly. I’m thinking “Who the hell wants to send SMS-type messages over the web – well, it turns out millions of people, which really almost pisses me off. I’m trying to get my head around it and somehow learn to appreciate it – but do I really need another social media “thing” to have to update?

Well, apparently now you can link FB and twitter so your twitter followers can see your FB status as tweets or vice versa. But if I have no twitter followers (yet), then it doesn’t really do me any good. I guess I should spend some time on twitter adding friends and figuring that crap out too but then again, I’ll still probably provide better information via Facebook – and I have that app. on my phone already anyway.

So I have FaceBook, Twitter, WordPress, and I’m pretty sure I set up a Ning site at one point that I’ve ignored for a year. Now I guess I need YouTube account too so that I can post some videos of my acting and/or playing and singing – but at some point, I’m going to need my own personal portal software to manage all of this crap. Does that exist yet – and can I run that over the web and/or on my phone?

I’m sitting here writing this wondering if (and why) anyone will read this, or want to know what I’m doing “right now” or see my videos or anything else…this blog was an experiment for me to begin with, so I guess we’ll see. The bottom line is that I’m used to having business people ask for software like this to bring together 10 different and disparate technologies, but it seems that we need something similar for our personal web sites now as well. What a time suck – if you’ve read just this one posting from me, you’ve wasted about 3 minutes of your life. You probably should have just checked my facebook status.

Time To Go Public – I’m OUT! And right back in…

This post was actually created back in April and I never let it fly…at any rate, here it is with some recent updates and additions:

Well, here goes the beginning of a new thread – a new start – of sorts. My name is Chris Jones and I’m the former CIO of TRG Customer Solutions (http://www.trgcs.com). Yes, FORMER. I probably don’t need to get into the whole story here , but I can tell you that just over five years ago, (January 12, 2004 to be exact), I became the CTO of a predictive dialer company in Houston, TX named Stratasoft (http://www.stratasoft.com).

Stratasoft was owned at the time by a publicly traded company named Internetwork Experts (http://www.inxi.com INX as we called it, Nasdaq – INXI to be clear). A couple of years ago, INX sold Stratasoft to The Resource Group (TRG) (http://www.trgworld.com). I was one of the few managers who remained at Stratasoft after the purchase and later became the CIO for TRG Customer Solutions.

Needless to say, several years later, I am no longer an employee of TRG as of March 1, 2009. Now, technically, I was out of work for a month before I went to work for another company called FutureView Technologies, Inc. (http://www.futureviewtech.com) here in Houston. That job lasted from April 1, 2009 through June 12 (or 30th depending on how you look at it) and I can’t legally get into any details on that one.

Now, I have a lot of good friends at these companies and I wish them all the best. ‘Nuff said.

So, by now you’re wondering, what have I been doing with my time since June 2009? Well, I helped to start a company, BlueWave MTG, Inc. (http://www.bluewavecorp.com),  to provide, primarily, hosted VOIP Telephone Service to Business and Advertising Tracking through DNIS-based web reports and call recording. It’s growing at a nice, slow and steady clip and we’ll see if this turns into “The Way Out”.

My company, BlueWave MTG, Inc. is actively seeking resellers and has a decent product that works that provides perpetual residual income for both ourselves and our resellers. The fact is, our first reseller has sold nearly 100 phones in it’s first few months of offering the service and is generating a nice income for themselves and for us. If you’re interested in hearing more about this opportunity, then e-mail me. – Shameless plug? You bet!

At the same time, I happened to buy a Ducati 848 motorcycle right at the beginning of June and this weekend, I took the motorcycle safety training course. I had also recently decided to try my hand at acting during my sabbatical and landed a place as an understudy in a local community theater play.

A little weird probably, but I’ve had to keep busy while sending out resume’s and applying for jobs. At this point, I am about to take a contract position with one of the major PC manufacturers for the next year until my company gets big enough to support me…I’m sure this post isn’t as interesting as some of my travel posts, but I needed to play catch up here, so there it is.

If you like 19 hours in DC, you’ll probably like 24 hours in London – it was at the old job, but if I have pics, I’ll post them here and write about that craziness next. Sorry about the DC pics – I had some really funny pics of the white house that I can post now if I can ever find them…unfortunately, that was 3 phones ago, so I may not. I think I still have the London pics though, so I’ll try to post that one next.

Holy Crap! It’s Been Too Long

I haven’t posted in what seems like (and probably is) a year, and it’s time to get off my ass and write something – especially since I haven’t worked in 3 months…time to reconnect with my peeps (and no my friend, those aren’t the conservatives with the mis-spelled signs – any more than the folks over at ACORN are yours)!

Hard to believe, I know, but it’s been – well, I don’t even know how long it’s been since I’ve posted here. I actually feel a little bad about this because, well, I haven’t worked at a “real job” since June 12th, 2009. So, believe it or not, at this point, I really did “get out”. The problem is that I’m about to get sucked right back in.

I recently remembered this blog and thought that I would pick it up again and try to be a little more dilligent about posting to it. I wish that I had captured everything throughout my career here so that it was documented in rich, interesting prose and exciting pictures (believe me, some of them were exciting). Since they weren’t, I’ll give this a try again and catch everyone up on what I’ve been up to over the past year – including my little sabbatical since June, and continue to document my journey of getting out of the rat race.

Unfortunately, I’m legally bound not to disclose some details of the past few months but will try to explain the situation without disparaging anyone or mentioning the names of any innocents.

So, to follow this up, I will write a few entries on the history since my last post and then maybe a few more to explain what the hell I’ve been up to since June and why I’m at least on my way to getting out.

19 Hours in DC

This post is incredibly old…I never published it, but will be trying to catch everyone up on the insanity since shortly….I’m letting this fly because the 6 door room was pretty funny.

Welcome to beautiful downtown Washington, D.C.. Yes, my weekend was once again short-lived. I am in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C. at the Marriott hotel. The flight up was pretty uneventful, as was the cab ride down here. I’ve decided that I’ll just post one message with pics and all instead of seperate posts on the travel days vs. the “get out and see something” days, so tomorrow I’ll take pics and finish the single post for you.

Here’s the weird part so far about this trip: my room looks like a meeting room, but with a murphy bed in it. When I first walked in, I was completely perplexed. First of all, the room was HUGE. It had a couch, 4 chairs, a nice sized flat panel, a bar complete with a sink and 4 stools, and 6 doors. No kidding, 6 doors. So I started looking around.

Door number 1, the entrance, no big deal.

 

Door number 2, adjoining room with the spooky 1-way lock on it.

 

Door number 3, closet.

 

 

Door number 4, a relatively small bathroom.

By now I’m thinking “Damn, this place is huge, it has a bathroom for people hanging out in the living room and the bedroom and master bath must be huge…it must be a suite that I got booked into by mistake.

Door number 5, adjoining room on the other side.

Still no bedroom and only 1 door to go…with a peephole in it.

Door number 6, right back out into the hallway.

Now, I’m really screwed up. I’m thinking “What the hell? I’ve been booked to sleep in a meeting room? The couch is a pull-out or something?”.  I check the couch. No shit, a pullout. Then, I notice this huge bookcase looking thing on the other side of the room and I’m thinking “French doors into the bedroom?” No such luck, but guess what? It’s a damn Murphy Bed.

Unbelievable. So, the adventure begins.

Day 2 – Yes, I know, it’s only 6 hours since this “adventure” started, but I have to at least include a few pics of the White House and Union Station.

Getting Out and My Story – Another Perspective by “Number Two”

Since you started this thing, I thought I would go ahead and tell my current story on my particular journey of finding a way to “get out.”

 

I have been in business for myself for most of my career, although I am working for someone else currently.  Anyone who has owned their own business and goes to work for someone else will tell you that it is very difficult to work for someone else when you have owned your own business (especially for as long as I have).   I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the SOB’s who own their own businesses have no clue whatsoever as to what they are doing, and they have managed to stay in business as long as they have by sheer dumb luck.  Of course those of you who know my whole story might well say “what the hell makes him think he knows what he is talking about”.  Who am I to argue with that?

 

I have owned 2 retail stores (in a partnership and later on my own).  The rest of my business involvements were partnerships with my brother and occasionally others including part ownership of an technology company which also did computer repairs and rent to own, and part ownership of a software development and consulting company.  At one time I was part owner of all of the above at the same time.  To say it kept me busy is an understatement.  Oh…..I almost forgot.  One of our ventures was a coffee shop.  Imagine Espresso sold in a very rural area that most customers have never heard of the types of coffee we were selling.  At least we had good coffee for ourselves though.  Those were the days.

 

I will devote future posts to my past ventures and both my successes and failures, as well as what I have learned in each and every venture, including “sometimes making the least amount of money is the most rewarding and fun”.  I would never give up the days of sitting in the office all day on a Saturday playing computer on-line video games against each other with 1 or no customers stopping in.

 

As I stated earlier, I have tried a lot of different things in the past, all in an effort to make a lot of money at a young age and ultimately have the money and the time to do “what I want to do, when I want to do it.”  I think that is probably the ultimate goal that most of us have.

 

I know a lot of people who are very successful financially who have no time at all to enjoy the money that they are making (you know who you are), and I know a lot of people who have lots of time on their hands, but live paycheck to paycheck, with nothing left over to enjoy life.  The ultimate in my opinion is to either find some in between ground where you can make a lot of money without spending a lot of time doing it, or to get lucky and stumble across some great business that will make you a lot of money in a short period of time or a very saleable company where you can get out with enough profit to enjoy life.

 

So, what are my latest schemes on my getting out strategy?  I have 3 areas that I am currently focusing on, with a fourth idea that I have had for a long time, but have never been able to get off the ground (at least not yet):

 

1.      Residual income

2.      Insurance Sales

3.      Automated Internet sales

4.      Real Estate

 

Residual Income

I have always been a fan of residual income (part of the reason that we started the technology company).  The key in my mind is to find something that will continue to bring in profit month after month, without spending a lot of time supporting it (this was part of the problem with the tech. company, it took a lot of support).  I have found a product that seems to do all of the above, and am working to slowly build a business using this product.  Most of the time and focus on this product has been by me (although there are other people working for this company focused on other things). 

 

In 6 months time, we are generating $15000.00+ a month in revenue and it does not take a full 40 hours a week to manage this service.  In fact, I think we could easily double the revenue and the business could still be run by one person easily, with time left over.

 

The business is a call related program that the users can use to train their CSR’s (Customer Service Reps) to do a better job in closing calls.  It does a whole lot more than just that, but the point is that it generates recurring revenue. 

 

The users of our system love it, and we have had a very low churn rate, with most of the calls that come in being “I want to buy more”.  The few actual support calls that we have had, have usually been issues with the customers’ side of things, and not issues with our service.  To top it all off, we are just a reseller of this service, with little overhead expense to keep it going.  Not a bad business to be in, and it is a program that I truly believe is helping our customers, which makes it that much easier to sell.

 

I could be part owner of this business if I pushed the issue, and that was my initial plan.  Great business you say with lots of future potential!  So what’s the problem?

 

The reason I am not part owner of this business, is that the owner of the company has some financial issues with his other business ventures (which brings in a lot more than this company in revenue and profit), and I am somewhat nervous about getting involved in a business relationship with someone who has a tendency to spend cash faster than he can make it.  The other issue is that he can not stay focused.  He is constantly moving forward with his next “get rich quick scheme” before we have even come close to tapping the potential of the existing business we are working on.  I think the company has a great potential and a great future, but I don’t think that he is not the one to be running it, which again is part of the problem of working for someone else.

 

Insurance Sales:

I recently got my license to be an insurance agent.  My motive behind this was varied, including that I am not certain how long my existing gig with residual income will continue, and I hear that there is a lot of money to be made in insurance.  Not get rich quick type of money, but a real decent living, and probably more than I am making now.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I know a few insurance agents, and they seem to always have a pretty good amount of time on their hands.  A lot of them play golf, which I have always been of the opinion “is a game for people with too much time on their hands”.  Also, in being an insurance agent, you are running your own business.  So, everything I am looking for is in this career, money, more time, and back to owning my own business.  I don’t know if my expectations are being set to high, but I hope to find out soon, and will keep you posted.  I plan on doing this part time, until my other gig runs out, or I start making enough money that I can focus on the insurance comfortably 100% of the time.  I used to always tell people that “I am not a salesman”, but have recently come to the conclusion that I have been selling all of my life, and just never admitted it until now.  If you believe in your product, and are helping people with the product or products you sell, selling is easy.

 

Automated Internet Sales:

I have heard a lot of people say that automated internet sales is a great way to make money and have a lot of time on your hands (check out The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss).  I agree that this would be a great way to go, but I think you have to find the right product, and have to do a great job with promoting your product and optimizing your web site, which is in most cases much more difficult than it sounds.  I have a couple of projects going in that direction that I am trying including http://www.outdoorsplus.net and http://www.everythingbeerstore.com .  My original idea was to partner up with a friend who has a deer hunter club and magazine website http://www.modeerhunter.com who gets quite a few hits and unique visitors every year.  This is a very new venture for me, so I will let you know how it goes.

 

Real Estate:

I have always been of the opinion that the real money to be made out there was in real estate.  I have never given up this belief.  I was in the process of trying to get a real estate business started when I owned the grocery stores, and have tried again since, but for various reasons, have never been able to get this off the ground.

 

I like the real estate business for a variety of reasons including the relatively quick large lump sum cash potential of flipping properties, and the rental aspect of tenants building equity for me.  I also like the fact that the equity allows you the potential to borrow cash as needed to help cash flow in other business opportunities that you might have.  Cash flow and daily management reports is a key component of any business that you will ever get involved in, and I strongly encourage anyone thinking of starting their own business to stay on top of the cash flow if they don’t do anything else.  In any case, I still have hopes of getting into the real estate game at some point in the hopefully near future, when I hopefully have the funds to do so.

 

I will keep you posted as I progress in my latest ventures, and at some point will try to address my previous ventures and the successes and failures of each.  I learned a few things along the way, and maybe you will too.

Getting Out and The 4-Hour Workweek

Not too long ago, I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. This is a really interesting book and right up the alley of what we’re talking about here. You’ll have to excuse any mis-formatting of the book title, or any mis-information about it because this is just my rambling, but this guy has many concepts for generating passive income with little work. He’s done a lot of VERY interesting things in his life. He’s a Tango champion, a martial arts expert, and has done more in 29 years than I’ve done in, well, more years. Check out his bio if you want to know more, or buy the book. The guy is a pretty impressive young man.

It’s been several months since I’ve read it, and I should read it again, but the gist is that this guy has it figured out to have a web site generating income which requires very little work utilizing drop-shipping, outsourcing work (even having an assistant in India) and basically enjoying life. I have to hand it to him, he’s a great example to follow.

From my perspective, getting started is the hardest part and having a job, a wife, and kids and being on the road 40 or so weeks per year isn’t going to make this easy. So, I have to challnge myself to step up to the plate and try to make the time to get something going here.

The biggest challenge for me has always been getting the time to start working on one of those ideas. This blog was a difficult to get started for the same reason. In fact, the few current readers were surprised that I made the time to even write one. But at some point, when you’re couped up in hotels for weeks on end, you have to start doing something or you’ll just go nuts, so here it is.

Now, if I could re-channel a bit of this energy into something that generates a passive income, well, then we’d be cooking with gas…in the Caribbean…on a boat. So, I’m going to go back and re-read The 4-Hour Workweek and I’m going to think about all of the ideas in there and all of the ideas in my head and come up with something that we can do to experiment with the concept of passive income. Yes, I said we. What I’m hoping for is something that we can participate in together to see if we can somehow generate at least $1.00 in recurring revenue per day. Yes, we can split it. I’ll send you all a check for a nickel each if it works.

My next post will be a list of ideas that we all come up with. If I can find a way to post a poll or a vote, we’ll try to see which ones people think will fly. On that note, one of the funniest posts that I ever read was from Jeremy Schoemaker of www.shoemoney.com. The post is on his top 10 worst ideas to make money. You can read it here. I’m sure you’ll be rolling like I was.  This guy is right up our alley too!

Jeremy has one of the top blogs for making money with blogs on the web and is entertaining as well. He’s probably living the dream. Here’s a really good post on making passive income on your website from the ShoeMoney web site: http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/03/15/5-ways-to-make-passive-income-on-your-website/.

I have another nice post coming from one of our group, probably tomorrow, about his story and how it’s probably not about the amount of money. Some of our happiest times were when we were making a lot less, but really having fun doing our gig. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, like I did. In the meantime, keep looking to get out and let me know when you make it and how you did it.

North Bay Part 2 – No, I’m Not Out On My Dog Sled

I did get out on my 2nd day in North Bay and see a few things. I snapped a few pictures of the lake, I ate at Cecil’s Eatery and Beer Society. I had Ribs and Wings, which were very good. The wings were described as “double dusted”. I’m not sure what that means but they were definitely tasty. I didn’t see a whole lot and wasn’t out for long, but thought that I’d at least share my pics with you.

While I’ve always been into music (played guitar starting when I was around 5 years old), the last thing that I would claim to be is artistic, so I’m just going to post the photos here for your viewing pleasure. Several are of the lake, one of the Cecil’s sign which I thought was pretty cool looking. It’s the same as the logo on the web site entry page.

Believe it or not, Cecil was a real guy – our kind of guy. He knew how to “Get Out”. His name was Cecil Shamus Fitzgerald, an Irishman who worked on the Canadian Railroad and who dominated the bare knuckle boxing circuit at night. I can imagine that it wouldn’t be difficult for a railroad worker to dominate boxing. He opened this bar and travelled the world sampling beers and sending them back to the bar. What a life, eh? His story is on the web site here.

At any rate, the lake looks nice. If it was winter, I’m POSITIVE that we could be ice fishing, but since it’s May already, it’s starting to warm up (although the locals said it snowed last week and might snow some more before May is over). At any rate, for my liberal democrat friend’s benefit, I was NOT out on my dog sled when you called and good luck winning the next election bet.

There’s one other pic of note here of “Jokes Souvenirs” which also says “Melrose Smoke Shop”. I didn’t go in there to check it out, but I’m starting to wonder if I should have. Enjoy.

Ice Fishing Anyone? – North Bay post 1

At the risk of revealing my identity, I can’t resist telling you where I am or where I’ve been. Believe it or not, at the moment, I’m in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. It’s around 40-50 degrees during the day here and I can’t help but think that if it was January, I’d be ice fishing.

I’m staying at the Best Western hotel here right on the north edge of Lake Nipissing. I have to give them credit for the hotel here. It’s decent, as Best Western’s go. I normally stay at the Mariott chain, but sometimes I end up in something less comfortable, but at least this place is clean and well kept.

This isn’t my first trip to Canada. I’ve been to Montreal a few times for my former job, but it’s my first time to North Bay. Unfortunately, like most of my trips, I’ve spent a lot of time locked in the hotel room or at work. This trip is very short, so the likelyhood of my sightseeing is near zero.

A friend of mine once told me that I’m a bad tourist. It’s probably true. I’ve been to places that make most people green with envy. Australia, Dublin, Germany, France, and so many others. One of my best trips was to Munich with my wife about 2 years ago. We had a great time and I’d love to go back. On that note, it would be nice to go anywhere with her and our kids instead of trotting the globe for work.

But this is about North Bay. So, in an attempt to become a better tourist, I will try to get out tomorrow after work and SEE SOMETHING that is interesting to write about. I may even take a picture or two of the lake for you. This is beatiful country for sure.

Since this is the first day of the blog, I’m not going to write anymore tonight, but will try to find something interesting in North Bay and write about it before the week is out. If you’re on the road too, safe travels.

Viral Loops, Call Centers, Travel, Plumbing, Beer Pong, Politics, Guns, and God

I work for a call center company. They like to make it sound more interesting by calling it Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), but the fact is, for the most part, we run call centers. I can tell you that I’m an executive of this company in the IT arena and that I don’t want to reveal my identity at the moment for reasons that may be more clear as this develops.

I was thinking that I would start this blog with a couple of different purposes in mind and see if any of it catches on. I know, it’s supposed to be about something specifc or an interest group or something, but I have a lot of interests and some diverse friends, so here it is.

For starters, I am a slave to my job. It’s ok. I can admit it. Many of my friends are too and we’re looking for a way out. Without turning this into a rant, I’m guessing that there are a lot of people out there feeling the same way, so my goal is simple: turn this blog into a series of spin-off blogs, social networks, or products that people are interested in and follow and get feedback on our various attempts to “get out”. I think if we can get feedback from others about our ideas, we’ll be better positioned to be successful. I’ve owned several other companys before. Some of those have been successful and sold and some have been complete failures, but this isn’t really a stretch to want to start something better.

When it’s all said and done, the group of us here just want to start a better company. A company that pays 100% of our medical benefits for starters, but that’s not all. We want a company that gives a damn about it’s employees. We want a company that is fun to work at. More or less, we want to like our jobs again and we’re going to find a way to do it. This blog will track and document what we do.

I have some friends that would be considered experts in a number of areas that I hope will start their own blogs or social networks that are somehow connected back to this one, or maybe we’ll keep everything in one place. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

So, one friend of mine is, at least in my opinion, a travel expert. Name somewhere that you want to go, nearly anywhere on earth and he can give you personal reviews of the hotels, which ones have great showers, great beds, what’s close by. It’s spooky. I travel a lot, so I love to ask him where to stay and what to do wherever I’m headed. I’ve personally flown completely around the globe several times and spend more time out of town than at home, so this kind of info is valuable to me. We’re working at different companies now and don’t talk that much, but I’m hoping he’ll pop in and maybe resurrect some of his ideas about a travel-log type site. I’m sure it would be valuable to some of you like it would be for me to have his info available on the web.

Another friend of mine is a hardcore democrat. Yeah, I know, even spookier. But he has some very cool opinions and arguments about the state of the world, the elections, the candidates (on both sides) and more. I often have some interesting e-mail exchanges with him and I’m hoping that he’ll hop on here and write something interesting on that front. He’s really smart and I’m sure he has an opinion on everything and may, in fact be some sort of expert in other areas that I’m completely unaware of. Maybe he’ll write some other things that I haven’t thought about yet.

Clearly since I work in the call center business as well as IT and have spent my entire career doing it, I hope to have some things to say and to be able to help out some others in this business. I’m hoping to attract some other technologists and call center technologists here to help solve problems and discuss our unique challenges.

My brother is working for a guy who owns a plumbing company; a plumbing company AND a software company. He works for the software part. What a strange combo, but they have a pretty good gig going as well. I’m sure he’ll pop in here and tell everyone about it. They have some great software and services for small service-based businesses that their customers are saying really help their business. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Another friend of mine, one of my best friends from high school and just after, runs the plumbing side of that company and was recently trying to buy it out. The deal fell through, but this guy is hilarious and always that life of the party. Recently he got real into beer pong. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. I know that he’ll have something entertaining to sa y here.

My brother-in-law actually sells guns. Yep, he’s a real-live gun dealer. I’m hoping he’ll write here or start his own blog about that specific topic as well. He’s a real outdoorsman. A trap and skin animals type of outdoorsman. It’s one of he’s things and it makes him, well, him. I’m sure my democratic friend will have something interesting to say about that.

Near the end of this is something called a “Viral Loop” that if I can find a way to master, I can certainly escape my “enslavement”. I just haven’t figured out what kind of “viral loop” that I can create yet. If you don’t know what a viral loop is, then pick up a copy of this month’s Fast Company magazine for this REALLY interesting article on Ning that explains it. Ning has an incredible viral loop going and was started by Marc Andreessen. You know, the founder/creator of Netscape? His blog is here. I’m trying to learn more about this and thinking about ways that I can create one of our own. Doing it isn’t nearly as complicated as creating something that people will find useful, or fun enough to use on a regular basis. At least not in my opinion.

Finally, there’s always God. So, I have a friend who is Jewish, another who is a strict Baptist, another who is a Muslim. I myself am what they call a “non-practicing” Catholic. The reasons for this are numerous and will likely be explained in a later edition, but I would like to write or make a documentary (or find someone interested in doing it) called “Who’s God is it anyway?”.  This is mostly just about the idea that we’re all talking about the same God here. The Muslims may call him Allah, and we may have different beliefs about Mohammed and Jesus but if you go back to Abraham, we converge there. I’m no expert on the subject, and I expect heated debate on the topic here, but I figure if my friends and I can get along, then everyone else should be able to also.

Another old documentary idea of mine was to follow a company from it’s inception through going public. It was going to be called “Start-Up”. Maybe we can revive that concept if this blog takes off and we form a company out of this at some point.

I know this may seem a little disjointed, but I’ve been travelling for several months and haven’t had a ton of sleep lately, but you have to start somewhere. At the moment, I’m far North into Canada and heading back home at in the far south US at the end of this week. If nothing else, I’ll log my travels here which I find to be the most boring thing in the world at this point, but others always seem to be interested in. Just to give you an idea of where I’ve been in the past year: various places in Ireland, various places in England, Senegal, Dakar – West Africa, Manila, Canada, and many various places in the US.

I hope you enjoy this and find something that interests you at some point. If nothing else, I’m sure you’re going to find this entertaining once these people I know get to posting here. I know I will, and if nothing else comes of it, I’m sure we’ll be having fun with it. Until next time.