antipaucity

Shortcuts.

Shortcuts are great.

But only when you know the long way.

Without hard work, the short cut will seem hard.

Passive income seems to fall into this category.

Some people think panhandling is a form of passive income. It’s not. The panhandler works for his money – he talks to people, shakes a cup, whatever: he gets your attention, and tries to make you give him what he wants.

I have a Google AdSense account. I am also an affiliate with a few other places. I put Amazon links into some of posts. From those links, if any purchase is made, I get a small percentage back.

But they are NOT a business.

They’re a shortcut. They’re fantastic – but in the last several years of having an AdSense account, I have yet to see a check from Google. In the past several years of having an Amazon affiliate account, I’ve paid for about three books.

You hear of high-volume sites that make all their money off advertising revenue – advertising may or may not be “passive”. But to maintain a high-volume site takes work. Hard work. Lots of it.

You [generally] don’t magically get traffic just because you are the smartest person in the world (I should know, I get on the order of only a few dozen hits per week! )

You get – and keep – traffic because you have content or a service that people want to use. That they rely on. That they interact with in some meaningful way.

My friend Jay maintain[ed|s] AIMFix. For quite a while, it was THE best (and only) tool which would remove viruses which spread via malicious links across IM networks – dominantly AIM. I wrote a small library he used (at least for a while) in that program.

He put a metric butt load of effort into that tool, and made a little money from the “passive” advertising he had on his site.

Then traffic tailed-off, and so did his AdSense revenue.

So many businesses are started online with the premise that they’ll “make money from ads”… with nothing more of a business plan than that. They fail almost universally.

Businesses succeed when they follow the tried-and-true path of “work-deliver-earn”. And, “spend less than you earn” [ref].

If your only plan for earning money is to park a bunch of ads on a domain, you may make a little money for a little while. Especially if you’ve managed to register a reasonable typo domain (eg “antipuacity.com or “antipauctiy.com”).

But you need to have a reason for people to want to come back. To engage. To use what you offer.

Make something I want. Give me a service I need. Provide me with content I’ll return to.

Or maybe, just maybe, build something I can buy and hold.

In Mastery, Robert Greene continues in the style of his excellent work, The 48 Laws of Power (which I previously reviewed and have been posting excerpts from).

Sadly, it is not quite to the level of The 48 Laws – though it still a good book. Unbeknownst to me, I’ve already been practicing most of what he preaches, starting with finding your niche. Oh, and following an apprenticeship path. And staying creative; and widening your horizons.

This is also, more or less, the path modeled by one of my previous employers, The Shodor Education Foundation through their Apprentice, Intern, and “Post-Bac” Staff programs (they have higher than “Post-Bac” staff, too – but that gets more into the “Master” level than getting to it).

I was hoping for something … well, maybe not “new” – but insightful-and-not-common-elsewhere. Perhaps I’m merely well-read already, but Mr Greene comes to roughly the same conclusion as Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers – 10,000 hours of concerted effort in learning, practicing, and presenting a given topic/field will tend to push you into the “Master” realm (review).

Through a series of case studies and repeated biographical highlights through the last ~300 years, the point is shown that while there are a few workable paths to Mastery – they’re all traversable by anyone who cares to take the time and effort to do so.

Timothy Ferriss’ series of “4 Hour” books (4-Hour Body, 4-Hour Workweek, & 4-Hour Chef) all showcase these exact traits, as well. While presented as “shortcuts for the rest of us”, if read without skimming, instead show that it is only through intense focus and hard work that you can arrive at the “4-Hour” destination.

Is Mastery a worthwhile read? Probably for most people.

Is it worth owning? Doubtful.

Grab a copy from your library (like I did) and read it. Reread it. Blog about it. Skim it. Then return it.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu is one of the oldest texts in the world, and the oldest known treatise on warfare. It has become de rigueur in war colleges, business schools, and other venues.

Most people have incorporated at least part of Sun Tzu’s teaching and thinking in their lives as leaders – whether they know it or not.

It is available in a variety of formats online, so I’m not adding a whole lot of ‘new’ insights, here, more just my thoughts and reactions to the text.

I first read The Art of War online several years ago – it’s an extremely quick read, but it’s very dense, too. I also have it as an audio book (read, sadly, in a near monotone) – and listening to it while driving or at work has been enlightening.

Chapter List

(see alternative headings here)

1. Detail Assessment and Planning
2. Waging War
3. Strategic Attack
4. Tactical Dispositions
5. Strategic Military Power
6. Weaknesses and Strengths
7. Military Maneuvers
8. The Nine Variations
9. Movement and Development of Troops
10. Situational Positioning
11. The Nine Battlegrounds
12. Attacking with Fire
13. Intelligence and Espionage

Other References

Interestingly, The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene covers some of this same ground (no surprise, since his work is based on observations through history).

Today, none of the content of Sun Tzu’s efforts seems surprising: but I can only imagine how revolutionary his work must have been some 2500 years ago.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

You’ve probably been asked that questions hundreds of times in your life – parents, friends, teachers, yourself, movies. It’s a common theme.

For most of us, the decision gets made sometime in our late teens or during college: doctor, mom, lawyer, electrician, plumber, teacher, policeman, musician, actor, soldier, nurse, preacher, engineer, contractor, etc.

But I’d venture to guess that *most* people don’t truly know what they want to do until they’ve been doing something else for a while: I still don’t entirely know what I want to do for a career for the long term – if you’d asked me 5 years ago (as I was in interviews at the end of 2007 – beginning of 2008), I would have said that I wanted to be running a support organization, working towards a professional services operations role. 3 years prior to that, I would have said platform/application architect for flexible large systems. My best guess for what I want to be doing in 2 years now is being an IT/Enterprise data, virtualization, and automation architect for large environments (which happens to line-out with my current title and ‘career path’ with my current employer) – or a US Representative / Senator for my Congressional District / State.

However, the most successful and fulfilled people I’ve met (not necessarily by total ‘wealth’ or accumulated money) have all followed a Blue Ocean Strategy - they’ve invented their own job, or even their own business. That business might not be unique (eg MMM‘s contracting work), but it’s something they’ve decided to do for themselves.

If you’ve not heard of The Personal MBA, you need to learn more about it – start with their list of top business books, and read what you find interesting (and a couple you don’t think would be).

Expand your horizons – browse a good bookstore’s magazine racks, and buy one or two per month that are on topics you know nothing about, don’t like, don’t think you’re interested in, etc.

Visit your local library or bookstore and grab the first book in the history section that starts with an “A” in the title – then go for “B”, “C”, etc. Then do it from some other section of the shelves – maybe relationships, scifi, teen, romance, home improvement, etc, etc.

I am convinced college is not the best path for everyone: there are trade schools, military training, family businesses, farming, etc. I am convinced that going to college straight out of highschool is almost always a Bad Idea™ – at the very least, get a summer job: maybe get a “real” job for a couple years while you figure out what even interests you. Take the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). Take the ACT (it’s a better predictor of collegiate and work success than the SAT in my opinion). If you’re in college, take the GRE either just after your freshman year, or just before your junior year – the content will be most fresh then (if you’re taking enough general education classes and are not over-focused on your major).

As you start to find out what you’re good at, and what you enjoy to do, do everything you can to improve your communication skills. If you do nothing else at a college, take writing classes – take every class you can that will make you write. Communication is the single most important skill you can have: someone who can write and speak well will go far further than one who can’t. Take public speaking classes. Take classes you need to make presentations for, and follow the 10-20-30 rule. Brevity is highly key, and concision will get you much further than verbosity.

Blog. Blog about what you’re doing, what you’re interested in, what you’d like to do, where you’ve been, etc etc. The more you write, especially if you intend for what you write to be read, the better you will get at it. Aim to write frequently if you’re going to write at all – maybe it’s every first of the month, maybe it’s every Monday, maybe it’s every day, or maybe it’s every 4th of July: but give yourself a schedule and stick to it. Write for personal reasons, write for fun, and write for work.

Teach. When you learn something new, teach it to someone else. Whether you teach by writing, speaking, or showing – teach what you have learned. After communication, the ability to teach someone else to do what you are doing the most important thing you can learn how to do. You never want to become irreplaceable. To be irreplaceable is to be unpromotable. Teach at least one person how to do one aspect of your job as often as possible – spread your responsible skills across your team, and two things happen: first, you can take a vacation; second, you can move up (or out) more easily. The more you teach, like intentionally writing, you better you should get at it – especially if you intend for those you have taught to be able to teach others.

Learn. Strive to learn something new frequently. If you can do it every day, that’s awesome – but just once a month will help keep your mind sharp, and help you become even more valuable to wherever you choose to work (whether it is for someone else, or on your own). Any time your employer wants to pay for training for you, take it – you never know when it may come in handy. I am a proponent of the “Lifelong Learner” – and work to make sure I am learning something new all the time.

Review. Don’t ‘merely’ learn – review what you have learned before. You can do this via blogging and teaching, but take time to reread texts and materials you’re intimately familiar with: this is what David was doing when he wrote, “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night.”

No one can ever tell you what your niche is – not really. Maybe you want to be a lawyer – or not. Spend some time to figure out what you’re good at, and what you’d really like to do: shadow people in various careers; interview friends, family, coworkers, classmates, etc.

Life is too short to not try to spend it doing what you want.

The Richest Man In Babylon by George S Clason is one of the few audio books I have enjoyed – and one that I think everyone should read/listen to frequently: it’s the early 20th century version of Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover (another great book).

The advice/suggestions in this book are things I didn’t listen to soon enough – and I’d hasten to help anyone do earlier what I didn’t

If you take nothing else from this book, follow the first “law”:

The first 10% is mine to keep

From a Christian perspective, that should be reworded to “the second 10% is mine to steward” (if you presume the first tenth belongs to God).

This sounds difficult – but if you incorporate that single principle into your financial thinking early, you will be very well served later in life.

Unlike my previous book reviews, I’ve decided to approach The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene in a slightly different manner.

Mr Greene’s collection of historical observations into a neatly-distilled, easily-readable format should make everyone who reads it want to put a copy on their desk – and reread [parts of] it frequently.

The format is highly engaging – and not presented in a manner which demands linear consumption: there are quotes in the margins, unusual font and layout choices for some parts of each chapter … in short, it reads the way a modern collection of fables (a la Aesop) might be published.

Drawing from historical narratives stretching more than 2 millenia, The 48 Laws of Power covers a variety of cultures, nations, and times – but displays those aspects of the powerful (and the power seeker) that drive and define the overwhelming vast majority of those who have held positions of power and influence for centuries.

Why has no one come up with an email routing/sending system that can use multiple at (@) signs?

For example, why not have an author@antipaucity.com@apple.com?

The email could be routed to both auther@antipaucity, and @apple – and/or could force-route mail through the first mail system (presuming credentials were available).

Let the flames spark.

This year’s election results seem to – again – be confusing a LOT of people.

The incumbent presidential candidate, Mr Obama, won ~51% of the popular vote. His main opponent, Mr Romney, won ~48% of the  popular vote.

However, when you look at the electoral votes (the only ones that really matter), you see a different picture: 332 vs 206, which puts Mr Obama’s electoral victory at 61% of the Electoral College, and Mr Romney at 39%.

For some reason, and I have my personal theories on this, civics and American History is no longer actually taught in schools. No one today knows what the Connecticut Compromise was about. Let’s do a little history lesson to bring everyone up to speed.

In 1787 there was no “United States of America” – folks were still trying to figure out what to do with the nascent country that just won its independence from the British Empire. Virginia representatives proposed having a two-house structure for Congress (the Senate and House). However, they wanted both houses of Congress to be apportioned based on population – at the time, that would’ve meant a disproportionate level of influence from the more populous states over lower-populated ones (irony: New Jersey in 1787 was one of the smallest states by population while Virginia was one of the largest: NJ has almost a million more people today than does VA). For obvious reasons, the smaller states felt this was a Bad Idea™ – their voice would never be heard.

The Compromise brought the ideas that New Jersey wanted (a unicameral representation based on the concept of one vote per state) and the one Virginia was lobbying for (bicameral, but both houses based on population) into the system we have today: a bicameral Congress with one house based [loosely] on population^*, and the second a flat number per state (ie, our House of Representatives and Senate).

With Congress out of the way, let’s look at how the President is actually elected. Article II of the Constitution covers this (along with Amendment 12). This is where things get interesting: to help mitigate the disproportionate effect of large states on small ones, each state votes for Electors who will then “really” vote later for the President (and Vice President).

Why is this important?

First, it is an evidence of the fact that we do not live in democracy – we live in a representative republic.

Second, it allows every state to have at least minimum voice in an election – which means that it views every state as important.

Third, it means that pure favoritism shouldn’t be the exclusive basis for why any given candidate becomes President. Being President isn’t supposed to be a popularity contest in the way a beauty pageant is, it is supposed to be a race to determine the best leader for the country (of course, “best” is subjective, and few actually seem to campaign because they want to ‘lead’ – they seem more to run for the thrill of being “in charge” .. but that’s another post entirely).

How are electors apportioned? Most states distribute electors in a winner-take-all form: if a candidate receives a simple majority of the popular vote in the state, they get all the electors of the state (eg a 51% win in CA gets all 55 electors even though 18.4 million of the state’s population of the state may disagree with the 18.6 that elected a given candidate). Hypothetically this shows that the States are joining together to vote for the President rather than merely the populace.

Not all states follow that model, however – Nebraska is a notable exception which awards Electors based on the vote percentages of its population.

Some argue that this system inherently creates “swing states” which lead to disproportionate campaign expenditures and focus instead of spending approximately-equal time in every state.

Personally, I think this is a fantastic system because pure democracies devolve into anarchy and/or split into multiple groups upon reaching a given size.

The Founders of our country were a lot smarter and forward-thinking than most are willing to give credit for. Were they perfect? No. Did they have flaws in the initial proposals? Absolutely. But this is one artifact of our founding that needs to stay.

^{*_{“The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand” – Article I, Section 2. If we followed this minimum today, we would have >10,000 representatives in Congress (2012 US population ~310,000,000)}}

Specifically in the realm of data center management and automation software, but applicable to all other niches, sales people are too focused on this quarter, their commission, and getting ink on the page.

In the broader context of the software companies producing tools / products, there is a general focus of getting to the next customer – forgetting about the ones they have now – so they can use previous sales as pressure to get you to buy, too.

And there is a perennial problem with having “products” which are at best half-baked trying to be shoehorned into a role for which they were never intended, or that the customer really doesn’t need.

For example – the growing prevalence of “cloud computing”. Cloud computing – which is really utility computing, an idea 60+ years old – is a useful endeavour … for some companies in some contexts. On-demand creation of compute resources to handle busy times, testing software, etc is a wonderful idea (all of the *aaS acronyms come in here – IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, DBaaS … what have I missed?). However, hopping on the cloud bandwagon just because everyone else is doing it is dumb.

Not everyone needs cloud computing and services. Some/many may and should employ them, but they’re not for everyone (an unpopular statement at this particular date).

Some companies will not being the “on-demand” aspects of ‘cloud’, and therefore should not have cloud-specific tools.

For example, if you want to do long-term provisioning (greater than, say, 6 months), you are not doing “cloud”, you are doing normal provisioning. If you want this to be subscription-based (like cloud offerings usually are), use a subscriptioning tool – don’t use cloud provisioning software.

Sales is an important part of software development – without sales (of some kind), there is no way to pay for development.

But it is absolutely vital to understand a customer’s environment, needs, wants, and abilities before selling them anything! Does a mom & pop shop with 8 systems need management tools? Maybe…but probably not. How about a company with 30 servers and 100 desktops? Possibly – but “enterprise” solutions will most likely be out of their budget.

Sales folks: learn your customers, become their friend, a trusted advisor – someone they want to write large checks to.

A recent question (“Is it possible to trace someone using Google during an online exam?“) on superuser had me thinking about asking the right question again.

I want to design an online exam for over 1000 students via around 50 computers right after the vacation ends. Now the problem is that I have heard that many students use Google on a different tab to find answers when no invigilator is around.

I want to know if there is a way to backtrace it after the exams via some kind of history or any other possible way.

Here, already, the premise is WRONG!!

The asker is a professor. Sadly, that means he’s likely even more skewed in his bias than most people (after all, he is an expert at his subject). He should have asked a more fundamental question, since he is asking for support, but he didn’t.

Instead of trying to catch a cheater, which is what his question is going for, he should have asked how to structure an exam for open-book responses – many/most of my instructors and professors at college had open-book, open-note tests: and those of us who either knew the material, or knew where to find it, did great. Everyone else? Not so much – they viewed “open-book” as “don’t study”. Personally, I loved open-book tests, because it meant the questions were going to be hard-but-answerable … if you knew where to find the answer.

Mr Professor: please just learn how to structure a good test, and not how to slap your students for doing what they’re going to do when they get to the “real world“.