Ulysses Archives

The Collective: Notes on Construction

CB called and mentioned an idea that sounded a lot like the creative collective I had previously bandied about for a novel idea. You'll like it, Yule. Makes it seem like it is a good idea. Lots of questions still remain:

• How will it be organized?
• Ownership, which isn't a small issue
• Legal status
• "profit" sharing, and how these things will be distributed
• Divisions and strategy, which may be handled by the strategy expert, making a lot of sense
• Areas of expertise
• Cross-marketing

And a host of others.

The real issue is that the goal can only be to introduce novelty through human freedom. You can't predict where things will go. You can only disrupt the current stability.

Generally, the collective is a group of high-mode individuals who band together as a company to accomplish individual goals. This mirrors in many ways the formation of companies in the Renaissance. People of a variety of abilities would join together because:

1. It spreads risk
2. They believe that they can accomplish their goals more readily jointly rather than separately

[ Continue reading "The Collective: Notes on Construction" ]

Another 1-5 Inches: I'm Really Tired of Rain

Sure, Yule, April showers bring May flowers, but we've had so much precipitation this last winter that the ground is still soaked. Or as the National Weather Service says, "hydrological conditions are favorable for flooding". 1-5 inches (2.5-12 cm) is a lot of rain in 24 hours. It's not San Antonio's 35 inches (89 cm) in a week but it's still a lot of rain, considering that this was one of the North End's wettest winters on record (in total precip).

And then we're to get sleet and snow on Saturday.

To make up for all this wonderful water, we'll probably have a drought all summer, of course. Lots of rain to make it impossible to plant, and then no rain when we need to water the crops. Right when it's a great time to be a farmer, what with food prices doubling.

I'm sure that you're enjoying your weather.

On this day in history, Uranus Discovered

And middle school science class has never been the same.

Thank you, Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

On a more important front, this week will always be remembered as the week we all finally learned what Ted Forth's job was. (It was in Strategic Sourcing, whatever that is....)

in the inbox: 5 Steps to Stroke and Backup

Because I care, Yule:

In the inbox today, right on top of each other, these two subject lines;

• 5 Steps to Stroke Prevention
• 5 steps to successful disk-to-disk (D2D) backup

Considering that I'll probably die of stroke or an aneurism, and I just had a backup issue, this is probably fated to happen sooner or later. Still, odd. Maybe I should write up "5 Steps to " something.

How about "5 Steps to taking 5 Steps"?

First Baptist Church, Temperance, MI college after Sunday Evening, Dec. 1988

The group came over to my folks' house in 1988 during Christmas break. Not too sure about the date, to be honest. Could be 1988 or 1989. Could be 1987, to be honest. Now that I'm looking at it, I bet it is.

The guys were all friends. Paul Kinney introduced L and I to our church in Chicago, indirectly, by inviting us to a Christmas party he and his wife threw at their Chicago apartment in 1993. We met a newly married couple who were studying at Moody, who happened to be going to a church that had just bought a new building. Well, a used building but new to them.

"Wait until January," they advised. "The plaster will be done falling off the walls."

Anyone who has gone to that church will laugh at that. The last big plaster fall was in 2003 or so, when the angels above the altar came crashing down, debris falling as far as row seven or so.

[ Continue reading "First Baptist Church, Temperance, MI college after Sunday Evening, Dec. 1988" ]

Google Ad: "Loving Family Looking for a Surrogate"

So, I opened up my gmail account, where I get mail associated with some of the high potential people that I run into. There, at the top, where you get a link to (usually) some "top story" on CNN or Wired, was this:

Surrogate Needed $30,000 - www.ThrivingSurrogate.com - Seeking loving mother who wants a family's baby dreams to come true.

[ Continue reading "Google Ad: "Loving Family Looking for a Surrogate"" ]

Chocolate Working: Stretching

Sitting here again, like an idiot, in the South Bend Chocolate Company's cafe in beautiful downtown Valpo. And indeed Valpo has a pretty decent looking downtown, as these things go. There has been some more money poured into it, mostly due to Valpo being the county seat and all the county and city employees would like to have someplace to eat for lunch. There's Jimmy's Cafe, a local diner that gets a lot of the old time city employees. People who remember when there was a big department store downtown. The service is decent, the food hearty, and the prices low. And they only take cash. (Yes, Ioannis, Jimmy's is owned by Greek Americans.) But right now, I'm just having a cup of coffee here in chocolate land. We bought a bunch of chocolate for shipping off to folks in January — lots of birthdays this month in my family — and we got to taste some of it. The chocolate-covered cherries are particularly wonderful. For a variety of reasons, mostly surrounding its position next to the courthouse off which the morning sun bounces, SBCC is my coffeehouse of choice for when I'm working. One of the local pastors, a guy named Kevin who has moved down to Virginia to work with a national group, used to call this place his office. I suppose that he and I had seen each other a dozen times or more before we finally met, about the time he left. But now there aren't the regulars like there used to be. I'm probably the most consistent customer that they have. Which says something bad, I think.