A Few Random Thoughts

• The small business has taken a lot of time in the last couple of weeks.  Our part-time person turned in her notice.  That's a good move for her and not so good for us but like most businesses it all comes down to managing your most valuable resource, that being your employees (or you if that's are there is).  Leveraging the time and knowledge for the demands of the day and the strategic demands of tomorrow requires discipline.
• Although the 27-year gig was all in IT and the eleven years before that were also in IT my home computing environment has always been a bi shaky.  Everything worked and there have been no major data losses.  It's simply that system performance lagged a bit, font management was quirky, etc., etc.  Several changes have been made in storage, backup and printing.  Not that it matters but I use www.mozy.com and www.backblaze.com for backups.  On the less than optimal configuration platform we had adequate printers in the office but you had to get the files to the he direct attached PCs.  Now I've implemented wireless printing which is more about catchup than anything else.  There was another wireless printer that's been sitting in a box on the floor for three or four years, long enough that it's probably just good for donating rather than implementing.  Everything has it's time.
• On the art platform there have been a few projects.  Austin Kleon, a young guy, an artist, who's captured quite a following in the social media world offers the position that all art is theft; there are few
  
  original ideas.   This afternoon I dug into www.youtube.com.  For a number of reasons the 1970s are a bit unclear so I enjoyed the Grateful Dead doing Stairway to Heaven and The Immigrant Song and then chased the chainsaw art world.  I gravitate to the folk art world because I like quirky.  I'm going to steal another artists words about fold art..."Folk art is just short of fine art.  It lets the viewer finish the piece (in their head and find a place for it)."  Surprise.  That's not theft, simply my re-wording of someone else's idea.  If you want correct colors, textures, proportions and technique, a piece of fine art you should just go to art school.  This is a different route.
• Re-training & re-work.  This next week I'm going to make a couple of commitments on the re-training front, focusing on a couple of technical certifications that would allow some short-term consulting.  A large national company about a mile from home continuously hires in those categories.  It's walking distance and now in my post-C-Level career I would not have to be concerned with politics or managing people.  I'll schedule a meeting or two w/ my outplacement guy, harass him about his unfinished book, make excuses for mine and start to wrap that relationship up.
• In the database world data does not normally go away.  Deleting a record simply marks it as deleted.  Most often, especially in this day and age of unlimited storage, it's still there.  Everything you've every done or looked at on the internet is probably recorded and while not necessarily easily connected with
  
  you,  some sort of security group could put is all together.  Trees, this fall, have been beautiful.  As the leave have been deleted I'm reminded of the form and shape of trees, hidden for five or six months.  For the next two days I'm going to be changing the form of a couple of oak trees that have fallen during the summer.  This has been going on for thirty-one years, my changing of standing trees to not-standing trees.  In one sense they remain standing.