One of the things I enjoy about the blogging world is finding book reviews and other suggested reading lists on Mormonism and Mormon Studies. Over the years I’ve found a few (okay, several) and I would like to share them with you.

12 Question for Armand Mauss, part two, by Greg Call at Times and Seasons, April 27, 2004.
Yes, this one is from five years ago, which is ancient history in blogtime. Here, sociologist Armand Mauss is asked about “essential texts” for Mormonism. Check out question 12.

Four books to understand Mormonism by J. Stapley at By Common Consent, December 7, 2005.
An interesting challenge to select four books that collectively cover the most topics in the least amount of pages. Don’t forget to check the comments for more suggestions.

Stop Reading Blogs!! by Kristine at By Comment Consent, June 20, 2007.
Regardless of what prompted this classic post, the author suggests at least five books on Mormonism aimed to improving the quality of online discourse. Check the comments for more suggestions.

Episode 11: Our Favorite Books on Mormonism by John Dehlin at Mormon Matters, August 20, 2007.
Want a break from reading about books? Listen to this podcast where John Dehlin, J. Nelson-Seawright, David King Landrith discuss their faves.

LDS Theological Methodology by Clark Goble at Mormon Metaphysics, December 31, 2008.
One of my favorite lists is a bibliography of works related to Mormon theological method. This is a useful place to go if you are seriously interested in tackling the intractable question: “What is theology in Mormonism?”

Mormon Studies on a Budget? by Kaimi Wenger at Times and Seasons, June 23, 2009.
This hypothetical, as the name suggests, addresses the reality that often our reading eyes are too big for our financial stomachs. “[H]ow should someone on a limited budget begin to explore Mormon studies?” Be forewarned—this reading list is not for the fainthearted.

Recently Published and Forthcoming Books on Mormon History, November 2009 Edition by Jared T at the Juvenile Instructor, November 30, 2009.
The title says it all.

2009 Christmas gift book guide by J. Stapley at By Common Consent, November 20, 2009.
You might still have time to get that perfect gift for that special someone. Here are J. Stapley’s choices. Each book is introduced with text and accompanying image.

My 10 Most-Read Books From Deseret Book by Matt W. at New Cool Thang, December 11, 2009.
Matt decides to show his love for the little book company that seems to have taken some heat this winter season. Included in Matt’s list are books guaranteed to warm that Mormon soul.

I’m sure I’ve missed other lists and I didn’t include reviews on single books, but this should keep anyone occupied for years to come.

His bio per Morningstar: Pat Dorsey, CFA, is Director of Equity Research for Morningstar and author of The Little Book that Builds Wealth and The 5 Rules for Successful Stock Investing.

Book URL on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471686174/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

Overview:

This book is an excellent intro-level handbook for equity investing newbies. The financial analysis segments are a bit too basic for most entry-level investment bankers and research analysts, but his clear explanations of basic equity and financial statement analysis is perfect for the aspiring single stock equity investor. His suggested investing style is pretty much a by-the-numbers Morningstar approach that advises buying shares of companies with competitive economic moats at prices that provide attractive investment returns and acceptable margin of safety (pseudo Warren Buffett style value investing). The book does a good job of explaining what an economic moat is and why it’s important, and lays out some basic rules of thumb that investors can use to identify possible moats. Anyone who’s read their Michael Porter or received their MBA probably won’t find many new ideas on competitive analysis in this book, but the book’s target audience probably doesn’t have that background. Since I like the idea of helping “the little guy” out when it comes to making it easier to succeed at investing (and I read nearly every darn investing book anyone recommends to me), I’ve gone through the book and summarized a bunch of the key takeaways. My notes aren’t comprehensive and don’t cover every chapter in the book, but they probably can help you decide if you should buy the book to explore these issues in further detail.

General/miscellaneous notes:

• “Great companies create wealth, and as the value of the business grows, so should the stock price in time.”
• None of the truly exceptional managers spend time thinking about what the market will do in the short-term.

• Always build-in a margin of safety into all of your investments. You might unintentionally overestimate future prospects for a company. You should have a larger margin of safety built-into investments that are shakier or riskier due to uncertainty about the company or industry.
• Short-term holding periods are inferior to long-term holding periods: you pay higher capital gains taxes and commissions eat up a larger portion of returns, which overall tends to explain why lower-turnover/longer-horizon investors have better results over time.
• Long-term stock performance is “largely based on the expected future cash flows of the companies attached to them” and doesn’t truly relate to short-term trading action.
• If you make a bad investment and your analysis was incorrect, don’t hold on to the position, just sell it. Cut your losses and prevent a major catastrophe and take the tax break on the loss to shield other gains. Use the capital to find something that has more attractive prospects.
• Avoiding losses is extremely important: It takes a lot of winners to make up for a few big losers. A stock that’s down 50% has to then appreciate 100% to get back to flat.
• “The four most expensive words on Wall Street are ‘It’s different this time.’”
• Going against the grain (being contrarian) takes courage, but it can be rewarding. Think for yourself and try to find good bargains based on value versus price. Look at areas of the market (industries, companies) that are out of favor instead of looking at the hottest sector/stock according to the herd/press/public.
• Don’t time to try the market. ZERO funds that Morningstar follows has consistently been able to “time the market” so it’s highly unlikely that you can do it.
• Don’t try to buy ahead of “positive news flow” or “strong relative strength” because it’s speculation based on what MIGHT be instead of what WILL be.
• Cash flow is more important than earnings. Accounting earnings do not equate to cash that the company spends or receives.
• Look at FCF margin to figure out what % of each dollar of sales (on average) the company is able to turn into actual cash that the company generates in profits that are truly “free” for management’s capital allocation decisions.
• His general rule of thumb: he considers FCF margins of 5%+ indicative of a company that could be a cash flow machine.
• He states that “Academic research suggest that a firm’s strategy is ROUGHLY TWICE as important as a firm’s industry when it’s trying to build an economic moat.” [Emphasis added]

Economic Moats:

• Moat describes a firm’s competitive advantage, the moat keeps competitors from attacking a firm’s profits.
• The most profitable firms attract competition, which is why the vast majority of companies see their profitability regress to the mean. They become less profitable over time due to competition (without a competitive advantage and a wide moat).
• Moats allow a small number of companies to post above-average profitability for long periods of time, which can make them superior long-term investments.
• Companies that succeed historically rarely perform well in the future b/c success attracts competition.
• Competitors try to offer a better product (which steals away your customers and erodes market share) or they offer lower prices (which also hurts your market share and hurts industry profitability).
• Two key aspects of an economic moat: depth and width. Depth = how MUCH profits can a company generate using their economic moat. Width = how LONG can a company sustain above-average profitability. Dorsey correctly notes that just being able to segment the duration of a company’s CAP into “a few years, several years, and many years” is extremely helpful in terms of thinking about a company’s prospects over time.

Steps to analyze a company’s economic moat:

1. Evaluate returns on capital over time to see if the company can consistently generate profits that are acceptable and in excess of their cost of capital to create and maintain their enterprise. He considers consistent ROEs of 15%+ indicate a possible economic moat.
2. Evaluate the company’s competitive situation in terms of the industry, its competitors, and what the company does that keeps competition away. Ask why competitors aren’t stealing away customers and why couldn’t a competitor charge a lower price and succeed? Do customers accept price increases, and how often and how large? What value does the product offer the customer? Why use one company’s product and not a competitor’s? Are industry sales generally increasing or is the industry in decline? Are firms consistently profitable or is profitability cyclical? How concentrated is an industry in terms of number of competitors or the influence of key competitors? How profitable is the average industry participant?
3. Estimate and evaluate a company’s CAP (competitive advantage period), which is how long a company can fend off its competitors.

Methods to create a sustainable competitive advantage:

1. “Creating real product differentiation through superior technology or features” and offer customers the best product they can find. The best product usually enables companies to charge customers a premium price, which enables solid profitability. However, Dorsey notes that it’s very difficult to continuously beat out competitors by always having the best product, and it’s expensive to do so, so very few firms can use the “better mousetrap” strategy to create long-term excess profitability.
2. “Creating perceived product differentiation through a trusted brand or reputation” that motivates customers to pick the company’s product faster or more easily. He cites Tiffany jewelry as an example: the famous blue box allows them to charge huge premiums for products that can be reproduced identically from a quality perspective and yet people still pay the Tiffany premium. Point being: the brands that are actually VALUABLE increase a customer’s willingness to pay an above-industry-average price for a product. Additionally, Dorsey correctly points out that some brands are very well established but don’t help a company produce excess profits, whereas some brands actually motivate the customer to pick a certain product or to pay a higher price. I think Warren Buffett’s commentary about Berkshire Hathaway’s business when he first invested in the company is worth reiterating here: Even though Berkshire was an established industry leader in producing suit linings with a large and stable customer base, if they had tried to raise their prices by even a tiny amount they would have assuredly lost business to other companies. Lastly, Dorsey notes that valuable brands are expensive to maintain, and require a lot of advertising expenditures to support (think about Coke or Ralph Lauren).
3. Being the lowest-cost provider of the product by being the lowest-cost producer of the product. This is “an extremely powerful source of competitive advantage” because it takes a long time to develop and is hard to replicate (think of Walmart). In commodity industries like airlines and PCs, products are very hard to differentiate in terms of clearly superior value versus price, which means “low-cost strategies work especially well in these types of markets.” Low cost production advantages come from the development of more efficient processes or reaching larger-scale production that enables lower-cost acquisition of inputs required to produce the end product. Dorsey notes that scale advantages are especially valuable because they’re hard to match because as scale gets incrementally larger the benefit in terms of incrementally lower cost becomes greater (so it’s somewhat self-sustaining). The scale benefit “comes from simply leveraging fixed costs-in other words, spreading the cost of an asset such as a factory across an even-larger sales base.” Clearly, I could have rephrased that to avoid having to use quotes but the author’s words are perfectly to the point. This concept is extremely important to understand: if it costs you the same $1 million per year to run your factory/machine/business, you produce a heck of a lot more profits if you use that same factory to satisfy $5 million worth of sales than if you had $2 million worth of sales, because the “fixed cost” of keeping that factory running is roughly constant.
4. “Locking in customers by creating high switching costs” that discourage them from using a competitors product. Dorsey calls this “possibly the subtlest type of competitive advantage” because you have to fully understand the customer, the sales process, the product usage and life-cycle, and all the other variables that play into why a customer tends to stick with one company instead of using another one. The best ways to create “lock-in” is to make it either very expensive or very time consuming to switch to a competitor’s product, which enables a company to charge more for their product or to hold onto customers for longer-periods of time. Learning and training required by customers for a company’s product creates a lock-in, because the training and familiarity means a competitor has to have a very compelling reason why their product is worthy of starting over with. Three other pieces of evidence that Dorsey states can create lock-in include 1) tight integration of your product into a customer’s business process or their product, and 2) if your product is the “industry standard” like Adobe’s Photoshop (everyone basically HAS to learn to use it), and 3) does a company have long-term contracts with their customers?
5. “Locking out competitors by creating high barriers to entry or high barriers to success” that discourage them from even trying to compete in the industry or raising the likelihood that competitors will fail if they do try. He points out two basic ways to lock-out competition: government regulation that determines whether or not competitors are allowed to operate in an industry/market and patents that legally protect a product from competition for a period of time. Dorsey spends more time talking about the power of “network effects” and how they tend to be a more durable way to lock-out competitors by locking-in customers. A network effect is produced when the more users a company’s product has, the more valuable the company’s product is to each customer. Good examples include eBay and some of the financial exchanges: more buyers and more sellers make the market more vibrant and more valuable in terms of selection, lower price, or ease of transaction.

Some of Dorsey’s suggestions when conducting company financial analysis (for beginners):

• Look at the ratio of depreciation versus capex as a way to see if the cost of maintaining the company’s infrastructure is increasing or decreasing, and it can help spot rising allocation of capital into the business instead of returning capital to shareholders or reducing debt loads.
• Watch accounts receivable and how it changes relative to sales. Is the company booking sales that it hasn’t actually collected money for? Is there a potential accounting issue, or is the company easing its credit/payment terms to try to win new business because competition is increasing?
• Inventory falls into three buckets: raw materials, partially finished goods, and totally finished goods. All or none of them might be worth a lesser amount than the company thinks, or lesser than the value that the balance sheet indicates (although conversely they could clearly be worth more, particularly as it relates to LIFO/FIFO accounting and the trend in industry pricing).
• Inventory is a use of capital. You have to spend money to buy inventory that sits in a warehouse until it’s used in production and then sold, so you spend money before you get paid for a sale. For non-finance pros, this is a very key piece of what we call a company’s “working capital cycle.” The faster a company can buy inventory and sell it to a customer and actually receive cash from the customer, the better the profitability and cash generation of the company. The less time your cash is invested in inventory that has not been sold or has yet to be produced, the longer you can’t use that cash for something else, which is why we call it a “use of capital.”
• Dorsey advises being extremely skeptical of the value of “intangible assets” as listed on the balance sheet. I couldn’t agree more. Because the majority of M&A activity has historically proven that acquiring companies overpay for the companies they buy, the positive value for intangible assets like goodwill is highly uncertain to be justified over time, and it has little “cash” value in the short-term.
• Make sure you fully understand what goes into a company’s COGS (cost of goods sold) so that you fully understand a company’s gross profitability. COGS is composed of raw material costs, labor costs, cost of services to provide the product, and several other pieces. Some of them vary a lot with a company’s level of sales, while some of them might be relatively stable regardless of production volume and sales, which means that gross margins usually do not stay the same as a company expands and shrinks and deals with a dynamic marketplace.
• Be mindful of the difference between the basic and diluted share counts. The diluted share count reflects any stock option or convertible bond that can be turned into actual new shares of the company’s stock, which means that an investor’s % ownership of a business goes down when dilutive securities are exercised/converted. Stock options are still a very popular employee compensation tool these days, and they can materially lower non-employee ownership stakes in economic reality.

Some of Dorsey’s pointers for analyzing a company as an investment and its overall economic prospects: *Note: I’m leaving out a ton of stuff b/c it’s a waste of time for me to type it up, so I’m gonna stick to the more important or less-obvious things.

• Be mindful of the risks and bear case for an investment. What are the risks? What are the best reasons NOT to invest? What’s the PROBABILITY of minor AND major “bad things” happening? Carefully examining the risks and bear case can help you make MORE money if you’re right and the bear case does NOT come true because it can serve as a reference to spot situations when the risk a company faced has actually gone away or is lesser, which might be a great time to add to your position knowing that the overall probability adjusted return is higher.
• Sales growth only comes from 3 sources: 1) gaining more customers in your addressable market or selling more of your product to your existing customers, 2) raising prices for your product, and 3) buying another company to add its sales to your own (inorganic growth).
• Dorsey is correctly very skeptical of corporate M&A. The historical track record indicate that the majority of acquisitions don’t produce gains for the acquirer. M&A made harder by the size of the company being acquired, because it’s more difficult to fully examine its business inside and out. M&A also takes time and money, which means it can be a distraction to your existing business and it costs money to pay bankers and lawyers to get deals done. M&A activity often means the financial statements drastically change after the acquisition is complete, which makes it easier for management to make questionable accounting changes without attracting the appropriate skepticism from investors and analysts, and it also makes analyzing the original business more difficult (tougher to parse-out true organic growth from inorganic growth).
• Dorsey is somewhat skeptical of companies that report lower tax rates or buyback their shares because they may not be sustainable over time. If the tax rate decrease is relatively permanent, I think it’s basically a clear-positive, and if repurchasing shares is a key piece of managements decision to allocate capital by returning it to investors then it’s not necessarily a one-time event.
• Return on assets (ROA) is important to keep tabs on, because it reflects a company’s strategy and cash flow generation capabilities. Companies can either charge high prices to boost margins and maximize the profit the generate from using their assets, or they can maximize volume of production to produce a greater number of cash flows to the company and more frequently “turn over” the company’s investment in assets.
• Return on equity (ROE) is more important to monitor for equity investors because examining the equity portion of the capital structure reflects the portion that is “owned” by common equity shareholders. Companies can issue debt which produces cash to buy assets, but it creates a liability that must be paid off before equity shareholders can benefit from either a firms profits or the value of a firm in the event of its liquidation. That means that financial leverage (using debt) is a key variable in ROE, and is most simplistically assessed by the ratio of a company’s total assets to its equity. Debt is important because it’s essentially a fixed cost of doing business, meaning each year the company has to pay a certain amount of money out to debt investors in the form of interest, and this interest is owed whether the company has a good year or a bad year (and even if a company loses money). That means that there is leverage in taking in money from debt investors and using it to try and generate much more profits, but the big risk is that if profits decline or turn negative then the cost of debt can become an existential issue of business survival. Leverage magnifies gains and losses: it works both ways and raises the possibility of both much better and worse outcomes.
• Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) is the most important piece of analyzing a company’s returns. ROIC reflects the capital a company uses that comes from equity, debt, and quasi-debt produced in the course of doing business like certain types of leases and payment plans. ROIC also measures profits using an after-tax number that ignores the impact of interest on net profits, which means those profits are theoretically available to benefit both debt and equity holders. NOPAT requires some subtle and tricky tweaks (as does Invested Capital) but it’s worth studying if you’re not familiar with it.

Dorsey’s suggestions to spot and avoid financial accounting tricks:

• Watch out for declining cash flow. Monitor FCF as a % of net income to see if accounting earnings are not keeping up with our questionably exceeding actual cash flow.
• Repeated charge-offs can indicate accounting tricks b/c mgmt can hide questionable results or accounting inside a big restructuring charge.
• Frequent M&A: financials get murkier and it can get harder to examine the fundamentals of the existing business.
• CFO departures can signal possible accounting problems, especially if the CFO isn’t leaving to take another opportunity that seems desirable.
• Problems with billing and receivables and payables: watch how AR changes in relation to sales, they should move roughly inline with each other. Keep an eye on the “allowance for doubtful accounts” which is a reduction in accounts receivable made at the discretion of management for bills that they expect might not get paid. Management might be overly optimistic regarding their customers’ ability to pay their bills.
• Gains from investments that are one-time or unusual. They’re usually not sustainable or repeatable.
• Pension problems: if the pension’s assets aren’t of adequate size to service the pension expenses, a company might need to allocate capital to the pension instead of into the business or to returning capital to shareholders. Pension income can also be a problem, because it’s not actual income that’s available to the company or to shareholders, so it can also be an issue. This income is dependent on the performance of stock and bond markets, not a company’s operations.
• Problems with inventory: Overstocked warehouses indicate that either a company is allocating too much capital to inventory or that a company is unable to sell its products the way it has in the past, which means that either the business might face declines or the company might have to discount its product prices to sell excess inventory, which then pressures profit margins.

Some of Dorsey’s tips on investment valuation and returns:

• P/E multiples are not as important as some might think: “Over the entire twentieth century, Bogle found that the 10.4 percent average annual return of US equities broke down into 5 percentage points from dividends, 4.8 percentage points from earnings growth, and just 0.6 percentage points from P/E changes.” The point is, look for dividends and look for growth, and don’t overly rely on changes on company P/E’s when you assess the attractiveness of long-term equity investments. It means you should focus on generating an investment return regardless of what happens with multiples and focus on a company’s fundamentals.
• Don’t rely on Price/book multiples for service firms and only place major importance on P/B for financial firms.
• Examine the cyclicality of a business and its profits, so that you value a firm based on its ongoing results and not the results from one segment of its product/industry/macro cycle. Think about what earnings look like peak-to-peak to assess upside and trough-to-trough to assess downside.
• Cross-reference the FCF yield of a company’s stock versus its corporate bond yields. If the yield of the stock is significantly greater than the yield a company’s paying on its bonds, then it’s a sign that the equity shareholders should expect excess profits to benefit them over time.
• When assessing the value of future cash flows generated by a company, you have to consider the amount, timing, riskiness and volatility of those cash flows.
• When determining appropriate discount rates for determining the present value of a company’s future cash flows, adjust for size (small companies are riskier and have more volatile results), leverage (highly leveraged firms have greater risk of distress), cyclicality (cyclical firms have less predictable cash flows), corporate governance and mgmt skill (trust and demonstrated skill are very important), an economic moat (wide and narrow moats should significantly influence the discount rate), and complexity (the less-certain your analysis is, the higher the discount you should place on a company’s future cash flows).

Dorsey then goes on to evaluate the major business sectors/industries and give an overview of how to look at them, and it’s not worth it for me to summarize each of them because either I personally care about only a few or already know what he’s talking about, or other investors might have different interests than myself.

A story with an ugly ending is not worth the pain, whether in life or fiction.

Author: Greg Shultz

As an IT professional, chances are you read a lot.  And, it’s a good bet that most of what you read consists of manuals and other technical books and articles directly related to your work.  However, you really owe it to yourself read other types of IT-related books.  For example, reading nonfiction IT-related books can help you gain different perspectives on the industry, while reading fictional books about IT will allow you to relax and enjoy the industry.  So as we get ready to close the book (pun intended) on the first decade of the 2000s, I thought I would compile a list of 10 books I think every IT pro should read.–Greg Schultz

1: Does IT Matter? 

Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage

by Nicholas Carr

Every institution on the planet relies on information technology in some shape or form. It is the lifeblood of business and it provides most TechRepublic readers with a solid way to make a living. But does it really make a difference? In this thought-provoking look at the IT industry, the author challenges us to examine the role IT plays in the overall success of business. I highly recommend that everyone in IT pick up this book, no matter what your job is. Everyone from the support specialist to the CIO will find it worth their time to read Carr’s analyses.

2: The Road Ahead  [Available through Onondaga Co. Public Library]

by Bill Gates

Soon after Windows 95 radically changed computerdom as we knew it back then, Bill Gates released The Road Ahead, in which he examined the personal computing revolution and how it was to play out in a future being paved by the information superhighway of the Internet. There are two editions of this book. The first was published in December 1995 and the second was published in October 1996. The second edition was put together so soon because Gates realized that the Internet was changing the world faster than he had originally theorized in the first edition, and he wanted the book to be as accurate as it was innovative.

While companion CDs are pretty common these days, The Road Ahead was one of the first books I remember purchasing that came with one. Not only does the CD contain the text of the book and supplemental information, but it also includes a couple of video shorts – mini-dramas that provide a look into how the technology discussed in the book would play out in the future. For example, a mother and son take advantage of home-based technology, such as information appliances and interactive TV. In another, a pair of Seattle police detectives uses video conferencing, mobile communications, and electronic wallets. When the boy from the earlier video goes to school, we see all sorts of electronic gadgets being used in education, such as tablet PCs and digital whiteboards.

Even though this book is relatively old, it is still a good read. It offers an interesting perspective of the man who, back then, recognized the path technology was on and steered Microsoft in that direction.

3: Showstopper!:

The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

by G. Pascal Zachary

If you’ve been in IT for a while, you remember when Windows NT 3.1 was released in July 1993 and how, as the first fully 32-bit version of Windows, it began to change the world of IT professionals. At the time, this operating system was revolutionary for a number of reasons, including the fact that it was processor-independent, provided a full preemptive multitasking kernel, featured a new file system called NTFS, and possessed many other innovative technological advances.

To create a new version of Windows from the ground up, Microsoft hired Dave Cutler, from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and tasked the creator of the VMS operating system for the VAX superminicomputer with picking up the pieces of what was being developed as OS/2 3.0 and transform it into what would become the foundation for today’s Windows 7.

In this fascinating story, you get a rare and detailed look at the day-to-day machinations that went on inside the walls of Microsoft as the powerful and intelligent Cutler orchestrated the development of the most complex OS ever created for the PC.

4: iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: [Onondaga Co. Public Library] 

How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It 

by Steve Wozniak

Everyone knows that Steve Jobs is now the leading force at Apple, but he didn’t get there by himself. Back in 1976, Jobs and his business partner, Steve Wozniak, formed Apple Computer and began work on the Apple I, which when released was essentially a circuit board containing about 30 chips. To this circuit board, end users had to connect a power supply, keyboard, and a standard television to get a working system. Using a keyboard for input and a television for output made the Apple I stand out from the competition. For example, the Altair 8800 used toggle switches for input and colored indicator lights for output.

In this book, Wozniak presents the story of his early years and his fascination with emerging computer technology and how he teamed up with Steve Jobs and created the first modern computer. Not only does the book provide an interesting, yet quirky, historical perspective on the beginnings of Apple, but it is filled with wonderful techy anecdotes, old photos, and even a glossary of computer terms.

Even if you’re not an Apple fan, this book is a fun read.

5: The Cuckoo’s Egg:  [Available through Onondaga Co. Public Library]

Tracking a Spy through the Maze of Computer Espionage

by Cliff Stoll

Back in 1986, an astronomer named Cliff Stoll took a job as a computer operator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories when his grant money ran out. He stumbled upon and began tracking an unauthorized user through a maze of networks that included hacking into computers at universities, defense contractors, and military bases. Stoll eventually uncovered an international spy ring that was hacking into these computers, seeking out U.S. intelligence, and selling it to the KGB.

As a methodical scientist, Stoll began keeping a daily log book in which he documented the hacker’s movements and methods. To add credibility to what he was witnessing, he set up traps, such as making sure that the hacker had access to the Lawrence Berkeley network where a teletype printer recorded everything the hacker typed and setting up a honeypot in the guise of a fake Strategic Defense Initiative account filled with fake documents that would keep the hacker involved long enough to backtrack the connection to its origin. The investigation lasted close to a year and involved a multitude of federal agencies, including the the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Air Force OSI.

Based on his experiences and vividly recounted with the aid of his detailed logs, this book documents an incredible true story of international computer espionage that is both educational and entertaining.

6: Gödel, Escher, Bach:  [Available through Onondaga Co. Public Library]

An Eternal Golden Braid

by Doug Hofstadter

A deep exploration of the workings of the human mind, using as examples the works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, this book provides a philosophical outlook on how life, thoughts, and technology are all linked together. There are so many different and fascinating ideas presented in this book, along with wonderful illustrations, charts, diagrams, and complex formulas, that reading it is like exploring a foreign yet familiar land.

It is a captivating book, but because of its heavy subject matter, I found it best read it in small chunks over time.

7: The Google Story  [Available through Onondaga Co. Public Library]

by David Vise and Mark Malseed

Over the years, we’ve all picked up bits and pieces of the history behind Google’s rise and its brilliant cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But in this book, which was updated for Google’s 10th birthday, we get the real inside story, because the authors were allowed seemingly unfettered access to historical documents and people at Google — including Page and Brin.

They present a unique perspective on the people behind the scenes as you learn about the company’s milestone events, such as the arrival of the first investor, the development of the Googleplex campus, the origins of keyword-targeted Web ads, the IPO, new product developments, and much more. Along the way, you’ll learn a lot about how the search business works and much more about Google’s plans for expansion of its searchable database.

8: Wikinomics:  [Available through Onondaga Co. Public Library]

How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

By now, everyone is familiar with Wikipedia — the massive collaborative effort aimed at providing the world with an encyclopedic source of information about everything. Thousands of people contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis and it has become a terrific example of what can be accomplished when people use the world wide access of the Internet to work on a common goal.

This book explores how many companies have and can use mass collaboration and wikis to grow quickly and successfully. In fact, the book begins with the story of how Goldcorp CEO Rob McEwan learned of the success of the Linux open source initiative, realized that the closely guarded company secrets of mining for gold were no longer yielding viable results, and decided to share the company’s geological data on the Web along with the offer of $575,000 in prizes to those who could come up with the best way to find and extract gold on the company’s 55,000 acre mining facility. Suggestions based on the data poured in and out of the 55 new targets that were identified, 80% hit pay dirt.

Citing Goldcorp’s success as an example of Wikinomics, the authors go on to provide examples of other companies and describe in detail how these companies employed and harnessed collaborative efforts, or Wikinomics, to grow and be even more successful.

9: Microserfs  [Available through Onondaga Co. Public Library]

by Douglas Coupland

This is a thoroughly amusing story about a group of fictional characters working at Microsoft who feel that life at the company is like being in a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord and the employees as the serfs. As the story progresses, you learn more about each of the characters and how their lives are intertwined with each other, their products, and Microsoft.

Later, the group leaves Microsoft and Seattle and moves to the San Francisco where they start a new company. Living in California is different from Seattle, and you see the characters shed their Microserf skin and evolve in different ways.

10: The Soul of a New Machine  {Available through Onondaga Co. Public Library]

by Tracy Kidder

We all know what a cutthroat business the PC industry is and that the extreme competition that exists between rival companies can also exist inside a company as employees vie for resources and power. This type of competition is more widely publicized nowadays, but it wasn’t invented by those in the PC industry. In The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder documents the internal turmoil that embroils two groups of Data General Corporation engineers tasked with developing a new a minicomputer that will go head-to-head with a new VAX computer from archrival Digital Equipment Corporation.

Along the way, we learn more about the lives of the engineers, most notably a fellow by the name of Tom West, and how he and his team beat out the other group and then have to prove themselves worthy as they grapple with such challenges as making sure that the new system is backward compatible with earlier systems, using new and untested technology, and relying on young team members fresh out of college.

Published in 1981 (incidentally the same year that the IBM PC made its debut), this book won a Pulitzer Prize.  [Source:  http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1209&tag=nl.e124]

A round-up of articles I found fascinating:

• Drive for geothermal power heats up on US campuses (Associated Press via wtop.com): As seems to be typical in New York, the Theological Seminary’s project tripled in cost because of regulation setbacks.
• Building Sustainability for PlaNYC (Policy Innovations): An analysis of the Greener, Greater Building Plan (which passed this week without mandatory retrofits) and PlaNYC as a whole.
• NY Awards $3M to Clean Energy Businesses (Gouverneur Times): Two NYC grant winners are Locus Energy, a software company, and Rentricity, which harvests energy from excess pressure in water pipes.
• Plan Advances to Build Wind Farm Off  New York (Wall Street Journal): The wind farm would be the nation’s largest and could power 200,000 homes by 2015.
• NY students create wind-powered menorah (Associated Press via WCAX.com): Just because it’s entertaining. Happy Chanukah!

Here are a few interesting articles I’ve read this week:

• Bringing Renewable Energy to the Consumer (Green Chip Stocks): A new program to allow New Yorkers to “purchase” electricity from renewable sources.
• Elusive Goal of Greening U.S. Energy (The New York Times): Not specific to New York, but an overall assessment of Obama’s promises of “green” job creation. It’s impressive that Germany still leads the way in solar installations, which was the case two years ago.
• Bloomberg Drops an Effort to Cut Building Energy Use (The New York Times): Facing pressure from building owners, the mayor has rescinded a proposal to mandate energy efficiency measures in existing buildings.
• Delaware energy: ‘Backbone’ power line pushed for wind farms (delawareonline): Ten  governors (including Gov. Paterson) from eastern states have signed a petition to install an underwater power line to connect offshore wind farms. Note that one of the companies advocating for the cable is preparing to bid on an NYC offshore project.

• Fat Families Thin Families: How to Save Your Family from the Obesity Trap by Amy Hendel
• Hardcover: 475 pages
• Publisher: BenBella Books; 1 edition (May 11, 2008)
• ISBN-13: 978-1933771496

Back-of-the-book blurb:  This comprehensive guide to diet and nutrition provides solid advice for families looking to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle.  The four habits of healthy families—Plan Together, Prepare Together, Play Together, Portion Together—and possible integration strategies are thoroughly discussed as well as the Healthy Family for Life (HFL) diet plan, which contains both family and individual food assessments, activity and weight patterns, activity planning, and suggestions for family support.  Providing practical tips for making healthy changes on a daily basis and recipes that are simple, yet nutritious, enough for the busiest of families, this manual is an invaluable reference for those who tend toward obesity and encourage unhealthy eating habits, as well as families looking to reinforce their already healthy tendencies.

She is Too Fond of Books’ review:  You can imagine my reaction when I saw the title of this book – containing not only fat and thin, but also obesity.  I complained about the word diet in The Game On Diet book, “why can’t we use a word like lifestyle, so we don’t reinforce body image issues with the impressionable teen in my life?!”  Well, as with The Game On Diet, Fat Families Thin Families is all about learning habits to achieve and maintain health, not a crash-and-burn diet and exercise plan or ranting lecture.

Author Amy Hendel tackles what she calls the “in your face” title early on.  It’s as if she’s talking directly to me and my issues with those words when she explains that the title is intentionally blunt and the words deliberately chosen.  She’s talking about fat and thin attitudes – it’s possible to have a fat attitude (getting little exercise, eating a high-fat, highly processed diet) and be physically thin; but the negative consequences of that fat attitude are hurting the body on the inside and those negative habits will come to the surface eventually.

So, I got past the title and kept reading – what did I find?  A well-written, easily understood plan for working together with the entire family.  This is not a “you’re the mom, this is what you need to do for  your family” book.  This is a “here’s how you can do this together, get everyone involved, make it your lifestyle” plan.

There are several heavier (more serious) diagnostic tools and charts to determine overall health of individuals and the family dynamic, activity snapshots, family eating habits, and the level of change needed to be made.  These are tools to assess where you are before beginning the plan.  At first glance the titles of the tools (and the fact that some are printed in official-sounding Appendices) can be a bit daunting.  Taken line by line they make sense; straight-forward and quantitative measurements to help your family form its goals.

Hendel proposes the Healthy For Life (HFL) plan, a “whole family approach” with the mnemonic of 4 Ps – plan, prepare, portion, and play (activity) together.  One of the principles I found most interesting (and core to the HFL plan) is the the “yes, no, maybe so” method of categorizing foods.

Each chapter concludes with a Quick-Summary and Tips for Teens and Tips for Kids.  These sections reinforce the idea of a whole-family plan, and address issues and concerns for the various age groups.  It also gives responsibility to the teens and younger children to make the best choices based on what is in their control.

Usually when I read a book I take notes on things that I might want to incorporate into a review – a particularly beautifully written section of prose in a novel, an insightful and memorable description in a work of non-fiction.  I found myself taking pages of notes while reading Fat Families Thin Families, and even (gasp!) marking portions of the text and writing notes in the margins!  Notes for myself; notes to share with my family; habits I’d like to incorporate into our meal prep.

Hendel’s approach seems sound – she has medical research and experience to back-up the HFL plan; it is presented clearly – with lots of explanations and those text boxes and bullet-point lists that I love.  As we approach back-to-school, I plan to get my family more involved with the 4 Ps.  It will benefit us in many ways – quality time together, learning healthy habits, and less pressure on me to manage it all by myself.

 Photo and Article Courtesy of http://www.sheistoofondofbooks.com

Christoph Niemann — The Pet Dragon: A story about Adventure, Friendship, and Chinese Characters — Greenwillow Books, 2008, 40 pp. ISBN 978-006-157776-5

(Buy at Amazon.com)

I greatly appreciate Niemann’s graphic style. He’s original and kept his playful side. This short book—a kids’ book—is full of his odd poetry and graphic genius. The Pet Dragon is built around the analogies between what we can imagine chinese character represents and pictograms. A short à la Petit Prince story, just a lot less pretentious.

The book’s website
The author’s website.

Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin — Three Cups of Tea: One Man mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time — Penguin Books, 2007, 349 pp. ISBN 978-014-303825-2

(Buy at Amazon.com)

This book tells us about Greg Mortenson’s efforts to build schools in remote corners of Afghanistan and Pakistan, starting with how he fell in love with this country after having lost is way down the K2. Rescued by poor but generous villagers, Mortenson, deeply touched, set himself to help them in any way he could; finally to decide upon bringing education to these people, and especially to girls and women.

This book is a great lesson of humanity; an inspiring “fix the world” story.

The book’s.

Has National Novel Writing Month helped you write a crappy novel or a fantastic draft?  The answer lies in the power of perception—your perception. Is your glass half-empty of half-full?

The first draft is never a best-selling novel or a meticulously crafted example of fine literature. It is however, a fantastic draft. It is the foundation for a great story—but it’s not a complete story.

***

This weekend while researching that great craft of writing, I learned that for a story to be complete, it must do what a story is supposed to do. It must stir in the reader an emotional response. A draft may incorporate the various parts of a novel such as the hook, backstory, struggle, epiphany, plan, climax, and ending. Nevertheless, without an emotional response from the reader the story is not complete. First drafts are merely the foundation.

Just as if you were building a home, you cannot stop with the foundation. You must build your home on top. The emotion is that home. Because the emotion is what will keep your reader involved with your main character and turning the page. The emotion is where your reader will live.  

What can you do with this fantastic draft to take it from a solid foundation and turn it into the grand mansion where the reader wants to take up residence? What can you do to turn a draft into a story?

I plan to rewrite it.

Let’s say your story (like mine) is a thriller. The glue that binds the pages to the spine and the reader to the story will be suspense, worry, fear and hope. Therefore, the backbone of the story will focus on those emotions. This is how story comes to life. Then, once the story comes to life it must be kept alive by keeping it believable.  How is this done?  Through setting, character, theme, and conflict.   

Every dialogue exchange, every scene, every internal thought, every attack against character flaw, must relate to the basic function of the thriller novel.  It must not only move the plot forward, but also add to the story in a way that arouses an emotional response adherent to the genre of a thriller.  The same holds true for any genre. 

As the month winds to an end and you begin to look at your novel as a fantastic draft instead of a crappy novel, take the time to research the important emotional elements that will bind your story’s genre together.

Here are a few helpful websites to get you started.

SETTINGS

Researching Your Way to Believable Settings: It’s in those pesky little details, isn’t it?  by Terrie Leigh Relf, M.A.

www.writer-on-line.com/content/view/1090/66/~Articles/General-Writing/Researching-Your-Way-to-Believable-Settings:-It-s-in-those-pesky-little-details,-isn-t-it?.html

CHARACTERS

Creating Real Characters by Jeff Heisler –

www.talewins.com/characters.htm

THEMES

Finding Your Themes © by Holly Lisle  -

http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/feature9.html

CONFLICT

Conflict in Fiction Writing By Joy Cagil  -

http://ezinearticles.com/?Conflict-in-Fiction-Writing&id=1080850

Here’s a wonderful poem by Jean Valentine for you!

If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream,
in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them
-for Reginald Shepherd

Dear Reginald,
It is morning.
I sit at a table
writing a letter
with a needle and thread.

I pricked my finger           A pelican
out of her migratory path,
even her language family-
whose child is gone
yet she absently pecks at her breast.

I write on the bedspread
I am making for you there
May you breathe deeply and easily.
If a person visits someone in a dream,
in some cultures the dreamer thanks them in the morning
for visiting their dream.

I call it dream
not that I am drawn to that which withdraws
but to him pearled, asleep, who never withdraws.

At a hotel in another star. The rooms were cold and damp, we were both at the desk at
midnight asking if they had any heaters. They had one heater. You are ill. Please take it.
Thank you for visiting my dream.

Can you breathe all right?
Break the glass                  shout
and break the glass          force the room
break the thread                Open
the music behind the glass.

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v8n1/poetry/valentine_j/dreamer_page.shtml

“Labor willingly and diligently, undistracted and aware of the common interest. [. . .] A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book III, #5

“Do the external things that fall upon you distract you? Give yourself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around. But then you must also avoid being carried about the other way. For those, too, are triflers who have wearied themselves in life by their activity and yet have no object to which to direct every movement and every thought.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II, #7

That’s the fancy way of saying idle hands are the devil’s playground.

Writing is complicated and requires the author to balance many elements to acheive the perfect combination. When found, the result is a winning manuscript.

Key elements of this balance are Dialogue and Description. Too much dialogue and the reader quickly tires. Too much description and the story slows to a dreadful pace.

I have a confession to make. I love descriptive writing. This requires me make sure I include enough dialogue to keep an active pace and have the reader relate to the MC on a personal level.  It’s been a difficult balance to achieve. However, I find that I am not alone. 

In an effort to keep the story moving, authors attempt to keep the reader engaged by using dialogue to propel the story. However, there seems to be a lack of descriptive language to appropriately set the scene in a way that places the reader with the characters in the action.

Laura College wrote in her article Creative Writing: The Art of Description:

“The problem is that most novice writers focus more on the action than on the description.”

 [READ FULL ARTICLE]

The five senses are a powerful tool to engage the reader. The clearer the reader’s mind can visualize the scene, the more the story comes to life.

When reading a novel there needs to be an ebb and flow. The action needs to rise, but also slow down and give the mind time to absorb what’s been read. This is where the effective use of description comes in.

By adding description to slow the action you allow the reader to take a breath and become more involved by experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, textures, and taste of the characters surroundings.

Finding the correct balance is important to me as a writer and I am more cautious to make sure I am achieving the appropriate balance.

Jennifer Jensen  has given a simple solution to check the balance of description and dialogue in your writing and I often use this formula. If you’re interested in learning her method read  Description, Dialogue, Narrative Finding a Balance as You Write Your Story

http://writingfiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/description_dialogue_narrative#ixzz0WSu1ABnN

What do you think about using description in your writing?

Have you found other methods more useful to moderate the pace of your stories?

We’re on the same wavelength as Mark Bauerlein…

September 30, 2009, 02:00 PM ET

By Mark Bauerlein from The Chronicle of Higher Education

At first I thought that multitasking was just a bogus concept, on the one hand an obvious truth and on the other an obvious falsehood. If multitasking meant reading a book while listening to music, of course it happened, and had happened long before the term “multitasking” ever came along. But if multitasking meant talking on the phone while doing email, or doing homework while watching TV, or carrying on six chats on your laptop — no way. Those activities exercise the same parts of your brain, and in order to do them you don’t multitask, you switch-task.  And the bad part is that in the switching process you have a warm-up time with the new task before you reach full engagement with it. Doing those things at the same time actually ends up taking longer than doing those things one after the other.

But the dangers of multitasking go beyond inefficiency. Here’s a page from the New York Times entitled “Driven to Distraction.” It presents a series of reports and stories on “the dangers of drivers using cellphones and other electronic devices.” Many people think that talking on the phone and driving are activities that don’t interfere with one another, but the accident statistics don’t lie. One story there notes that Utah has a new state law decreeing that drivers who text and cause fatal accidents are subject to a 15-year prison term and $10,000 fine.

Another story finds that most people are, indeed, aware of the driving-while-tasking problem, but they just can’t help doing it anyway. Take away the freedom to text while driving and people get nervous. I felt it last summer when I left a talk-all-you-want state (Georgia) to live in California for a month, where no handheld devices are allowed.

The health problems don’t apply only to driving. Here’s a study out of Stanford that announces,

Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows

Think you can talk on the phone, send an instant message and read your e-mail all at once? Stanford researchers say even trying may impair your cognitive control.

The primary finding was that “People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.” When people spend months and years trying to multitask, their mental habits follow. Most important, their capacity to filter out distractions and irrelevant items deteriorates. As one of the researchers put it, “They’re suckers for irrelevancy.” The researchers set up experiments that isolated the ability to ignore things that didn’t help subjects complete a problem, and low-multitaskers did well, high-multitaskers poorly.

They also did some memory tests. Result: “The low multitaskers did great,” [researcher] Ophir said. “The high multitaskers were doing worse and worse the further they went along because they kept seeing more letters and had difficulty keeping them sorted in their brains.”

Finally, they did a test of concentration and the pattern held.

“Again, the heavy multitaskers underperformed the light multitaskers. ‘They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing,’ Ophir said. ‘The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.’”

So all those fans of multitasking who claimed that the interactive, multiplicitous Web

Need to get some focus? dig into this book:

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594202100,00.html

Winifred Gallagher revolutionizes our understanding of attention and the creation of the interested life

In Rapt, acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher makes the radical argument that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how you choose to do it. Gallagher grapples with provocative questions—Can we train our focus? What’s different about the way creative people pay attention? Why do we often zero in on the wrong factors when making big decisions, like where to move?—driving us to reconsider what we think we know about attention.

It’s a tangent to our topic, but he’s helped many people get their heads on straight. See his books at http://www.eckharttolle.com/home/books/

We especially recommend:

A New Earth

Building on the astonishing success of The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle presents readers with an honest look at the current state of humanity:

He implores us to see and accept that this state, which is based on an erroneous identification with the egoic mind, is one of dangerous insanity.

“The Secret Of Impressive Writing? Keep It Plain And Simple”   www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051031075447.htm

This article discusses the use of needlessly long words and flamboyant fonts and arrives at the conclusion that these practices can have a negative impact on how your writing is perceived.

 “One thing seems certain: write as simply and plainly as possible and it’s more likely you’ll be thought of as intelligent.”

Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly, Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology 2005, DOI: 10.1002/acp.1178

***

I agree with Oppenheimer regarding the use of font, but disagree that writing should exclude long words. Or at least it should be clarified so that broad generalizations are not made.

I agree that needlessly long words in an article designed to inform the reader only confuses the reader and therefore fails at the task of clearly defining the point. Most academic work falls flat when the author sets out to impress the reader with the strength and size of his or her vernacular.

However, there is  a place where needlessly long words are not only accepted but celebrated. After all, where would poetic prose stand if the author can not paint the scene by using descriptors with long strings of syllables.  

What do you think?

“The year is 1632, when a strange town, called Grantville, appears in the middle of Germany.  The strangers claim to be from someplace called West Virginia, a part of the United States”

If you have not read Eric Flint’s 1632 series and are in any way into science fiction or fantasy, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

You may ask why I am sharing the “leisure reading” recommendation on a gun blog.  Well, in part, because 1632 deals with firearms on many levels.  First and foremost, it addresses the effect of modern weaponry in an antiquated world.  From shotgun wielding rednecks. To a young female competitive shooter who uses a Remington 700 .308 to take out enemies at a distance unthinkable at such a time.

However, the people of Grantville were smart enough to realize that modern rifles are a rare commodity in 1632.  And not something easily produced en masse.   So the series addresses the manufacture of older style rifles (flintlocks, cap, etc) which are still substantially more advanced than the firearms presently available in the 1600’s.

The series can be a tad campy, but is a lot of fun. So if you’re looking for some to read – pick up a copy.

I mean how many sci-fi books deal directly with the advent of firearms, their manufacture, and address the affects of what a modern day shot gun does against a man with a pike.

http://www.amazon.com/1632-Assiti-Shards-Eric-Flint/dp/0671319728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256874689&sr=8-1

In some ways, I am almost happy I have a chance to set my first draft aside.

As I mentioned before, November’s National Novel Writing Month has forced me to walk away from the re-write of my first book. 

But after reading Sloppy Firsts, by Anna Elliott on the writerunboxed blog page, I began thinking about the travails of that first draft and how emotionally close to it I had become.  Distancing myself for a month or more is probably a good idea.

It’s a difficult process to go through, completing a draft. As Anna mentions, you have a relationship with your characters and like real people their lives are a mess. I believe you become so consumed by trying to fix your characters problems, that just like real life, you sometimes become frustrated and confused.  

After thinking about this for a while, I came up with the following analogy.

First drafts are messy. They remind me of the process of making lasagna. You collect the ingredients and start to mix them together. First words and thoughts are scattered  much the same way.

At the expense of the author’s now unclean hands, the thoughts begin to stack together as layers meticulously placed.

Finally, when you’re done, you set it aside. Like clearing the kitchen, you must also clear your mind.  

An important step, that so many skip, is letting your dish set overnight so the flavors combine. How long you let your draft stand depends on how long it takes to fall out of love with your characters. This helps you edit without bias.

Then like a rewrite, we pull the dish back out. We bake it and edit the goo that spills out.

No lasagna is complete until it leaves the dish, much like a novel that goes unpublished.

So you place it on the table for the world to see. You hope a guest comes along to consume what you made. The satisfaction comes when you get that first nod. When your guest looks up, smiles, and ask you for more.

Yes, first drafts and lasagna are messy, but the end results are oh-so-delicious. 

Well, here I am on another rainy Thursday… the only difference?  It’s cold.  52 degrees in fact.  That’s the coldest it’s been in probably 5 or 6 months.  The summer veggie garden is over, I may plant some leafy greens – turnips, collards, etc, but I am not feeling all that committed to it right now.  Pansies are planted, the Michalmas Daisies are still blooming, but are seceding into letting the leaves of hardwoods take the show, then the sasanquas, then the camelias, then the year starts all over again.

And where am I?  Right here.  Still unemployed after my contract job ended 6 months ago, and a couple of failed attempts at sales jobs that were only slightly short of scams.  Starting to feel the “loser” effect on this whole unemployed thing. But at the same time it’s making me reach out to anyone and everyone to discuss what I can do and what they may know of and ask for solicited advice… I think my beautiful friends know me well enough that I don’t dig unsolicited advice unless they happen to see me tip-toeing on the ledge of a 15 story roof and think I may need reminding on what I’m doing.  Thankfully, I’m not usually that type of person… only every once in a while.   So, I’m reaching out to my inner-circle, and the next level and the level after that of friends.  Not that I class you people, I don’t.  But clearly, there are some of you with whom I speak every day, every week, once or twice a month, etc… and there are some of you that I rarely see or hear from, and that’s ok too!  I still think very highly of you… well, ok, most of you!  What?  gotta keep you on your toes! 

Anyway, so here’s what I’ve come up with:  be self-employed… actually have 2 ideas for businesses, or keep on looking and fruitlessly (or so it seems) applying to jobs.  I love the idea of being self-employed, but being that my specialty and 12 year focus has been Marketing, I also have very strong feelings towards working in a partnership…and I suppose that I could do that with my clients as that’s what a consultant does, or so I’ve witnessed in the past.  But again, there’s the whole risk factor, and giving up your life as you know it so you can network and get business and deal with cut-throats and whatever else you get.  Signing up for endless “societies” and “associations” and whatnot.  I guess it’s what I need to do anyway, and who knows perhaps I’ll actually find business that way but in the end, really what I want to do is spend half my time in a beautiful mountain meadow and the other half in a hammock on a beach… preferably with my sweet love.  Though I think he’d not really go for the mountain meadow.  Can’t blame him… I want to herd a couple of sheep and make wool to be spun into yarn, which sounds beyond ridiculous as I’ve never even done anything but pet a sheep when I was younger.  But it sounds fun.  I can even see the flowering trees that would line my winding lane from the blacktop to my cute little bungalow (oh, and don’t forget the babbling brook… have to have one of those!).  Yeah, yay for daydreams.  Perhaps that’s where  my problem is in the first place.  I have an awesome imagination and absolutely no desire to work.  well, that’s not completely true.  I do want to work towards the greater good, which is why this marketing consultant thing is really piquing my interest.  Yeah, how about that for bringing the rant back to home?  Anyway, I am putting forth a hugely concerted effort into the thought of this with exactly how I want to focus, who I want to help, and what I want to do with my services.  I am going to actively read what I can and what is suggested to me by folks that I think know what they’re talking about in regards to marketing, perhaps even conscientious marketing, mkt consulting, and environmental marketing, among some others that have been recommended to me.  Perhaps I’ll even write reviews of what I get my hands on in this here blog thingy.

The fruitless job search is just that. I find jobs every day that I can do and am qualified for… and by qualified, I mean either I am over-qualified times 10, or I have the right qualifications or there may be a couple of challenges, but I’m certain I can do the job.  I never go after something I have no business going after.  I’m already wasting enough time trying to find a job, why go for something I have no chance of?  Yeah, so anyway, the part I’m struggling with all the time now is a damn cover letter.  I really want to show myself off, and can do so verbally, but to put it into words and tailor it for each and every single job is a hard, pain in the ass thing to do.  It’s the thing that is discouraging me the most and making me hold back the most.  Oy… what to do what to do.

If y’all have any suggestions, either for reading, new businesses, writing a good cover letter template, or most especially if you have a job, let me know!

Until then, go out and see live music, hold the ones you love close and tell them you love them every chance you get, and really, if you know of anyone hiring, tell them to hire me!!!  <LOVE>

Tonight I saw a Cave Canem sponsored event “Legacy Conversation with Ntosake Shange” at the New School. Spunky, smart and unbossed, Shange illuminated the audience with her politics, (future) projects and pleasures, particularly those that she derives from cooking. Unfortunately, I had to leave early for a writing workshop but Ntosake was totally without airs as she spoke. Like many African American women, I have read and am familiar with For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Not Enuf. On my list of books to read soon are Liliane, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo and Betsey Brown. I’ve recently been engorging myself with books (mostly fiction) and during this process I’ve realized that I’ve missed seeing new literature by African American women whether by emerging or established writers. I’d love to see something new by ZZ Packer, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison or Gloria Naylor. Thankfully, Ntosake has something coming out in 2010!