13 September 2015
Island Life 13 September 2015
13/09/15 15:46
I mentioned in a previous letter that I wasn’t a businessperson. I don’t have a head for commercial thinking. This was evident this week when we were testing some new robot control software.
The software will display how fast the robot is moving, normally in meters per minute. This customer, though, had requested that their copy of the software display the speed in millimetres per second. Why? I don’t know but that’s what they wanted so we were testing that change as well as a bunch of other patches and fixes. The programmers were griping about having to change such a trivial thing. I pointed out that the problem was we were using one of the many international standard measurements. We needed to have our own proprietary format and make everyone convert to it. That would put us on an equal footing with Adobe or Microsoft.
The programmers saw some logic in this and we started discussing what unit would be the best. I suggested Furlongs per Fortnight, which did gain some traction as it WOULD be proprietary, if a little archaic for our clientele. We then tossed around the idea of using %C, the fraction of the speed of light. I pointed out that it would have a certain advantage. Because our display was limited to four digits, we could just leave it reading 0.000 and not bother with the conversion.
Then someone mentioned that the customer was in Norway, which gave me the idea. In Norway they use the Bangund, a metric beard length, as their unit of measure. The standard beard belonged to Minister Olufsen of the Units of Measurement Department in the Old Norwegian government. By Norwegian law his body temperature was “normal”. The time it took him to hit the floor after getting drunk and falling off a barstool was the standard unit of time. And his beard length was the standard unit of distance. As it was a hereditary position, when he died in 1837 without an heir, they just bronzed his face and it is hanging on the wall in the capitol in Oslo. To this very day anyone can walk up to his beard and get the length of a standard Bangund. As I finished my story, I saw that my coworkers were eyeing me fairly dubiously. I don’t think they believed me, which I found rather surprising. I thought everyone had heard of the great Bangund Olufsen. http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en
The agreed though that this was not the path the company should take.
But over the years I’ve had all sorts of business ideas. I was going to start up an investment fund. The “You Can Take It With You”, fund. My idea was this: Why leave your hard earned money to your ungrateful children? Instead, leave all of your assets to the fund. We would manage your money after you pass away and then, when you are reincarnated, you just have to come by, reclaim your assets, and you’d be off to a good start in your next life. I had it all planned out, but I was never was able to set it up. You see I have this hereditary condition that prevents me from running this sort of a financial institution. It’s called ethics. It afflicts a lot of people who can’t make it in business.
Then there was the plan I came up with to create a place for people to go on vacation. It would have a crummy pool, lousy food, a spa you really wouldn’t want to use, attractions that aren’t very, um, attractive. The prices would be high and the service terrible and it wouldn’t be near anything you wanted to see. We’d get the people who wanted to go somewhere else but all the good places were booked up. I was going to call it The Last Resort.
On CBC this week they were talking to a Financial Analyst about all the recent turmoil in the markets. They asked him for some advice on an overarching investment strategy. His reply was, I thought, very good. “Don’t buy on greed and don’t sell on panic.” He went on to explain that when the market is rising rapidly, it’s tempting to jump in, but by the time it’s obvious that it’s rising, it’s usually near the top and about to go down. On the other hand when there is a huge drop in the market it’s too late to dump your assets and get out. He said that he tends to sell when the market is rising and grab bargains when it drops. This mirrors what I’ve been doing for the last thirty years … sort of. I’ve recognized that rapidly inflating markets are going to pop. I did not buy stocks leading up to the crash of ’87 or the DotCom bubble or just before the housing crash of ’08. On the other hand I’ve always had an aversion to jumping onto a sinking ship. When the markets are free falling I don’t tend to buy then either. I just don’t play the market. Some would say that I haven’t earned as much as I might have. But I haven’t lost any money either.
Overall it takes a particular kind of person to operate in the business world and I’m just not that kind of a person. Some are though. Here’s a great CBC documentary about a guy in Vancouver that turned a lifelong love into a business. (Excuse the commercial at the start. I guess that’s business too.)
https://youtu.be/TBb9O-aW4zI
Doug & Marsha
(Though Marsha is still on the road)
PIX: Who says we don’t have surf in Lantzville.
The software will display how fast the robot is moving, normally in meters per minute. This customer, though, had requested that their copy of the software display the speed in millimetres per second. Why? I don’t know but that’s what they wanted so we were testing that change as well as a bunch of other patches and fixes. The programmers were griping about having to change such a trivial thing. I pointed out that the problem was we were using one of the many international standard measurements. We needed to have our own proprietary format and make everyone convert to it. That would put us on an equal footing with Adobe or Microsoft.
The programmers saw some logic in this and we started discussing what unit would be the best. I suggested Furlongs per Fortnight, which did gain some traction as it WOULD be proprietary, if a little archaic for our clientele. We then tossed around the idea of using %C, the fraction of the speed of light. I pointed out that it would have a certain advantage. Because our display was limited to four digits, we could just leave it reading 0.000 and not bother with the conversion.
Then someone mentioned that the customer was in Norway, which gave me the idea. In Norway they use the Bangund, a metric beard length, as their unit of measure. The standard beard belonged to Minister Olufsen of the Units of Measurement Department in the Old Norwegian government. By Norwegian law his body temperature was “normal”. The time it took him to hit the floor after getting drunk and falling off a barstool was the standard unit of time. And his beard length was the standard unit of distance. As it was a hereditary position, when he died in 1837 without an heir, they just bronzed his face and it is hanging on the wall in the capitol in Oslo. To this very day anyone can walk up to his beard and get the length of a standard Bangund. As I finished my story, I saw that my coworkers were eyeing me fairly dubiously. I don’t think they believed me, which I found rather surprising. I thought everyone had heard of the great Bangund Olufsen. http://www.bang-olufsen.com/en
The agreed though that this was not the path the company should take.
But over the years I’ve had all sorts of business ideas. I was going to start up an investment fund. The “You Can Take It With You”, fund. My idea was this: Why leave your hard earned money to your ungrateful children? Instead, leave all of your assets to the fund. We would manage your money after you pass away and then, when you are reincarnated, you just have to come by, reclaim your assets, and you’d be off to a good start in your next life. I had it all planned out, but I was never was able to set it up. You see I have this hereditary condition that prevents me from running this sort of a financial institution. It’s called ethics. It afflicts a lot of people who can’t make it in business.
Then there was the plan I came up with to create a place for people to go on vacation. It would have a crummy pool, lousy food, a spa you really wouldn’t want to use, attractions that aren’t very, um, attractive. The prices would be high and the service terrible and it wouldn’t be near anything you wanted to see. We’d get the people who wanted to go somewhere else but all the good places were booked up. I was going to call it The Last Resort.
On CBC this week they were talking to a Financial Analyst about all the recent turmoil in the markets. They asked him for some advice on an overarching investment strategy. His reply was, I thought, very good. “Don’t buy on greed and don’t sell on panic.” He went on to explain that when the market is rising rapidly, it’s tempting to jump in, but by the time it’s obvious that it’s rising, it’s usually near the top and about to go down. On the other hand when there is a huge drop in the market it’s too late to dump your assets and get out. He said that he tends to sell when the market is rising and grab bargains when it drops. This mirrors what I’ve been doing for the last thirty years … sort of. I’ve recognized that rapidly inflating markets are going to pop. I did not buy stocks leading up to the crash of ’87 or the DotCom bubble or just before the housing crash of ’08. On the other hand I’ve always had an aversion to jumping onto a sinking ship. When the markets are free falling I don’t tend to buy then either. I just don’t play the market. Some would say that I haven’t earned as much as I might have. But I haven’t lost any money either.
Overall it takes a particular kind of person to operate in the business world and I’m just not that kind of a person. Some are though. Here’s a great CBC documentary about a guy in Vancouver that turned a lifelong love into a business. (Excuse the commercial at the start. I guess that’s business too.)
https://youtu.be/TBb9O-aW4zI
Doug & Marsha
(Though Marsha is still on the road)
PIX: Who says we don’t have surf in Lantzville.