simplerich

So, my Kindle Fire developed a weird screen thing where the screen would shoot vertical lines through it and then go black. In the dark you could sometimes see it was half the blacker-than-black from between scanlines on a TV and the other half was a dark gray. But the screen wasn’t viewable. Just the slightest tweak, or holding it ONLY on the left side would fix the problem stutteringly. Then it would stay OK for a while. Other times it’d be touchy and seemed not willing to stay on at all. Still other times it would go a negative so white was black and black was white. blue was red, etc. It was a negative… you know what that is. It got worse over time. I didn’t have a lot of time so I didn’t do much with it.

Finally tonight I went through the steps on amazon to do a return and got a message saying, “Can’t just return this item punk! You gotta talk to someone in a foreign country who is awake this late.” or words to that effect. With great trepidation I called the 800 number and got someone whose name I didn’t understand but his name was NOT “Peggy” and he did NOT tell me I couldn’t turn my airline miles into cash.

It was a guy, with an accent yes, but he was super friendly. Very helpful and never once asked if I’d dropped it, thrown it across the room, left it in a car overnight when it was eleven-degrees outside, shipped it across the country twice in a shoe box or anything else that might cause problems. He simply apologized for the problem and asked where to ship the replacement item. I told him and while we were talking an e-mail showed up with a link to print a shipping label. When the new one arrives I’m to put the broken one in the box, hand it to any UPS driver or store and toddle off to enjoy the replacement item.

No muss. No fuss. Free 2 day shipping to me. They couldn’t have been nicer, more solicitous, helpful, cooperative, or excellent to deal with. Seriously. I can’t imagine anything he could have done to make the experience more pleasant.

To answer your unanswered question: Would I still recommend someone get a Kindle Fire? The answer is absolutely YES if you have wi-fi at your home or work. If you don’t have wi-fi it’d be a harder sell for me. But with the wi-fi I have available to me at home, work, and the coffee shop it’s as good as always on for me.  I love it for movies, facebook, comics, and reading websites. I don’t love it for books because the battery doesn’t last 2 weeks like my Kindle 3. But I like it for books at night when the lights are out and I don’t want to turn on a table lamp.

Thank you Amazon.

I’m not sure what to do with this place. I’ve got posts out there. I’ve got them here and on my blogger blog and there are readers both places but Google+, somewhere I haven’t been more than  months I don’t think I have more readers and more interaction already than on both of my blogs combined.

I like the idea of my own blog, but the reality is I like interaction and readers and I have a LOT more of those, engaged readers, on Google+ than I have on either blog.

It’s the engagement of the readers that’s attracting me. Granted, I’m pretty careful about who I circle, and while over 2k people follow me I don’t follow that many at all. I’m just over 300 that I read, but I add more all the time, and sometimes remove people. There’s such a feeling of community, of conversation, of participation on Google+ I find I’ve spent far more time there than here.

I need to figure out what’s going to happen next obviously. Mirroring or merely importing those posts to here is a possibility but it seems like it’s diluting things. If you’re on Google+ look me up. If you’re not… the conversation there is absolutely incredible.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Google+ lately and am finding the conversation over there excellent. I’m getting a lot more traction there than here. Funny how that works. One of the things I’ve noticed over there, and the Internet-at-large honestly, is a lot of people claiming to be entrepreneurs as their job.

I call foul. If a person is truly an entrepreneur they’re starting up a business. They have a stake in it and they are trying to get it off the ground. I would think if they were engaging in a social network they would want to advertise their business, you never know when you’ll find someone interested in helping a fledgeling business take off. These people aren’t talking about a business though. They’re talking about a mindset and that mind set isn’t a job.

There are entrepreneurs I look up to. Myspace Tom is one. He was Myspace for a lot of years. He didn’t say he was an entrepreneur. He said he was Myspace. Today he says he’s retired but he continues to look for an idea he’s passionate about that he’ll do next. He doesn’t call himself an entrepreneur. He recognizes that it’s not a job to be an entrepreneur. It’s a calling. It’s a way of life. It’s the way you’re wired. It’d be like saying you’re a Libra (well… except that Libra isn’t all that real but you get my meaning.)

Imagine you’re an entrepreneur starting up a new business selling widgets and you’ve got three employees in your start-up. You’ve invested all your money in it. Mortgaged your house, cashed in your 401k and your wife’s 401k and you’re making a go at it with all cylinders. Would your business card say “Entrepreneur” or would it say “Widgetopia!” My guess is it would say “Widgetopia!” And that’d be in 20 point type.

What’s it mean to your employees, those three people you stay up all night with working with to get things done by a deadline, what’s it mean to them if your business card says “Entrepreneur?” It means to them as soon as you can get the business off the ground and sold for a profit you’re going to hit the road. You’re not in it for the long haul. You’re in it until you can monetize them and run. It’s one thing to have the entrepreneurial spirit or to think like an entrepreneur. It’s another to claim to be one all the time.

I wonder if they’re really entrepreneurs or if they’re dilettantes? If they don’t have the attention span or commitment to do the running of a business. Or maybe they’ve got an idea that’s good enough to sell during a bubble, but not sustainable and they hope to get out before anybody notices? Or maybe they’re unemployed and don’t want to say that. I don’t know what it is. But I don’t know if “entrepreneur” as it’s used today by those people calling themselves “entrepreneurs” means what they think it means.

I get that it’s today’s go-to buzzword way for a person to indicate they’re creative, think outside the box, and are able to do a wide variety of tasks to get things done. But it’s not at all indicative in it’s spirit of sticking to a project. It doesn’t portray to an employer, a person who is in it for the long haul. If you want to be thought of as creative just use that word, and then show it. BE creative. BE thoughtful. BE civil. BE polite. BE the person you’d want other people to think you are.* Don’t just say it. And, if you DO say it, use the word correctly.

I was training a new employee at work today. Today was her first day. She used to be a customer and would only come in when I was working because I made her feel welcome, comfortable and special. She said she wanted to work at a place that employed that kind of person. She and her mother came in almost weekly for about six weeks. They wound up sending me a thank you note and bringing me a plate of goodies after they were done doing their party they were doing. It was VERY nice.

At shift change today my clerk that’s been there six months and the new girl were talking and the six month employee said, “Rich is the best manager I’ve ever had. You know some places have like good cop assistant manager and bad cop manager? Well Rich is totally good cop and he’s the best manager I ever worked for. He really cares about his employees and it’s awesome.” The new girl said, “Whose the bad cop?” The six monther said, “You don’t need a bad cop when everybody looks out for each other. The assistant is more gruff or short or rough around the edges, but he’s not a bad cop. Rich likes to think he is but he’s totally not.” I was counting my drawer down while they “girl-talked.”

I interrupted from my counting, “Don’t believe her, I’m a jerk if you mess up.”

Six-monther said, “You won’t want to mess up. It’s like you let him down and he doesn’t yell at you at all, he just goes all quiet and talks about how he knows you can do better and how did he mess up in the training or the communication of what he wanted and by the end of it I’m all, ‘Just yell at me! I’m sorry!‘ He’s great. I don’t ever want to work for anybody else. I wish I could have trained you one day, but I’m not management though.”

I interrupted again, “If the schedule had worked out I’d have totally let you train her. You’ve got an excellent work ethic, you do your cleaning really well, the customers really like you. I’ve got total confidence in your ability to be an excellent example to anybody I hire.”  That’s true too. I wasn’t just saying that. She’d have done an excellent job.

“See! Isn’t he great? Now how awful will I feel if I mess something up tonight?” Six-monther laughed, “I won’t though. He makes it easy to do good.”

Now, I’m not saying this because it makes me look good or makes me look like a push-over. I’m not… but there are a LOT of ways to manage and expecting good things, encouraging good things, and rewarding good behavior works for me, a LOT better than just punishing bad behavior. Which I DO do when it needs it. But it’s nice when an employee is bragging about how great it is to work at a place. I’m super excited for my crew and for the new employee being excited to join a crew that’s excited to have her and doesn’t see her as a threat to their hours.

Jesup is my room mate’s cousin. I don’t know him well enough to say we’re friends yet but he’s not only really interesting, he’s going something really interesting and blogging about it so people can read all about it over at the aptly named Jesup’s Blog.

He’s a 20+ Iowan teaching in Chile. Here’s the thing… he went down there and THEN looked for a job! If you’ve read the 4-Hour Workweek I think it was? It suggests that the best way to see the world is GO where you want to go and get a job there. Become a local and see the sights. I hope I got that right. It seems especially timely with the death of Steve Jobs and his oft replayed and shared 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.

(If you haven’t seen it go watch it. It’s worth it.) Jesup seems to be following Steve Jobs’ advice to do what he’s passionate about and it’s paying off in a rich and interesting story that he’s living. Go give him a read, add him to your news feed and let his example inspire you.