![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I didn't do much today. The wind-chill was nasty all day, but most of the things I was supposed to have done were on the telephone. One item: I was supposed to call one of the local "Chamber of Commerce" type places to ask if they know of any other Job Fairs like the one they held a month ago. (They had 55 vendors, I handed out 5 résumés, went home thinking there were actually two companies I'd like to work at, but later found out that one doesn't need a software guy right now and the other has run into funding issues and can't hire anyone.)
I was also thinking of asking them where I could find a part-time semi-retired salesman for a "Linux system administration outsourcing" company, because it seems that I could actually form such a venture but none of us wants to be the guy who goes out and hawks the product to potential customers. One of the nice things about sysadmin is that you really can create virtual full-time people by packaging up a bunch of part-timers (as long as work-documentation standards are strictly adhered to). Two half-time contractors get paid less than one full-timer, so there's "margin" and "value-add" and all that lovely business stuff. But I didn't call.
Today, PZ Myers wrote about the first time he asked out his future wife, which reminded me of my difficulties in picking up the phone to ask those two companies from the Job Fair why they hadn't called me back. (You never know — I once got a job several months after a different job I had interviewed for had funding difficulties, because the interviewer remembered me. And *that* job led to Company ℱ where I worked for 17 years.) Professor Myers writes, "She was the brave one when she said yes." Yeah, if any salesman were to agree to take on this gig, he would have to be a brave one. Right now I have only one customer (that I would like to replace, or at least augment) and the method I used to acquire that one probably wouldn't work again. I have no idea how to sell such a service, or how to determine what price the customers would pay for it, or how to find people who should buy it. If you know that you're not good with sysadmin, then you don't think about sysadmin approaches to solving your problems, so you don't "feel the lack" of a sysadmin on your staff and don't realize that you could benefit from hiring an outsourcing firm.
I had a much easier time asking out my future wife than Dr. Myers did. I just posted a "mating call" to a University BBS. She was the only female respondent, so — years later — I married her. Now if only I had some income to put food on the table for our children...
I was also thinking of asking them where I could find a part-time semi-retired salesman for a "Linux system administration outsourcing" company, because it seems that I could actually form such a venture but none of us wants to be the guy who goes out and hawks the product to potential customers. One of the nice things about sysadmin is that you really can create virtual full-time people by packaging up a bunch of part-timers (as long as work-documentation standards are strictly adhered to). Two half-time contractors get paid less than one full-timer, so there's "margin" and "value-add" and all that lovely business stuff. But I didn't call.
Today, PZ Myers wrote about the first time he asked out his future wife, which reminded me of my difficulties in picking up the phone to ask those two companies from the Job Fair why they hadn't called me back. (You never know — I once got a job several months after a different job I had interviewed for had funding difficulties, because the interviewer remembered me. And *that* job led to Company ℱ where I worked for 17 years.) Professor Myers writes, "She was the brave one when she said yes." Yeah, if any salesman were to agree to take on this gig, he would have to be a brave one. Right now I have only one customer (that I would like to replace, or at least augment) and the method I used to acquire that one probably wouldn't work again. I have no idea how to sell such a service, or how to determine what price the customers would pay for it, or how to find people who should buy it. If you know that you're not good with sysadmin, then you don't think about sysadmin approaches to solving your problems, so you don't "feel the lack" of a sysadmin on your staff and don't realize that you could benefit from hiring an outsourcing firm.
I had a much easier time asking out my future wife than Dr. Myers did. I just posted a "mating call" to a University BBS. She was the only female respondent, so — years later — I married her. Now if only I had some income to put food on the table for our children...
