"No good deed ever goes unpunished."
- Ferengi rule of acquisition #285

"This little piggy went to market.."
- Unknown

"A man's home is his castle."
- Proverb

July 5th, 2008

I think it was Buddha that said it's sometimes best to just sit down and do nothing.

If it wasn't, it should have been. I'm taking time right now to rant, because I've just broken my left big toe. My wife, who used to work for an orthopedist, essentially believes that I've torn the ligament. And since my toe has turned all sorts of very interesting colors and hurts like hell, I'm inclined to believe her. She has also offered to take me to the emergency room several times.

When I asked her what they'd do for this, she said, "Well, I don't think they'll do anything. They won't put it in a cast, or wrap it either. They'll take some x-rays which will tell them that your toe is broken, which by the way your toe is turning colors is probably true. You'll spend a lot of time and money for them to send you home on crutches you already own. You should stay off your feet and not really do anything except put ice on it."

Given the fact that she worked for a specialist for about 20 years and has wrapped these types of injuries before, I decided that she was probably right and I really did not want to spend Independence Day in at a hospital waiting room. Instead, I've decided that drinking alcohol and watching the Twilight Zone marathon on Scifi was a better idea.

And even that got boring. Instead I decided that this was the proper time to start my overdue rants.

So, here I am ready to take the bull by the horns and get back to business. I'm sort of tanned, rested, and ready to start on my rants and I have a full gas tank of issues that will certainly provide interesting fodder for all. The last few months have been anything but boring. And now, due to this forced hiatus on this holiday weekend, I'm about ready to go.

However, first thing is first - what happened and where have I been?

What happened was a combination of work, aggravation, dementia, cancer, and home ownership. Relax, I'm not the one who has cancer and my wife is fine as well. Nor am I homeless. On the contrary, I have too many homes at the moment and I'm looking to unload one as soon as I can.

When last you heard from me, in February, I was busily working at my new job at the sixth largest corporation in the world and was quite happily doing that voodoo that I do so well. I was well employed and I was working to make content management for insurance companies as simple as a ridiculously complex content management system could make it for people who know less about the web than a Zulu tribesman.. or my father-in-law - take your pick. I don't want to get into too much detail regarding my current job situation, other than I work for some really great people, my job seems to be somewhat stable (although technically I'm still a consultant), and I'm currently trying to train people who are harder to train than a parrot with a speech impediment.

And I'm not even going to tell you about my experience with the French.

Something you should know, however, is that my degree is in marketing. As I now am more an engineer than a marketer there are some truths which have been brought forth in sharp relief. They are as follows:

• To me, 95% of the marketing people I have had to deal with should commute to work on "the short bus".
• All content management systems are not created equal. Some can be termed as "user hostile".
• The learning capacity of a marketer is somewhere between that of a tree stump and a not altogether bright rock.
• My father was in marketing but dealt with statistics and research. I had assumed that all marketers were like my Dad and actually made decisions based on data and common sense. Nothing could be further from the truth.
• Not everyone in the world is happy getting a job done and over with.

Once again, I don't like talking about work. It is a line that I have drawn a long time ago and I try to keep on the right side of that line. I won't divulge the name of my very generous employer, nor with I make mention of any of my co-workers full names. If I refer to them, it will be by their first name and possibly their job title. And as so much of my life at the moment has revolved around work, it's sort of impossible to avoid talking about it.

From February, I've spent my time training marketing executives to use our content management system. Also, I attempted to train them to be competent enough to teach it to others. It's been no easy trick and has certainly been one fraught with much peril. "Peril", in this case, was my own lack of ability in keeping my temper. If I plot the untimely deaths of people who, while not mastering the system, know just enough to cause utter chaos within production and bring our corporate web site crashing down, I run the risk of going to jail.

I have shaken my fists at the heavens more than once in utter frustration and shrieked, "WHY!!!!! WHY ARE THEY SO F$#%KING STUPID!!!!" To be fair, what I term as stupid may not be the same as what you term as stupid. So let me give you a reading of what I think is stupid.

I have repeatedly attempted to explain the concept of "categorization". I use this example and say, "Let's say you have a large bag of assorted marbles. They are all different sizes and colors. When I categorize these marbles, I can do them by both size and color. So, let's say we decide to separate the marbles by color and create these categories: blue, red, yellow, white, and green. If we gather all of the blue marbles and put them in one group that would be a "blue category". We can then make subcategories of this group as to small, medium or large marbles and separate all of the small blue marbles, medium blue marbles, and large blue marbles. That's categorization."

Does that seem simple? Know why I know that speech so well? BECAUSE I'VE HAD TO REPEAT IT TO THE SAME PERSON MORE THAN FIFTY TIMES!!!!! As I've said, training a parrot with a speech impediment would be easier. Eventually, the parrot would say, "I'm a pretty bird. SQUAWK!!!"

That's what occupies my day. To be honest, some marketers pick it up quite easily - which is good because then I can usually explain the more complex concepts and will have less to worry about later from a support angle.

That's all I'm going to say about work.

Shortly after that started, my wife found the last straw which broke her camel's back. Recently, our next door neighbors, Dirk and Francesca moved. They decided to buy a house, in their place new tenants who had difficulty understanding the concept of "two" started to use more than their two parking spaces in front of their house. Our next door neighbor on the other side started some other type of comedy. Since we'd been in that townhouse for 10 years, we decided that enough was enough and that it was time to start really looking for a home of our own. Plus, since the housing market bubble had burst, we figured that this would be the best time to sell our house and maximize whatever profit we could get for it.

Also, to expedite the matter, my mother-in-law had developed lung cancer and was starting her chemotherapy. We thought it was time for her to live with us. However, because we needed a certain amount of free space and because she wanted something more than "the room where you keep old people", we needed to find a mother/daughter home or at least one with an apartment.

My wife started getting things together and started house hunting on the internet. We agreed that our price range should not exceed 450K and my two requirements was that it should have a basement and should allow me to commute to the city easily - preferably by mass transit. So, we started to look, and look.. and look. Eventually, we found something in town which seemed to fit our needs. For $460K we found a 3 bedroom house with a basement, a three car garage, WITH an apartment over the garage. I called my realtor and told her about the place. She had other suggestions, but I thought that we should, at least look at this one.

We went to see it and.. I fell in love.

What we didn't know was that the house was on an acre and a third of land. The garage was separate from the house (which was a bonus) and included a front office space with an additional attached greenhouse. The property has a swimming pool and is just beautiful. The master bedroom has an enormous bathroom with a huge jet bathtub and a separated 4 nozzle shower. The property has 3 and a half bathrooms (one full bathroom in the apartment). This was almost too good to be true.

And the little voice inside of me was saying exactly that: It's too good to be true. My little voice is almost always right. It's the same voice that tells me to stop drinking before its too late and when I should throw up after an alcohol binge.

The key word in that sentence was "almost". What I discovered was that the property was owned by a divorcing couple who just wanted to get rid of the house. Mentally, I did my little happy dance. Outwardly, I said, "It's a shame when a marriage comes to this."

Remember, inside - happy dance, outside - compassionate concern for the couple.

I called my realtor and my bank. Within an hour of placing the bid we were able to get the house for (drum roll, please)..... $450K.

Now, the real work was to start. It was time to get the old house in shape and to sell it. The townhouse needed (needs) a few things. At the time, the most severe thing was a new coat of paint and a new kitchen floor. My newest brother-in-law is a professional painter. I insisted on paying him for two reasons: 1) He and my sister are about to have a baby. So, they will need extra cash. and 2) if he screwed up, I would have absolutely no qualms about screaming at him.

Money buys screaming rights - which I'm more than happy to use when applicable. With labor and paint, the job cost about $2,000. I had him paint 4 rooms and spackle any damage he found. It was needed, It was educational, And it was something that I'll never do again without getting other estimates.

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

(More to come)