On 3/2/2013 2:54 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sat, 2 Mar 2013 17:04:03 +0000 (UTC), "Geoffrey S. Mendelson"
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Sometimes, I wonder what business I'm in.

That's pretty obvious to those that follow you here.

Well, the standard answer is that I'm in business to do business. When
about 30% of my gross income is tangled up with taxes and 50% in
overhead, the business end of the repair biz is far more important
than the individual repair jobs.

Many years ago, when I was still pretending to listen to advice, I was
warned against over specialization. 40+ years later, I've noticed
that my classmates, that entered into overly specialized areas, have
either priced themselves out of the market, have had their specialty
simply disappear, or have been outsourced into oblivion. I'm not
suggesting that one should try to learn anything and everything, just
not to become overly dependent on one particular skill. Were I still
an RF engineer, designing various radios, I would either be
simultaneously doing 3 peoples jobs for a tolerable pay, or standing
in the unemployment line awaiting my government entitlement.

About three years ago you retired, but like a character in an M. Knight
Shamalan movie, you refuse to notice.

Not quite. I retired in 1983, but didn't know it. I had just been
laid off from an engineering position and decided that engineering
management and my abrasive personality were mutually exclusive. Since
then, I've experimented with numerous businesses and professions, with
the usual wide variations in success. Unfortunately, I'm getting
sufficient old and tired that such changes and product ideas are not
going to work well in the future.


There comes a time in a mans life where he becomes so intolerant of
being in the employ of actinic sphincters that the he fears life in
prison for stomping the asshole until he quits twitching. I've had to
hide my crowbars whenever some of them got around me so I decided the
risk was too great and abandoned the corporate world for a life of
independent contracting. ^_^

TDD