Just lost my job. Now what?

My pescetarian diet may have given me an iron deficiency. I've been craving any and all meat (yeah, even chicken). I think I've been getting enough protein, but the only foods high in iron are non-swimming meats. To get enough iron I would have to eat 8 cups of beans a day. I like beans, but not that much. So I bought an iron supplement, and we'll see if that gets me to stop craving meat.

I don't remember if I mentioned that I also have a vitamin D deficiency. I'm taking a prescription-strength supplement for 8 weeks.

Tom and I are going to Dublin for three days early next month. Whoohoo! I bought the tickets on my frequent flier miles, so yay for a free trip.

I've bought three different boxes of cereal in the past week and I don't like any of them. The first one is smelly, the second one is boring, and the third one is fake strawberry-flavored. All this because I thought I should give myself a break from plain frosted mini-wheats. But you know what? Frost mini-wheats are healthy AND tasty! Too bad it's made with gelatin, which makes frosted mini-wheats not vegetarian. I just have to find the organic one, that one is gelatin-free.

These are the lessons I learned at the "Are you, or should you be, an entrepreneur?" ThinkTank forum hosted by the Northwest Entrepreneur Network on Sept 30.

• be proactive, act deliberately
  
• be able to sell, be objective, be able to tell a story
  
• tell everyone your idea/story, but tell your spouse last
  
• begin with the end in mind
  
• the hardest part is going from zero to $1 million, but after that scaling up higher is easy
  
• http://founderscoop.com/ and http://ycombinator.com/ connect investors with tech entrepreneurs
  
• starting in a field you have no experience in is not necessarily bad -- it brings fresh perspective; just get going and have cheerleaders
  
• make people happy by solving their problems
  
• must have passion for the idea you want to see realized
  
• making the sell: make people think "yes, that is a problem I have, you have the solution"
  
• start with a working product and 3 or fewer founders; everyone must share the same goals; be "slow to hire, fast to fire"
  
• business plan: 14 slides to tell the story and how you will monetize the business (template) or 2-page executive summary
  
• starting a business that eventually fails is cheaper than an MBA
  
• what is the market? how will you access it? what is your pricing structure? how will you make money?
  
• make your product irreplaceable to your customers (see: YouTube), not patented
  
• don't split ownership of the business evenly
  
• mentorship?
  

Today someone decided to see if banks still have money by robbing one. Specifically, the one on the same block as my office building. They then apparently left a suspicious note and backpack, resulting in the bomb squad roping off our block and sending in a bomb-disarming robot. Explosions did not ensue, but I did manage to lose an hour's worth of productivity trying to figure out what was going on outside.

Why do people keep trying to rob banks downtown? Maybe this guy thought the bailout bill had passed.

I've decided that in the spirit of one of my new entrepreneurial ideas, I should be blogging my entrepreneurial adventures and publicly so. (Do you believe in intellectual property (IP)? Do I?) All related posts will be tagged here.

So, today I went a free talk/forum ("Think Tank") hosted by Northwest Entrepreneur Network titled "Are you, or should you be, an entrepreneur?". Turns out it's a mostly rhetorical question, the answer being: the only way to find out is to try. I took about a page-worth of useful notes. I'm thinking of writing them up here soon.

Last week I attended Company Picnic: Seattle's Largest Entrepreneur Bash. It was a wee bit awkward but I got a few useful resources out of it (and I won a three-month membership to a small-business networking site).

I haven't yet decided which of my ideas to start on first. I have six as of now -- four websites and two commercial products. I'm excited about four and uncertain about the rest. I'm rethinking my view of which one would be the most difficult to accomplish. I thought it would be the Flash-based (?) website with an unusual and uncertain revenue-generating plan, but it's currently my favorite (and newest) and might not be as difficult as I thought. I've started browsing for possible outsourcing of the Flash content. Much easier to find than textile manufacturers (at least outside of Elance).

Inadvertent goal achieved: it is becoming impossible for me to not correctly spell "entrepreneur" on the first try.

This is more of a note-to-self, but I'm posting it for all in case you didn't know about it and think it's cool.

I knew about (the incorrect method for) alt-text for images (you have it set so that on mouse-over text is displayed) but I didn't realize you could have alt-text for text. For example, hover over the following line of text:

True or False: Most millionaires work fewer than 40 hours a week.

Here's the HTML:

<span title="FALSE. Nearly 2/3rds of millionaires work 45-55 hours per week.">True or False: Most millionaires work fewer than 40 hours a week.</span>

http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/blog/2008/09/napw_open_letter_to_governor_p.php

After Ayesha Madyun’s water broke, she went to the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she didn’t give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that she should have a C-section. [The court granted an order to force her to undergo a C-section.]

When Pamela Rae Stewart, allegedly, didn’t get to the hospital quickly enough on the day of her delivery, she was arrested in California on the theory that she had violated the rights of her fetus.

When Laura Pemberton chose to give birth at home in Florida, a Sheriff came to her house. Doctors believed that she was posing a risk to the life of her unborn child by having a vaginal birth after having had a previous c-section. The doctors were in the process of getting a court-order to force her to have a C-section. The sheriff took Ms. Pemberton into custody during active labor, strapped her legs together and forced her to go to a hospital where an emergency hearing was taking place to determine the rights of her fetus. She was “allowed” to represent herself. A lawyer was appointed for the fetus. This woman, who vehemently opposes abortion, nevertheless believed in her right to evaluate medical risks and benefits to herself and her unborn child. She was forced to have the unnecessary surgery and when she later sued for violations of her civil rights, was told fetal rights outweighed hers.

Rape victim advocates, the childfree, and advocates for pregnant women are in agreement: Sarah Palin is anti-women.

1994: Sarah Palin is on the City Council of the town of Wasilla, Alaska. The 'Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)', sponsored in the Senate by JOE BIDEN, will provide assistance to state, local, tribal law enforcement (SLTLE) in reducing violent crime, and in assisting battered women in getting free of abusive partners. It specifically prohibits states who charge their rape victims the cost of the rape kit from getting federal funding to assist SLTLE.

"Violence Against Women Act, SEC. 3262. RAPE EXAM PAYMENTS.

(a) No State or other grantee is entitled to funds under title XXXII of the Violence Against Women Act of 1993 unless the State or other grantee incurs the full cost of forensic medical exams for victims of sexual assault. A State or other grantee does not incur the full medical cost of forensic medical exams if it chooses to reimburse the victim after the fact unless the reimbursement program waives any minimum loss or deductible requirement, provides victim reimbursement within a reasonable time (90 days), permits applications for reimbursement within one year from the date of the exam, and provides information to all subjects of forensic medical exams about how to obtain reimbursement.

(b) Within 90 days after the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of Victims of Crime shall propose regulations to implement this section, detailing qualified programs. Such regulations shall specify the type and form of information to be provided victims, including provisions for multilingual information, where appropriate."

Again, JOE BIDEN sponsored this Act in the Senate. Know who voted against women and this Act? JOHN MCCAIN.

To explain to those who've never experienced it, a rape kit is a piece of law enforcement equipment designed for use by an appropriate officer or designated medical personnel to collect and process forensic evidence from a rape victim. It is used in a criminal investigation. It is not a tool used by doctors in health care. There is NO reason to bill a crime victim or her health insurer for the cost. This is police equipment, paid for by taxpayers, budgeted to law enforcement.

1996: Sarah Palin becomes Mayor of Wasilla. She fires incumbent police chief, Irl Stambaugh, and appoints D.C. Fannon.

1998: Chief Fannon implements the policy of billing victims for rape kits. Alaska becomes noncompliant with Federal law, and ineligible for Federal assistance to state, local, and tribal law enforcement. The rate of forcible rape in Alaska is 2.4 times the national average. The rate of forcible rape in the town of Wasilla is 1.4 times the national average.

2000: Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles signs legislation specifically banning the practice of billing women for rape kits. In statements to the press, Gov. Knowles admits that this state law was targeting the town of Wasilla, which refused to reverse its policy. Mayor Sarah Palin, who was mayor of Wasilla from 1996-2002, was holding up federal funds that would have benefited state and local law enforcement by holding on to a policy of charging rape victims for their rape kits. Gov. Knowles and the Alaska legislature in 2000 said, "No more," and forced the correct policy.

2002: Palin's term as Mayor of Wasilla ends. By the time she left Wasilla, she had procured $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 9,000. The cost of rape kits for the two years Wasilla actually paid for them under federal and state law (2000-2002) was about $15,000. Mayor Palin could afford to hire a lobbyist to procure $27,000,000 in earmarks and spend $16,000,000 on a new ice hockey rink, but she didn't want to budget $7,000 per year on police equipment to investigate rapes and convict rapists. In addition, her agenda was to change the law on abortion in Alaska to prevent rape victims from aborting if their rapist impregnated them.

2005: VAWA passes re-authorization in Congress, and is signed into law by George W. Bush on January 5, 2006. Once again, John McCain opposes it.

2006: Palin is elected Governor of Alaska.

EDITED to add: "According to this article, Palin was involved in an effort to take over the local hospital board and block all abortions in the facility. This forced any woman who even wanted counseling on abortion to travel to Seattle. This most likely disproportionately affected Native women -- along with those who didn't have the resources to be able to travel.

Locals sued the hospital and won an injunction from the state Supreme Court that required the hospital to provide the option, and the local religious right went nuts. They held a picket line to block access to the clinic, and Sarah Palin was in that picket line. Absolutely a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act."

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2008/9/3/media_coverage_on_the_arrest_of_amy_goodman_and_two_democracy_now_producers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jreRSEQ_yg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

This is just insane...insanely illegal.

Newsweek says:
Perhaps the biggest topic of conversation among reporters last week in St. Paul was how Palin's presence instantly makes this year's one and only veep debate the must-see TV event of the summer--more so, even, than the three presidential cage matches. The thinking goes something like this: Palin is a sympathetic female celebrity; Biden is a know-it-all blowhard with a tendency to cross the line of political correctness; watching him struggle not to alienate half the women in America will be like watching "Gossip Girl," only with more clothing, less cocaine and a smattering of agricultural policy thrown in for good measure.

Give clean drinking water to Ethiopia for my birthday!


The September Campaign Trailer from charity: water on Vimeo.