So this is what it’s like to be fired.

Not much unlike being laid-off, which I had the unfortunate luck to experience two years ago. This time, like last time, it was no real surprise. Not that I expected to be fired, mind you, only that something would have to change.

I am proud of the work I did at Lulu. I stand by it, and I stand by the people who supported me there. It is unfortunate that the situation wasn’t right for either of us.

I am dealing with a lot of thoughts and emotions right now, so I am resisting the urge to post them all now. I do not wish to point fingers but to analyze things with as much of a clear head as I can.

I vowed not to give up on Lulu, and I did not. I worked harder there every day. I made it better right up until the last minute I was employed there, taking a vendor phone call even while turning over company passwords.

Still, I can’t help but feel I’ve let my wife and daughter down. They aren’t here right now – out running errands and enjoying the beautiful spring weather.

And on the outside I’ll seem indifferent to this whole thing until the second they walk through the door.

Usually at a startup company, the politics is minimized, mostly because it hasn’t existed long enough for there to be any politics.

The one I’m working at now, however, is the reincarnation of a cratered start-up. It seems it has carried its baggage with it, however.

I have been spent my time here battling coworkers stubbornly set in their ways, whom I cannot seem to win over. It’s to the point where I cannot do the job I was hired to do.

Should anyone have job leads, please pass them my way. You can find out more about me by clicking on my resume link on the left side of this page.

Today is Garner’s “unprepared trash pickup” day. All the neighborhood junk lines the road today, ready for pickup by the trash company.

Only, most of it will be gone by the time the trashmen get here. Since we’ve moved here, Kelly and I have been so entertained at how our neighbors will cruise the streets, hauling away some treasure they found in someone else’s junkpile. Kelly watched this morning as a well-dressed lady hopped out of a minivan and janked two decrepit sawhorses out of our neighbors’ junkpile. Our neighbors’ bicycle didn’t last long, having been swiped by sunrise.

Last year we figured it out. The town announces “unprepared trash day” and then deliberately waits another week to dispatch the trucks. By that time, there is usually little left to pick up.

This, folks, is recycling at its best. Who needs landfills when you’ve got “unprepared trash day?”

My friends and family tease me for not always believing what passes for news nowadays. I am a skeptic about most things, actually. So while some Americans passed out cigars and declared victory in Iraq after seeing the toppling Saddam statue on last week’s news, I just couldn’t get my BS detector to settle down.

Turns out my skepticism was well-founded. The video of the spontaneous toppling of Saddam’s statue was staged to look much bigger than it was. A wide-angle photo of the square that ran on Reuters showed the square totally sealed off by U.S. tanks, with merely dozens, not hundreds, of alleged protestors present. All this occured conveniently in front of the Palestine Hotel, home to international journalists covering the war.

You’ll recall that the Reuters office in the Palestine Hotel was the earlier target of an unprovoked attack by an American tank last week, killing three journalists. I suppose the military doesn’t like it when the other side of the story gets heard. Killing unarmed journalists (one a Spaniard – part of the so-called coalition, for God’s sake) doesn’t sit too well with my quaint ideas of “Freedom of the Press.”

It seems that Iraq’s Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, isn’t the only one telling lies.

I’ve been having a challenging time with work lately. The current job has been one thing after another. There is a lot of good to it and a lot of things I could do without.

The main thing is time. There are many employees who think nothing of working 60 hour weeks. I, on the other hand, don’t think I can keep up that pace anymore, having done it for so long at other companies for which I’ve worked.

My priorities have changed incredibly after Hallie was born. While putting food on the table is obviously important, I would love to be able to do it without sacrificing my time at home.

It’s the age-old challenge, huh?

I can’t sign off tonight without commenting on the whole Matt Doherty/Roy Williams fiasco. Carolina wails like a damsel in distress when Guthridge retires. Tar Heel fans turn their eyes to Williams, who says “no, thanks.” Doherty comes to UNC’s rescue and soon gets canned.

Now Carolina fans are once again drooling over Williams, but this time things are different. UNC has shown the value they place on loyalty by dumping Doherty. Williams would be blind not to see the mess the Carolina athletic department is in. Would you want to work for Dick Baddour?

Now, granted, I’m an N.C. State fan, but I’ll freely admit it’s a lot more fun beating UNC when they’re competitive. So I want them to succeed… to a point. 🙂 Even so, I was always a fan of Doherty. I thought he was a great coach. His evident passion for the game contrasted immensely with Wolfpack coach Herb Sendek’s methodical, almost cold, coaching style. How I wished some of that emotion would rub off Doherty and infect Herb.

Yet the fat cats who rule Carolina (see FSU player Sam Cassell’s famous “wine and cheese” quote) decided Doherty was too wet-behind-the-ears for their liking. They wanted a coach with 30 years experience. No way do they have the patience to rebuild a program.

Roy Williams has nothing to prove, having brought the Kansas Jayhawks to the pinnacle of success. If he came to Carolina, he’d be right where Doherty was – forever in the shadow of Dean Smith.

Dear Carolina fans: Dean has left the Dome. It’s high time you stopped yearning for the glory days and focused on the future of your basketball program.

Please. You’re making even State fans feel sorry for you.

The good folks at Red Hat released their newest product, Red Hat Linux 9 last week. As Red Hat Linux is a GPL product, allowing anyone to freely distribute it, an enterprising developer used it to promote his new peering technology, Bittorrent.

Though it’s still rough around the edges (even I had trouble installing it, and I’m an old-school Linux hacker), the technology behind it is solid. I was totally amazed to watch it download three CD’s worth of software faster than I could have ever hoped to download it from an FTP server. Many times faster.

It works by chaining folks together as they download. For instance, once one person grabs a chunk of file, that person’s chunk gets shared by others who need it. Rather than all these people flooding a handful of FTP servers, they cooperatively share the files amongst themselves. Thus the download can scale almost without limit.

Keep an eye on this project, because tools like BitTorrent will soon rule the Internet.

I read an interesting essay on the fabrications that have previously led our country into war. It is, quite literally, as old as the nation.

Some juicy quotes:

Chile, 1963-76: Americans support the fascist Augusto Pinochet, whom overthrew the democratically elected President Salvador Allende three years earlier. While Pinochet was a bloody despot who had thousands of civilians tortured and murdered, he was also favorable to American corporate interests. [Cooper] Many of his killers were trained in the “School of the Americas,” in Fort Benning, Georgia. [Anon1]

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” Henry Kissenger.

Hey, Henry. It’s called “democracy.”

The point of it all is that when the jet engines get throttled up and troops are ready to roll, dust off your bullshit detector because you’re bound to hear some doozies.

I just read an article about Kip Frey, the guys who never did a damn thing as president of Accipiter but get rich. Kip couldn’t lead to save his life, yet he keeps getting slapped into management roles at startups.

The puff piece in Triangle Business Journal calls him a “serial entrepreneur.” What a joke. He shut down Ventana publishing, sold Accipiter, sold Opensite, and shuttered Zoom Culture. I thought an entrepreneur started companies, not finished them off?

If Kip ever steps in to run your company, update your resume!