Hindsight is 20/20

My best friend and I are always trying to think of ways to work for ourselves. We're still working on it.

We lived together our freshman year of College in 1998. I had just bought a $4,000 kickass Dell. This baby was state of the art sweetness: 400mhz Pentium II processor; 128mb 100mhz ram; 10 gig hard drive; 16mb video card. This puppy was the fucking KING! Toss in a 17" monitor and boy oh boy, I was unstoppable!

Anyways. High speed was something that people didn't have in their homes back then. Home networking was almost unheard of. My best friend and I were talking about starting a business renting network cards to college kids.

That way they could get one only while they needed it, and we could install it for them and make some $ doing the installations too, since people didn't know how to install hardware (most of them still don't). We drew up a business plan and did projected estimates. The first year our overhead was buying network cards. After that the money was a gravy train.

Thankfully we didn't have disposable startup money (See POOR COLLEGE KIDS). We probably would have made decent beer bucks for a couple years, but then the market surely would have dried up.

-Dude

Michael Dell Can SUCK IT

Disclaimer: This shouldn't be considered in a racist or anti-foreigner tone ...

Some history about Michael Dell.

He's a model for American Entrepreneurship. Started with next to nothing, and through hard work was able to establish what it is today.

By 2009 over 20,000 Dell employees will be located in India.

Is it just greed? Money greed that makes someone built on free enterprise put as many jobs as one can overseas?

I can't help but have a bad taste in my mouth over this. Am I wrong?

-Dude

Let the bodies hit the floor

8am Sunday. I probably ate too close to the ride, but I can handle it; no problem.

Roadies usually leave on the dot. There were about 30 people at the meeting spot, which is HUGE for a Sunday group ride. We left a few minutes behind schedule.

Sweet day for a ride. Started out about 65-70 degrees. Crusin' along ... around mile 15 ... a few guys break out to lead an early attack for a stop sign sprint ...

It was right after my pull ... so I was just behind them as they slingshot by ... they always plan this and it gets on my nerves; team tactics ... but whatever ... I like riding.

Suddenly I hear *chink* ... *ooooomph* ... then you hear just metal and bodies hitting the ground. I turn around and see EVERYONE except for like 5 people behind me go down hard. I was crusing about 25mph, so the people behind me were likely in the 20-25mph range.

One guy was out cold. All fucked up, really labored breathing ... sounded like something was in his airway. I'm convinced he has a cracked rib ... or something ... after like a minute, this guys breathing slows down 1/2 speed ... he's still unconscious ... I'm convinced his chest is filling with blood, and we're gonna lose him ...

Few minutes later he comes to. Doesn't remember much, helmet is shattered. Meanwhile everyone else has picked up. A lot of scrapes and cuts, 1 broken wrist, and another guy coughing up blood.

After everything was cleared up, we had 2 ambulances, 2 sheriffs, a volunteer fireman and a fire truck. Three people were taken by ambulance to the hospital, all on back boards.

It was pretty surreal. And it all happened in the blink of an eye.

I'm very lucky to not have been involved. And as a group, we are very lucky that everyone will pull through.

-Dude

The Dude On Mail and Weddings

Having a kickass credit score will make you resent the US Postal Service. I'm an unlucky mail person. I get tons of credit card offers and solicitations. Even Playboy screws up my mail; somehow I get two copies every month. Shit, maybe I'm the luckiest guy around! When I sell my collection I'll make double!

I usually let my mail pile up for about 6-8 months before I go through it all. Of course, in the interim I've pulled all the important shit; checks and Playboys.

Which leads me to weddings. I hate going to them. They're happy, sure, I'm happy for the couples, sure ... but something about them just plain fucking sucks the life out of me. My best friend is getting married next year ... that one I'll go to and not complain.

In any event ... when two worlds collide ... and my point:

For some reason I cannot send in RSVP's to weddings. I usually call just after the deadline and say "Yo, I'll be there" ... it's embarassing to be late or not RSVP, but for the life of me I can't bring myself to do it.

Why am I thinking about this? ... Right-o ... big wedding this weekend ... I'm just thankful for a couple days off work.

-Dude