Bitter has come down with a cold, so she has not been in the mood to do much blogging. I came home today to see her on the sofa, watching a foreign movie that involved two guys who had just killed a bear by impaling it from underneath with a spear, set inside a church. Apparently this involved some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare. I said “What movie is this? I must watch this from the beginning,” since I figure any movie where two guys run a large brown bear through in a church probably involves all kinds awesomeness to arrive at the scene.
Either way, I’m still billing at the client, and about to take a second on. Today was to be my last week at the current client, but they extended me until the end of September, or I run out of work, whichever comes first. My bet is the end of September comes first.
Fourteen years ago, I invested in a small consulting company when it was a start-up. That is now my current employer. Two and a half years ago, I came on board to work on special projects. We wanted to take up special projects, because we don’t want to be in the consulting business long term. The consulting business has lasted 14 years, and has thrown off enough extra money to support my (and several others) efforts for the past two and half years to try to come up with a line of products that people might want to buy. But consulting is a tough business to be in, especially when you’re a small outfit. Unfortunately, we need the consulting business alive to provide the cash flow to fund the special projects.
This winter sucked. I can’t express how much it sucked, both in terms of weather and lost economic productivity. I wish I could say it was all the weather, but a lot of other unhappy things are just hitting at the same time. In consulting, it can be like that, and if you’re not Very Big Consulting, you can only take so much bad luck.. So that’s why I’m out billing instead. As long as I’m out in the field, even if it’s part time, I’m making money instead of costing money, and the company needs that right now.
Personally, I think it’s all a conspiracy by the Obama Administration to deliberately wreck the economy. That way the people who have to do all the work to support the technocratical terror he’s constructed don’t have time to complain ;)
Feel better, Bitter :)
RE the Obama joke, it occurred to me the other day that in some ways indirect government employment (estimated by some to include up to 20 million people) is a form of guaranteed basic income for surplus population. A _lot_ of the projects really amount, in the scheme of things, to digging holes and filling them in, but it makes people feel like they’re gainfully employed in a way that, say, the CCC never could have.
Full disclosure, I am a government contractor, so I can say stuff like that (or, maybe I shouldn’t…)
Well, in that sense, I’m indirectly being employed by the government, since my client is a government contractor.
So what was the title of the movie?
And the movie was???
The Last Days – a Spanish movie with subtitles. It’s on Netflix at the moment.