Some people Twitter, I batch my news and bullet-blog..
Monday, had a few Tanqueray no. 10 Martini’s at Relish. Seems I’m going to be on the board of Section 21 company, that’s a first. Met Jaco from Pangea.
Tuesday, Sushi, watched Hancock, Jazz night at Asoka and a rather random 29th bday party for Matt.
Matt figures I’m an INTP personality. It’s a nice model. Simple, well structured, good story, but may also be an easily workable falsehood. I’ll read about MMPI next.
Wednesday, creative writing, lunch with Jonathan at Greens. Typed up this WAPA secretary job spec. Went for a run along the cable car road. Took a few nice sunset panoramic photos.
Thursday, house shopping in Higgovale. A run along the Mouille Point promenade. A burger at Da Vinci’s on Kloof and Asoka again.
Friday, House shopping in Camps Bay. Time with Meebs. Earl Grey tea with the ~ex-wife at Paradiso.
Saturday, gym, swim, Knead, Deer Park, afternoon nap and a nice braai at Georg’s place.
I can bench press a bit more than my body weight again, seems to take about 3 sessions with reasonable intensity to make progress.
Sunday morning, Lion’s Head at 9:00 with Jono. Climbed up to the top with Mia in a baby-backpack. If you ever need motivation to lose ~16kg try climb a mountain with a 2yr old on your back.
Sunday afternoon, Bloubergstrand with Georg, Blue Peter, walk on the beach, fish and chips and white wine at a nice beach front restaurant. Mia ran all over the place and made a few friends and enemies. She does not like to be pushed around.. *grin*. Ended up at Fandango’s.
200th Crackbook friend.
See you at the Cape Town bloggers party on Tuesday night.
Man, I’m stiff today, but I figure the photos are worth it, no pain no gain… have a fun week.
I figure I need to find a new place to live. Not that I’m really unhappy with the current place in Gardens, but it’s no fun staying in the same place for more than 2 years.
I figure I’d try a blog post. Maybe a bit of social networking can help me find a place. So, let me know if you know of something nice to rent in the city bowl or surrounding areas.
I have to be in a new place by 1 September, so I need to find something pretty quickly. I viewed a place in Higgovale yesterday and a place in Camps Bay this morning. Both nice, but I’m still looking around a bit.
First, a long detour..
I guess what I should really be doing is finding a place to buy.. but I figure that’s a 6 month project.
I realised something (blatantly) obvious this week as I was taking panoramic pics from the side of Table Mountain. I though to myself.. I really have a lot of photos of Lions Head.. and then it dawned on me..
I’m pretty comfortable in Cape Town. Maybe I should live here. Does that sound a bit strange? I did mention it was obvious, remember.
“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” — Heat
Maybe I used to think like this.
I don’t really see myself moving away from CPT or SA soon. Sure, it would be cool to travel more, but you need a base.
I realised I need to take a longer term view at some point. I guess the thought of a 20 year mortgage will have that effect. Up to now I’ve kinda had a week by week view of the world, always following the next interesting and exciting idea. INTP again.
Maybe not the most fitting thought pattern for a (single) dad. Time to grow up I guess.
At the end of a long conversation, my ~shrink recently told me.. in summary.. “you’re a little boy”. It’s just plain annoying when people are right about little details like these. I suspect most of my friends know this, but tend to humour me.
I guess 6 months is a good time frame for growing up. We’ll see about that.
Back to the details.. the ~spec:
CBD, Gardens, Tamboerskloof, Higgovale, Camps Bay areas
1 or 2 Bedrooms and secure parking
Cottage or loft apartment
Close to Lions Head, Mouille Point, the gym, the office…
Would be nice to have line of sight to the Gardens Centre for Amobia connectivity.
On days like these I usually have a William Wallace moment.. after a good run.
“All men die, not all men really live.”
I followed the advice of the latest book I’m reading and I’m collecting phone numbers. Walked up to a girl I liked in Asoka tonight and said..
Hi, I’m Joe,
I think you are really cute and I’ll simply regret it if I don’t ask you for your number.
Don’t worry, I’m not some stalker. [Hands her the geeky phone] You can type in a random number if you don’t like me.
Here’s my business card. I’ll phone you.
…and it works. Well, we’ll see if the number is correct soon.
Could everybody just stop these two annoying things.. please:
1) Brand ripoff tshirts. Yes, every student wants one but it’s just sad to use other brands to promote your lame idea. Be more creative. Sure, sometimes it’s a bit funny but in the end it’s just annoying. I noticed some sad person with a “Cape Town the Original” tshirt in a Levi theme today. Grinds my guts.
2) Could everybody please start using 24h time. It’s the en_GB and en_ZA standard. If you want to arrange a meeting with me, say it’s at 14:00, not 2pm. I’m talking written comms here. I don’t mind if you tell me I’ll see you in an hour.. at two, but if you write me an email please keep the time and date 100% clear and unambiguous.
Just my INTP personality needing to vent.. (MBTI) ..more about this later.
A few random quotes I jotted down over the last few weeks..
“Trust is good, control is better.” — A cop saying
“Locks keep people honest”
“Everything ends badly, otherwise it would not end.” — Lou Holtz
“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.” — Matt Groening
“Snippy, snippy. No bus-ride treat for you.” — Igby Goes Down
“I’m an emotional guy, so I puke a lot” — Mike Strutter
The new Frogfoot office is taking shape. It’s actually rather peaceful there at the moment. Nice high ceilings in these old buildings.
I think the drive from Gardens to the new office is a bit shorter and I have under cover parking again. The Waverley business park is very different to our previous office. Much more of a community feel to it with lots of small businesses around. I’ve discovered a nice lunch spot (a 1min walk away). Lots of smokers manning every exit sadly, but I guess that’s a general trend.
Discovered a few geeky tshirts we made a long time ago in the process of moving.
I visited the Frogfoot datacentre in Great Westerford yesterday to see if we can host a cabinet or two as an interim solution for Teraco customers. It’s scary how long its been since my last visit.. months. The joys of remote admin and a stable OS I guess.
The DC (aka Frogtown) is rather impressive. Pretty much full. Nice to see how it’s grown from humble beginnings in 2002 when Abz and I built it, painting and cabling over weekends and a few late nights.
End of an era. New beginnings. Now all I have to do is find a new place to live from Sept onwards and most of the big changes will be complete. Change can be scary, but as they say.. can also be as good as a holiday.
..things I write which I kinda know only friends read. Yes, it’s a bit sad, especially when I assume they read these posts.. I skip the “how was your week” stuff in conversations and move along to the “what does it all mean” parts.
Monday, had lunch at Rhodes Memorial with Jonathan and visited the the Old Cape Town Zoo.
Turns out Mia had chickenpox over the weekend, at least the worst was over by Tuesday. She’s a tuffy.
Amobia’s touch rugby team, won 10 - 4 in the final.
Turns out I’m a hero (implicitly), maybe I’ll get myself a “single dad” tshirt.
Tuesday, Lions Head. Put on my (mildly gay) long running tights and went for a run along the table mountain cable car road. Had sushi. Watched Get Smart. Nice movie, had a few good laughs.. man, Anne Hathaway is hot.
Watched The Dark Knight. I enjoyed it. It’s a bit more James Bond than Kung Fu like the the previous one was.. and the penthouse was a bit more American Psycho, but I still like Batman Returns. Inspired me to wear my Vivienne Westwood shirt the next day.
Thursday, Web Africa brand launch at Relish and GeekDinner at De Capo with Cath. Met an interesting tailor who made suits for a number of presidents. Now I know where Fabiani sent my jackets.
Met Charl and Jade at the GeekDinner. Big thanks to Perdeberg wines for their GeekDinner sponsorship.
Friday, blogging. Gym.. trust me, newby parents need strong lower backs to keep up with a 2yr olds. Mia. Tea with the ~ex-wife at Manna. We’re working on being friends. Like the Joker said in The Dark Knight.. I was “like a dog chasing a car.. wouldn’t know what to do with it if I finally caught it.”
Saturday, watched parts of Babe for the 14th time. Stellenbosch Wine Festival with Georg and Mia. Long, busy, crazy day. Bumped into Max.
I love Vanilla Tea and honey on a laid back Sunday morning.
Glen Beach for a bit of sunshine and a few photos. Maybe I’ll see you at Fandango for some jazz at 20:00.
Thought for the week..
“the real breakfast of champions is a low information diet”
We started Frogfoot in July 2000 with a simple business model. Internet services for businesses. The two founders were both working full time jobs at the time so it made sense to have a niche operation. Frogfoot was the reason we could play with new and interesting toys and tinker with open source software. It was all good fun.
Four years later we moved into our first office space. Frogfoot became our full time gig… a day job. We hired a number of people. Let’s call this Frogfoot 2.0. We started diversifying and growing the consumer side of the business.
This week, eight years later we moved into our second office space and we are making a fresh start, in some ways going back to a very similar point from where we started. Frogfoot 3.0. Back to basics, lean and mean.
A few changes
No more software development
No more Stellenbosch office
Staff numbers went from 20ish recently to 6 people
Client numbers went from 1000+ to the 100 range
A few observations.. wisdom and perfect hindsight
Focus. Don’t get side tracked. It’s often hard to walk away and say no but it’s a very useful discipline to master. If you come across a new cool idea.. ask yourself if the idea is good enough to be a business on its own, then start a new focused business.
The 80/20 Rule. If you know 80% of your profit is coming from 20% of your customers and the other 80% use up most of your time.. find a way to work with the clients you want to work with.
The call centre model sucks. It’s a back breaking endless war zone. The best support is no support. The only way to provide mass market support is to have fully automated self-help systems and smart customers who know how to use them. Call centres and support help desks are an HR nightmare. You really have to have the personality for it. Personally I think all call centres are doomed.
Make sure you have solid business foundations. Make real profit.. 20%+ or walk away. If the industry starts selling the same commodity service you sell below cost.. drop it and run, as fast as you can.
Do the stuff you are good at. Don’t play catch-up.
Don’t work harder, work smarter. Your time is worth more.
Finding the right people is hard. Keeping people motivated, who are not naturally self motivated is even harder. People like stability and predictability. Keeping them motivated in an uncertain environment is painful.
Internal communication is very important.
Some personalities just don’t work well for managing people.
Pride only hurts. Make rational decisions. Place your bets and stick with them.
Decision making is the ultimate power. I remember driving in a taxi in Barcelona. We suspected we were going the wrong way. The meter is ticking. There is a major language barrier. Do you go along for the ride or do you cut your losses and say “take me back to the start”?
Option paralysis and Occam’s razor. The simple answer is usually the right answer, not making a decision is always the wrong answer.
Walk away from sunk costs. Especially software development costs. The software development game is messy. It’s like patching a broken fishbowl while driving on a dirt road. The more silicone gel you use the less you can see the goldfish. Avoid software development if you can.
Don’t count your chickens… At some point I figured it’s a bit depressing growing a business for 8 years, yet finding myself sucked in more and more and not being able put a price tag on it that motivated 8 years of efforts. What I realised is that Frogfoot was an excellent learning environment. A stepping stone. Frogfoot gave us the skills, experience, time and flexibility to start a number of other ventures.. and if I add all that up, I’m more than happy with my 8 years of effort.
That turned out to be a longer list than the quick brain dump I had in mind.
For some strange reason this song was stuck in my head all week. An Earworm. Actually I think I know why.. Monday was a strange day.
The video is bizarre. And the story behind the song is pretty wacky. The song was written in response to a school shooting. The reason given for the shooting was..
