I Built My Business, Mr. President (No Thanks To You)

Entrepreneurs don’t ever stop. We never take vacations. When a man or woman is building a business from the ground up, he or she doesn’t have the luxury of taking anything for granted. It’s one hundred percent all the time; the plucky small businessman goes everywhere with the burden of his company on his shoulders. The entrepreneur doesn’t take time off, she has no “down time;” even if she’s sitting in front of the television she’s working, thinking of how to expand her biz, how to add more income streams, how to better serve her clientele, how to expand her product and service portfolio.

Contrast this picture with the following: A national organization that shall remain nameless gets the meals it provides funded by the federal government. If one were to travel through the line for one of those said meals, getting a dollop of slop plopped on one’s plate, and if one were to attempt to bypass, say, the milk, one would be told, “You have to take the milk. If you don’t, we won’t get credit for using our allotment and our federal funding will drop. Take it, and if you don’t want it, drop it in the box at the end of the line and we’ll re-use it.” I shouldn’t have to belabor this illustration, but this is where backward federal baseline budgets have taken us. If you don’t see how this is dishonest at its best—and theft in truth—you might as well stop reading this, because your mind is dead. But baseline budgets are de rigeur in the house that capitalism built (and socialism is actively eating).

At no time does the thought I feel secure because I know the government is helping me enter the mind of the bootstrapper. If anything, anyone who has ever tried to start up their own business feels the government is antagonistic to everything he is trying to do. The entrepreneur must beware of all kinds of tax regulations—some of which are written to be ambiguous on purpose, like the weird way the Idaho State Tax Commission allows businesses to “voluntarily” (you’ve gotta read the fine print to discover this) pay more taxes on internet-based sales. Does the ISTC not know that taxes are kryptonite to prosperity? Why on earth would any sane person volunteer to pay more taxes? But now the leftist brainiacs are spouting the lie that somehow paying higher taxes is morally superior. The Catholic church had a similar program (the paying of indulgences for the forgiveness of sin) before the Reformation. There’s nothing new under the sun. How ironic that those who proselytize us about the religion of recycling are themselves recycling a concept that’s a thousand years old: guilt as a motivator. My wicked step mother tried raising me like that, and I hate her to this day. Almost as much as I hate how the Obama government operates. But I digress.

The entrepreneur must beware of producing too much, lest he commit the sin of moving into a higher tax bracket and thereby suffer the sting of the long arm of the tax law, which punishes production. I know a guy who was forced by logic at the end of his fiscal year to plunk down a large amount of money on office equipment he didn’t need—because, the way the income tax brackets work, he could either spend money on something functional or write a check to the IRS for the same amount. That was a no-brainer. The government has too much already, and they don’t deploy it efficiently. Exhibit A would be the story about the milk above.

I know another couple that had a great year working their butts off only to find that it was all for naught—their tax bill went through the roof. They decided the subsequent year to reduce their production so they could make more money, which is backward as hell. This is how things are in the real world right now, and worse. Question: if we live in a consumer economy, why do we not then tax consumption, instead of doing things backwards? But still, I digress.

I’ve lately been brainstorming ways to better build my business. Being that I live and breathe by Web-based sales, I don’t have to volunteer to pay the Idaho sales tax, which is six percent. And trust me, I minimize my tax obligations ruthlessly. That’s the American way. The government ought to earn the right to take my money, but instead it’s the other way around: I have to earn the right to keep it; the onus is upon the business owner to navigate the treacherous bevy of legislation, regulation, and taxation that assaults us from all quarters. No wonder so many of us were outraged by what our sitting president said about all our work being nullified by the very presence of infrastructure in our lives—a crazy ass thing to say. It’s clear what our president believes in: government, not God. Marxist redistribution, not hard work being its own reward. But again, I digress.

Trust me, if you’re a hard working entrepreneur (is there any other kind?) you’re not alone. We are the majority in America today. With the uncertainty in the workplace, why not strike out on your own and take the risks of being self-employed? At least then if you’re downsized out of a job you’ll know who to blame (you). With the volatility in real estate and on Wall Street, why not make your primary investment in you, rather than sending your 401(k) to the gamblers in NYC? At least then if you utterly fail and your retirement is wiped out, you’ll know who to blame (you). As it stands, with the government engaging in a hostile takeover of the entire world, the central planners amongst us just might be unwittingly stoking the fires of an enormous backfire—that will explode in their faces—because if the government is responsible  for everything, guess who gets blamed when everything goes wrong? Bingo: BHO is his name-o (and friends, Republican and Democrat).

This is not an endorsement of Obama’s opponent, in November, Romney. Far from it. As one of my friends might say, we really have no options anymore. The powers that be have propped up the candidates they want us to choose from, and frankly neither one of them is what I want. We are being told who to vote for. For me, Romney is milquetoast. I don’t know him from Adam. I do know to a certainty that I do not want Obama to win a second term. Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with race. He is a known quantity that has been measured and found wanting. He’s more of a punishment than anything else. His tenure in office is like God’s judgment against a wayward nation. Will we wake up? Who knows. Obama has told us who he is and we know what he wants to accomplish. Basically that is the castration of America. And it’s nothing new; the French invented revanchist politics hundreds of years ago (which begs the question of why Barack Obama is so angry, and what he wants revenge for—I leave that to you).

In the end, the entrepreneur has enough opposition working against him. We don’t need the government lecturing us, acting morally superior (which irritates the hell out of me). Federal bureaucrats haven’t the slightest clue about the real world. I know of a couple who both work for the federal government—they live in a $500k house and drive Cadillac Escalades. This guy’s home theatre is like his own personal IMAX—and they do it all with my money, your money. They don’t live in the real world. They live in a fairy tale, and nothing is real to them—especially the price we pay in order to pay them. Are they grateful? I can’t say. But I don’t see them volunteering to pay higher taxes. If that’s the measure of holiness these days, these federal employees have fallen short of the goal. But sadly, we the people who are paying their salaries are encrusted with ambivalence. “Meh,” we say. It’s sad. Because things could still change. America could still heal; it’s not too late. But it won’t—not, at least, with people like Obama in power.

Your Essential Shopper YES! and how to get rid of it

I’ve been receiving the YES! straight-to-the-trash “newspaper” for about half a year now. I never asked for it. I never, not once heard from the Idaho Statesman (a Gannett company) about whether or not I wanted it (they allege that a previous resident at my address gave them permission). But twice a week, it showed up any-damn-way, a pile of pink bagged garbage, a condomized collection of junk mail just sitting in my yard, daring me to defy it.

For a long time I just took it straight to the recycle bin (hey, evil conservatives with libertarian leanings can recycle, too). I would sometimes be outside and hear a thwack! sound and turn just in time to see the delivery person drive away with me trying to call out to them, “Hey! I don’t want that!” But to no avail.

I finally Googled the title of the supplement. What did I find out? Why, only that it’s a nationwide nuisance. There are people in places other than Boise that are just as befuddled as I am about this direct-to-your-door advertisement poopstorm. What’s funny is that, of course, you can find all kinds of links that point to how you can susbscribe to YES! and the blurb text gives me the impression that by God I ought to be excited about it! There are exclamation marks everywhere! There are words like dynamic and yippity zippity! Okay, maybe not that, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I finally found the number to call. It’s the Idaho Statesman subscription desk. It’s 208.377.6200, just FYI. And it’s public information, so I’m not breaking any rules in regard to disclosure. I’m just trying to save you the pop-up pain of navigating the Stateman’s Web site—clearly they’re desperate for revenue (maybe the majority of people are sick of reading “news” that’s really just the left’s opinion on how we’re supposed to think). If you call this number and tell them you don’t want YES! anymore, they’ll be happy to unsubscribe you. But if you tell them how outrageous their business practices are, they’ll transfer you to the supervisor. Now that’s service.

But wait, there’s more. Because there are other people out there across the fruited plain who have tried to unsubscribe from YES! as well. These people have spoken to the subscription departments of their local broadsheets and they’re still, guess what, getting a large pink turd dropped on their lawn twice a week. So be ready for a fight.

I told the Statesman that their direct delivery junk mail constituted a security risk to my family. No, really. Because what if I’m on vacation, okay? And what if the pink turd patrol continues to drop two bombs per week in my absence? Astute criminals will be able to deduce, a la Home Alone, that my house is ripe for the picking. And I ain’t having that.

I think it’s a commentary on where we’re at as a society when our newspapers can bully us into calling them for relief. Clearly, they’re desperate for a world that no longer exists; a world where they mattered. They’ve been reduced to schlepping used cars and appliances and blue light specials via ad supplements no one wants. I find it hilarious, in the end, and I rejoice in the demise of what has amounted to a powerhouse, for decades, of the American left (it’s also beautifully ironic that these socialists have to turn to capitalism to save them).

The Statesman’s harassment has been, perversely, at least a little instructive. I’ll keep you updated on whether or not they continue to shat on my lawn. Shades of the occupy movement? Oh, yes. I think so.

Try Something New

It was the banana leaves that did it for me. I tell my kids all the time, “Don’t tell me you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it.” I’m talking about food, of course, and in this case, banana leaves have the starring role. They’re an essential ingredient of kalua pork, a traditional Hawaiian dish that’s usually cooked in the ground. Mind you, I didn’t cook mine in the ground; I used a wood fired grill. But it’s true about those banana leaves. It ain’t kalua pork without ‘em.

And that has caused me to come over all philosophical. Because truly, how often do we really try new things? (If you’re jet set or single, ignore this). For those like me, who actually thrive on routine occasionally, trying something new can be daunting. Like a kid with a plate of sushi in front him and a look of horrified anxiety on his face. Or like a grown man trying to bring off homemade kalua pork for the first time in his life.

Sometimes there are a lot of elements that have to come together in order for the New Thing to be a success. For instance, there might be a need to find where in the hell to buy banana leaves in Boise, Idaho. Or Hawaiian red salt. Or there could be a wood fired grill that refuses to cooperate and just stay at around 300 degrees all day long, necessitating the native blowgun method of cooking (don’t ask, but it involves a disused metal broom handle aimed at hot coals and the lungs of an old trumpet player). That New Thing might cost you, in other words.

You may not even like it, and that’s okay. But at least you can say you’ve tried it. Or that you’ve had it, which puts me in mind of my mother telling me, “I have had it with you!” as a kid—or was that a Bill Cosby sketch? And anyway there might be the lingering aftertaste of regret commingled with be-bafflyfuddle-wildering victory. One might ask the question “why” one was so stupid as to try Spam and seaweed. Look at it as a notch on your belt, then. And try something new. Really. Try it. You’ll like it. Or not. But just try it. It may or may not be fun or even remotely enjoyable or even perhaps a total and complete waste of time and energy, but in the end you can at least brag about it. I know I will.

And you know what else? My homemade kalua pork was so good I’m going to try beef brisket the same way. I’m told I can’t (HA!) call it kalua beef, but critics aren’t even human. Now, before I begin a new tangent I must end this blog post.

Ninjas (Hemingway style)

I recently got a ca. 1950's Royal Quiet De Luxe portable typewriter. For two bucks. I'm told it's worth between two and three hundred. To me, it's priceless. It's completely mechanical, and a triumph of 20th century engineering. Ernest Hemingway reportedly composed much of his work on one of these.

I'm not that professional, but I've been practicing. I wanted to share a short story of extreme absurdity with you:

Of course there are errors. Hello, that is ROUGH. But it's beyond refreshing to compose on such a magnificent machine. Like playing a different instrument, you get different results. I'll share more in the future if it's worthy. For now, I'm just having fun. Hope you had fun reading this.

The Writing Shed, Part Four

Last time I wrote about the shed I was missing a wall. There were two ends sort of dangling in the breeze like a participle. Whatever that is.

Since the fourth wall would not fit inside the other three laying down (which is how ya build ‘em), I had to frame it up on the grass. As it turned out, that was much nicer for my blown-out knees to kneel down on than the floor. My wife helped me stand it up and get in in position, sans sheathing. We had to lift the pre-drilled bottom plate over the power conduit. I didn’t install the header for the sliding glass door until the wall was set. I wanted it to be light and tweakable, because I had two corners to meet up with. After I nailed off the corner, I tacked on the first piece of sheathing at the top, letting it drape, checking for square. I wasn’t so worried about things being plumb or level yet—the deck has settled a bit since I dug the foundation stones, so there will be some shimming and leveling for fine tuning as weight is added to the structure.

Now that the power is inside the shed and not just sticking up into the atmosphere, I can begin thinking about wiring up all the switches and recepts I’ll need. I plan to use those ultra-modern LED lightbulbs, which have become pretty reasonable price-wise. I refuse to install CFLs, because one, they contain mercury, which is toxic (bet you didn’t know that, and please if you use those idiotbulbs, take them to a HAZMAT drop off when they expire—don’t chuck them into a landfill—we’ll be drinking mercury in our groundwater pretty soon if you do). Two, CFLs irritate the shit out of me because they take about five minutes to come on and warm up to full bright, which is like driving for groceries in a Model T. CFLs are rubbish. Anyway, more on electrical in the future. LED lightbulbs will contribute to efficiency, they last forever, and they won’t tax my electrical feed. They use about one tenth the power of an incandescent, and every little bit helps. Not for the environment. For my power bill. I'm an evil capitalist.

I got the sliding glass door from my brother. He was looking to replace the one on his house with a French door, and I told him we’d go halvsies on that if I could have his old slider. Turns out I paid twenty five bucks for it; not bad. It installed very easily. There’s a flange along the outside edges of it, and that flange is meant to butt up to the framing. After it’s all hunky-dory, the sheathing is installed over the top of the flange, decently tight to the door. [I've since been informed that I should have installed the flange over top of the sheathing. But I ain't changing it.] It’s important not to screw the flange along its top edge—it has to have room to expand and contract with temperature changes. If you strangle off the door by running screws through the top flange, you may end up with cracked glass.

After I got the slider figured out, I was able to continue sheathing the rest of the shed. A 2x4 wall is pretty strong in compression, but adding the sheathing makes it strong in shear load. Building each wall into a square makes those walls exponentially stronger, as does adding the roof. All that to say I’m past the point of needing to brace the walls, but it’s not done until the roof is on. And speaking of which, my brother and I figured out a way to build it simply, cheaply, quickly, and all while keeping it quiet and adding a facility for it to vent from bottom to top. If a roof isn’t vented, condensation could develop in cold weather, and extreme heat could build up in summer, both of which make it tough not only on the shingles, but eventually the framing. So we’re going to vent it. I’ll show you next time around, or the time after that. Or the time after that.

Between now and then I have to fine tune the floor, moving one foundation stone and shimming some others. I also have to build the inner wall. This will separate the storage part of the shed from the writing part. I already have my lawnmower parked in there. It looks great.

The Writing Shed, Part Three

Since I last updated this series, I’ve done a lot of work to the writing shed. Plus, I began using a phrase I’m sure I’ll use often in the future: “Babe, I’m going to the shed.”

I neglected to install pressure blocking on my joists when I was framing up the floor. I clean forgot it. To compensate for this, then, I added a layer of 3/8” underlayment, glued and stapled down. Now the floor doesn’t sag. Of course, it rained soon after I did this, permanently raising the edges of each sheet, so now I’ve got to get in there with a belt sander and some 40-grit and relieve the seams a bit. It wouldn’t do to have a crummy floor. I meant to seal the whole deck with some oil base floor paint, but I was tied up that morning, and by the time I was ready to roll, it was raining.

On to the next bit, then. I’ll fix the floor after the roof is on.

Since I had a nice flat surface to work on, the next step was building the trusses. This required a flurry of Googling in order to remember how to use my Swanson Speed Square. Basically, it’s an aluminum right triangle with cheats on it so carpenters don’t need to know trigonometric math by heart. I figured my 4/12 pitch (4 inches of rise for every foot of run), drew the angles, and cut my top chords. After that, with my brother’s help, I laid out each one precisely the same (I traced the first one on the deck and then lined up all the others on those lines, temporarily screwing each truss to the deck for nailing). OSB gussets were glued and nailed on with ring shank nails. The bottom chords, sections of 2x6, were cut, glued in and nailed the next day.

I suppose I should mention the power feed. The back yard is currently in a state of recovery because I have been digging the crap out of it lately. I had to remove an old piece of conduit that had been sticking up out of the ground (it wasn’t live) that failed to launch. Shed plans changed over the course of many years; what can I say. After that, I had to relocate two sprinkler heads. While my yard was littered with trenches and big clumps of grassy dirt, I went ahead and dug another trench for the shed’s power supply. I used schedule 80 conduit and a 25’ length of 12-2 W/G outdoor wire—the wire could probably have been buried directly, but I wanted to have zero problems. This, on a 20 amp breaker, will provide plenty of power with very little voltage drop due to resistance. I could have used smaller gauge wire, but I’d rather be on the safe side. I need enough power to be able to run the little air conditioner my neighbor gave me, plus a little heater (alternately, of course).

The walls went up pretty quickly. I laid them out on 24” centers, which is plenty for a shed. Most sheds are framed up like this, only they use 2x3s instead of the 2x4s I used, so it’ll be plenty strong. The easiest way to build a wall is to precut your top and bottom plates and then layout your stud locations with both of them sandwiched together. When you’re ready to nail everything together, you’ll have perfectly plumb and square studs. Once the frame of the wall was nailed together, I laid out the sheathing on it before standing it up. I nailed my OSB sheathing along the top edge of the wall, allowing it to drape down. I then could rack the wall for plumb if needed, then nail off the sheathing after the wall was braced.

The second wall was nearly a tragedy, because the wind came up a bit, and I foolishly decided to stand the wall up in these gusts. April helped me out by smooshing herself between the wall and the fence until I had everything nailed off. The corner where the two walls meet is critical; it’s gotta be plumb in both directions, so it was a bit of a faff until the bottom plate was nailed down, the corner nailed off, and the free end braced. The third wall, you’ll notice, has been framed out for a large set of double doors. This will be the entrance to the shed. I’ve left its free end incomplete for now, because I’m waiting on a sliding glass door for the office section. Until that’s on site, I don’t want to build anything, just in case the rough opening isn’t quite as advertised. It would suck to have to modify a wall I only just built.

So the next step is to finish the walls. Once those are done, my brother and I can roll the trusses and finish the roof. That’ll be next month. Thanks for tuning in here. It’s pretty exciting!

Fatherhood for the Clueless

Recently, at the Vineyard Men’s Retreat in Challis, I shared a little about my own dad. The guest speaker David Parker opened the mic on the final morning for testimonies and I jumped at the chance, because I felt a burden to share about my broken relationship with my dad. I believe there are plenty of men who, for one reason or another, are disconnected from their fathers, and I wanted to encourage other guys like me who have daddy issues.

As I said that morning from the stage, I’ve been trying my whole life to get my dad to engage, to show interest in my life, to be involved in what I do and in who I am. Sadly, he has never done that; not once. The only times we’ve been even semi-close or involved with each other have been when either I or my mom took the initiative or reached out. Ever since the divorce, he’s been passive, disengaged; he’s deferred to others—especially my step-mother. I realized the most painful part of it all only a few years ago—that in the process of destroying our family when I was two years old, he literally traded us in for something he wanted more. That’s been borne out by a great many bits of evidence, from how he does engage with my step-relatives to the fact that I haven’t received a phone call, email, letter, or even a card from him in the 5+ years since I decided to see how long it might take for him to notice me.

I share this not to bitch and moan. I share it only to illustrate that these patterns do not have to continue in my life, and especially not in the lives of my own two boys. I’ve made attempts to reconcile, don’t get me wrong. But at this point, it’s clear he just doesn’t want to be a dad or a grandfather to me or my brother and our families. I have moved past that. Now I focus on my own boys. So does my brother, with his own. We’ve had a great many conversations about this. One thing we decided upon was that it was a net good for us simply to be present in the lives of our boys. Sure, we mess up as dads from time to time. But we’re here. That’s the bare minimum, and we’re accomplishing that with gusto. I personally, and I know I can speak for my brother on this point as well, want more for me and my boys than just to be present.

I want to involve them in my life, and I want to be involved in theirs. Just last night, I was walking and praying and asking God to show me what to pray for in their lives for this next year or so. He showed me. He gave me specific things to pray for. I’m not going to share specifics here, because it’s none of your damn business, frankly, especially if you’re not family. But suffice it to say that what God led me to pray for in my boys is exactly what they need for this upcoming season of life, and it’s all blessing. I can’t wait to get started.

And if you’re like me, if you had to struggle through boyhood and manhood for years without much of an example, take heart. God uses that hunger to produce amazing and miraculous deeds of warrior fathering and genuine masculinity, not only in your life, but in the lives of your kiddos. Trust me, I know. My life is proof that God loves to use what everyone else thinks is useless and wasted and broken, and through grace, make it something magnificent. That’s what a man’s heart for his boys is. Magnificent.