Rodent Regatta

Medieval theologians listed ”seven deadly sins.” They were pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Though never called out in a simple list in the Bible, these remain the kinds of things that block our way. If you’ve not achieved what you’d like in life, consider shifting what you pay closest attention to.

Contrast those ”deadly sins” with the ”fruits of the Spirit.” That list is explicitly cited in Galations 5:22-23. How different would things be if we spent more time on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control than on the seven deadly sins.

How different could your ability to earn and provide meaningful service to others be in 2004 if your focus shifts? Rather than a legalistic attempt at avoiding and condemning the wrong, focus on seeking and showing others the better alternatives of the second list. You’ll be amazed at the result.

Here’s the way the New American Standard reads:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22, 23 New American Standard

Here’s the way The Message reads:

But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard – things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Galatians 5:22, 23 The Message

The only way we earn is by exchanging our goods and services for an amount of money of equal or similar value. Are the services and goods you produce exchanged for a sum of money that meets your needs? The only way to alter that condition is to increase the value of the goods and services you provide. Serve more and you’ll earn more. Find a way to meet the needs of an increasing number of people and your earnings will rise.

This guy just made $810,000 for 2004, and it is only January 25th!

What goods or services will you exchange for money in 2004?

What is that exchange worth in the marketplace?

In the USA we value different kinds of things at very different rates of exchange. You won’t earn that much money teaching a classroom of third graders this year. You might earn that as a doctor, lawyer or business owner. The CEO’s of our largest public companies will earn that.

Have you broken the code?

Tim Bray has found that merely dropping a hint that you might be considering a job or career change brings the opportunists out of the woodwork. Never do they have an offer of immediate employment, income or a match of work to your experience.

Instead, they’re offering a ”chance” to realize your dreams. Emphasize ”chance,” because it usually means something like, ”if you’ll do all of these things for me, look what ”might” happen to you, your career and your income!”

This will bore some (many?) of you. Some of my recent experiences with technology have dealt with very arcane configuration parameters in a piece of software used for supply-chain work. If a company sells a widget that requires two sub-assemblies to be built prior to final assembly and there are pay-points or labor costs for each assembly and six or seven raw materials for each assembly, how do you make (this particular) software track that.

I haven’t done much of this kind of work since the mid-1980’s. You’ll recall how frustrated I became recently. There were many moments when I felt as if I was learning things I would never use again. They were one-off solutions to problems I didn’t even want to be solving. But, there’s always a silver lining…

This morning I’ve been tinkering with Movable Type and MT-Medic. MT-Medic is a nice tool for someone (like me) who is ultra-cautious about trampling around on the insides of a Movable Type installation. I don’t know why the configuration report from MT-Medic shows some different settings from the ones I know I’ve changed in mt.cfg, but it does. That’s a different subject.

Here’s what hit me: why am I enjoying mucking around in Movable Type, but not in a supply-chain software package? Several reasons come to mind, but the most important is, ”Movable Type is horizontal knowledge. Understanding how it installs on a web server and how permissions are set on files and how to make it behave as a content management system for virtually any business is radically different work from configuring a supply-chain package to handle a unique set of widgets.”

One of these is clearly horizontal knowledge that will be in demand for many years to come. The other is specific, vertical knowledge that I’m having to develop for a single client. It just feels better to be working on something that you might be able to apply over and over. Ultimately, the answer lies in doing work that fits this kind of requirement.

Go over to mezzoblue and read the entry titled Business Loss. It begins with a great quote and ends with a great truth.