I pretty much detest this IOZ character, but this is some funny stuff right here . It has the added zest of being true, but the wordsmithing is genius.

And the bonus contemporaneousness, for me, of hearing today that it’s time to renew our health insurance at The Tiny Bidness, so I’ve got to quit smoking by October 1, 2006. I hope they didn’t tell them I gamble and own firearms, too, but they probably already know that.

Secondarily because I like the cache of linking to Nick Carr’s blog, which is an excellent 21st Century Bidness blog, by the way:

Salesforce.com, which is the flag-bearer for Software as a Service, can afford to take a very different view of the economics of business software because it is not tied to the client-server model (and, indeed, wants only to destroy that model). Its intent is to shake things up, and its vision is, not surprisingly, the most radical of the three companies. It believes that basic business software should be rebuilt from the ground up, in Web 2.0 style, through the contributions of a broad set of developers and innovators - from its own staff, from its clients, and from independent software firms. Cohesion comes at the platform level, with a shared computing infrastructure, a shared database, and a shared programming language - all under Salesforce’s control.

I’m speaking here as an extremely small business user of SalesForce. I am the absolute smallest unit on their price list, in fact. And I’m here to tell you that for all that high-falutin’ 21st Century Bidness bullshit bandied about above, I’ve never been more disappointed about my tee-tiny’s company’s dollars winging their way out of our pocket-book. Let me just tell you that the ‘broad set of developers and innovators’ have a long damn way to go to reach the most dumbed-down level of open-source software available today. That is, open-source, as in “free.” As in, you could run it on that AMD K6 PC you’ve got on the shelf over the workbench, free.

You can talk Web 2.0 all you want until the cows come home, but when you start subtracting features from the software you sold me, and telling me I have to change a 10 year-old workflow* and break every other connection I’ve built, and make your “radical” business model the center of my universe — well, buster, you can be sure I shan’t be re-upping in a month or two. I’m the center of the universe in my eensy-weenie bidness world. Just as my customers are my Sol.

Details? I’ll give you details…
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Leave Coach Fran alone!

“…all you people want is pass, pass, pass!”

Especially appropriate after last night’s butt-whipping…

Not that it matters, but it’s been a completely rotten week with the Peruvian Meteor Sickness. I got nothing done, and no hopes of being completely prepared for a supremely important* six-day biz trip to Viva Las on Saturday. I did get a handful of horse antibiotics from the doc yesterday & that finally broke the fever in the middle of the night. I should be able to get a little caught up, but I mainly want to be able to be lucid and cogent and on by Monday morning.

* So important, that I’m not even thinking about the poker prospects.