Potential Client
I just had a meeting w/ a potential client (let's just say they're one of the fastest growing chain concepts in the US right now), and had a discussion first with the COO (a family friend) and then their head of IS/IT operations. And I'm still confused as to what happened, or what needs to change to fix it.
I went in discussing food safety, our departure from the focus on food safety, and the reasons we were departing from that market for the time being. [Don't get me wrong, the money is in the food safety market. It just takes some money to get there (custom plastics cost money). And we don't have the necessary $500,000 - $700,000 to get the products done "right".] I then transitioned the discussion into using software to optimize the restaurants that they have.
How do they know that they are using the best schedule possible? Could they schedule people differently and more efficiently (and save money)? What cash do they keep tied up in inventory? Could they do that better? What if they saved 1% on their inventory ... 2%, 3%, 4%? They don't use a reservation system -- but what if they did? A smart reservation system would be able to help them move tables in real-time and help them allocate tables to people in a faster situation. Why don't they use that?
After a few minutes of discussing this ... I got a blank stare. I decided to focus on inventory, since that's a well known problem in the industry (or so I thought). The chain doesn't use
ChefTec or
MenuLink, or any other system. Somewhere in the middle of the discussion, I went from talking with the COO to the director of IS/IT ... and our conversation started going like this (I'm paraphrasing, the quotes aren't 100% accurate):
"What does your company use to track inventory?", I asked him.
"We do everything in house", he replied.
"Right ... but let's say that you take inventory once a week, how do you know how much to order next week?"
After some grumbling from him ... "We train our managers, and they're good at what they do. We know what our food costs are, and we work around that."
"Is there a reason you don't use something like a ChefTec? They propose that they can save you 1% - 3% on your inventory costs. Sounds like a deal to me.", I postulated.
"Well, I've seen it in action, but I don't know that it can save me money. So, we're developing something in house to track certain items.", he came back.
"Ok, so, if they proved it to you, would you use it?"
He said, "It depends, we're taking baby steps right now ... if we need a solution though, we can probably develop something in house cheaper than their solution."
I can't dispute that with him ... and he seemed to have made up his mind. It may be cheaper to develop it in house (
along those same lines, it is probably cheaper to track your check book in Excel than it is to buy Quicken or Quickbooks ... but that's not really why people buy that software). So, I went back to the tables / reservations:
"What if you had software that could
MAKE you as much as $3500 PER week more than you're making now?" I asked.
"Well, that might be nice, but what is it?"
I said, "It's a software solution to help you seat people more efficiently. It can tell you who to seat in a restaurant, and where, and when, and how [including combining tables together]. It takes a bunch of things into account, and then crunches the best solution based on how long people have been waiting, what your individual preferences are, etc..."
"Not interested. What happens if there's a party waiting for 20 minutes, and a new party comes in. It might make more sense to seat that second party, but then the first one could be upset. That's what we have good managers for."
I just stared, and said "Well, what if I told you that the software can into account more than what the restaurant manager can, and could free him / her up to do something else."
He mentioned something about software / hardware could not replace a good manager.
Yikes. That's entrenched. I didn't know what to say.
I did learn a few things that I might not have learned elsewhere.
1. They're very concerned about how things run in the kitchen.
2. "Optimizing" to them means doing what they are already doing, but with a computer.
3. They don't seem to be concerned about costs. This was most interesting. They kept referring to themselves as a "concept" -- which makes me wonder if the goal of the company is NOT to grow a company / chain, but to sell out to one of the "big boys". Let them worry about the bleeding cash situation.
Either way I look at it, I'm fighting a long, hard road.
Spot Light On ... GTA
GTA: San Andreas has drawn some press recently. Perhaps "some" is an understatement. It got enough press to get national headlines, followed by local headlines (we even heard about it in Lubbock).
Apparently, some snafu occurred over whether it should get a Mature [M] rating, the original rating it received (which I understand to mean that it's appropriate for 17+), or an Adults Only [AO] rating (which I understand to mean that it's appropriate for 18+). Nevermind the moral, ethical, or religious reasons for rating the game ... and lets ignore what it is that teenagers learn between day 1 at age 17, and day 365.25 (when they hope to be 18). I find the press ridiculous.
Personally, any "kid" which has to jump online, find, download, and install a hacked software patch, and then go find the special password to access the special soft-porn section .... can probably type "porn" or anything else into Google, and find what they're looking for. Nevermind the porn aspect ... Did you know that video games make kids more violent?
So here it is, a wonderful call to everyone's lovable friend,
Ms. Hillary Clinton.
Seed Funding
Last Friday I sent out an email to a possible investor about a $30K - $50K seed funding to help us continue to develop our product(s).
The principal investors and founders (myself and my partner) are doing a "decent" job making sure that all of our expenses are covered. Our employees are fed, though they're slowly starving, and all of the bills are being paid. However, we would like for our employees to eat a little better, and we'd like to pay for some the services that are being given to us. [
Why? Because I've noticed over the years that people have a tendency to jump and help you when they're being paid. However, if their helping you from the kindness of their heart ... they just may not be as ready to help you when you need that help.
Free work has a tendency to only occur on their time.]
I also hate stopping our forward progress so that I can play catch up w/ the bank account (it's painful to have to choose between a board revision or a software widget or a patent application).
Turns out that our investor is actually more excited than I had anticipated, and he's proposing coming up with 5 investors w/ $50K each. In exchange, he feels that 25% (5 each) would be a good trade off. I'm pondering this greatly ... because equity / startup capital is a bit like porridge. It can't be too much, and it can't be too little.
In this case, if we had $30K - $50K, it would be scarfed up, and gone in a matter of months. If we had $2 million, we might not know exactly how to allocate it all and might do some floundering around. But, with millions, we'd have enough to leave our day jobs, hire an entire crew, and get the project well off the ground.
$250,000 is right in the middle. It's not enough to leave our day jobs, and it's not enough to retain everyone we might want. But certainly, it is enough to help us w/ all of our incidental costs, and probably to make our programmers a bit happier.
I'm most excited about the opportunity to retain members on our R&D advisory board (paying their summer stipends), and possibly a grant writer ... to see what type of collaborative work (grants?) could be secured.
Regional News
It appears that the local powers-that-be have formed a RCIC,
as dictated by the State of Texas, in an attempt to establish a Regional Center of Innovation. Oh yeah, they also want to snag some of the $200 million available for funding various projects .... especially since it's a-OK by the state for them to take a slice along the way.
It appears that the chairman / director of the local RCIC, called the WTCIC is
Dale Gannaway. Dale is also the general front-man of the local economic development group, which used to be known as Market Lubbock, but is now known as
LEDA. Their sole purpose is to try and provide incentives to stimulate local economic development.
I'm currently on a consultancy board with another group, called TRAC, which is now part of the WTCIC. I'm not sure entirely what that means ... but it could provide some interesting funding possibilities and access to some projects. So, it may not be long before I'm writing about our workings with TRAC and the WTCIC.
One Less Employee
Erik and I have been pondering what to "do" with our very first employee. When he signed up, he was a great super-star, and did some amazing development. However, over time, he has begun desiring to go back to India.
About a month ago, he approached us to let us know that he wasn't interested in the long term benefits of being a stock holder, or of the possibilities for where he could go as the company grows. He is, however, interested in more cash to ensure that when he goes back to India, that he has as much money as possible. We've had several long discussions about the possibilities that may be available for his needs. However, I've noticed that his "heart" or enthusiasm has been somewhat lack luster of late. This creates a bit of a problem, because I see the issue as having two possible outcomes:
- Take control of the product he's working on, and ensure that we get to production with it in a very rapid manner.
- Leave Resolution Systems to make more money at another job.
I called him at 10pm on Saturday night, mostly because I'm impulsive, and partially because I wanted to see how he would react to me calling him at such a late hour. Although he was a bit concerned (or seemed to me), he took the call well, and we agreed to meet at a coffee shop on Sunday @ 3pm.
He was there promptly, and we had a great discussion about what he wanted to do between now and when he was going to India. Our discussion was much as it was before, that he wanted to make as much money as possible before going back, and that he was hoping to get us to "give" him more money. He also explained that he's unwilling to take the sorts of risk that he might have been prior to making the decision to go back to India.
This creates a bit of a
problem for us. We're in a startup
mode. I understand that his needs have changed, and that he needs / wants more money. He also understands that we don't have the resources to pay him more money (nor would it be beneficial to do so). In an ideal world, I'd have more resources to pay him, and we'd be done.
I asked him a seemingly simple question ... "What would he do if he were in my position?" The result was "I would try to find more money." Though, the answer was disheartening, as he's our very first employee, and has been with us the longest, it was the answer I assumed he would propose. After some more back-and-forth, we decided that Resolution Systems would not be able to create the financial atmosphere that he was expecting or hoping for. And, without further ado, he quit.
I'm sorry to see him leave, he's been a valuable asset, and it's unfortunate that he'll be leaving. Erik and I will wish him the best in his future endeavors.
FC4 or Windows XP
Yesterday I decided to try out all of the ports / drives on the new laptop, and I blasted away the hard drive and installed Windows XP onto an 8GB partition.
Note to all: Windows XP needs 10GB+ by the time you're done with Open Office, DVD burning, and all the applications, drivers, and virtual memory that you might need.
My new laptop has a
AMD 64 Athlon, and I'd like to use some of those extra bits, so I'm in the process of downloading the Stentz DVD of
Fedora Core 4 for AMD x86_64. The last server I installed and setup was a dual-processing Opteron, which churns through a client's email like
budda. It's awfully quick w/ SATA drives, a SCSI interface, and about 2GB of RAM.
But, I do appreciate that my stock Windows XP tends to start faster than my Fedora Core 3 (or any version of
SuSE or
RedHat or
Fedora that I've ever tried) systems. Or, rather, it does today. It probably won't in six months, but then, it takes more than a few minutes for my Informix, PostgreSQL, Tomcat, Apache, Sendmail, Named, and X machine to start up.
So, now I have a decision to make. My primary machine has always been (for the past six or so years), Linux based. Starting w/ Redhat 7, then 9 (skipped 8), then Fedora Core 2, and now Fedora Core 3. I have, over the years, tried SuSE,
Damn Small Linux, and about 10 or 20 others. But Redhat has appeared more stable over the years (I'm not sure what will happen with the SuSE/Novell packages).
Typically, under Linux I run
VMWare, because most of my clients insist on some portion of their network being Windows. Sometimes, like when they have custom software that will only run on Windows, this makes sense. More often than not, the reason is "I don't like the icons" -- which doesn't make sense. Be that as it may, they are the paying customers.
So now, I'm faced with a decision:
Do I run Windows XP and do various Linux virtual hosts while using VMware, or do I run Redhat Fedora and various Windows virtual hosts?
New Laptop
Stephanie and I decided that having a single laptop in the house wasn't quite enough. Every time I travel, she's stuck without a computer, and ends up hiking into the office to take her classes or communicate with me. We've discussed the options ... including a laptop and desktop, since we already have one laptop (a year old eMachine). I also ended up in VA this weekend, so I expedited the search and stopped by Sams today.
I went in looking for a fast laptop, light, and a large screen. But we also wanted to make sure that it has a DVD/RW. Which meant that I was stuck between a Averatec, 12.1" screen -- a 4.5lb machine, and a HP with a 15.4" widescreen, and weighing in at 7.5lbs. Right around the same cost. I called Erik, and he could not get any information about the Averatec from their website (I'll need to upgrade to 2GB of RAM for development).
So, I picked up a
HP zv6008cl, and proceeded to the check out. I paid with a check, just in time for them to tell me they were sold out, it no longer will be sold, and the only one left was the display model. Turns out, they'd be happy to sell me that one, or give me a refund.
As she was giving me a refund, I inquired about a discount on the display model. "That requires a manager." So, ring me a manager. About 10 minutes later, along comes "AJ". "AJ" gets the details from me, and I explained what was going on. He disappears to a phone, and comes back 10 minutes later. "How about $175 off?" -- I told him I'd take a once-over and let him know.
Erik did some Googling, and couldn't find anything about the laptop. I know Sams has been carrying it for more than a month, but HP's own pages say it was only released yesterday (on the 19th). Huh?
I told the manager I wasn't up for it, it had been plugged in for a while, and there was no way that I was willing to pick up the laptop for that cost. He said "Why"? And then I started in on him.
"Do you know much about laptop batteries?" I asked.
"Nope, just that they all have one." He replied.
"Well, let me bring you up to speed.", and I started, "Have you ever noticed that your cell phone carries more charge when you first buy it, rather than eight months down the road? Yes -- I know, it sucks. But, mostly it's because batteries degrade over time, because the cells don't charge as efficiently. Your cell phone manual tells you to completely discharge the battery every so often. The smart way to use a laptop is the same. If it's always plugged in, the battery will slowly die."
He just stared back, his eyes glazed over.
"Alrighty, science lesson over. I have no idea how long that laptop has been plugged in, but I bet I'll need a new battery. A new one will run between $50 and $80 on eBay, but otherwise it's in good shape.", I informed him.
He woke up, "Oh, so, if I can take some more off of it, you'd buy it?"
"Only if it's enough to cover the cost of a new battery.", I reminded him.
"How about $250 off? That's the best I can do, since I was already below price. I'll try and explain the battery thing to my boss."
"Can I return it if I decide something's busted on it?", was my last question.
"Of course -- everything here has a standard return policy."
Deal.
So now, I own a lovely HP zv6008cl, of which I can only find about
21 mentions of this laptop on the web. It runs like a champ, and I got it w/ all the docs, the box, the battery [which works fine I might add], and the cables for $748.
I have no idea how well it will run Linux, but I'll let you know.
Not too shabby.
CLP vs. Standard Prolog
We've been working hard for some time now on three core things:
1. A killer GUI framework for our next Application.
2. A
Prolog algorithm capable of some amazing feats.
3. A way to properly test and quantify the amazing Prolog feats.
We're making some progress on (1), (2) is completed -- but needs some tuning, and (3) is almost done.
I've stuck our amazing intern, Travis, on the process of (3), and considering he didn't write (2), and is still in high-school, he's done some excellent things with our automation and testing. For example, we can now simulate a restaurant environment whereby people show up very quickly at certain times, or not at all. We can then throw these imaginary people into imaginary "wait queues" and apply various versions of (2) and "see" the results. And "see" is where we have a problem.
Well, perhaps "seeing" is not the problem. Perhaps it's the slow speed in which we direct ourselves towards "seeing". I can't / won't elaborate on what (2) is doing, except to say that if six parties are waiting to be seated in a restaurant, and there's 50 tables, then without our "virtual tables", there are some (50^6) * 6! combinations of where to seat EACH party. On our test systems, decently equipped in RAM and processing speed, it can take between 10 and 30 minutes to crunch all of those possible combinations. Ouch.
So, we're looking into
CLP (Constraint Logic Programming), which appears to be an off-shoot of our problem. It hopefully will provide some better / faster results. I know that in certain problem domains, we can expect to see 8x speed enhancements. But, an 8x speed enhancement over 30 minutes still means that we have to process for 3.5 minutes. This is still unacceptable. That number should be under 30 seconds.
Our next possibility will be to look at slicing portions of the problem onto a small cluster of machines, to allow each machine to tackle part of the problem. Luckily, our problem domain falls easily into the class of problems which is both easily solved in a cluster of machines. I don't mind building a small cluster to test our theories -- however, the question may become
"How do we convince our customers that they need to pay us monthly for this service?"
Movie Review: Equilibrium
Steph and I belong to
Netflix, and we enjoy it a lot more now that they've added a TX based distribution center. Movies show up within two days now.
About two weeks ago, I went online and started clicking on movies that they were suggesting, but I had seen, much less never heard of, to see how well their automated selection was working. We ended up with
Timeline,
Twisted, and
Equilibrium.
Turns out, we'd seen Timeline before, and it's so-so. A simple plot, easy to understand character motives, and un-believable technology makes a good kids movie (the PG-13 rating is a whole other post).
Twisted, we watched ... and were quite disappointed with. Ashley Judd does a decent job of playing the crazed semi-criminal, but after about the fourth drug-alcohol-induced blackout, I was yawning. The ending (not spoiled here) was also quite apparent as soon as you match up what the celebrities involve charge for their on-screen appearances and what they do in the film.
Equilibrium was quite another thing. I'm a huge Sci-Fi fanatic, and this movie had enough action to keep me entertained (though perhaps not quite the
Matrix) and a real plot. The writers did a great job (IMHO) of pulling together the various political, social, and psychological elements -- and the result was a gripping movie.
Christian Bale, an excellent actor, did a wonderful job of pulling off being un-emotional in a movie.
I was prepared to be disappointed .... the movie is about a drug-induced society which has sacrificied emotion and feelings (senses) for better efficiency and less war and crime. They follow "father", the creator of a new drug (Prozac?) which is designed to mellow everyone out. Citizens all wear the same clothing, do similar job functions, and are killed for having anything which may evoke their senses.
My concern would be that the actors would be boring -- actors get paid to show emotion in their faces / bodies. How were they getting paid in this movie, in which they could show none? Christian Bale did not disappoint, and I truly believed that he was witnessing the emotions he felt, for the first time.
My fascination w/ Martial Arts (being a practitioner of
Krav Maga and a certified
Haganah instructor) and my current job roles combined perfectly as the movie explained the role of the "gun kata". Talk about efficiency! The top level "clerics" are taught these advanced kata's, improving their ability to strike down an opponent, and to defend themselves, all based on the statistical distribution of opponents and weapons.
I think this will go in with my collection of Memento, and a few other top-notch movies.
As for Netflix and their optiziming ... I'd give it a 40% rating.
Animal Intelligence
As the owner (and an advocate) of avian pets, I have always been impressed by the studies that are being done on parrots to discover the limits of their intelligence.
Our current avian family-friend,
who will probably outlive me, is Dren. Dren is a 3.5 year old
Blue and Gold Macaw, and is constantly charming us with his 3-year old mentality. Anyone who has ever bird-sat for us has discovered that he loves to play "
Try and Put Me in My Cage", can undo all of the locks on his cage (which is why they are now pad-locked), and has a constantly growing vocabulary.
He'll never have the vocabulary of
Alex, who is pictured above, but he certainly does understand some amazing concepts.
For instance, he has discovered how to dump his food bowl. If it was a generic food bowl, most people would go "No biggie". Dren's bowl actually screws on, and then "locks". To unlock it, he must climb underneath it, and rotate the wing-nut until it aligns with the holes (not all the way, just until it lines up), and then push up. Once he has pushed it out of the locking wing-nut, he crawls back up and finishes pulling it up ... then throws it. But, he won't throw it if it's full. That would be wasting food (and there are starving birds somewhere!) He only dumps it when he's eaten / played with all of it.
Although, I find the
monkeys who will pay to see female-monkey bottoms quite humorous. It makes me wonder about monkey entrepreneurs err ... pimps.
Slingbox
I decided today that I read too much of the same information. My standard dosage of RSS feeds gets me
Brad Feld,
Southeast VC,
Mark Pincus Blog,
Seth's Blog,
Fractals of Change,
Slashdot, and
TheServerSide (along with a half dozen other semi-read feeds). However, I thought I might need some new reading.
For that, I headed over to
Technorati, and opened up their "
Top 100 Blogs", and started scrolling through some of them; at least, those that looked interesting. I think I'll stick with one-a-day for now, as it's amazing how much time can be spent just going through various Blogs.
I did manage to track down a few new ones today:
- Joel On Software - Joel has been someone I've read from time to time in the past; he has some great writing on how to treat programmers (including pay, housing, feeding, and visitation hours). I don't agree with all of it, but it's very interesting reading. He's even got a book or two.
- Gizmodo - This is some of the latest / greatest gadgetry. At least, me and a few other thousand (millions?) readers think so.
- Engadget - Similar to Gizmodo, but with what appears to be more "news" and fewer "reviews".
While I was doing all of this perusing, I managed across
Brad Feld's blog, and an entry on
SlingMedia / SlingBox. It looked neat, but then I noticed a mention on
Gizmodo, and thought I'd take a deeper look.
I'm impressed. Talk about the essence of simplistic media players / repeaters. I may just pick one up. I've been bouncing around the idea (and who hasn't?) for a long time of a home media center, and some way to manage all of my media -- ideally from anywhere in the house. I'd think a solution like MythTV or TiVo would be wonderful -- storing all of my data on one machine; fine, but now how to get it to everywhere in the house?
Then I looked at the cost of bringing in Cable / Satellite to the office, only a few miles from my home.
Cox Communications wants $60 for the first TV, and $20 for each one after that. It very quickly makes the SlingBox a better alternative.
Does anyone know how much bandwidth the Slingbox takes up? I tried to find it on their website, but no luck.
HaloScan
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.
[I'm just trying to figure out this TrackBack pinging thing. You'd think it'd be a bit easier to use
].
