Trump Week In Review, 17 Mar 2017

| March 17, 2017

This evening, we returned from a week at a trade show helping a company launch a new product, so we’ve been out of the loop on Trumpenings and world events. More on this side of things next week.

In business news, the show was a huge success. It has been over a decade since I’ve seen this much optimism and enthusiasm at a trade show. Although it was our first time at this particular trade show, veteran exhibitors said it was the most successful they have seen. Public attendees had a spring in their step and their eyes would light up at many booths. Exhibitors told us that this perception is a significant tick upwards from past years. All booths were sold out, and there was record public attendance. Many exhibitors were excited to talk not only about their current offerings, but also about new projects that have only recently been green-lit.

Private conversations with many exhibitors, and a few attendees, revealed a common theme of all of us having dodged a Hillary-shaped bullet. There was also a common understanding that the reprieve is most likely temporary. Despite this single caveat, the entire experience was very encouraging overall and entirely consistent with what we’ve been reporting here from our other conversations over the past few weeks.

Introduction To Prospecting

| March 13, 2017

SoftBaugh has released an article on the subject of prospecting for the small business owner. As with many of the articles in this small business article series so far, this article introduces the topic at an introductory level. Future articles will build on these introductory topics. We think that starting small is the right approach, particularly to help young people get started. Because of more than a decade of dwindling economic opportunity, some Millennials have little significant financial or business experience. It isn’t an insult to say that for some of them, using their parents’ credit card is their primary source of goods and services. A similar number have probably never filed a tax form more complicated than the 1040-EZ. While these articles aren’t at that low of a level, the goal for now is to get most readers up to a fundamental level of expertise. Old hands at business may recall fondly their earlier, bright-eyed younger years when just getting started. These articles also make great business and economics lessons for the homeschooler.

Local Papers As Information Sources

| March 11, 2017

In your local civil affairs efforts, you will often find that local papers will tend to whitewash various local officials and public figures. We’ve discussed this in other articles; the tendency is to want to ignore the local rags because of how obviously lop-sided their reporting can be. As it is above with mainstream media and national news and public figures, so it is below with local media and local news and public figures. This doesn’t mean that the local papers should be ignored. Far from it. Even in the whitewashing, local rags can reveal many useful bits of information. Plus, once you see the pattern between the whitewashed image and the real thing, future whitewashing will help you fill in the gaps in your intelligence operation, or at least direct you onto interesting collection targets. Today, Leech City released an article that was prompted by a local paper source.

» ( Read more of Local Papers As Information Sources… )

Trump Week In Review, 10 Mar 2017

| March 10, 2017

Seven weeks, and plenty is happening on the geo-political front. Everyone has heard of the Wikileaks dump and the wiretapping of Trump Tower by the Obama administration during the campaign. A civil war has been reported between Trump’s nationalists and the cuckservative moderates sprinkled in the mix, and the revised travel ban looks like it may stick. We’ll see how these shake out.

Closer to home and with more immediate impact are the latest rumblings about job creation projections and Obamacare Lite. Various mainstream media sources appear to be grudgingly acceding that a pro-American stance by the national government might actually help create jobs for … Americans. The horror…

» ( Read more of Trump Week In Review, 10 Mar 2017… )

Your Small Business Checking Account

| March 10, 2017

SoftBaugh has released a new small business tips article, this time about opening a business checking account. While admittedly simplistic, this article lays an important foundation for future articles. It also encourages even sole proprietorships to open a separate business account to make tax time easier, and easier to anticipate. Here at Starving the Monkeys, we are big fans of anything that increases your family’s self-sufficiency. A successful small business (at whatever level) will go a long way toward enabling everything else you want for your family, and increase your personal freedom and choices.

Homeschool CLEP: 8 College Chemistry Credit Hours at Age 14

| March 9, 2017

Today, our fourteen-year-old homeschooled daughter passed the Chemistry CLEP with a score of 57/80, which is good for up to eight college credit hours at many universities. As with the previous Biology CLEP, this win is made even nicer by the fact that some of those credit hours include lab segments. As you know, lab courses can represent an inordinate amount of time, effort and schedule juggling. For those lab courses which are off the primary degree track, this additional time and effort can detract from the major focus.

» ( Read more of Homeschool CLEP: 8 College Chemistry Credit Hours at Age 14… )

Leech City Update, 9 Mar 2017

| March 9, 2017

We’ve been busy over at Leech City with local content articles that, individually, weren’t worth posting for the national reader. However, enough material has accumulated since the Godbee interrogation which can help with the planning and conduct of your own local civil affairs programs that a guided update is in order. In the past months, we’ve started quite a few concept threads while waiting for a couple of key events to pop. These unfinished conceptual threads include the use of a combined civil affairs program, the “Welcome to Leith” mockumentary, and controlling the local narrative through your own media. While we plan on looping back to those threads eventually (the 2017 “year of pursuit” has been very busy and productive thus far), we can at least hit the highlights on topics which affect a wider civil affairs audience.

» ( Read more of Leech City Update, 9 Mar 2017… )

The Idle Manager Myth

| March 8, 2017

The latest article in SoftBaugh’s small business series is about the stereotypical coffee cup manager who seems to do nothing, but somehow things in the office or the shop hum along nicely. Often, that manager’s leadership style is why things are humming along nicely. Mastering delegation and removing obstacles are important leadership skills, whether as a manager at BigCo, or a small business owner.

Make Mistakes Quickly

| March 6, 2017

SoftBaugh has released a new small business article about the value of mistakes. Nobody likes mistakes, but we all make them, and a lot more often than we like to admit. The more you do, the more you will accomplish, but you will also make more mistakes along the way. The key is to extract value from them, and catch them as soon as possible. This mindset helps you create processes that avoid those mistakes in the future.

Double Conversion UPS Update

| March 4, 2017

Old School Tech has released an update in the double-conversion UPS series. The latest article describes detailed test results with two different loads, one load more than twice the nominal rating of the batteries, and the other much less than the nominal rating. What emerges from this latest article is a rule of thumb to adjust expectations for available battery array energy by 2% for each 10% increase from the nominal load. For example: double the load, decrease the energy rating by 20%. This is a useful rule for self-sufficiency enthusiasts to use when planning their own battery arrays. As a reminder, a double-conversion UPS can keep critical loads running for many hours in a power outage, giving you time to drive the AC charger from a generator, or to deploy a solar array and its charger instead. Even better, the double conversion UPS concept can swallow bad power from marginal generators, within reason, increasing the options for backup power. Rather than seeing bad power from the generator, picky loads such as freezers and refrigerators consistently see the cleaner power from the inverter.

» ( Read more of Double Conversion UPS Update… )