I just read that gold hit $1250 at some
point. My first thought was that man, that's a lot of money, but I
quickly caught my self, and realized that I need mental
reconditioning. I need to think, my how the dollar has fallen! It
takes $1250 of them to buy one ounce of gold.
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This is one of those weird fly-through
thoughts that are interesting to ponder for a minute, but only as a
strange analogy. At what point are the state workers the new
bourgeoisie? Living off the production of the proletariat? Some are
more equal than others, and all that. They don't explicitly own the
means of production, but if they heavily affect it's use, through
regulations, is the analogy less of a stretch?
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The phrase “To protect and
serve”...who is that referring to? The people or the state?
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I saw a sign in an auto paint supply
place, it read: The only thing more over rated than owning your own
business is natural child birth.
In the 28 or so years that I've been
making signs, a couple of consistent truisms never vary:
If someone approaches and asks for my
card, no matter how sure they sound about hiring me, they never do.
Once, maybe twice in 28 years. Conversely, if they give me their
card, the odds are the opposite.
Never, ever give a price range, like
“it'll be between $225 and $275.” They ALWAYS cement the lower
price in their mind, and the higher price completely vanishes. I've
been around enough to know people's manipulation games, and I don't
think it's that. I can tell by how hostile and extreme their
reactions are, they genuinely think I'm ripping them off with made up
inflated prices when I submit an invoice for the higher number. They
have zero recollection of it. I guess it's human nature to want the
lower price, so they latch on to it.
One thing that's helpful for me when
bidding a job is to use Open Office free software to make a table
with rows and columns. In the rows are all the possible steps for
that kind of work. In the columns are different pricing or time
estimating methods. One column has hours, another has days, and
another might have price per square foot. So I look at a step in a
row, like computer drawing time. My first thought is that on this
job, this step will take 6.5 hours. Then I look at the days column,
and realize that no way, this is an all day job, so call it 8 hours.
By cross referencing two pricing methods, I do much better. It's
making a quick guess off the cuff that gets me into trouble with
underbids. By using this method, I can say one number, not a price
range.
