Mind The Gap

Anyone out there familiar with Integrity Selling, or Integrity Systems (the company that ‘owns’ the program)?

I’ve been through the Integrity Selling program in the past, and found it to be really commonsense, practical stuff.  I always appreciate that, because sometimes corporately sponsored training-type programs are not so practical.
Anywhoo, since that time I’ve thought a lot about how the Integrity Selling principles apply to the software business – particiularly figuring out what to build (for a single customer or for ‘the market’), and figuring out when to build (prioritization of effort based on benefits from effort).

I’ve gotten permission from Integrity Systems to write an article on this topic (provided they review and ok it before I publish it) so I’m excited about that, despite the fact that I don’t have much time to write it in.  This article has been just my initial outline for a while now….
Has anyone else thought about the relationship between Integrity Selling principles and software design and management? Do you have opinions, do you see any connections, or not see any at all?

Ironic things that have happened lately:

• After breaking the lease early through a complex series of ‘if you don’t answer this by x date it means you agree’ letters and notice giving, and doing what I thought was a pretty good job cleaning, but a pretty bad job repairing puppy damaged carpet, our old apartment complex sent us a certified letter. Expecting a bill for 3 month’s missed rent and carpet repair, I instead found that they are going to be giving us a refund check for about a hundred dollars.
• After driving to St Petersburg to see Madama Butterfly, it’s now (or soon to be) playing here in Gainesville.

So far 50/50, wondering which direction the next plot twist will be in.

So….I forgot to pay them last month, and they chopped my limit in half, and like tripled my interest rate, and I don’t even recall seeing any letters about my payment being late.  I have moved and everything and so maybe I failed to put said letters somewhere that I would read them, or something.  To be honest, I hate these guys, and I always have, because they’ve made it obvious that they have lots of other customers and my business really doesn’t matter much to them (like the time they put my account in bad standing because they inappropriately set up my automatic payments…twice in a row about 8-9 months apart…and then were rude to me about it when I called to resolve the situation, both times).

Anywhoo, if I pay everything on time for 6 months, they’ll put my interest rate back, and put my limit back, and all that good stuff.  I haven’t even used the card in the last 6 months (they sent a new one and I forgot to ever activate it, and it’s lost in my files somewhere), so it’s not like it’s that big of a deal to me to not have it.
As I listened to the girl’s info (and to her credit she was nice) I said to myself (silently of course), there is no way in hell I’m going to pay 30+ percent interest for 6 months when I have such a low balance, and enough cash in hand to pay this thing off now, provided I drink cheap beer and cook at home for a couple weeks.  So they are paid off now.  It seemed to surprise the girl on the phone, I guess normally people in bad standing don’t just opt to pay off the balance.

Next I’m going to send the official written request to close the account, because they don’t just close them automatically when you pay them off, want to leave them to accrue finance charges or something.  Screw ‘em.

So I took some time today to get a bunch of photos off of Ryan’s phone, and the following is a brief narrative of February 2007 (and a short bit of early March).

Somewhere early in the month, the lab from down the street came over to play with Tachi (and kindly brought his people with them, but they didn’t get in front of the camera at any point).

Then there was valentine’s day. We had dinner with Shannon, Russ and Nathan, and it was yummy. After that we went down to common grounds and took Suz some roses. Also we saw her boyfriend’s band (By The Horns) play – there was a free show thing going on, and despite being pretty empty due to the valentine’s day-ness, it was cool.

For a valentine’s day gift, Ryan got us tickets to the Against Me! show coming to Gainesville in April. Wooo!

Later in the month we finished up getting the apartment all cleaned out and dealing with the lease breaking business. All in all, we left the place in rather good shape, but there was one questionable repair. Tachi helped decorate a corner of the carpet that wasn’t well secured, and it fell victim to her puppy ways. Since the home improvement store didn’t have any grey carpet of the right pile height, we had to get beige carpet, then I colored it using automotive carpet/fabric spray can dye stuff, and then I glued the carpet patches to the carpet pad and started fading in the color difference using two different shades of dye. All in all, not as bad as it could have been.

Ryan and I went to see the pirate’s dinner theater in Orlando with Russ, Shannon, Nathan, and Shannon’s brother, John (who kindly let a few of us crash at his house, which was mighty neighborly). That was pretty cool. This is me playing guitar hero after the piratey goodness. I rock so hard.

We captured this great random picture of the dog and cat getting along sometime during the month.

This past week Ryan and I made a road trip up to Atlanta with Nathan and Russ to see MMW and the Wood Brothers at the Variety Playhouse. A good time was had by all, but I have no pictures. I should write more about this later, rather a good show, and probably the best executed drunken scheme I’ve been a party to.

Today Ryan and I caravaned to St. Petersburg with his parents, and Emili and Ross, to see an opera (Madama Butterfly). Yesterday evening I recovered and renovated an old hat from an antique store (in High Springs), and wore it with some retro style stuff to said opera, here’s a few crappy pictures I took on the ride up.

And a picture of the fellas in the opera hall.

So I’ve been wanting one of those big glass display cases like jewelry stores have for a long time. The trick has always been that a) you don’t see them for sale around here often b) when you do they are often damaged and c) when they aren’t damaged, they are really expensive.

Well no more! While driving around downtown (hitting thrift shop type places looking for a fish tank) – Ryan saw a sign that said free, and thought that perhaps it was a display case. Although he wasn’t sure and believed that what he thought he saw might not have been what he actually saw. But it was!

It was a display case, and a free one no less! We inspected it, found that it had been packed up (with shelves and hardware) and placed outside very recently (it was still dry, despite rain earlier that morning). Since I’ve been wanting one of these, we of course waited there to stake our claim, while calling folks to find someone with a truck that wasn’t doing anything right then and could come help us (it would not fit in the car at all).

Ryan’s dad was the savior of this event, and came with their truck and we loaded it up and got it home.

The case is 5 feet long, 20 inches deep, and about counter height. Our house’s floor plan is open, so I put it in between the dining area and the TV area, like a room divider, and set it up as a bar, which frees up a good deal of counter space, and showcases the drink shaker collection I am building up, and the shot glass collection we already had. It looks super cool, and I’ll post some pictures after I take some (my good camera’s batteries are dead).

Ahhh, I love it. Ryan did good seeing this thing and going back to look at it.