terrygold.com

I mentioned a few posts back that my good friend and co-founder, Jim Fudge, has become a great photographer.  Well, I’m not the only one who thinks so.  Jim won first place in the Nature Category of the Flatirons Photo Club Year End Competition 2008 with his Iceberg Duet photo.  We have it displayed in the lobby and it is available for purchase at a ridiculously low price.  I suspect Jim will be commanding 10 or a 100 times the price for his photos in the future.

(Photo copyright James Fudge 2009)

I got out of the habit of writing about entrepreneurship when I was asked to blog for the Kauffman Foundation, but I haven’t been doing that for awhile so I’m going to refocus my blog on entrepreneurship, Unified Communications and the occasional random story about cool gadgets and technology.  I guess that isn’t really very focused is it?

I returned from the New Years break and was reminded of some advice an old friend gave me years ago.  Josh Bernstein, who I just realized may be one of my first friends to get a Wikipedia page told me that before he has to make a big decision he needs three things.

1. A clean desk
2. A good nights sleep
3. Plenty of exercise

I’m guessing 2009 will be a year with lots of big decisions, so before I go home tonight I’m going to clean my desk, and I commit here to not staying up so late this year.  I’m a night person, and I just can’t stand for the day to be over most days, so I often run on less sleep than is healthy.  I know it, now I need to do something about it.

Maybe I’ll ride my bike to work too as a start, but I don’t want to over commit.

Happy New Year everyone!

Terry

Jim Fudge, my good friend and co-founder of Gold Systems has started blogging, and this week he wrote a post titled, “It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times.”  He brought a smile to my face thinking about a nice moment, which by the way was wrapped up by one of our worst times in business.  It’s good to remember that even in the worst of times, people can do good things that are remembered long after the bad times have passed.

Someday I want to write more about the early days of Gold Systems, but for now I’ll say that the company would not be here today – would not have even got off the ground – if not for my friend Jim.  There were times I drove him crazy I know, but I’ll always appreciate his friendship, his optimism and his determination.

Read Jim’s blog here, and be sure and check out his photography too – he’s become a fantastic photographer.  So far he’s posted Colorado, New England, Glacier Park and some balloon photos that are really amazing.

Photos by James Fudge (Available for purchase in the Gold Systems Art Gallery!)

I don’t think I’ve ever ripped off someone else’s blog post before, but I can’t say it any better than Brad Feld does, and it is for a good cause so I don’t think he’ll mind.  Brad just wrote a post, and quoted Om Malik, who suggests that Tom Evslin should be our next FCC Chairman.

Tom writes a blog about a lot of things – life in Vermont, Energy (Alternative and otherwise), politics and how the Internet is transforming telecom and everything else, particularly in rural American.  He’s also an author and wrote hackoff.com, a novel about the internet bubble. 

I find that I often forward Tom’s posts because they are always well thought out, detailed enough to be believable but clear enough to make you go, “well that makes a lot of sense.”  Besides having the smarts and experience, he’s from the other side of the isle from President-elect Obama yet he seems open-minded enough to be just the sort of non-partisan public servant we need in this country.

Here’s Brad’s post on why he believes Tom should be seriously considered.  I’m happy to be a part of the drumbeat.

Brad writes, “I didn’t come up with this idea – Om Malik did.  But he’s absolutely right – Obama needs to look outside the beltway for many key positions, including FCC Chair.  Tom Evslin is an absolute star in my book and as Om states:

"Tom Evslin, who is a retired telecom executive, is the kind of person I would expect to be in the FCC. He knows the machinations of the big companies and at the same time is an Internet liberal who can keep broadband providers and their anti-consumer tricks under check."

While Tom graciously responded in his post The Importance of the FCC that "[he’s] flattered although neither a likely choice (that’s an understatement) nor a candidate" help me and Om start a real drumbeat.  Obama was elected on a platform of change – let’s bring some completely fresh leadership and thinking into the mix.”

One of the ways I deal with the stress of being an entrepreneur is I remind myself that no matter how bad it gets, life is good.  It works in my personal life too, and it is something I only got pretty good at a few years ago.  I’ve written something like this before, but let’s face it, if you have the Internet access required to read this post, things aren’t too bad.  You probably can read, as I don’t post that many pictures.  You probably have a roof over your head and I’ll bet you aren’t too hungry, unless you’re reading this at lunch while working.  That doesn’t count.

I get down just like anybody else, but when I do, I try to remember (not always successfully) that most people would take my worst day in a heartbeat.

I’ve been reading a blog I found through a chance web search a few months ago.  It’s very political at times, often funny and sometimes just has links to interesting photos or videos.  (If anyone is looking to hire a retired Denver librarian who has a sense of humor and can write and just wants a job that would offer a sense of purpose, check out Deborah’s blog)  I saw this post and was reminded again about how fortunate I am as an entrepreneur.  There is a train that runs by my office, maybe 50 feet away, but I don’t have to close up shop while it goes by like these entrepreneurs do.  Watch it to the end – they laugh about it. I admire them!

History is being made today so when I was offered a ticket to see Obama today, I took it. Thank you Gillie! Even with a ticket I’m not sure I’ll get in. Standing in line with 40,000 people. I’ve never seen a crowd this big!

This is a story I’ve been meaning to tell for years, and it just keeps getting better.

About five years ago someone got the idea that we should have an art show at my company.  We knew we had several people who had talent and it seemed like a fun thing to do.  It turned out that quite a few people had an artistic side and we had a great display of paintings, photographs, sculpture and woodworking.  (If you are an entrepreneur, this is a great way to get people to break out of their normal day-to-day routine.  It’s even more fun if you invite the families in to see the exhibit.)

Theresa Beckemeyer worked in our finance department, and she was a master at getting our customers to pay on time.  She’s just a nice person and she cajoled them into paying on time, and we always appreciated that.  I knew that Theresa was an artist also, because she had painted a mural in her office that was the highlight of company tours.  (To this day, people at Gold Systems can paint their offices.  Yes, everyone has an office except for Lori, and she has her own skylight and wine cellar.)  The only time that Gold Systems has been named in the Wall Street Journal was when they did a story featuring Theresa’s office.

Here’s a photo of Julie’s office that Theresa painted. 

Well, about two months after the art show, Theresa came to me and said that she was going to follow her dream of being an artist, and that she was going to be leaving Gold Systems.  I hope my first thought was "that’s great!" but it might have been, "Oh no, how are we going to get paid with Theresa gone!"  She assured me that we’d be fine and she gave us several months of notice.  After my initial surprise I realized that this was a great thing to be able to play a small part in someone going after their dream.

A few months after Theresa left we got together and I suggested that she should let us display some of her work.  Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to have this ever-changing gallery of her work at Gold Systems.  Lori has even helped Theresa sell quite a few of her pieces off the walls to visitors, and quite a few of us now have Theresa’s art at home.

Theresa started entering and getting into art shows a few years ago, and now I’m happy to say that she just got her first show in a gallery.  Lori and Julie helped her put on the reception and quite  a few of us got to see Theresa’s beaming smile at her opening night and her realization that she’s achieved a great milestone as an artist.  The show is at the AMP Gallery at 9801 E. Colfax in Aurora, Colorado and will run through the 29th of August.  AMP Gallery’s website is http://www.theampgallery.com/

You can see more of Theresa’s work at http://theresabeckemeyer.com/ Unfortunately, Theresa’s newest work isn’t on the web site.  Can anyone recommend an easy tool for building and maintaining an artist’s web site?  Her current webmaster is at a loss for how to make this easy for her.

We’re all so proud of Theresa and I’m happy to have her art displayed on our walls, and I always tell the story to visitors about how she decided she was going to make her dream a reality.  Congratulations Theresa!

I’m finally installing V4 of the car computer project.  On Sunday afternoon I started making a wiring harness that would run from the dash and the Xenarc MDT-X7000 Display to the back of the FJ where the computer will live.   Just to make sure everything was working, I plugged the computer into the Xenarc using an extension cord for power and I discovered I have a driver problem.  Everything works fine as long as I boot into safe mode, but otherwise the Xenarc displays an error of "Out of Range" followed by "No Signal."  I’ve had some other issues with the Xenarc, with it hanging randomly so I emailed their tech support.  It turns out that even though I bought the display only a few weeks ago, the firmware is out of date, and to update it – wait for it – I have to send it back to the factory.  I decided to keep going on the wiring though and I finished it tonight.

I thought it would be nice to have a power switch to the whole installation, just to make reboots easier.  Earlier this week I was having to occasionally pull the terminal of the batter to get the Xenarc rebooted.  This will be much easier, and when I drop the FJ off for service I can cut the power to the computer if I want.

So here’s where I’m at.  The wiring harness works and I’m able to boot the computer up.

Everything looks good until I log on, and then I get the "Out of Range" error and then no signal.  I’m going to email Xenarc, who to their credit did respond within a couple of hours to my last email, to see if this is a known issue.  On their FAQ they mention that they did a firmware update to make the screen "Vista Compatible" so I’m afraid I’m going to have to send it back to the factory so they can do the update.  Given that it has a CD/DVD reader and a USB port, it is a shame they couldn’t make firmware updates installable in the field.

I feel pretty good about the progress.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make the wiring harness without help, but I just worked through it one wire at a time and got it working.