UT's GOT A HOMEPAGE!!
 

Tony, why didnt you ever link to this? Thats funny.


This is gonna keep me hooked until I read them all.
Interesting
Bizarre
Odd

Lets see what else google digs up on tony.

What!!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?! Someone has beef with Tony? Not possible.

And Tony in a Simpsons archive in another language. That takes talent.
I get it now. It does make sense.

And now we find out Tony's political adgenda.


Google + Bored = Trouble. heh heh heh.

I've known about his homepage for ages. I forget how I found it, but it was through linkage. I like his cookie of the second.

Moral fo the story?
Don't out your full name on the net.

Hey, I stand by everything I've ever written. My old page, well, it's just too damn old. I leave it up in case anyone has links to any of it.

But hey, if ya want more ME, <a href="http://www.catalystinternet.com">this</a> is the business I started that failed.

<a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/4/26/153853/420">This</a> is the Kuro5hin story I wrote about the death of the business.

<a href="http://www.zerodefect.net">Here</a> is the gent I worked with before that, with whom I had some kind of unfathomable falling out.

<a href="http://www.kpmg.com">Here</a> is the place I worked for, at a senior level, for five months, until I came to the realization that I am water and corporate consulting is oil.

<a href="http://www.pond.com">Here</a> is the place I worked for before that, as all-around techie sort. It went severely downhill and was finally sold about a year ago.

And I could keep going but I'm sure nobody needs or is interested in my resume before that.

You kind of have to if you're trying to earn a living out here.

Don't have to put it in the same place as you handle, fi you can't link the two, no problems. Whn you homepage is a dir of your business i guess your a little farked though.

You don't get it if you don't try.

It was a good try, Tony. Sad to see it go.

It always disappoints me when I think about it. The page is still up there and everything. For some reason that just gets to me.

Here's to hoping for bright success in your next endeavor.

P.S. - how much were you overpaying the brilliant employee? :)

Well it embarrasses me to say. But the thing is, the whole model of how I thought it would work was based on what we sold for the first few months. The first two weeks we sold $100k of work and had another $100k in the pipeline, and I thought damn, the right thing to do is to expand fast; but after the bursting of the bubble, we probably didn't sell $100k worth from April through December. The whole world just flipped.

In the middle of the worst of it, I bought a slick brochure and a marketing list, and I did a mailing to 700 companies that were right in our target, and you know, I got not one single response. I mean, you expect 1% return from direct mail. But not ZERO.

I paid my folks based on what the cost would be to not pay. The theory was we'd grow on revenue but we had to get the senior people in first, both to build the portfolio and to have the complete package of the sort of work people were looking for in late 1999, in a small firm.

But I feel a lot better about it now. And I still have the incorporation, and I still work under it, it's just me now. In theory it could come back... you never know. If someone needs a web development project done in short order for big bucks, y'know, I have a bunch of folks who would be practically ready to drop everything and restart the biz.

It was that cool, eh?

I'd dig working for a small company. The problem is, as you know, the uncertainty. Right now I mean to save up enough that I could theoretically be unemployed for a few months while I was in between jobs (though I have no intention of leaving SAIC until I retire). You never know when you're gonna get laid off or fired for spending too much time on the Cellar (though the latter is certainly something that I can control). But I think it would just be very trying to work at a company I loved and see it die.

My friend Brian and I started a web-design firm. We just never really did anything with it :) $100,000 would have been beyond our wildest dreams - we were thinking like $3,000 for a BIG site. But we were both poor kids back then - me in high school and him in his first year of college. We never lost money on it though. We haven't recouped the hosting costs, but that's free now 'cause I've, uh, "had talks" with people at the hosting company. Domain registration and that's about it. So it's lost us $140 over the past 4 years, I guess :)

If you ever get the work and start it back up, I'd be interested in doing some cheap work for you - maybe 3-5 good hours of work is what I could manage in a day. I don't really need any money either, so I could work for cheap. But I need to re-hone all my skills 'cause it's been so long since I've evercised them. Hehe. Anyway... like I said, you don't get it if you don't try. So here's to the people that make things happen instead of sitting around doing nothing.

There's nothing like a startup situation, and if I were to be very realistic about it... being in the startup situation when it was dying was still more fun than working for somebody else.

But of course everyone will find different ways of working to their liking. My risk-averse spouse would not be happy in a startup situation.

Yep. To each their own.

I wouldn't mind the risk if I had no responsibility. Unfortunately, I do. Hence SAIC. :)

One thing I'd like to do, however, is open up a business after I retire. I was thinking a restaurant, but maybe not. All depends. Fairfax needs some more good restaurants. Would certainly be interesting :) But not as fun as technology either...

You said it.. back in the olden days (1999-2000) I often wondered if I was the only techie my age who wasn't moving into the fast lane, working for some high-flying startup or a big name out in Silicon Valley. And the stocks, oy! the stocks... was I the ONLY person that thought it was a bad idea to have almost all your stock money invested in the sector of the economy where you work? To say nothing of your company itself.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling just a little bit of schadenfreude when all the people who rode high for thouse coupla years got brought back down to earth, justifying my decision to stay with stable, conservative employment. Or is that just a rationalization for my lifelong unwillingness to deviate from whatever rut I happen to be in at the moment?

And how come there's not a Smilie for schadenfreude?? :cool:

Eeek! Nightmarish floaty throbbing rectangles scare me. run away!

Tony mentioned his friend Ken in one of my threads. And I happened to notice that Tony manages Ken's campaign site (Ken Krawchuk is the Libertarian candidate for PA governor). After going through Catalyst's website, I stumbled upon an article in the Daily Local News from 2 years ago that features a pic of Señor Shepps.

Dude, you look a little too similar to Bill Gates. ;)

It's important for me to point out that this is the Worst Photo of Me Ever Taken. Typical of silly suburban rags I suppose.