Blog/October 2013/Oct 4th
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| Oct 4th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
Hi, again!
Back to what passes for “normal” now that our guests are gone. I hate my bank. The weather is wonderful. Work proceeds apace…
How do I hate my bank? Let me count the ways! First because they took a large fee for me depositing money at the branch. Yes, I gave them money, and they charged me the equivalent of a decent restaurant meal. Second, because they messed up my account linkages when I opened my business account, so it took half an hour to deposit said money while they figured out the problem. Third, because they are indolent monkeys.
Need an example? Last week we told them we needed to give our accountant read-access to our account. That’s standard procedure, nothing to get excited about. They, in turn, had to print out the log-on credentials for him. To remind you: that was a week ago. When I was in the branch this morning, I went to our “personal banker” to pick up those credentials. She told me she was taking care of another client right now, and wouldn’t be done for an hour. Of course, the second clerk there couldn’t help us because she’s not our banker. But since “our banker” had not taken the five minutes to print out the papers to give us during the past week, and because their computer system only allows them to do one thing at a time, we’ll have to go back to the bank next week. I really. Truly. Hate my bank! We’re upset enough that we would switch banks if there were any better choices. Do any of our Israeli contacts know of a bank better for business than Leumi?
But B”H, the weather has been wonderful. Cool (by our standards) fall weather. We had a little bit of hot weather, but it’s supposed to get actually cold over shabbat and for the next couple days. We might even get a spot of rain. Excellent!
Our business is finally past the initial set-up phase (well, we still lack one thing but that’s less critical for the moment). We’ve got our business credit-cards, our business cards, our invoice and receipt forms. And by the way: in contradistinction to the bank, the printer we used has excellent service, even if their prices aren’t the very lowest — they’re still reasonable. So now we have to develop another client or two, besides working on business development with our business consultant.
In my role as Chief Consultant, I met with a (professional) cryptographer this week and signed a contract with him to review the security design of the main product I am developing. So that’s exciting on the one hand, meaning the business is now serious; on the other hand, if he tells me I have to redesign everything that could be painful. We’ll see in a week or so what he tells me. In any event, I’ve started work on some of the foundations of the product, things which won’t have to be changed due to security issues.
Since Esther is the CEO of the company, she gets to deal with all the administrative issues. We met with our “business consultant”, who had thought I was the CEO — so now, he says, he doesn’t need to talk to me any more… such cheek! Anyway, Esther has been working on how to keep track of things properly. I helped her out by setting us up with a free CRM program to track clients and hours spent, etc. Not exactly the way I would have set it up, but it will probably be OK for our purposes in the near term.
In a surprising move, Sarah decided she would agree to be our employee and do “QA” for us. That’s a good thing, for a few reasons. Among other things, she’ll get her “National Insurance” paid for by the company (well, it’s still us for now, but coming from pre-tax money — up until now, we were paying her portion with after-tax money). So initially she needs to learn what QA involves, and as we get more paying work she’ll hopefully be able to increase what she earns and we’ll have someone we can rely on. It also gives her a marketable skill in addition to the profession she’s learning.
Enough for this week! Just three of us, we’ll content ourselves with:
roasted chicken,
cauliflower soup,
veggie stir-fry,
rice,
salatim
and chocolate cupcakes.
Until next week,
shabbat shalom!
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