Will Bridges

I’ve really got disgusted with a lot of music coming out of the mainstream but I love music with a deep passion. If I weren’t a programmer I would probably be a writer and one of the things I would love to write would be songs and poetry. I write some now of course, but it’s not my profession. Anyways, so I started a web development contract with a company that works a lot with musicians and they mentioned this website CDBaby.com which is where independent artists put out original music for sale.

So, on this site you can preview and browse all the music on the site. And they also allow the musicians to sell their music on itunes and other digital music platforms. So, I can browse music, comment on music, it tells me what each band/artist style is comparable to in the mainstream and then I can buy and download either through their site or through itunes on my iphone. It’s really cool and there’s a lot of good music out there that never sees the light of the music industry’s powerful pen. Totally worth a look.

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When the iPhone came out I really did want it. But I was curious if it was all hype and so I waited and the price dropped. I thought “cool, I’ll buy it next check I get”. Sure enough, a check came and I decided it was time for new tools & equipment. I put aside a certain amount of money for new tools each month and I had enough. New tools increase efficiency and allow me to do more. The iPhone was a great investment for many reasons. More importantly, because I love the iPhone so much my next computer will probably be a Mac Pro Desktop.

So, why was it a good investment? Well, it allows me to sync calendars and contacts through itunes. I can store all kinds of valuable map information. I have enough space to store all kinds of video, audio, and pictures. Come on, who can say “I’ve got the video of my first born son’s birth right here on my phone!”… me. I can buy music right on the phone. It hooks to wi-fi where I can surf the internet and full speed. The touch screen navigation is amazing. I love the keyboard. Texting in the old fashion never caught on well with me so I wasn’t used to it. The iphone is worth the cash. There’s a bunch of other features. Plus, with apple putting out a software developers kit for programmers to start building apps for it in February I can’t wait to see what other apps I can have at my finger tips.

Apple is an awesome company, even if they are closed source at least they listen to their customers and provide quality products. Microsoft needs to take a lesson from Apple’s success.

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There are really two major things to figure out in any business but especially in this business. You need to figure out how to get high quality clients who will pay a fair wage in and then you need to figure out how to best find the cheapest and highest quality labor to satisfy the work you have promised. Then you have to keep your labor force happy and employed. These may seem like easy things to figure out but they are most certainly not easy. I have worked for 8 years and have just now figured out a formula I am pretty sure I can make work in this industry at least for the next 5-10 years.

Being wealthy is about finding windows of opportunity and exploiting them. You cannot expect something to last forever and you have to constantly have to adapt your strategy to stay relevant. Even when you find a window of opportunity and are successfully exploiting it you should save and build for the next window of opportunity you come across. This is a constant effort of prediction, strategy and balance which can only end when you are ready to get out of business.

The great thing is I finally figured out what tools I need to grow, how I can catch up and overtake past difficulty and start really building my empire. Wish me success.

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I really don’t want to do a rant on things but I really feel like doing it. Here’s the thing about buying CDs. I ‘evaluate’ music by going and downloading it. I’m not saying I do this illegally but I do go and download music. Now, sometimes I do this before the release date actually hits and sometimes I do it afterwards. Most of the music I get is garbage and I don’t go buy it from the store. However, if I support the artist and love their album I will go buy the album as soon as it hits stores. I don’t feel that I buy less music because of the digital age. I just have become very picky about the music I buy. If your album sucks and only one song on it is good don’t expect me to go buy your album. I think what the RIAA is really pissed about is that the digital age has made it harder pull the wool over people’s eyes any more and make them buy crappy albums by having one hit single.

Their waving their fist saying “Damn you! Educated consumer! We’ll sue!”. Like it’s going to stop people from downloading music. All people will do is get more clever and technology will get better to make them less able to protect their garbage. You want money? Provide a good product at a reasonable price and the American consumer will buy it. (Or have an overwhelmingly strong marketing department… *wink* *wink* Microsoft).

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I’ve been told that most great advances have been out of necessity. I guess my next advancement is no different. I have truly a ton of information and tasks to do and almost no help. It will be my own personal evolutionary leap to take myself and my company to the next level with the resources I have and my own ingenuity. I believe that this is probably the quickest way to advance but also the most painful. Many people back off and give up when they are up against so much pressures. It’s when people step up and take the full force of a challenge that they become the next strongest person they can be. It’s when people back off and give up when they regress or become stagnant.

I’m sure this philosophy has made those who care about me think I’m constantly putting too much stress on myself and that eventually I will break. On the contrary, eventually I will find a way to figure out the problems, advance and learn to defer the stress. I’ve had friends who say I approach things very non-emotional and that it gives me a very inhuman quality. I’ve tried to press on to others that getting emotional doesn’t solve problems. It usually creates problems. If I feel something, I accept that feeling and understand that most negative outcomes are things that I could have prevented. If I feel negative I accept that the path I chose lead me to that negative feeling and take responsibility for that. This way, I’m always in control. I can never be a victim to any one or any external thing. I feel I’ve probably went over this in my blog before but I like talking about it because I see so many others fretting over their individual issues and feeling victimized. It bothers me because I see their pain is self-inflicted and no matter what I say they will continue to feel like they do and make it more difficult for themselves to move past issues. I don’t like seeing others in pain when I know they can prevent it as most people don’t.

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This past Saturday Ron Paul came to Nashville. I was able to go with Yendis (my girlfriend) and we had an incredible time. Ron Paul was an exceptional speaker to see in person and being there really motivated me to get more involved in the campaign. If you are interested in seeing what I saw. The War Memorial Auditorium was packed. They said they were turning people away. 1440 people showed up. It was really high energy. Here’s the full video of the Ron Paul rally below.

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I’ve been working with AllstarLoding.com for years now to improve their site and their business. They went from being relatively small and managing about 20 cabins to managing 100+ properties in about 3 years. I attribute a large part of their success to their website, of course! They now dominate their area in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and are still expanding. The company is also doing well because it’s run by a very sound business man, Carlos Ruiz. He has a lot of foresight and vision. I came to him a year ago when he was thinking about revamping the software I had built him. He wanted to go with an ‘out of the box’ solution and was researching the massive amounts of reservation software out there. I asked him to let me do it in Ruby on Rails and let me sit in on the demonstration for some of these ‘out of the box’ or pre-built solutions. I sat in and gathered all the information I needed to build a very solid reservation system in rails. Now, mind you, I was very new to rails at the time and I’m still cleaning up things that I should have done a different way but it was a learning process and I still created a magnificent piece of software, which is being improved on all the time.

I’m actually working to generalize it so it can be sold to other companies and re-used. There are parts that I built in a very modular fashion but some parts I built very specific to his business. So, now is the tedious part of generalizing, writing tests that should have been written (at the time I wasn’t doing BDD or TDD) and building test instances of the software. This software is not just a reservation system but a complete software solution to vacation rental management and I like to think of it as the tool to use for any vacation oriented business to take over their respective area.

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