Bill writes:

> Thanks Wirt - honestly it seems that whatever one trains for you get a few 
>  good years then the world marches on -
>  
>  About Randy Cunningham - talk about throwing  a good life down the toilet 
- 
>  I used to live in San Diego and if I am not mistaken he was a Navy F4 
pilot 
>  who got into a dogfight with a North Vietnamese ace - the transcript of 
his 
>  communications is the stuff of legend - for a good 10 minutes both kept 
>  trying to get into a good position - Cunningham finally won -
>  
>  In a larger sense I think Congress tends to corrupt almost everyone. Keep 
>  throwing money in your district - for good projects or bad - and you keep 
>  getting reelected.
>  
>  You can take almost any Congressman - or Senator - and see their lifestyle 
>  and wonder how they afford it on a $135,000 salary.

A few weeks ago, Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader of the Senate 
angrily marched out into the halls of the Senate and told the waiting reporters 
that "the Democrats have no convictions."

If you do still talk to anyone in the San Diego area, you might tell them to 
vote Democratic so that eventually the Democrats can get a few convictions of 
their own.



>  Anyway sounds like IT has a limited future to you Wirt? At least as far as 
>  decent careers...

I was mentioning to Rene Woc of Adager a few nights ago that so far in this 
life I've been extremely lucky. To date I've never had a job and because of 
that I've been able to do pretty much what I've wanted. The obvious downside to 
that statement is that in my next life, I'm almost certain to be destined to 
come back as a slug or a worm, at the bottom the food chain, and I'll have to 
work my way back up to the top again.

If by a "career in IT" you mean to be sitting in a brightly lit, 
air-conditioned cubicle all day, where you have to commute an hour to work each way every 
day. I'm not sure that anyone would want that. But computing has never been 
about the machinery. If you're going to prosper, it means you providing a 
product or service that makes someone else's life significantly easier. If you 
wrong-headedly focus on the technology, you're far more likely to do exactly the 
opposite: that is, make someone's life more complex and complicated.

It sounds like you're already providing your customers with such a service, 
and they must have been happy with you for some significant period of time. The 
only problem seems to be that they're either finding new ways to reach their 
customers or you haven't been aggressive enough in recruiting new customers to 
cover the inevitable losses.

But printing mailing lists isn't the only kind of business for which you 
obviously have talents. If you carefully listen to your customers, they'll tell 
you -- perhaps not directly though -- what they want and need from a person like 
you.

Wirt Atmar

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