... let's turn to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sub­jec­t.

In my pro­fes­sion­al life (that is, not count­ing odd job­s) I have had on­ly three em­ploy­er­s.

I worked for many years for the nice guys at UNL and for about a year for the not so nice guys at Conec­ti­va (now Man­dri­va) Ok, I take that back, they were nice guys, they just were not a good place to work at. Or rather to stop work­ing at.

And the third one has been me.

I must say I am pret­ty hap­py with me as a boss. I have man­aged to go through some very dif­fi­cult mo­ments in my coun­try's econ­o­my, and nev­er failed to cov­er pay­rol­l. Then again, I was very will­ing to take some pay­cut­s, so I am a mod­el em­ploy­ee, at least about that.

But... I have de­cid­ed, a few months ago, that there are clear lim­its on how far be­ing one's boss and sole em­ploy­ee can take you, so with a cou­ple of friends we have de­cid­ed to start a com­pa­ny, sortof.

It's pret­ty ten­ta­tive right now, but we are all three quite knowl­edge­able in many things, and our ar­eas of ex­per­tise over­lap enough so that we can cov­er each oth­er, and are dif­fer­ent enough that we have a var­ied ser­vice of­fer.

Our main fo­cus is sys­tem/net­work/DB man­age­men­t, and a lit­tle cod­ing. So from now on, you will see ev­ery now and then, up­dates about this new projec­t.

Where are we now:

• We have a few cus­­tomer­s.

• Each of us is keep­­ing most of their old ones, too.

• We are us­ing Trac to man­age is­­sues like tick­­et­ing and doc­u­­men­­ta­­tion.

What we need to do:

• We need to start mar­ket­ing.

Any­one can rec­om­mend a good nerdy host­ing? Un­man­aged, cheap, Lin­ux? We are go­ing right now with Tek­ton­ic, which has some very cheap un­man­aged plan­s.

Any­one can rec­om­mend good lit­er­a­ture on how to man­age a ser­vice com­pa­ny?

Any­one thinks this is a very bad idea? Or a very good idea? Why?

I am pret­ty psyched about this, these are the two per­sons I would trust most in this sub­jec­t, and we have been friends for a very long time. It's go­ing to be fun :-)

So, we're out.

The match was pret­ty even, not bad­ly played, but both teams played ex­cel­lent de­fense, so ...

Penal­ty kicks can go ei­ther way, and we are out.

What I have learned:

• Enalapril does work.

• Tevez is a mon­ster.

• Ger­­many will not win the cup... un­­less they get some more luck. Like Ukrayne in semis and France in the fi­­nal. Any­one else and they are toast (ok, maybe Italy sucks enough).

• We have a very good shot in 2010.

I am ob­vi­ous­ly not feel­ing ok right now, but ... I said quar­ters or semis, and I said it would be with suf­fer­ing. So there. I was right. Not that I ac­tu­al­ly en­joy be­ing right. It's more like I hate be­ing right.

I am not an artis­tic per­son. I am not able to ap­pre­ci­ate whole arts (po­et­ry does­n't move me, Lyric Singing an­noys me). But I do have a taste, which is my own, al­though I un­der­stand it is not ex­act­ly good taste.

Now, what do I like?, or rather, why do I like it? Does it say some­thing about me?

I find that I don't like any form of art with­out in­trin­sic dif­fi­cul­ty. Or rather, that I en­joy more if it is some­what dif­fi­cult tech­ni­cal­ly.

For ex­am­ple, I know all the the­o­ry be­hind why this is sup­posed to be a great paint­ing:

Quot­ing:

Her­mann Nitsch's work draws par­al­lels be­tween re­li­gion and the rit­u­al­is­tic spir­i­tu­al­ism of cre­ativ­i­ty. Heav­i­ly en­trenched in an­cient phi­los­o­phy and a dis­si­den­t, ques­tion­ing Chris­tian the­ol­o­gy, he ac­tive­ly seeks cathar­sis through pain and com­pas­sion, a rig­or­ous­ly dis­ci­plined quest for ethe­re­al re­lease and en­light­en­ment through an em­brac­ing of pri­mal in­stinct and an­cient sacra­men­t.

Er­mm­m... I see most­ly a red blotch, which I sup­pose makes me a philis­tine.

On the oth­er hand, I see this, and I ac­tu­al­ly see a lot more that fits that de­scrip­tion:

I like In­gres more than Rothko, I like Rubens more than Pi­cas­so... maybe I am just old fash­ioned?

I think not. I think I de­spise those who de­cide to mas­ter a game with no rules, where you can de­clare your­self win­ner with­out con­trast­ing your­self to oth­er play­er­s. That's why we watch the foot­ball world cup and not oth­er games, be­cause it's damn hard and you have to do it with your feet. I think mod­ern paint­ing is tak­ing the ball in your hands and declar­ing your­self rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

This out­look, that hav­ing a good tech­nique, a do­main of a dif­fi­cult craft be­fore both­er­ing with art has some strange ef­fects in my life. I don't like the low hang­ing fruit. But then again, I am not re­al­ly tall enough or strong enough for the one that's on the hard to reach branch­es.

That leads to a life of al­most un­end­ing frus­tra­tion and yearn­ing, yet gives me lots of en­er­gy, and I think I have come to do some things I would­n't have done had I set­tled for eas­i­er pick­ings.

I have been work­ing for years on how to har­ness that thrust for my own ben­e­fit, and I am not too good at it yet. Maybe that's the tough­est craft I need to mas­ter, and I am work­ing on it.

Thanks to a post Rich Bur­ridge I found out about Talkr which pro­vides a cute RSS-­to-voice ser­vice.

It works pret­ty well, and it was a piece of cake to add to the blog.

So, you can click on the "Lis­ten to this post" links and ... lis­ten to this post.

In any case, this con­firms I am a blog-­fid­geter. And if any­one knows of any oth­er cute toys for it, please let me know :-)

I wrote in my first post about the world cup this:

We have a prob­a­ble su­per­star, but he's too young and a lit­tle in­jured. We have a ter­ri­ble goalie, an ag­ing de­fense, a lot of above av­er­age for­ward­s... I say semis, or quar­ter­s. If we get any fur­ther, it will be in the Italy way, not the Mex­i­co way.

When I said the Italy way, I meant as Ar­genti­na ad­vanced in Italy 90: with lots of suf­fer­ing.

Now, this was not even close to the equiv­a­lent match in Italy: re­lent­less­ly be­ing dom­i­nat­ed by Brazil, but boy was it painful.

Not a great match, but I have hope that's just beause we match up bad­ly with Mex­i­co.

Ger­many beat the tar out of Swe­den, and Eng­land has just fin­ished beat­ing Ecuador.

• Ger­­many is good, but I still want to know what hap­pens when they play a team that can ac­­tu­al­­ly score. The clos­est they had was Ecuador, but they played with­­out their best for­ward.

• Swe­­den... what a de­­press­ing team.

• En­g­­land... Like Swe­­den, but with a guy that can do free kick­­s.

• Ecuador... ner­vous. But not a bad game, they could have won if they had de­­cid­ed to bring it to En­g­­land, which should have had some play­er thrown out for re­­peat­ed foul­ing.

• Mex­i­­co... gut­s. Lots of them. Peo­­ple have said Lavolpe is crazy. His name means "the fox". So, yeah, he is crazy... like a fox! He made a per­­fect tac­ti­­cal set­t­ing, but was un­lucky with in­­juries.

• Ar­­gen­ti­­na... we can get bet­ter. I feel there is still an­oth­er gear. But we need it on fri­­day.

And to all my ger­man friends in KDE... good luck, and a pain­less 1-0 de­feat to you! ( just kid­ding ;-)

BTW: this is what hap­pens when Ar­genti­na plays (game start­ed at 16 hours):