I remember how I felt then but I don't feel the same way about it now. I remember chewing my thumb. That's something I do when I'm really unhappy. I was arguing with myself about why Clark never followed up on the lead I brought him. It was the guys ${Timmy} and I met in ${Atlanta} when we went there for the conference. I'm imagining a scene where I argue with myself. I could end the scene going from the middle to one extreme, and then the other, like... * Feeling weird about it * listing the reasons that clark said * repeating the idea that he's more experienced than me, he knows what he's doing, he's not like me, and that's the whole point, because I'd give away the product to everyone for free first. * by the end, I've debased myself. I've joked around about how bad my business skills are, and so that's why I don't like what ${Mark} is doing. * Then I sit for a long time * I remember the months that have gone by. How hard I worked. * I see us rush feature after feature out, and then I look at the logs, and the people that are buying our product are barely using the new features. People want the one thing, or, a much easier to use version of the scheduler. It's too complex. I needed time to improve it. * I bring up how people aren't using the new features and I realize ${Mark} doesn't care, because the contract requires them to pay for 3 years, so if it takes them a year to adopt, then that's fine. * I bring up the Atlanta time clock dudes. He says he gave it to ${some sales person}. I wonder how that's going to work because they don't want to buy our software... I wanted to talk about us building something. "They're a timeclock company, and we're a scheduling company. That's the main two features that everyone needs." At this point I realize it was really that ${Mark} didn't appreciate me crowding in his territory. He wasn't going to do anything with this opportunity. I can barely remember now but there were times when I found myself yelling. Me! BUt yeah, these guys were an inflection point. ${Timmy} and me felt like bad asses. We had spent a few hours with these guys. We had an idea of how they could offer our product to their customers, through their time clocks. It would mean ${Timmy} and me would make some special screens that their system would display. We both liked the idea of something fun to build, using ridiculously simple machines. Heck, this could be a major subplot. I build a dirt-cheap version of the product, just the part that people like, and Mark buries it. Yeah, so maybe this is the plot arc: * ${Timmy} and me become pretty bad ass technically, at least we really vibe mentally. * We build some stuff, sales go up, we say we wanna go to this conference, kinda boisterously. Like I say I want it as part of recruiting too, go see anyone that might be worth poaching. That kinda bullshit appeals to ${Mark} and ${Teri} cuz it makes the company sound more fancy and they eat that shit up. * we go, we talk to those guys, we have a moment when we both realize (me, ${Timmy}) that we could copy our system, then rewrite one part, and mostly just strip out most of the stuff that makes it all so slow (rendering data as HTML). * we leave the meeting with pages of notes, and they gave us one of their printer devices because we're convinced this is gonna be nice. * In short, we would make it easy to print reports from our database through their printers. When an employee clocks in, or out, they can ask for a report like "show me my schedule for the next two weeks" or "show me any open shifts that I'm qualified for" and stuff like that. I don't remember the details, but we had the strong sense that we could deliver this quickly because it was just reorganizing stuff we mostly figured out. But yeah, that weekend was a trip. I remember coming out of the restaurant and ${Timmy} was def chatting up these two waitresses. I went back to the hotel. A few hours later I caught a cab to an Asian massage parlor and paid $300 to spend an hour with tiny woman C cup breast implants. She barely spoke English. But she knew what to say to get me to fork over the cash. "Women fuck US. They're walking away with the money, after all." Who says that? It's a voice in my head. Who is he? And you know what though? I felt so GOOD and PEACEFUL after that session in the massage parlor. I think she did a table bath. I remember she was totally shaved, small, big titties, cute cute face. I wanted her to like me. I think that morning, or another morning, or maybe it was lunch, I remember explaining what we did to another couple of dudes that were from a San Fransisco startup. They were there at PyCon because their biz was flush with cash. At that time, most of the high paying tech jobs were on the coasts. Building a software company in Cleveland was a lonely, hungry experience. I remember the look in the dude's eyes when I explained what we built. He said something like "that's a good business" and I realized he and I were on different levels. He was just an employee, probably paid well, and not taking it all seriously. He had options, being in California. I didn't have a lot of options. I had a mortage. A wife in medical school and depending on me for food, water, shelter. A five year old boy in kindergartern at private school. A toddler in day care. ${Timmy} had a mortgage, a wife, three kids. His wife stayed home with their three children. I had family depending on me. ${Timmy} depended on me. Hell ${Mark} needed me. If I walked, I'd be burning down all their livelihoods, and that felt WRONG. So yeah, I envied how relaxed those dudes were. Like, they didn't care about getting to every talk to learn as much as possible. They were their on their company's dollar and nobody would care if they didn't get much out of their investment. Anyhow... I can see an arc about me and Timmy getting close, then I feel like I'm leaving, and I leave, and he decides to not take such a principled stance. Buy yeah, the time clock biz woulda been nice.