Well that rates a great big smile! That's the way I felt as a computer salesman, selling Apples back in the 80's in Tyler, Texas. It wasn't a job. I relished getting to work every day. It was fabulous!
After the ImageWriter came along, I had an attractive young lady come in and tell me this long story of how she worked for a printshop running their typesetter and had been fired. She was really mad about it. She felt it was unjust, because she was only using the equipment for a one time instance of printing something for her church, and it was on the weekend. Didn't cost them anything. She brought them more business since working there than they could count. Yada, yada. She was mad. She wanted me to help her buy a typesetter so she could go into competition with them. She had $10,000 cash and could raise more if necessary. She expected to invest around $20,000 to get started.
I listened to her quietly until she ran out of gas and then started asking questions to see if she was a good fit for a LaserWriter. Page setting was her specialty. She planned on farming out the print jobs. She just needed to be able to do the layouts for her clients. She had never heard of Apple. Knew nothing of personal computers, let alone the Macintosh. I showed her Aldus PageMaker and had her eating out of my hand after seeing the output. She could not believe that I could set her up to do this for less than the $10,000 she had. I think I remember her ticket coming to around $7,000. She was my best friend after that. Her business was a complete success and she didn't have to go into debt to get started.
I believe that was the first industry Jobs destroyed.
So, I know the feeling. It's wonderful to be able to share knowledge. It costs nothing but time, and us retirees have lots of that.
So, thanks for offering. I will do it, just as soon as I get into the next tax year.
Unless I sell my car. I've got a 2008 Prius and a 2010 Toyota Tacoma. I've got to have the truck to pull a trailer, but I love the Prius so I didn't trade it in when I bought the Tacoma. I thought I would be putting more miles on them, living in the country, but I don't. The incident that brought that fact home to me was last week when I went out to the car to go, but the battery was down from sitting too long.
Then there's the $20k to $25k just sitting there depreciating that I could probably find a better use for. I'm just having trouble letting go. I'll keep you posted on the stereo project. |
