Dead Horses

Thanks for your note - hope you have time for a little fun while you're in SF
- or at least some good food.

The Moorings said they should be able to put your part on the credit card if
you want. Their number is 800-535-7289; our contract number is 507645 and
it's under my name. The guy I talked to said he'll have to call during
regular business hours when the bookkeeping department is open. Each
person's share is currently $905.33. That includes one night in the Moorings
hotel so will go down by 55.50 or so if you decide not to stay there at all.
Beverages are covered by a separate payment. I'll be glad to fax the invoice
when you get a number for me. If you want to send me your check, that's
fine, or Bruce can do it - makes no difference to me.

Regarding "connectedness," there were no internet cafes the last time I was
there. While that may have changed, there won't be more than one or two in
the entire place, I'm sure. Were you planning on bringing your laptop? If
so, it would make sense to find a 12 volt charger cable that will plug into a
lighter socket or bring extra batteries - we won't have 110 volt current on
the boat except the first - and maybe one other - night. It will be easy to
check voice mails since we will have a cell phone on board. But it's not
cheap (as I remember it it was $1/min. to receive a call from the States and
$2/min. to place one) and I'm reasonably comfortable that you won't be able
to plug into it. I'm not sure if your US cell phone will work there or not.
We can find out from the Moorings. I have an international cell phone I'm
bringing along that also has infrared capability. Does your laptop have one
of those ir receivers? If so, I can bring along the software you need to
work it with this phone. Not to be defeatist and I'm sure the times have
changed but I remember one trip 7 or 8 years ago where a friend needed to
receive & send some faxes so we stopped at a little island hotel and asked if
we could use their fax machine - they said yes but had never seen anyone send
or receive more than a 2 or 3 page fax before and our 50 and 60 pagers soon
ran the machine out of paper. When we asked for more paper it turns out we
had used the last piece on the island - they were not amused.

Ted asked me to remind you to be thinking about music. Let me just add in
the spirit of self-preservation that it's a good idea. It's not safe to
ignore this issue since if we leave him to his own devices we may not hear
much other than Van Halen and Iron Maiden. Obviously feel free to bring as
many of your own cd's as you want & if you let us know what types of tunes
you like we'll try and bring ours (if any) that match. Don't worry too much
about Ted's taste - I always insist that he bring along a Walkman &
headphones!

Glad to hear the company is doing well, but just in case you need some ideas
with some of your projects, I got this from a friend this morning:

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation
to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse,
the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to
be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried
with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase the riders load share.
9. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
10. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting
its full original cost.
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would
improve productivity.
16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs
better.
18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.