If you haven’t played Left4Dead, or Left4Dead2 or haven’t watched Dawn of the Dead, then you are simply silly.

I have never had so much fun in multi player online gaming as I’ve had since Left4Dead. Actually I did, in Tribes2. But that’s an era that’s passed (now re-invigorated by Tribes:Ascend).

“The Man Comes Around” song by Cash, is simply incredible. Especially when augmented by a view of the blood of lots and lots and lots of zombies sprayed on your computer screen.

Cash’s lyrics simply makes Armageddon sound like it’s the most romantic and enticing thing on earth. Johnny Cash’s covers are awesome. Honestly, I never thought I’d say that about some guy that lived and made music in an era I didn’t really know about.

“Hurt” is an unknown classic — so underground that you would probably only know about if you wore stockings, tape, and sported black hair in the early nineties, and lived underground and after midnight because it was the “right thing to do”. Or, maybe you bought lots of NiN albums because it was cool.

I did a lot of that — the wearing stockings thing at least… I was also a NightClubOwner. I still meet people in my professional life these days that bring that up and mock me. I wore stockings. I wore duct tape. They considered it weird. meh…. At least I have some stories to tell. They have… Oh, a few years wasted…

I simply look at those days as a seven year hobby. Non-profitable. But extremely enjoyable… It was the most memorable time in my life.

How many 38-year-olds can say they ran an alternative nightclub for 7 years? Fuck — it was my fantasy come true. And I didn’t even have to die the way that Lolly did with all that blood and bullets and shit…

Of course, there’s “Personal Jesus”, by Cash as well:

I can honestly say that by the time Johnny Cash died, he really completed the full, utter and true artistic depth that any artist could strive for.

A true legend. As are the artists he covered. Old learning from the new, and all that jazz…

One of of my first educational posts. Now, revisted.

Get some Fad Gadget.

Some more musical education.

Tristesse De La Lune, Queen of the Damned. Google it, get the mp3, buy it from wherever.

Then, get out your vampire outfit, dress up  and go and watch ALL of the Underworld movies (again).

If you haven’t, then in which bat cave have you been living?

I don’t generally refer to news articles on commercial news sites, even though the good old “biting the hand that feeds IT” is one of my favorite daily reads, and has been for more than 10 years.

This article, however was just a priceless win. The subtleties obviously escaped whichever news24 monger was at the helm that day, and simply googled “london 2012 logo”. That, or he/she was actually enough of a subtle bastard to use TheRegister’s version in the hope that nobody would notice…

Either way, it has absolutely made my day.

“We began by responding only to customer demand with our specialized service which derailed our in-house product development. It’s an easy trap to fall in as the money early on is very good. However you will eventually need to invest in your own products and core strengths to build a truly unique and profitable business. We are now highly focused, but I wish we’d done it sooner”

Sam Hutchinson, and Josh Adler of Prefix Technologies

Since apparently it’s fashionable to mention previous business failures in blog posts, I thought I’d mention one of my prior failures here, and then tie it up with focus and customer service.

Prefix Technologies took over Creamer Media’s EngineeringNews, and MiningWeekly after my old IIS/ASP based CMS which served them well for 4 years was becoming simply unmaintainable and unscalable and I started the port to move over to a hybrid Linux/Apache/PHP and Microsoft SQL backend as part of the migration.

It was a trying migration. It worked, but I simply didn’t have enough time and energy to continue the final ports of database migration and then adding the additional features they required. Root cause:  Freeside was  a moonlight engagement for me because we didn’t have enough money as a startup to pay everyone (well, apparently everyone but me) — which meant lack of … yeah, you guessed it — focus.

What was even more trying was that my business partner at the time (Hello Robert Budai) screwed me over no end. For example, not paying the company’s taxes, whilst still happily paying himself.

Entrepreneurial Lessons:

• Never let someone else take care of financial matters and focus purely on technical matters — stay involved.
• Never trust someone else to have done something important (such as paying taxes) based on pure face value — always confirm for yourself.
• Don’t try to start a new business by moonlighting — take the knock in salary, take the pain, but at least you will have focus.

All of the above was pretty much the death knell for Freeside’s original CMS, and the company. I was rather relieved that Prefix could take over Creamer Media. For me — it was time for new business, and a new focus. I resigned from my previous job, and bit the bullet with Neology.

I have to agree with Sam and Josh’s views strongly. FOCUS. Don’t deviate.

The thing is, that sometimes existing customers and prospective new ones will throw things at you that causes your eye to waiver from that ever so elusive thing called “focus”. Sometimes you have to say no, even when everyone around you will say “but they’re willing to pay good money”.

That might work in an environment where you’re selling widgets, but it does not work in a high-stress, creative environment where your employees are the single greatest asset your company has.

Sometimes the customer JUST ISN’T right, dammit!

Even when they want to pay you a lot of money. It could be that their demands will so detract from your core business and focus that it may be more damaging than useful to engage. (Yes,  regardless of the damn money).

Strategy, architecture, wellbeing and not compromising your core values  sometimes DO have to come first. (Yes,  regardless of the damn money).

Continually placating and accommodating unreasonable customer demands detract you from your focus, and strategy and will eventually end up costing you more than they’re bringing you. There is a balance to be had. The problem is that identifying this kind of customer, or situation is sometimes not easy.

I’ve started implementing a fairly basic rule which I use to gauge whether I’m entering into one of these situations. And it regards the damn money.

“If it remotely  starts feeling like I’m going to have to slut myself out just to get the business, it needs some reconsideration”.

qed