Setbacks

Setbacks

Overcoming setbacks

Everyone fails sometimes or faces a setback in a particular aspect of business, because we, human beings, make mistakes and because business is really unpredictable. Most businesspeople continuously deal with adversity and failure, and you can be sure that a list of prominent people who reached rock bottom and filed for bankruptcy includes celebrated business gurus. Actually, at the company level, adversity, failure, setback are widespread. The same adversity is even common at the national level. Besides, the reality is that no matter what governments have implemented, there has remained an economic cycle that includes positive growth, but also negative contraction. There will be always unexpected, unpredicted major events…

Thus a key differentiator of success is not the absence of failure or adversity, but the ability to bounce back and try again. A key determinant of change in our world in absolutely unpredictable and unexpected.

But how do business people overcome setbacks ?

Many studies have attempted to uncover the common qualities of prosperous entrepreneurs. In fact, all these entrepreneurs a highly disparate bunch, with only one share trait which is perseverance.

There is no education like adversity (Benjamin Disraeli). Image: Megan Jorgensen.

Being prepared for a failure is a mental attitude you should acquire. In each forecast you make you should elaborate an optimistic, a moderate and a pessimistic scenario. This approach will enable you to prepare in advance for unfavorable outcomes. You can also create a setback pipeline. For example, you estimate that you have one chance in ten to succeed at a job interview. Therefore, it will require ten interviews before you receive a job offer, so you have to ensure you achieve at least this number of interviews.

There will be times when your business goes worth than even your most pessimistic forecast. When facing real setbacks, you need to keep things in perspective. There are also many people in far worse situation. In fact the world is full of disadvantaged people who with great courage and bravery overcome adversity against the most daunting odds.

As well as planning for damaging effects for your business, you should also look for emergent business opportunities. But change can be both good and bad for your business.

Anyway, even though failure happens to everyone, it does happen for a reason, and you need to learn from your mistakes. Business is constantly changing and there is no preferential or predetermined formula. Rather it is a process of trial and error. It is a matter of continuously learning what didn’t work at the time and what will work in the future.

Video Games

Video Games

With the advent of computers not only efficiency during working hours has increased, but likewise leisure time was diversified. Individuals now could spend hours at a time playing a video game that virtually transported them into an online, multiuser, shared, and in a way implicitly agreed on, reality, such as the one in World of Warcraft. The phenomenon is so widespread, that it was even used to gently poke fun at Penny, the bubbly blonde living near two brilliant but socially awkward physicists, all of whom are protagonists of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

A magenta colored hair woman on a castle’s rooftop. Computer games often focus on treasure hunts, quests, itineraries to complete, and goals to accomplish. Many, such as the long-established, albeit much changed, classic Prince of Persia, take place in a castle, sometimes almost entirely. As can be seen from the picture, image: Copyright © Megan Jorgensen (Elena).

Of course, long before Internet, or even single user, computer games were a popular, quasi-omnipresent cultural characteristic, individuals already engaged in playful activities for enjoyment. Therefore, an example going back to Antiquity is the game of chess. Rumor has it that, initially, the game represented a quarrel aimed at dividing the sky among supernatural beings. Today, while the origins are largely overshadowed by tournaments, world champions, rules and strategy (and three dimensional chess as featured on many televised ventures), it continues to be a hobby for many, while also now being available in highly computerized versions. Amazingly, international chess geniuses have even been able to win against the best chess-playing machines, although depending on the levels and settings, it may me difficult, or virtually impossible, for an average player.

Regardless, what seems clear is that most games require some degree of imagination. Conversely, fantasy is so engrained in games, that perhaps it is even natural to assert that all games are permeated with the fantasy component and thus, fantasy (as in fantasy art and literature) games fall outside discernible boundaries.

Copyright © 2011 Megan Jorgensen. All rights reserved.

Games surround us. Photo by Elena.

The Passion of Lizzie B.

The Passion of Lizzie B.

By Edward D. Hoch (excerpt)

Most eastern crimes made little impression upon people like Ben Snow who lived west of the Mississippi, but even he had heard of Lizzie Borden and the sensational murder trial the previous year at which she’d been acquitted of charges that she brutally murdered her father and stepmother. The eyes of the nation had been focused on the courthouse in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and even little children recited poems about the number of blows Lizzie struck with her axe. Still, the verdict of not guilty was cheered in the courtroom and almost universally hailed across the nation.

With the passage of time, that began to change. Lizzie went home to live with her sister at a different house in Fall River, and some people began to feel that she might indeed have been guilty, though the state had failed to prove it.

“I’ve heard of the case,” Ben admitted, “but I don’t believe I ever saw a picture of her.”

“I have one here that I obtained from the local library.” He produced an illustrated magazine and turned to an inside page where an account of the trial began. There were photographs of Lizzie Borden, her father, and stepmother. “You see the resemblance?”

“It’s a poor picture. One can’t be certain.” Yet Ben had to admit that this could well be the likeness of Lizzie Benson, the woman he’d met just a quarter of an hour earlier. “But isn’t Lizzie Borden still back East?”

“Who knows for certain? This article says she lives with her sister and is rarely seen. What could prevent her from placing that personal ad and coming out here under the transparent alias of Lizzie Benson?”

Grenadiers Lake. Photo by Elena

“Where was she living when you wrote her?

“The letters went to a post office box in Tauton, Massachusetts. That’s very close to Fall River.”

“Why do you need me?” Ben wanted to know. “If you don’t want to marry her, give her a ticket bacl East and be done with it.”

“If she is Lizzie Borden, she might not appreciate being jilted.”

“You’re afraid of her?”

“When I was showing her around my hardware store she picked up an axe. It gave me a jolt, seeing her with it.”

“All right,” Ben decided. “I’ll stay a week. By that time we should know if she’s dangerous or not.”

Clant drained the rest of the tea from his cup. “That will be just fine, Mr. Snow.”

It developed that Clant had given Lizzie a part-time job, working at his hardware store three afternoons a week. The following day Ben found her there, dusting shelves and bins with a feather duster. She recognized himm at once. “Hello again, Mr. Snow. You’ve decided to stay with us for a bit?”

He nodded. “I’ve taken a room at the hotel Omaha till next week. Then I’ll be heading back West.”

“Are you a friend of Cyrus’s?”

“An acquaintance. This is my first trip to Omaha and I decided to look him up.”

She put down the feather duster and picked up a big metal scoop, using it to combine two bins of small nails into one. “I’m trying to get Cyrus to weigh these nails and package them in five-pound bags. That’s the way some stores back East do it. Why spend the rest of your life selling things for a penny or two each?”

“You have a good business sense,” Ben told her. “Did you work in a store back East?”

“No, not really. It comes natural to me, I suppose.”

(Ellery Queen, Mystery Magazine, September 1993)

No Vivaldi

No Vivaldi

By Edward Clinton (excerpt)

She needed energy and she looked briefly at the loaf on the cutting board. The eyes of the man in charge followed hers. “On holidays, are we?” the little leader asked, looking at her bags all packed and ready for the return flight home. She did not respond. It didn’t seem to matter. He walked slowly around the room till he stopped over by the bread board. “Who murdered the loaf?” he asked blandly, poking at the hacked up loaf of bread. The room began to blur a bit as she brought her attention away from the fire and up to his face. She was going to have to answer questions sooner or later. But then, as she stared at his face, she set about assigning an animal to him, something she always did upon first meeting a person. Aardvark, she thought, and was pleased. She had never had an aardvark before. The other two could be Brendan Bear and Mr. Macaw. (Kids would like that.) Then she noticed how awfully silent the two upstairs were. What must they be thinking?

An ambulance decorated by a neon orange stripe slipped subtly into the courtyard, dousing its lights. No one emerged.

“Come on, luv, let’s have a bit of chat, then,” Aardvark prompted, appearing to be nice. “The pub up the great hill have anything to do with this?” he enquired, as it pubs held the answer to every crime.

Another darkened ambulance squeezed its way silently into the tiny Mews Courtyardm crunching the gravel. Again no one emerged. She remembered, from her American crime programs, that ambulance crews are not allowed into a crime scene until it has been made safe.

“What do you use these for?” Aardvark asked, pausing in his endless circle of the room long enough to hold up the pair of surgical scissors.

She knew she had better say something. “Clippings.”

“Any particular kind of clippings? The keenest price on a tin of pears perhaps?

No Vivaldi. Photo - Elena

Mean, sarcastic little aardvark, she thought. That was men for you – can’t figure something out and they get mean right off. “Ideas for stories. I write children’s stories,” she said.

“Childrens’ stories, it is then?” he said dismissively as people, especially men, often did. “You want to tell us what happened here tonight? He asked as he dropped the scissors into a zippered plastic bag he had produced from nowhere. It already contained the bread knife. “I have to tell you that what you say from now on will be taked down and used against you at your trial, if there is a trial, of course.” Now he had a small pad in hand and was scratching notes. He spoke as he wrote. She hated people who spoke as they wrote. “Are we sure we weren’t up the great hill in the pub drinking; and it made us crazy enough to do a thing like what has occurred here tonight?”

“I don’t know what happened. I had nothing to do with it. I only found him. That’s all.” Strangely, her eye kept coming back to that loaf. It did look murdered – he was right. She wasn’t used to cutting her own bread and had made quite the mess of it. “I had dinner at the pub. It’s the only place in town. When I returned home I heard the cat calling out in the wind, It was a terrible night…”

“Fierce night, yes, Ma’am,”

“I thought the cat might be hurt, so I went out into the wind with my flashlight. It was raining then as well. What with the wind and the rain, I couldn’t hear anyrthing, but I saw the black and white cat go up that horrible steep hill in the abandoned garden.”

(Ellery Queen, Mystery Magazine, September 1993)

Sizing Up a Chest of Drawers

Sizing Up a Chest of Drawers

When you’re trying to decide whether a chest has been repaired or altered, there are three things you automatically look for: top, feet, and hardware,” says antique expert George Read. “Ninety-five percent of the restorations on a chest of drawers will be in those places, so you can save a whole lot of time if you start there.”

    Watch how the light rakes across the top – if the surface is mirror-smooth, or if the top’s back edge doesn’t look as old as the rest of the back, it’s probably new.

    Remove the hardware to look at the fading. If the hardware is original, it will leave a sharp fade line.

    Look at the drawers. Do they look as though they’ve been altered? Do the dovetails look new or machine-made? Large, hard-to-sell pieces are sometimes reduced. One change often made to a chest is to reduce its depth by cutting off part of the back and reattaching it closer to the front.

    Tip the piece back to see whether the feet look as old as the rest of the chest, and notice if there are any spare marks or holes to indicate that something’s been replaced.

An antic door. Photo by Elena

Repairs: Minor or Major?

Although it’s impossible to put a general dollar value on the effect of given repair, George Read says some typical repairs are minor – maybe reducing the value of a piece by 10 percent – while major changes might cause a piece to lose as much as 75 percent of its value.

Minor

•     Any changes that are reversible
•     Replaced hardware, on European furniture
•     Hardware added for embellishment (usually is reversible)
•     New feet on a chest, or on any European furniture
•     Replaced mirror
•     New gliding
•     A damaged or stripped patina
•     Missing casters on chair legs of French furniture
•     Small alterations to the cornice of a book-shelf.

Major

•     Replaced hardware, on American furniture
•     New feet on a chest or on American furniture
•     A damaged or stripped patina, on American furniture
•     A new top on a chest
•     Marriage of pieces that don’t belong, such as a bookshelf on top of a slant-front desk
•     Reduction in the depth of a chest
•     Replaced chair rails
•     Spliced or repaired chair legs using all of the original parts
•     Even worse – legs with newly carved pieces.