Of course I pushed too hard and paid the price of feeling that scratchiness in my nose by mid-morning.  At best I was gonna carry a mild cold through the holidays.  At worst I'd be a write-off for an entire week (which happened to me right after Christmas in 2015). It's not difficult to realise that I pushed too hard.  Despite being on Startical with its explicit guidelines , there was just way too much to get done before the holidays.  Even my Startical posts for nearly the past week have been placeholders to fill in later.  And now that's caught up to me and I'm starting sniffles. The challenge now is striking the optimal balance between preventative care and completing my commitments before Christmas: sending out personalised Owl-iday e-mails including the Owl-iday Special I had worked so hard to create.  I think I'll err on the side of preventative care as I really don't want to wrap up Startical feeling sick and useless...

...so what is it being invested in? Received an unexpected call from a candidate investor this morning, and in our discussion, by far the most striking thing he mentioned was how there is more money in this world than there has ever been. That's something I think about a lot and is one of the things that leaves me scratching my head.  If there is so much money in the world (and there is, even if it is all fiat money ), and all that money is searching investment in which to grow, how is this not a golden era of innovation, with technological and social innovation companies blessed with liquidity to create new value for exploitation? I could write a book on this subject (actually, a few years ago a registered the domains make-money-not-progress for this exact purpose), but won't do so here.  I will just use the occasion to document how frustrated I am with the hypocrisy and inefficiency of the current economic paradigm.  When I have frank discussions with my colleague...

Woke up at 6am.  Walked dog to rental truck.  Filled truck up with fuel.  Drove truck back to U-Haul just in time for 7am opening.  Continued dog walk.  Arrived at locksmith just before 8am opening.  Made copies of office keys for coworkers.  Popped in to office store and picked up gift wrapping paper.  Home and ready to make breakfast at 8:15am. I take much pleasure in accomplishing travelling-salesman-like challenges such as these.  Probably the key takeaway from Startical 1.0 was my propensity for " creative optimisation ".  This morning was exactly that, and it was fulfilling.

Almost match the original black, orange and red colour scheme...