Kermit the Blog: That’ll be… Aw, heck. No charge.

Over on the Kermit the Blog he’s having one of those days. Another friend gets free computer help, and now he’s wondering if he’s too nice or just a sucker.
Kermit the Blog: That’ll be… Aw, heck. No charge.

My take:

One of my clients, who runs a very successful jewellry business, explained it to me: When you charge little or nothing then there is no associated value. Which means there is no way to compare what you are really giving them to anything else they are familiar with.

So the next time you get a call to a ‘family or a friend’s’ house to fix something, interrupt them and tell them up front: “I am no longer able to help you for free. $$$ an hour, minimum one hour. When should I come by to fix things?”

Then things get really interesting! 😉

As he says “What’s your take?”

Turning a man page into a PDF

In the end of a series of comments on Mike Harris’s article about Remind:

[minor edits by davidr]


#!/bin/sh

manpage to PDF generator

2004-08-02, Christopher Hansen

http://emilyandchristopher.com/

Usage: pdfman command

Creates command.pdf in current directory.

mandoc=/usr/bin/env man -w $1
grcmd=/usr/bin/env grog $mandoc
/usr/bin/env $grcmd | ps2pdf - > $1.pdf

To use it, select and copy the previous 11 lines. Then type the following into a Terminal window:

pbpaste > pdfman
chmod +x pdfman
cp pdfman ~/bin/

Now, if you type “pdfman remind” in a Terminal window, you’ll end up with a file called remind.pdf.

43 Folders Mike Harris looks at Remind

Thanks Christopher!

The Case for PowerPC based Amiga Hardware

My friend Michael got his article published …

His perspective on why the new Amiga hardware is based on the PowerPC chips instead of Intel.

“Synopsis:
The economic well being of the Amiga market demands a system that is not in direct competition with the Wintel world. Running on Intel hardware will jeopardise the viability of OS4 by placing it into direct competition with Windows. Intel derived hardware raises issues of support costs and financial return for the vendor.”

The Case for PowerPC