what's with big companies?

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Oh yeah, that makes sense... I'll drive probably upwards of an hour to visit someone just for "fun," but as soon as we're talking long distances/flights/hotels, then certainly that should be covered, and no "reasonable" potential client would be unwilling to do so.

(But given my very limited contracting experiences -- I can count them on one hand -- perhaps I haven't just been burned enough. :-) )

Ouch. :-( I suppose it's not practical to sue someone in Korea... perhaps you should make some "obvious" "mistakes" on the schematics, that anyone trying to learn from it will clearly notice and fix, but someone trying to just rip it off will at least waste a bunch of time and money when their first units don't work! ;-)

---Joel

Yep. Impractical to sue. The original work was done for them. Went unpaid. They vanished. Then _my_ schematics started appearing.

So my general rule now is not to do business with anyone not having at least some presence in the US, like sales offices, etc... some assets to "attach" ;-) ...Jim Thompson

I usually insist on prepayment for work, as well. I require a retainer in the bank to work off of. Like attorneys often do. When it gets low, I ask for a refill. I stop work when and if the retainer runs out and until it is replenished. I'm not a bank they can "age their payables" against.

I also won't sign hold harmless/indemnify clauses. Holding me up as a defense is about as effective as holding a sheet of toilet paper up against an attack by a blow torch. I'm not an insurance company, either.

Jon

:-)

I see it the same way. Ok, occasionally potential clients take ideas I offered in a proposal and run with them. Either they try to do it themselves or they try to find someone on the cheap. But sometimes they come back many months or years later. Either because the idea really worked and now they have a bigger project where they really need me, or because it worked but they can't get it completed.

I usually don't fly somewhere unless there is an agreement in place. Because that means 2-3 days where you can't continue work on other projects. Local clients where it means a short drive, different thing.

Whoops. They never did that with me. I really liked working with engineers there, they are really good cost-thinkers. There was a hallway with sheets and sheets of paper on the wall. Some sheets were replaced in the mornings. People trudged over there, looked, walked back to the desk. It was price lists for jelly-bean parts.

Then came a sobering reminder that not all is well: Air raid sirens began to wail. Luckily it was just the regular drill. They have to do those, for obvious reasons.

Next time you fly there at night get a window seat on the left. Then you see the sharp line going east-west. Tons of light south of it, utter darkness north. Quite sad.

Joerg on Korea ;

Like these?

Agree. The first impression I want to make is "I want to understand your system and do whatever I can to make it better." Not "pay me to listen whether I'm useful or not."

When I call on a potential customer, I'm really selling to them, and charging for that isn't logical. I certainly wouldn't pay anyone to come to my place and present their capabilities.

And I don't want potential customers to think that we are either cheap or poor.

But then I want to sell products forever, not my time by the hour. Manufacturing is different from consulting.

John

You can see it on the high resolution versions of this as well:

Thanks. Yes, that shows it rather drastically. I wonder why the Nile is lit up so brightly.

te:

ou

I looked at the pic that josephkkk linked to and the Nile river stuck out to me too, even before I saw your post.

Tourism. ...Jim Thompson

Probably because no place else in the country is habitable. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

That, too! The parents of my daughter-in-law were there a few months ago... the father got serious dysentery :-( ...Jim Thompson

You can get schistosomiasis by dipping your toe into the lower Nile, courtesy of Nasser & Khrushchev. (The floods used to clean that stuff out once a year.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

That's a fairly good approximation. Although there is significant population in Egypt outside of the Nile valley, the densities of those outlying populations are low. The very great majority of Egypt's population lies within the Nile flood-plane area or just outside of it.

Some of the oasis towns in the western desert are good-sized, and interesting places to visit, although relatively few tourists get out that far. You can see a couple of the larger ones, as individual light-dots to the left of the Nile, in that NASA image. Nothing like walking up to a small hill, seeing pit-tombs lining all sides of it, and having the local site guard ask you if you'd like him to carry one of the mummies up so you could inspect it at close range (we said "No, leave it in peace" - didn't want to have it damaged on our behalf).

Common problem, I'm afraid... my understanding is that most Westerners who tour Egypt do come down with one form or another of Pharaoh's Revenge. Even the locals aren't immune. My wife and I both had a bout of it, as did almost everyone in our tour group, despite following all of the recommended precautions.

Interestingly, when we left the Nile valley and drove out into the desert to the oasis towns (a five-day loop trip), everybody got better... and several became ill again after we returned to the Nile region. The dry air and bright sunshine of the desert regions act as marvelous disinfectants, and in oasis communities the drinking water is largely artesian (from a deep underground aquifer).