So the whole family (sort of) is now in Las Vegas to attend the SEMA convention, which is basically heaven for anyone remotely interested in anything automotive. This is pretty much the most productive year I've attended. It used to be a shiny-cars and hot-chicks kind of deal, but I have graduated to actually talking to exhibitors and trying to find software solutions for the Family Empire. My sister and I have also between attending the free seminars that range from inventory management, small business IT, and online marketing presented by leaders of their respective fields. The last seminar we attended was chaired by execs from eBay Motors, Amazon, Google, Activant, etc! This is a pretty damn good deal for the $15 registration fee that we paid!

Rambling mode on. So it's a cut throat market, and everyone's out to make a buck. I used to subscribe to the school of modesty, and self-deprecation. "Set expectations low, and perform high." Never acknowledge your talent, because there seems to be greater satisfaction when it comes unsolicited from a third party. There are, however, some potential drawbacks to this approach if it starts to manifest itself internally. To guise yourself from others through modesty, may be a formidable plan of attack, but be sure to always keep in mind what is real, and believe the truth in what you can do. It's easy to get swayed into the cop-out that you cannot do something, when all you need to do is to take that first step and make the effort to make it happen. It's easy to follow the crowd of lemmings and go with the flow. And this fear of 'failure' (that can present itself in many forms), marks the difference of those successful, and those who are not. And no matter how intelligent you are, no matter how much you understand it better than the monkey next to you, what stays in your mind as ideas can never be as real as the actions you put to follow the idea through.

There are constant disconnects between what I believe in, and the life I am stuck with. Each day is another opportunity to weed them out. Nothing that a few beers can't fix. :)