Houston negotiated a wifi deal that was too good to be true and….

Houston went through an elaborate process of bidding and approvals for a city-wide wifi deal that is now dead. Earthlink found it cheaper to pay The 5M contract penalty than to build the network. First the facts, and then I’ll move on to why this is the city’s fault and we got what we deserved. (thanks for the heads up Katie)

Houston’s Wi-Fi deal with EarthLink fades

With little fanfare, the City of Houston’s wireless network deal with EarthLink
Inc. has gone dead.

The Atlanta Internet service provider last week said it was not making any
future investments in its $40-million municipal wireless business.

In August, when EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK) announced it would cut 900 jobs,
Houston city officials said the citywide
Wi-Fi network was still in the works despite already being behind schedule
by about three months due to infrastructure planning.

Houston city officials were unavailable for comment.

So what went wrong? Well, Earthlink, a COMPANY, couldn’t make money on the deal. The balance sheet said "the negotiators were using bad numbers and the city hood winked us." So they backed out. Which if you were an Earthlink shareholder is exactly what you would want them to do. So that part is a no brainer.

How did we get here? The bidding process was intense and lengthy.

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Quote of the Day – Benchwarmer Days are Over

Quote of the day:

“The day is coming. The day when being a benchwarmer just won’t cut it.
Stick in the cassette of Def Leppard and get out of your rut. The time
is now! Are you ready?”

- Balls of Fury, 2007

Mustaches for Kids – Why am I doing this again Jason?

Yup – I got talked into doing the Houston Mustaches for Kids. So give me some money for charity now dammit. OK, wait, I have to work on my approach. First a little of the hairy nitty gritty about M4k Houston.

Mustaches for Kids is a volunteer-run organization started in Los
Angeles in 1999 to do good and have fun by growing Mustaches for
children’s charities. Since its humble beginnings, Mustaches for Kids
satellite chapters have spread across the continent, a steady expansion
that is not unlike the measured, deliberate growth of a Mustache.
Through the years, Mustaches for Kids has enlisted the efforts of
hundreds of brave of Growers who, collectively, have raised over
$150,000 for charities such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, and San Francisco’s Legal Services for Children.

What can I do to help?

Well – I am glad you asked! You can pledge! So far I have one of my kids pledging 0.25 cents, but I think he might back out. So throw me a hairy bone here with a pledge! Because the beginnings are in place.

More details on pledging:

The minimum Pledge Goal for each Grower should be
$50.00 for the designated charity, but in no way should anyone be
discouraged from participating in the contest because he doesn’t think
he can make the Pledge Goal – $5 or $500, it goes to a good cause.
Please be aware of and obey all local laws when soliciting donations.

So my question is, would they have warned me about following local laws if this wasn’t a manly mustache competition? Are they AFRAID of the power of the stache? Inquiring minds want to know. So for now, post a comment if you wnat to pledge? I promise to REPRESENT well! And I leave you with a symbol.

:{)

Gene McCubbin is blogging (no really)

Gene, who I know both professionally and personally and mostly as a sometimes competitor, is blogging. There have been fits and starts before, but this looks legit. Welcome Gene!

Calculate Revenue and Profit Per Employee Over Time

This is not a detailed how-to post. Rather it is short, you will have to do most of the work yourself, but here is some help to calculate revenue and profit per employee over time. Specifically this is for a small business running Quickbooks.

My main goal was to be able to see head counts integrated with financial results by quarter. So if revenue was X and profit was Y in the third quarter, how many employees did we have at that time? Seems a reasonable question to me that was left unanswered by Quickbooks and Microsoft. So here goes:

Using Quickbooks

1. run the "Employee Contact List" – this is on the reports menu
2. click "modify report"
3. Select the following fields:
   1. Employee
   2. Hire Date
   3. Release Date
   4. (uncheck everything else)
4. go to the "filters" tab
   1. click "Active Status" and then "All" so you get a report of ALL employees
5. At this point check that all employees that are "inactive" have a "release date" – if not I recommend you fix it here. Refresh your report.
6. Export to Excel
7. I’d also recommend you "memorize" this report to get back to it easier next year.

The next steps take place in Excel. More after the jump:

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