I had a real frustrating day yesterday at work. The problem was that I had been working with a sales rep and a partner to sell a deal for about a month. When the deal finally came close to closing and the customer was ready to buy our management decided not to do it. It was a little more complex than that with the VP of Sales and the sales rep not having communicated effectively whether the rep had the OK to go after it or not. But this left me feeling completely responsible for wasting a lot of people's time and looking very unprofessional. It also really burned my entrepreneurial approach to selling because this was to be a new way of selling and it clearly was caught in all the red tape that tends to tie innovation in knots.

But it has a silver lining or two. The first one is that I have rarely if ever been in a situation where it was my company that pulled the rug out from under a deal. Usually it is a customer who does that to us while we are working diligently to cater to their every need. It was a bit vindicating to be on the other side of the transaction. But there isn't much more demotivating to sell something and have people pull back the sale.

So last night I was thinking hard about my life and what to do next. I started thinking that it is time to really spend more time on my new ventures. Having met with Jorey I got the vote of confidence that I was a good "Mogul". This is either a big pile of snow that causes you to tear your ACL or a person who goes very deep into subjects and can really build something around. So I am going to go after one venture right now because I am doing enough writing these days to make me feel like it would be an interesting place to put some energy. That one is the hypercrit project. I'll do what it takes to bring it forwards. In the middle of the night last night I was thinking that it could be quite successful and make lots of money if done in a commercially smart manner. So I will give it a try. If it fails... at least I was working towards building something.

I went to bed quite cross last night because of the whole sales deal thing. That led me to get into a fight with Sarah about some things that are causing trouble in our relationship. I am not sure how well I expressed what I thought but I think it was good to communicate even when the communication isn't all positive. It's healthy although a little uncomfortable to have your girlfriend swimming in a pool of her own tears on your belly every once in a while. I think the key thing that made her cry was that I told her that I feel sometimes when she is acting very bitchy about something irrelevant like traffic or clutter that I am afraid she will make me miserable in the long term over these sorts of things.

Then when I woke-up and was getting ready for the day the pug dog puked on the bed. I put the down pillow in the washing machine. I figured that if the pillow got ruined that wouldn't be a big deal. Well... actually I learned instead that the problem isn't ruining the down pillow.

I went out with Leelin and walked him to do his business. On my way in the delivery man was delivering a DSL modem for my new upgraded service. He was excited to see me as I entered because it happened to be me who the package was for. To him this implied that I had ESP so he was inquiring what I would recommend as lottery numbers for the evening. When I got back into the apartment I put the DSL modem on top of the washing machine.

So the risk of putting a down pillow in the washing machine isn't that the down pillow will get ruined. The risk is breaking the washing machine and anything on top of it. As I started to do some work I heard what sounded like a thousand marching feet or an airplane engine approaching the apartment and the floor started to shake. When I got up to investigate the situation the washing machine was bouncing up and down on the floor and shaking more and more with each cycle. I ventured near it and opened the lid to turn it off. The problem was that the down pillow absorbed so much water that it created a huge imbalanced centrifuge when the washer started to spin down. I am not sure what exactly stopped the washing machine. I think it has some tilt-guard but it may have just broken. I won't know for a few days. My advice for anyone whose dog has puked on their down pillow in the morning is to avoid putting the pillow in the washing machine.

While I was fixing the washing machine situation I found the pug dog eating the cat's poop. The cat seems interested in baiting the dog to chase her out of boredom. He is very cute even when he is sick.