In the course of my usual day I’ll make some phone calls to potential clients that are not familiar with my company. I don’t make cold calls. If I call you it is because I’m reasonably certain you are responsible for software development at your company, and that your company utilizes the stuff that my company is good at. It may be you don’t need any help, which is fine. You can ignore me, or a simple “we don’t need to oursource” will get rid of me. There are plenty of companies that need my help. I don’t need to hit my head against brick walls.

What you don’t get to do is be a dick. Today, I ran into a dick. I got a reply email informing me that it was company policy to never accept a cold call or email, and that they were on the do not call list therefore I was violating the law.

First of all, the do not call list does not apply to businesses. You would think a Director level person in an industry that relies heavily on direct marketing would be at least a little familiar with the rules. And second, this is a company in the magazine publishing industry, with dozens of titles. They have more advertising sales reps in cubes cranking out calls all day than my company has employees total. Without people willing to do sales, Mr. Dick would be unemployed.

I may be in sales, but at least I’m not a dick.

In the course of my usual day I’ll make some phone calls to potential clients that are not familiar with my company. I don’t make cold calls. If I call you it is because I’m reasonably certain you are responsible for software development at your company, and that your company utilizes the stuff that my company is good at. It may be you don’t need any help, which is fine. You can ignore me, or a simple “we don’t need to oursource” will get rid of me. There are plenty of companies that need my help. I don’t need to hit my head against brick walls.

What you don’t get to do is be a dick. Today, I ran into a dick. I got a reply email informing me that it was company policy to never accept a cold call or email, and that they were on the do not call list therefore I was violating the law.

First of all, the do not call list does not apply to businesses. You would think a Director level person in an industry that relies heavily on direct marketing would be at least a little familiar with the rules. And second, this is a company in the magazine publishing industry, with dozens of titles. They have more advertising sales reps in cubes cranking out calls all day than my company has employees total. Without people willing to do sales, Mr. Dick would be unemployed.

I may be in sales, but at least I’m not a dick.

In the course of my usual day I’ll make some phone calls to potential clients that are not familiar with my company. I don’t make cold calls. If I call you it is because I’m reasonably certain you are responsible for software development at your company, and that your company utilizes the stuff that my company is good at. It may be you don’t need any help, which is fine. You can ignore me, or a simple “we don’t need to oursource” will get rid of me. There are plenty of companies that need my help. I don’t need to hit my head against brick walls.

What you don’t get to do is be a dick. Today, I ran into a dick. I got a reply email informing me that it was company policy to never accept a cold call or email, and that they were on the do not call list therefore I was violating the law.

First of all, the do not call list does not apply to businesses. You would think a Director level person in an industry that relies heavily on direct marketing would be at least a little familiar with the rules. And second, this is a company in the magazine publishing industry, with dozens of titles. They have more advertising sales reps in cubes cranking out calls all day than my company has employees total. Without people willing to do sales, Mr. Dick would be unemployed.

I may be in sales, but at least I’m not a dick.

So I changed a few things around here. Hopefully you noticed the new “About.me” style entry page to the blog. You may also be be noticing that this does not look like Wordpress. I started using Wordpress when Movable Type was the hot blog CMS. 4000+ posts later and I was sort of bored with Wordpress. After playing with about a dozen different options I settled on Anchor CMS. It’s not even at version 1.0 yet, so expect stuff to break around here. That is what makes it fun.

The Wordpress site still exists and is here as an archive. With this version of ODonnellWeb I’ve gone very stripped down. No sidebars or anything else to distract. It’s all about what I write. Also, since nobody actually comments on blogs anymore I’m not bothering with comments. The conversations have migrated to Facebook, Twitter, and Google +. I don’t necessarily like it, but it is not a hill I want to die on either.

If anything seems broken please let me know.

So I changed a few things around here. Hopefully you noticed the new “About.me” style entry page to the blog. You may also be be noticing that this does not look like Wordpress. I started using Wordpress when Movable Type was the hot blog CMS. 4000+ posts later and I was sort of bored with Wordpress. After playing with about a dozen different options I settled on Anchor CMS. It’s not even at version 1.0 yet, so expect stuff to break around here. That is what makes it fun.

The Wordpress site still exists and is here as an archive. With this version of ODonnellWeb I’ve gone very stripped down. No sidebars or anything else to distract. It’s all about what I write. Also, since nobody actually comments on blogs anymore I’m not bothering with comments. The conversations have migrated to Facebook, Twitter, and Google +. I don’t necessarily like it, but it is not a hill I want to die on either.

If anything seems broken please let me know.

So I changed a few things around here. Hopefully you noticed the new “About.me” style entry page to the blog. You may also be be noticing that this does not look like Wordpress. I started using Wordpress when Movable Type was the hot blog CMS. 4000+ posts later and I was sort of bored with Wordpress. After playing with about a dozen different options I settled on Anchor CMS. It’s not even at version 1.0 yet, so expect stuff to break around here. That is what makes it fun.

The Wordpress site still exists and is here as an archive. With this version of ODonnellWeb I’ve gone very stripped down. No sidebars or anything else to distract. It’s all about what I write. Also, since nobody actually comments on blogs anymore I’m not bothering with comments. The conversations have migrated to Facebook, Twitter, and Google +. I don’t necessarily like it, but it is not a hill I want to die on either.

If anything seems broken please let me know.

It’s 70 and sunny today, way too nice to sit inside all day. So even though I’m working on 5 hours of sleep after guys night out last night, I decided to go for a hike on this trail I’ve driven by 100 times. It’s 3.6 miles one way, so 7.2 for the round trip. […]

This American Life did a two part report from Harper Valley High in Chicago over the last month. If you haven’t heard of Harper High, it is an inner city school where over the last year, 29 students or very recent students were injured or killed by gun shot. I think it was 8 killed. […]

I’ve had Owncloud 5 installed for a few days now. I really, really want to like this app. It’s definitely improved quite a bit since versions 3 and 4, both of which I abandoned after a week. Version 5 isn’t going to last any longer. It’s not all Owncloud’s fault. Files: File sync seems to […]

This American Life did an in depth story about disability benefits that has been stuck in my head since I listened on Friday. The number of people collecting disability benefits has been increasing for years. Even during the last couple of economic booms the number kept going up. Are we getting sicker and more frail? […]