Thinking out loud.

Thanks to Shannon (sister Shannon that is) mostly as well as a few shots from Shannon (girlfriend Shannon) and myself, we ended up with a huge pile of pictures from our recent trip to Southern Africa. Below are the links to those pictures.

I am going to write another couple posts about our time in Africa. There is so much to talk about… why I hunt and the ethics of hunting, the crisis in Zimbabwe, the violence/rioting in South Africa, REAL racism, and more. I want to post on all these topics. But before we get into the “deep” discussions about Africa, lets have a bit of fun with the pictures we took!

So for those that may not know, we spent just over three weeks in Southern Africa. Most of this time was spent in South Africa but we also spent time in Zimbabwe and are least able to officially claim we have been to Botswana and Zambia as well. Africa is a place of immense beauty, a place where nature is raw and real in a way that is hard describe… even if you have been to Yellowstone and Alaska. Pictures do the place little justice, but we did our best.

So, here are some links to the pictures we took. In total, we took about 2000 pictures. I deleted the really terrible ones and managed to get down about 1200. From there I have done my best to find a smaller set of representative photos. I ultimately got down to a set of 245 photos from the “non-hunting” portion of our trip (which included time in a South African bush camp in Madikwe Game Reserve; our visit to Sun City, South Africa; and our trip to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Here is the link to the Flickr “collection” of these photos, which is separated out into three “sets” in accordance with these areas:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dzvette53/collections/72157605564592921/

There are no hunting photos in that collection. For those interested, here is a link to the hunting photos on a separate site:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.zitting/HuntingInTheLimpopoSpring2008

Finally, those that may be interested in more pictures (though they don’t have captions explaining them, you can check them out here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.zitting

Enjoy!

It is today that with a heavy heart I can say that Dr. Ron Paul is officially ending his campaign for the presidency of the United States. While it is quite literally painful for me to see him go and leave only a sad choice of two candidates who, when you really push aside the superficial and the difference in party affiliation, offer no real change for America, I am proud to say that Dr. Paul cured my apathy.

I feel like prior to the Ron Paul campaign I was nothing but a disenfranchised American youth who was actually (at least to some degree) laughed at if I were to sound my TRUE political beliefs. A long time registered Republican who felt totally betrayed by “his” party and looking for a group to associate with (perhaps the “red-headed step child” of current American politics, the Libertarians). Dr. Paul changed this for me. I am not a republican or a libertarian or any other bullshit term the political establishment would like to assign to me. I am an American that devoutly believes in freedom, personal liberty, the constitution, and the vision the founders of the United States of America laid out for us all those years ago. And guess what… I am not alone. There are millions of me. There millions of us, from all across the political spectrum. There are millions of us, from all across the racial, gender, and religious spectrum. We are easily the most diverse and yet most homogenous group making noise in politics today. And we are getting loud.

Thanks to the Ron Paul campaign we have united and we have a voice. We can raise millions of dollars any given day. We can get the mass media to talk about us, no matter how badly they wish they could exclude us from the conversation. We even garner the vocal support of non-Americans all over the world via the internet who plead with America to mind its own business and disengage in nation building.

The democrats’ nomination process was perhaps the most painful thing I have ever been through. The republicans’ nomination process managed to take someone I once thought really had backbone and was a true patriot and turned him into another religious, nation-building, freedom-infringing nut. Yet no matter how terrible this presidential campaign gets, I don’t care. I will not become apathetic like last time. I am not yet sure if I actually care who wins, since there really are no major differences between them (other than race and age, the only two things anyone seems to care to talk about).

There is one campaign though that will offer “Change we can believe in”. It mostly certainly is not that of Barack Obama but rather the Campaign for Liberty. The Campaign for Liberty is Dr. Paul’s effort to turn the ground gained as a result of his presidential campaign into long term results. The presidential campaign launched a rEVOLution, the Campaign Liberty is what will make it really happen. I SINCERELY encourage everyone onboard with me to go to http://www.campaignforliberty.com/ and sign up. I already have.

“In the final analysis,” Dr. Paul wrote in his new book The Revolution: A Manifesto (a MUST read), “the last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.”

To quote Dr. Paul: “Our time has come to act on these words. May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in a moment of great crisis, stood up to their politicians, the opinion-makers, and the establishment, and saved their country.”

My apathy is gone. It is time to fight. Thank you Dr. Paul for starting the rEVOLution, I promise I will help see it through to the end. For liberty!

So for a bit of background, every time I have been to Africa and Asia, I have taken a minimum number of preparatory medications and inoculations. Usually what happens is, whoever it is in the party that took all the suggested crap got sick while my body never seems to care what continent I am on. So this time to Africa was no different and of course it followed with me having to listen to everyone else about how stupid I am for not taking malaria pills (even the story of the people we met who lived in the “malaria zone” we were in for 8 years with no pills while everyone’s malaria pills were causing them to have terrible stomach issues didn’t seem to help).

Well, it finally happened. I got sick. I haven’t gotten sick from anything in probably 15 years but it happened. I (as well as two of the other guys we went with) got a tick bite that resulted in tick bite fever. The lucky guy was the one who came down with the symptoms while he was still in South Africa. All he had to do was go to the doc there in South Africa, get some anti-biotics, and done. In my case, I got home before the tick bite fever set in. So, I went to my doctor, a real nice guy, and told him I thought I had Afrcian Tick Bite Fever and needed some antibiotics to get right again. Well, instead I sat and listened to this big line of what I can best refer to as “medicalese bullshit” that was basically a bunch of clinical talk I couldn’t understand other than that he thought I had a spider bite rather than a tick bite. Well hell… he is the doc right? So I take the prescription he writes and go home to start taking it. By the next morning I feel like complete hell and have broken out with what looks like a case of the adult chicken pocks. I go back the next morning. Doc agrees that wasn’t what was supposed to happen so he calls Dr. Whoever that was one of Denver’s experts in infectious diseases from Africa. He explains the situation and the infectious disease doc tells him that (SURPRISE) it is African Tick Bite Fever caused by a TICK. I am accordingly prescribed the appropriate anti-biotic and two pills later feel 100%. Talk about “practicing” medicine, what a waste of time… should have just let my body fight off. I would have saved like $250 worth of doctor visits, two prescriptions, and a bunch of hassle.

OUTSIDE OF TICK BITE FEVER HOWEVER, Southern Africa once again proved to be among the coolest places I know of on the planet. We spent two and a half weeks in South Africa and then about 3 days in Zimbabwe. We managed to land right on top of the first widespread rioting and violence in South Africa in many years as well as the CRAZY election situation in Zimbabwe and I loved every bloody minute. Anyway, pictures and more blog posts to come about the trip! In the meantime here is the quick highlight timeline:

1. Dan, Chuck, and Sister Shannon spend twelve days hunting in the Limpopo province. We did awesome including shooting a beautiful trophy big bull Cape Buffalo, hands down the best hunting species I have ever experienced.
2. Girlfriend Shannon and Pat arrive and we spend three days in Sun City relaxing. Activities included an elephant-back ride on the edge of Pilanesburgh National Park.
3. The group heads to Mosethla Bush Camp for three days. 3 days of game viewing and sleeping among the lions and elephants and giraffes. We saw piles of amazing game but the climax was the last day when a mother elephant decided to charge our truck!
4. All fly up to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Vic Falls itself was the highlight but a canoe trip among the hippos and crocs as well as the general experience of being in a place that is facing the utter crisis Zimbabwe is facing were a pair of “close seconds”

Recent events (MANY recent events) have led me to wonder something… why do we set our sights low? Let me break this down a little bit.

THE BACKGROUND:

For years now I have been hearing about how sad ‘my generation’ is. “They have a poor work ethic”, “they are not loyal”, “they think they are entitled to everything”, “they have no respect for private information”, and I could go on. Yet everyone is my ‘MySpace’ generation seems frustrated too. My parents’ generation was going change things right (at least that was what they tried to tell everyone in the 60s)… no more wars, stick it to the man, etc. but they did nothing really (no offense). We still have wars, we still have preventable disease, our environment has gotten worse, we still have corporate greed, and on, and on, and on.

THE FOREGROUND:

I feel like I fight this in Corporate America now every day. Worse, I feel like I am going to have to get really aggressive before I get anywhere. In the last few years I sat and watched as Ernst & Young played “zero-sum games” with our competitors (we offered a crappy, low-value suite of services and made up for it through larger “growth” pushes and cutting prices) leading me to swear I would not engage in zero-sum games with competitors ever again. Yet, where I find myself right now in our new business trying to “make our name in the market” is doing exactly the same thing… undercutting price, really “selling”, etc.

THE POINT:

Why the hell does all of this continue to progress in this manner? Let me explain why I think it does… all the generations ahead of mine (and when I say ahead of mine, I literally mean anyone older than 25… which is funny because I am 26) aren’t ready to accelerate into the future, no offense. My generation isn’t lazy or disrespecting of company privacy or any of the rest…. We are all just ready to work TOGETHER to accelerate business and economies into the future. Instead of me at E&Y hiding things from “my competitor” at PWC; my college buddy who works at PWC and I are connected on LinkedIn and Facebook and are sharing experiences to lead to smarter conclusions and decisions thus making BOTH of our organizations better.

BUT THE OLD GUYS DON’T GET IT! Everyone older than me is just sure we have to “compete” and treat other firms like they are from some other planet. Here is the deal. I can’t help but wonder why Generation X and The Baby Boomers are often so anti-innovation. When certain kinds of services and products are becoming commoditized and starting to look like a zero-sum game, instead of increasing sales efforts and cutting prices… why don’t we innovate, grab the business/industry by the balls, and turn it on its head? And if we can’t, realize that business changed, what we do is not viable, and learn to do something else.

So, I am currently wondering why our team is fighting this crazy trend of getting a piece of commoditized work.

QUESTION: Why do we care about it? ANSWER: Not sure, guess because we have to start somewhere.

QUESTION: Are big companies actually better or more important clients than very small ones? ANSWER: Not sure again, yet we FIGHT for work at Denver’s big, public companies to really make no more money on an hourly basis than we do when we provide really great services to very small “Loveland-type” (for those that don’t know me – small, home-owned type) businesses. The reason is because we deliver a borderline commodity service to very big companies, yet we offer a borderline transformational service to very small companies.

QUESTION: When we cut prices and increase sales are we really putting the customer at the center of our business? ANSWER: I don’t think so. If a customer is really pushing to reduce prices, shouldn’t we help them get what they want? It seems like the thing to do is totally change approach and build the service specifically around cutting price… don’t just cut margin, automate, innovate, and get ahead of the market.

WHAT NEXT:

I’m going to work. Time to put the customer at the center of what we do and rethink our strategy on a few things. Time to abandon this idea of playing defense with pricing and play some serious offense. I think it is so easy to fall into thinking you can’t do certain things but you can. That’s what being an entrepreneur is all about. Instead of selling a service that used to cost $125,000 for $100,000 with a smaller margin (say $10,000) in order to meet the customer in the middle on their desire to reduce costs, why not think about how to do it smarter with software and automation, build the product to do it, and sell it for $50,000 with a $25,000 margin? The zero-sum game ends, customer and provider win, and the economy benefits from innovative thinking. BUT… you have to set your sights higher to accomplish that. Hat is the quote that comes to mind… “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you will land among the stars”. So come on old guys, lets set our sights higher and change business forever.

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Please watch…

After is your ability to buy that house with a theater room still seem like the top priority in life? Do you think that if there only 100 of us, the 33 Christians would be fighting with the 18 Muslims? Or could we maybe stop fighting long enough to try and help out those 53 that live on less than $2 a day.

All of this business about the business of “high-finance” lately has turned my stomach. I mean REALLY turned my stomach. Lets review the VERY short version of the events that have led to the current “credit crisis” and the ensuing pain felt by America’s financial institutions.

1. The American population develops a serious spending problem but no one seems to notice
2. “Bankers” and America’s “financial experts” develop sophisticated financial instruments to make traditional more liquid
3. America, ignorantly, buys into the “financial experts” sales pitch and begins holding securitized loans in our financial portfolios
4. Bankers begin making more and more loans to less and less qualified people
5. “Everyday Americans” begin taking on more and more ridiculous loans because the bankers and “financial experts” told them they could afford it.
6. America realizes they couldn’t afford it, no matter what the banker/expert had said.
7. America begins defaulting on the loans.
8. Bankers begin suffering because all of their loans are defaulting.
9. Banks begin going out of business (e.g. Bear Stearns).
10. Uncle Sam decides it is time to bail the whole thing out.

Of all the crap I rant about in this little corner of the internet, this is bothering me the most right now. The government… especially the supposed “small government, free market” supporting Republican Party, is all a-buzz about how can we save America from the credit crisis. There is talk of bailing out the banks, saving people’s homes, and all the rest and it is infuriating to me.

Let me see if I can remain calm long enough to explain. America was founded on an idea of freedom and personal responsibility. In a free market, each individual is free to figure out how to prosper and is not (supposed to be) protected from failing.

In 2002, as nothing but a really stupid college kid and a simple retail shop owner, my own father and I discussed how crazy all the borrowing and lending was and how the whole thing was destined to collapse. We understood it, we stayed out of it, and we are not suffering from it. Big self pat-on-the-back for us I guess.

But this is the problem… now the whole thing has collapsed. Any idiot could have seen this coming except for the “financial experts” and all those people aimlessly signing their name on the bottom line apparently. Sorry to alienate all you “normal people” out there who fell for this scam, but I’m sorry, that is what happened you. You fell for a scam, and when you fall for a scam, you get burned. For you scam artists (or “financial experts” as previously named), you deserve the crash. You suck, I’m glad you’re going out of business. Wait, did I sound like a jerk just now? Let me see if I can say it better. You totally suck, and I actually draw significant pleasure from watching your businesses come crashing down (hmmm… still sound like a jerk but so it goes I guess). Basically, I was not involved and don’t deserve to suffer in the aftermath.

And that is what the free market is all about, rewarding those who played well and punishing those who played poorly. It is a harsh reality but history irrefutably proves that it is under this system we as the human race move forward the fastest.

The problem is that in the current situation, the government supported the run-up and is now looking to help with the bail-out. That is called socialism and it is MADNESS. By bailing out the banks and bailing out people with bad mortgages, the government is effectively using my money (tax money… actually debt in my name because they have NO money) to excuse the actions of people I did better than in the free market.

At the end of the day, these government bail-out actions do exactly one thing… make it known that if a company, or industry, or individual acts poorly, the government is there to fix it for them. The saddest part is that we have a political system that is supposed to be divided by party to create descent over these actions (e.g. this should be, at a minimum, protested by the Republican Party). Problem is that the party who is supposed to be pissed is totally spineless, so there is no descent/debate on this issue. They seem to be happy when corporations profit through greed on one side, but want to turn around and bail out those same people that were greedy when the free market corrects and punishes them for their greed (which it always does). Shame on you Republicans, please consider growing a backbone sometime this millennium.

So here it is again, evidence that all I want is government to get the hell out of the way and clear indication that the only political party I could even maybe legitimately associate myself with is the Libertarian Party. I am sorry the Republican Party has been so corrupted from what it is supposed to stand for. I hope its members will wake up soon and take it back.

What I want is this… let the lenders that made stupid loans sink. Let people who took on stupid loans lose them and learn a valuable lesson. Then the market will correct this flaw and we can all move onto further prosperity. The sad alternative of government interfering to “fix” this for short term satisfaction will lead to continued suffering.

I don’t know where Glenn Beck was a few months ago when we needed him but it looks like he swinging our way (check out the video). At any rate, I am very nervous about our economic system… a shimmer of hope exists for the American monetary super power, but the outlook grim. I hope the internet generation has what it takes to save us.

This video nearly took my breathe away. EXACTLY my “real world” take on what Web 2.0 means to the world after strip off the crap that is venture capitalism, talk of “Bubble 2.0″, etc.

Web 2.0 to isn’t about new businesses… it is about changing how old businesses, people, etc. are perceived. You have to understand who Gary is and what he is done to understand his perspective fully but it is spot on. And for those who have no idea what I am talking about… you (and your business) may get left behind soon.

Excellent, succinct explanation Gary.

Once again… long time no zittiblogs. I am about to get back in the habit .

Lets get back to politics. It has been awhile. As we all know, the republican candidate is chosen and the dems are still fighting. No matter how you look at it, we are down to three and my guys is not one of them (though he will go uncontested in his race to be reelected to congress). So let me address the remaining in relation to my actual presidential vote to be cast this November.

Most importantly, there was only one candidate that I believed in. I love the Obama enthusiasm, it feels like the Ron Paul enthusiasm of a couple of months ago, but there was ONLY that one candidate that I really believed. So now, I am listening, and I am the quintessential “undecided voter”.

TO THE DEMS: If you want sure thing on my vote, there is only one thing you can do… nominate Hillary. This will ensure my vote goes to the republican, even if he does want to win in Iraq, even if it takes “a hundred years”.

TO THE REPUBS: If you want a sure thing on my vote, there is only one thing you can do… make Ron Paul McCain’s running mate. He\’ll never do it, but if he did, the candidate on the democrat is irrelevant. Give a great man that much voice and you get my vote.

I have never voted democratic in a presidential race, but it might happen. These two routes to a republican “sure thing” may be the only thing that sways me back away from the masses that Barack Obama is pulling together.

Today I played golf. I played badly, but on March 9^th I actually played the first round of the year. My score was terrible, but I remembered (as I do the first time I go every year) that I love to play golf.

The last few years, I have not played golf with any real regularity. I bought a house in Denver specifically to be near a great golf course. I then went to work at Ernst & Young, and proceeded to work all the time, travel all the time, and play golf a whopping 5-6/year for four years. 6 rounds multiplied by 18 holes/round equals a total of 108 holes. 108 holes/year multiplied by 4 years equals 432 holes. 432 holes since graduating college… NO GOOD!!!

Well I am done with Ernst & Young and done with not playing golf. There was a year in either late junior high or early high school where I played something on the line of 1710 holes IN ONE YEAR.

We are working hard to start a business and I recognize that I still won’t get to 1710 holes again, but I am going to play twice a week. That is my goal, no chance I will make it, but I’m going to try… and hopefully I will also have a new golfing buddy to go with soon!! So, when you see me, remember to ask me if I played twice that week and of course let me know when you have time to get in a round!