How Not to Build Your Business
In progress as of fall 2011. The following is an excerpt from the introduction:
So why should you purchase this book? Because I made a lot of mistakes in building three consecutive businesses. I believe you can learn from my experience and avoid the loss of time and money, undue stress, heartache, high employee turn-over, several failed personal relationships, and most of all, lost years from your life.
If anyone has told you that building your own business is easy, they lied. If the book to the right or left of this one sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
I am not saying I have it all figured out, by no means, but I do feel that I am more realistic than some of the authors that promise the world in a set period of time. Remember, most authors make more money from their books than they ever did building the businesses they claim will make you rich.
Humanity & Technology
Humanity & Technology is a column I wrote in 2004 for MacNewsWorld and then in 2010 and 2011 for the Northern Colorado Business Report.
It does not offer a comparison of the speed of the latest wifi networks, but an introspective look at the effect of deeper integration of technology into the human experience, bringing to focus how our interaction with technology affects our relationship with each other, how it shapes the social evolution of our species.
The Stars’ Embrace
In The Stars’ Embrace, Kai Staats offers nineteen stories written over twenty years. His science fiction takes the reader from the ruthless rule of a near-future government, whose citizens are held captive by mind altering medication, to a distant planet where the remaining astronauts of a failed mission have lost all hope.
Staats’ non-fiction is told from an orphanage in Kenya, the limestone caves of Cuba, and from a house in upstate New York whose ghosts call from the days of the underground railroad to the spirit of our modern, interconnected world. Staats’ poems too tell stories, offering a sense of timelessness, when life pauses and the boundary between dreams and reality is blurred.
As the former CEO of a renowned software development company, Staats transitions from Linux user guides and marketing material to this, his first printed collection of short stories which includes the first-ever publication of Monitor Gray, Jon’s Song, and Sands.
Getting Started with Yellow Dog Linux
First published in 2002 by OpenDocs Publishing, Getting Started with Yellow Dog Linux was written for anyone interested in running Yellow Dog Linux on a PowerPC computer, with emphasis on Apple computers. This book introduced the reader to Yellow Dog Linux, regardless of previous familiarity with Linux, enabling comfort and familiarity with the daily use of Linux, both in the graphical interface, and if desired, at the command line.
“Getting Started” went into 2nd, 3rd, and 4th publications, each edition updated for the latest advancements of the Linux Desktop.
I am now in the process of preparing a PDF of the second half of the book which focused on the command line, to give away for free as a guide to those new to (and perhaps intimidated by) the command line interface to Linux.