Championable | Love, parenting, politics.

In my ongoing saga with my contract- and written-agreement-ignoring partners, many folks have suggested “give it to the lawyers.” And they’re right to suggest this. But the major drag is that once it gets to a legal fight, it doesn’t much matter.

If it gets to a legal tussle, the terrorists win.

Take the example of our phones. Since they have control over the numbers, we’re basically fucked. If we move out, and there’s a two-month battle to get the numbers ported… that’s two months of people calling our phone number and THEM answering it. Even if we get the numbers later, we lose.

So, contracts are great. Written agreements are great. But unless people actually honor them, sometimes they might as well not exist.

Love to all. Even you, the cat who dumped the kitten food from the top of the refrigerator.

After agreeing in writing to giving us our phone numbers, the people who control our phone numbers are now not willing to give us our phone numbers. This will sort of fuck us over.

Here’s how the email went in August:

I initially clarified:

I need to make sure that the following is correct. Could you both shoot me clear a “yes, this is correct” or “no, and here is why”?

On Friday, we agreed that, in the unfortunate case that we ended the partnership:

1. I would be the sole owner of [My Company] and keep rights to the name.
2. I would pay back an agreed upon amount of money to [Bigger Company] over time.
3. I would be a tenant of [Bigger Company].
4. I would have the right to move our phone numbers to a new account controlled by us.

PARTNER ONE responded:

Yes, except if we do go forward, the [dollar amount] would be paid back at some time going forward. The only time the [dollar amount] would not be paid back is if [My Company] went belly up.

I replied:

I understand your position on this. PARTNER TWO, is this how you see things as well?

Thanks!

PARTNER TWO responded:

Yessiree bob (Richard)

So, what the fuck? Today, they’re suddenly NOT giving me our phone numbers?

Argh, argh. Tomorrow is a new day. More will be revealed.

Love to all. Even you, uptight, too-close, train guy who needs to realize that he’s living a lie.

So, I got a lot of wonderful and super-appreciated well wishes from you people (and you KNOW who you are) about my panic-inducing day today… about which I’ll post in a few.

But damn if I didn’t ALSO get two regular-style emails, one each from Britt and LilliPilli, wishing me luck.

This thing… this fad they call the “internet,” is really incredible. In a strange, nonstandard way, you can make real friends here.

Love to all.  Even you.

The tough play Guitar Hero. I bought this for my son a few months ago… he thought I’d like it.

Oh, I do. And, um, sorry about the boxers, there. Ahem.

Love to all. Even you, the choicemakers.

…9 months ago I agreed to become the plurality-owner of a division of a bigger company that was in a similar industry to mine, but had no creative division. My company at the time was solely creative, so there was a lot of potential synergy.

We agreed that before 9/30, if it didn’t work out, we could dissolve the company.

Three of the partners owned a company that was about 15 times bigger than mine. The other partner was my then (new salesperson.

My absolute: we needed our own door.

Their absolute: we HAD to change our name, and we HAD to move to their office space. (This went against my recommendations, and my instinct, the national press - albeit trade - that we had recently gotten for being one of the best branded staffing firms in the country,

I agreed, because I believed the combination of companies could create something bigger than I could do on my own.

Well, for better or worse, it hasn’t worked out. And now my partners are completely not agreeing to dissolve the company in the manner to which we had repeatedly agreed in writing.

The thing is, they are bigger than me (I own most of the company, but their OTHER companies are WAY bigger than mine), we work at their office, and they have control over our phone numbers, and their names (as well as mine) are on our financing agreement.

Our agreement was that, if we separated: I would take over the company, pay them back some money over time (this was recently added, but I agreed), and we would keep the name and the phone numbers. Now, they are totally changing everything, and I’m not sure I have the resources to fight them, if they choose to be serious dickheads about everything.

So, we’re kind of fucked at the moment. And there’s nothing I can do until Monday.

The thing that’s most disappointing is that, after talking with various partners, it’s one person in particular who has acted in a completely fucked-up, dishonorable way. My friend (who knows him), referred to him as an Arsonist Fireman… someone who starts fires so he can be the hero when he puts them out. Well, he screwed up this time. I’m actually considering posting the text of his notes verbatim online, including my responses, just so when people search for his name, they find the shit he pulled. It’s unreal, the contradictions.

I probably won’t though. Even though I reserved a domain name for just such an occasion.

I ‘m trying to be calm. I’m trying to go into Monday without assigning too much blame. I’m trying to pray for their happiness, which is what I was told I should do.  So I am.  Trying.

Love to all. Even you, Steve, Harold, and the insecure jackass who can’t shut his mouth.

Right now, I feel like a heel. A complete idiot. A fool.

I’d like to write about the super-fun times I had with my youngest at Hershey Park, and I *will* do that, but right now I’m pretty much just seething over the fact that my one of the partners (the one that I knew going into this new business venture) has basically stated that he intends to fuck us over. I came home from my mini-vacation to a series of crazy-ass emails, the strangest of which was entitled “I’M WRITING THIS TO YOU AS A FRIEND.”

Now, this dude has a history of going utterly ballistic and then chilling out, but that’s not necessarily what I want in a partner, at all.

I am an asshole. I should have vetted this whole process more thoroughly before I accepted. Now, I’m up against a serious wall… and it has the potential to really fuck things up at a serious, can-we-afford-to-live-here level.

I know I’m blessed, and that I have it really, really good. I’m just upset right now.

Love to all. Even you, Joe.

Yo.

I’m taking my youngest to Hershey Park tomorrow morning, returning Friday. Also, I’m transferring Championable.com to a brand-new host, to test it before transferring the rest of my domains.

Thus, Championable.com is going to go away sometime in the next 48 hours… but it will be back by Saturday.

Yeeeeeeehah!

Love to all. Even you, the backstabbing copywriter.

So, my office coordinator had her IM icon as Spock. So I went and found “Evil Spock.” I thought I’d be really funny, but no… she was too quick for me. I am on the right.

Love to all. Even you, the guy who was just so happy not to have married that woman.

My 11-year-old is home from four weeks at camp. Thank God. This house just wasn’t right without him. And althought the Fighting-to-Peace ration among the children is surely going to skyrocket, that’s the proper state of things for Clan Championable.

And now, a question. I’ve been using HostGator for about a year. I switched to HostGator from DreamHost after experiencing mega-problems with DreamHost Email.

Three or four times now, my HostGator email has been blacklisted, because someone on the server (it’s a shared hosting account) was using the server for SPAM… so all 5000 domains on the server were put on the SpamCop RBL, since they all used the same IP.

Recently, there’s been some email downtime because of failed upgrades which the HostGator techteam apparently decided to do during the business week. THAT was a huge drag. If anyone tried to comment on this blog the last couple of days… you might have experienced a strange failure error: another example of recent problems.

So, I’m host shopping again. I need to host about 7 different domains. Four of which are updated a lot. After much research, I kept coming back to CartikaHosting.com.

Anybody know anything about ‘em? Anybody have a super-favorite small business website hosting firm they like more than HostGator, LunarPages, or Dreamhost? Should I just stay with Dreamhost? Hmmm.

Talk to me people. Collective knowledge, etc.

Love to all. Even you, the girl who shrieked in a chord.

My friend (and Art Director) Lisa was in my office. working on some marketing pieces for my company.  Our mutual friend Eric IMed her. Just to mess with him a little bit, I took over Lisa’s keyboard and answered him. He didn’t know she was at my office, but apparently he wasn’t fooled at all.

(Eric is on the left.  Lisa/Me on the right.  Eddie is the pup in Lisa’s icon.)

Love to all. Even you, the division director who’s getting a little bit sneaky.