You are lucky to have cash to stack under your mattress, consider yourself fortunate.

My first guitar teacher, who, when he talked would accumulate a white spit glob in the left side of his mouth as he talked (and kept a hankerchief close at hand to wipe it off) taught as one of his first songs: Greenback Dollar – Kingston Trio. This was back in the 3.x days after I paid for my master CNE out of my own pocket, when every reseller was making 30 to 35% margin on selling Netware, as this was prior to the ‘onslaught’ of the online resellers. This margin not only helped pay for my living expenses but also helped pay for my guitar lessons. Nonetheless, I would like to share with everyone one of the verses:

And I don’t give a damn about a greenback-a dollar
Spend it fast as I can
For a wailin’ song and a good guitar
The only things that I understand, poor boy
The only things that I understand

Eventually, I moved on to another guitar teacher as this one was a little nuts (and I am sure he has passed away by now). You see he had taught himself guitar while living in a nudist colony in the 1950’s. Now I don’t want to talk about Kerouac and the beatniks, as this is not an appropriate venue for these things, however. I think the song is appropriate. Why? Because the writer REALLY DOES CARE about the greenback dollar as it can buy one a guitar and a good song on a jukebox. So in reality, it is the Greenback dollar that matters not only to the writer of the song, but everyone.

And if you are an IT salesperson what are you going to sell? Big Greenback dollars or ‘no to little’ Greenback dollars?

After all you need the guitar and the good times, don’t you?

How’s that for dancing around your question?

GE, 3M, Novell…

I said: ‘Stop, mom, did you say Novell?’

I advised her that this could go to $20 if they get bought out, but I didn’t see much upside potential from the $5 level we see the stock in now, without buyout rumors flying. Or if the Nasdaq goes up and ‘lifts all boats’.

Maybe the regulatory enviroment will change as the Dutchboy has too many fingers in the dike and a Novell/Microsoft merger would be possible, especially if it is presented as a ’saves jobs’ kinda thing. I want to tell her to ditch the stock, but I would look like an idiot if they pop due to buyout rumors, or dramatic profitability improvement, etc. What should I tell her?

I think there are alot of VARs who would be more interested in the specifics here. As it was you, VAR Guy who made the statement:

‘there’s no money in file servers these days.’

And I did verify that there is no money in selling Novell operating systems these days, after investigating your proposition.

If there is little to no incentive to existing small partners to sell their O/S, what are they going to do to entice new partners? Maybe it is the statement he made regarding, ‘high-margin’ services business. What if I am a small VAR up to my eyeballs in high margin services business supporting my Microsoft accountbase?
What is going to entice me to start recommending Novell to my clients? Anything short of the greenback dollar ain’t going to cut it, in my estimation, and I think it means more greenbacks than I am already making, otherwise it doesn’t make sense to a VAR. Or does it? VAR Guy?

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-2:2008cv00201/case_id-109826/