About

Michael GracieThis is the personal kind of personal/archival weblog of Michael Gracie.

The Proprietor

Publicly

{note to self: for originality, insert something impressive here that isn’t stretching the truth}

Meanwhile, the unimportant but still factually correct stuff…previously…

  • Manager in Arthur Andersen’s Turnaround and Restructuring Group.
  • COO of Tango Communications; company sold.
  • Co-Founder and COO/CTO of Registry Services International; company sold.
  • CFO of Rivenet.com; I left early, but it flopped anyway.
  • Co-founder of TotJot.com; company folded within a year.

I’ve also done strategic, financial and technology consulting for dozens of businesses. Meanwhile, I’ve become a perpetual novice at catching fish with fly rods, and a feeble (and now semi-retired) skier/snowboarder. Formal education came via University of Florida, I’m a former CPA, and previously held six securities/commodities licenses (Series 3, 7, 24, 27, 30 & 66) as well as multiple state insurance licenses.

Presently

I consult in the arenas of financial and operation restructuring, small/middle market strategic planning, business continuity, and information technology integration. Services include building the finest GAAP-compliant financial models imaginable, providing hands-on assistance with acquisitions and divestitures (including liquidations), advising on company structure for long-term survival, and provide purposeful expertise (and elbow grease) on content management systems, customer relationship management systems, e-commerce, and data crunching exercises. Lastly, I occasionally conjure written content, primarily for the information technology and fly-fishing spaces, and spend a few hours a month plying the fly-fishing retail trade. I’ve been published in Military Information Technology and Angling Trade.

The Site

Origin

I doubt this method is patentable (heh), but I wanted to outline where the posts came from:

  • Notes – Links of interest, with limited commentary.
  • Office – From the desk…usually boring.
  • On The Fly – Most everything related to fly fishing, even if it wasn’t actually posted while on the water.
  • Spamroll – Almost everything from the now defunct internet security blog Spamroll.com.
  • Thoughtmarket – Almost everything from my old personal blog at Thoughtmarket.com.

You can find out more regarding how to subscribe to the compilations here.

Reading Lists

The reading lists (or blogrolls, if you will) aren’t very long, probably because I actually read most everything on the list, every day. Any more would be too much, and sources will come and go over time. The lists are divided between the business, finance and technology subjects (the “necessary evils”) and the truly important stuff (the fishing blogs).

Style

  • The CSS response: This theme is based on Skimmed Milk version 1.0 http://thortz.com/skimmed-milk/ by Thortz, which was based on White As Milk version 1.6 http://www.azeemazeez.com/stuff/themes/ by Azeem Azeez http://www.azeemazeez.com, which was based WordPress Default http://wordpress.org/, itself based on Kubrick by Michael Heilemann http://binarybonsai.com/kubrick/. The CSS, XHTML and design is released under GPL: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php.
  • The Michael response: Skimmed Milk cleaned up a lot of small errors in White as Milk, but I preferred the latter’s color scheme. I made template tweaks for things like tags, categories, and menu labels, as well as 404 notifications, plug-in link points, etc. I’m no expert, and the changes take/took just minutes. Nonetheless, it serves its intended purpose, simplicity – feel free to copy the css. End note: the name “Organic 2% Milk” was suitable and timely – slightly more work added to the previous theme, plus that is what I was drinking at the time.

  • I hacked up the WordPress Team’s Twenty Ten theme, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Miscellaneous

  • There’s a Google Custom Search Engine for this weblog available here, just in case someone doesn’t like using the obvious and convenient search box on the sidebar or are inclined to only use search tools that also display paid advertising. Fine by me.
  • The site feed was translated using Yahoo! Pipes (which I would recommend tinkering with around beer o’clock). You’ll need a reader that can handle such things (like kanji) – the feeds were tested in Firefox and rendered fine. Languages are as follows: