Ed - The key lesson for those who have not yet sprouted gray hair is to drive your car as long as you possibly can -- until the cost of maintaining and/or fixing it is greater than its trade-in value. If you can drive your car until long after it is paid off and the wheels fall off and you have to get a ride from AAA, that is the best way to set yourself up for financial stability. Buy a car every couple years and you will find yourself in your 40s still clawing to establish meaningful savings. So the best car buying advice is do everything you can not to buy a car.

(Jumped down from soap box) I've had very good luck with Texas Cars Direct, which is a no-frills retailer (http://www.texascarsdirect.com) that does marks the car up a couple thousand dollars and pays wholesale for trade-ins with a no negotiation policy and no b.s. policy. Their "lot" consists of a big warehouse full of cars, most of which are luxury brands, but they do carry a few Toyota, Honda, Volvo and miscellaneous brands as well. There are probably a couple similar Internet-based dealers in Houston worth checking out.

...The other idea-fostering concept that is used is the creation of an incubator -- enabling empoyees to implement and grow big ideas (think whole new business lines or services). I think this is a good way to encourage innovation and participate in concepts that otherwise would never see the light of day because they lack resources. I think Google does this - encouraging basically everyone on their team to carve out time to pursue a passion project. Most crap out but a lot of the Googe innovations have come from this incubator model.

Ed: The more mature corporations have a couple ways of dealing with this. One is a focused R&D mechanism. Typically, the ideas that are considered first require analysis somewhat similar to a business plan -- to assess potential size of market, how the idea addresses gaps in service or changing customer needs, etc. You say you worry that requiring a write-up could limit ideas because some lack the writing expertise. That would encourage collaboration and teams. Knowing what I know of your environment, if I was a Schipulite with what I thought was a good idea, I would engage a small team consisting sales, account service, programming and design to flesh it out, write it up and prototype it. Someone in that team would be a competent writer. Part 2 to come...

Has it come to the point that we get outraged if a company doesn't respond to our tweets -- even if it is evident that there may be a technical problem? There are a lot of companies that don't even have a Twitter presence let alone immediately respond. @jetblue did immediately respond and specifically requested you DM them. To me, that's the equivalent of someone saying, "I'm leaving work, but you can reach me this other way." That is excellent customer service. You don't know that the inability to DM them was their fault. It seems strange to think that they would go in a block you. Now I suppose you can get outraged that this person was not monitoring Twitter at the exact moment you needed it and they apparently were offline for a little while, but that's a pretty high standard -- especially since he/she told you to DM them. Southwest deserves a lot of credit. But it seems like the challenges you had with @jetblue might have been an anomoly. I just don't think they deserve the public flogging if there was some technical glitch with Twitter that prevented them from connecting with you. But big props to Southwest.

Perfect, unless there is a flood or high winds. You'd think they would come up with something that was a little more substantial than 1/4 thick walls.

Ed - I think you are approaching it too logically. Alex could just say he is in the food business, or say he satisfies hunger. But he has stepped back and looked at what really results from his unique combination of product, service, environment and customer interaction. Memories result. So Schipul is not really in the sales business. There are many clients of Schipul who don't sell a thing and even those that do sell aren't expecting you to close the deal. At best your services move people along the sales cycle -- accelerate the sales cycle. Actually, that may be the business you are in: Accelerating Business Success. You are an accelerator.

To expand on (or take issue with) Ed's point briefly, what's wrong with vanity as a motive? Steve Jobs is the most famous of CEOs, after all. I guess one might hesitate to assume what his motives might be -- to rescue the rest of us from a colorless, tasteless and less satisfying life -- or to feed his unquenchable vanity? What difference does it make? I personally had never heard of Julia until reading your piece. If she provides no value other than her lip dub video of Don't Stop Believin' it will be enough for me. She's making great candy! Because she's seeking fame for fame's sake? Who cares?! Each of us wants recognition. As Sally Field said, "You like me; you really like me!" When you peel back the onion, each of us is Sally Field screaming for acceptance. Embrace it.