Health Insurance – Health Savings Accounts

In 2009 under President Obama’s administration, one of the most politically charged issues in the United States is health insurance and healthcare. One of the best health insurance programs that seemingly few people are aware of is the Health Savings Account (HSA). My family started an HSA in 2004 coupled with a high-deductible health insurance [...]

The Power of Social Networking

Due to the nature of my father’s job, through my senior year in high school my family moved about 15 times throughout the United States and around the world. I made good friends everywhere that we lived, but unfortunately, lost touch after we moved. Recently, through the power of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter [...]

Lunch with President Elect Obama and Mayor Fenty

January 10, 2009 is a day my family and I will remember forever. My wife, sons and I went on a trip to DC to tour the Smithsonian. We stopped for lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl, and within a few minutes of standing in line to order our food, President Elect Obama and Mayor Fenty [...]

Federal Continuity Directive – FCD 1 and FCD 2

Over the years, I have had the pleasure to work with a number of companies and talented consultants/subject matter experts to provide business continuity, disaster recovery, continuity of operations (COOP) and continuity of government (COG) planning services for government and commercial clients. In summary, we work with our clients to produce a comprehensive, actionable [...]

The SWOT Analysis

On a recent client engagement, we were asked to develop and discuss a number of strategies for our client from both an operational and financial perspective. As we started developing the report, we needed a framework to capture and present this important information. Although a number of strategic tools were available, we used [...]

Operating System Virtualization

Linux is becoming my operating system of choice, but many of my clients have standardized (?) on Microsoft Office for document handling. Google Docs, OpenOffice, Abiword and other opensource suites are good for content development, however, I have found that Microsoft Word documents (at least through 2003) must be viewed and formatted [...]

Small Business Financing

When people ask me “what does Amicus USA (AUSA) do?”. The best answer that I can give is that since 2002, AUSA has been providing venture management, venture capital and business development services to a select group of emerging small businesses. We recently started using a service called Virgin Money (formerly Circle Lending) to [...]

Skype and Fios – Better, Cheaper, Faster

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I worked in telecommunications as a Senior Account Manager for MCI WorldCom selling telecommunications services, which included local / long distance, frame relay, ATM, and various flavors of DS-X and OC-X. Cisco Systems and a number of smaller players were promoting VoIP and the convergence of voice, video [...]

Ubuntu, Windows XP and Windows Vista

Last week I finally gave in and bought a laptop with Windows Vista for my father. I have been postponing the “upgrade” from Windows XP to Vista because I’ve been hearing about challenges with device driver compatibility. I have quite a few vintage printers, scanners and the ilk that are five+ years in [...]

Google Docs

In my job as a management consultant and as a business developer, I write about eight hours a day. Over the past 20 years or so, throughout my educational and professional career, I have used numerous proprietary and open source word processing programs on Microsoft, Apple and Linux platforms. Some of these programs [...]