Iron oxide, more commonly known as rust, is nothing special really. It is a commonly-found element and doesn't do a whole lot. It is unreactive, and quite heavy. Sort of like my ageing friend. Aluminium ('alloominum' to the Americans) is equally unexciting. It's light, and reactive under certain conditions. It creates its own invisible barrier against the outside world to protect the shiny stuff underneath. Sort of like me in a way. We'll come back to this.

It has been a hell of a weekend, I have not stopped for a minute.

In between doing the things I need to do, I have churned out over 100 pages of technical documentation, and something in the order of 20,000 lines of software. OK, so the software was largely just a moving around exercise - consolidating all the bits and pieces that I have written over the years - but still a big old job.

It occurred to me, as I re-read the documentation I wrote, that I am a fairly well-rounded individual. This is not the same thing as being a well-balanced individual (and I am well-balanced - I have a chip on both shoulders), it means more that I can apply myself to an awful lot of different things and be good at them.

For example, I write software. Lots of it. But I am not a software developer. Although I am a better software developer than a lot of people I encounter who only do software development. I can write great documents, but I am not a Technical Author. Although I can write docments much better than a lot of people I encounter who only do technical documents.

That aside, I don't ever think of myself as 'better' - it's very rare that I compare myself to other people at all. This is something I noticed when I started racing - I wasn't used to comparing myself against others (what position am I in? Am I behind so-and-so or in front of him?) - and it really does affect my results.

At the last race - Track and Nailed - I was comparing my position to Martin's. Not only did this make me keep pushing myself - because I knew he was faster - it also helped me begin to develop the mindset I need for racing.

Ultimately, though, I am racing only against myself. Which is fine, as long as I don't lose - that would interesting.

So my ageing friend just left to go into battle. He looked very impressive with the suit on and all - anybody with any experience of dealing with me would be absolutely blown away by the contrast. They won't see him coming, or at least we hope not.

He has, in his briefcase (which looks more like a handbag as I never tire of telling him), a very well thought-out and brilliantly written white paper on What Is Wrong With The World (in terms of software projects). He will be handing this to a senior manager at the outsourcer today, and talking about other things to do with bizz-ness.

Four years ago, I came up with an idea. I managed to sell it a couple of times, but always failed to sell it to large companies because of an inability to play the corporate game - I thought that it was enough to be really really good at what you do, and that being a buzzword-filled suit didn't apply to me. I was wrong. Sad as it may be, large companies will only deal with you if you have both sides of the equation - technical people who don't understand business and business people who don't understand technology.

It has only been in the last 12 months that the world has cottoned on to the need for what I came up with four years ago. This happens regularly. I come up with something, and the world catches up two years later.

Mr Happy, when he reads the contents of that white paper, will weep. There is no way they can compete with it. Sure, they can use their commercial muscle to make sure that their sub-standard solution is the one that gets chosen - this happens all the time - but they can't compete with it. Technically, they are already in second place.

When I finished the white paper - and my ageing friend had added in all of the bits that relate to his side of the equation - we sat back and took a breath. We were blown away by how brilliant it was. This must be how God felt on the seventh day.

The contents of that white paper in my ageing friends handbag - sorry briefcase - is two years ahead of its time. But there is nothing complicated in it. It is so simple that it is brilliant. The trouble with common sense, especially in IT, is that it is not as common as we'd like it to be.

As I never tire of saying to people - "the wheel is the most efficient machine ever built by man. Count the moving parts".

So, anyway, we came up with the Company mission statement. Not one of those bollocks bland corporate things like "we aim to be the premier supplier of bitz to the widget trade" - oh no.

We opted for something much simpler, something you could put on a t-shirt:

"Nobody gets shafted. Unless they try to shaft us first".

Apologies for not having anything to say over the past few days - my head (and my waking hours) has been filled by computer stuff so boring that it would make you cry.

So, back to the chemistry lesson. My ageing friend and me. Iron oxide (rust) and aluminium. Mix them together (approximately 74% iron oxide, 26% aluminium powder) and the combination is one of the most powerful substances known to man - thermite. It burns at 4,000 degress centigrade and it can turn steel into liquid within seconds.

As I said in my last blog about continuity, the individual parts by themselves have no power - it's only when you combine them that things start to take shape and become forces to be reckoned with. The combination of me and my ageing friend is something approaching unstoppable.

The SAS has a motto of "Who Dares Wins". Its aquatic counterpart - the SBS - has a motto far more in line with the way people of my size have to do things: "Not by strength, but by guile".

Please wish the very best of luck to my ageing friend. May the force be with you old man.

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