Editorial-Opinion: May 2018

Today’s word is “Prescient.” To me this word means smart, aware, able to accurately see what may happen in the future, and to be able to prepare for it. I would like to be able to describe myself with such a word. But the fact is, I have been on sort of a loosing streak of late; the ol’ prescient lamp has soot and tarnish on it.

Now, over all and in general, I have typically been better than average at picking choices and paths—and outcomes. I won’t bore you here by cataloging my numerous successes; tho I certainly could, and at least I would enjoy writing it.

Today, however, the simple fact is that recently I haven’t been as accurate as I have come to expect of me. 

Last month, as we gazed forward into the tea leaves of the legislative future, I guessed that the will of the legislature would be to pass a bill uniting the state on the question of hunting deer over bait. The question had been raised in the Senate, and the bill easily passed out of that chamber and moved over to the House where, after a bit, it was thought by me and others that, by some direct or circuitous path, it would pass and be sent to Governor. I said as much here last month. Yeah… not so much. The effort failed.

For next hunting season, the legal classification of the same act being either legal or illegal in Georgia remains a function of geography.

On the scale of wrong guesses, this one is not so big a deal; after all, predicting politics and votes is always a tricky matter. Just ask Hillary.

If that were my only short-coming, I would just write about something else here. But there’s more.

We have, for some time, been making plans to have more fun for you and for us here at GON with an online absolute auction. I am not going to be wrong about that. But I am wrong about the timing.

In engineering and coordinating our playpen, there have been “issues.” Last month, here, I announced one of the parts of this plan, and I included a start date of May 3. I also announced that we would begin with what I termed “a soft opening.”

“What is a soft opening?” you may ask. It is a way to start something so that when things don’t work just right, there is time and space to correct short-commings before you are really open for business on a regular basis. Such soft openings are based on the presumption that one actually really does think one knows what one is doing, so it is OK to try it out in the real world, and see if it actually works.

This past month has been a month of discovery for us. The majority of these discoveries have not been followed by shouts of Eureka! Or other joyous utterances. Instead, we have enjoyed a steady diet of Scoobie-Do “R’ut R’oh’s!”

It has not been a month of one-step-forward-and-two-steps-back. But it has been a month with some unanticipated road blocks popping up requiring our attention; sort of two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back.

We have been successful at over-coming most of these road-blocks. We all wish we had been a little more “prescient” in anticipating them.

The upshot of this work is that we will begin when we are ready. And we may be ready May 3. That is a Thursday, and I remain optimistic. But we may not be ready on that date. If we aren’t ready, we’ll be a little softer than we wished and maybe delay the launch until the 10th or the 17th.

To paraphrase the immortal words of Orson Wells, “We will launch no absolute auction before its time.”

When we do launch this thing, it will quickly morph into an absolute auction of items and services that sportsmen are interested in owning or doing.

Once we are rolling, we will hold an absolute auction every business day. These daily auctions will be conducted online at www.gon.com.

It doesn’t cost you anything to sign up, but you do have to be registered on the website to be able to bid. You can go ahead and sign up now. Each auction will open at 9 a.m., and end that evening at 9 p.m., or when the last bid is taken.

I don’t want to jinx myself by making a prediction, but the only way to get back up on that prescient horse is to go on record. I think once we get this thing rolling, you are going to enjoy seeing the items we have lined up, the bidding, and the amount of the winning bid.