Dealing with hurricanes is admittedly quite frustrating. You try to prepare your home adequately for the storm, based on the best predictions of the National Hurricane Center, only to find yourself severely overstocked on canned tuna and saltines when the system disintegrates over Cuba.

Now imagine that you aren't just making decisions for your home and family, but for a $2 billion corporation with offices all over Florida. You put the safety of your employees first, and want to give then plenty of time to deal with their own tuna and saltine issues at home; at the same time, you have an obligation to the stockholders to only close those offices most likely to be in the line of fire. With the Cone of Terror an unpredictably moving target, it's a tough decision to make. If you close a location that ends up dry as a bone, you'll catch hell from the board of directors, but being overly optimistic can lead to unthinkable results.

I'm very glad that my involvement in the process is purely words and data, equipment and systems, participating in conference calls. They don't pay me enough to make those decisions.