My Name is Peggy

I was trying to set something up on Facebook a couple of days ago and hit a stumbling point.  Google the question…it takes me right back into Facebook and one of its forums.  Fair enough. 

The second answerer appeared to be one of those tech support type of guys…his answer had an air of authority about it and seemed to make sense.  His screen name was Ashfaq something.  This ain’t Deb or Jimmy down at the Facebook store, I’m thinking.  Depending on how much information an account holder wishes to give away, it may be possible to learn more about who and where Ashfaq is. 

Turns out that Ashfaq is a resident of the island of Mauritius.  Where the heck is that?  Look it up…a small tropical island east of the larger island of Madagascar off the coast of Mozambique—the tip of Africa.  O.K., so this dude living in the ocean off the tip of Africa is answering my question about Facebook….need to be very careful what I put out on Facebook, but then again, I already knew that.

This example is a pretty good one by way of illustration of how far your computer screen reaches out into the world. 

James B. Ledbetter – EHHS Aggie

I didn’t know Mr. Ledbetter very well but ran across him in the halls enough to form some opinions about him.  He joined the faculty about our 1961 Junior year as an algebra and geometry teacher.  A fairly short man, his manner was friendly and mildly aggressive, but there was a problem…he was EH’s only Aggie, and a vociferous one.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not really an Aggie hater, just more of an Aggie tolerater as are a great many Texans.  For those readers who lack the experience of being subjected to that old time Aggie stuff, let me explain.  Aggies are a subset of Texans, a group unto themselves and proudly so, for reasons that non-Aggies have trouble understanding.

The old timers grew up suffering a variety of deficient circumstances and took themselves to College Station for their initial remediation.  The problem at College Station was yet another set of deficient circumstances that young Aggies had to endure.

Problem #1 was that there were no girls there.  That alone caused raised eyebrows amongst students all around the state and drew even more scrutiny of their student population since few red-blooded males would ever willingly subject themselves to that kind of deprivation. 

Problem #2 was that the campus was located in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from any real civilization.  A few low buildings and a huge football stadium in the middle.

Problem #3 was that members of the student body squeezed their balls to effect sharp pain in a gesture to “share the pain” of their fighting football team on the field.  Ow-K.

Then there were the uniforms, the paddle hazings, geeky-looking boys, and still no girls.  And our Mr. Ledbetter was an Aggie alum.  As 16-17 year old high school students, we really had no idea how deep the currents ran and that ignorance could be risky to some elements of our well being.  During our Senior year, EHHS won the Ft. Worth football championship, the 9-1-1 Longhorns won the Southwest Conference, and the Aggies went 3-7.

Mr. Ledbetter was a cranky little Aggie most Mondays during Fall 1962.  Most Mondays following his Friday mini pep rallies, EH football players usually came in off a win, the Longhorns always won, and his beloved 3-7 Aggies almost always lost.  That Fall, Mondays were usually grim in Mr. Ledbetter’s world and a lot of us had fun with that.

As I think back on it, that may explain why Mr. Ledbetter is the one EH teacher I recall as having been disingenuous with me.  It was out of character for him, but it was a singularly egregious bit of flim-flammery that I wouldn’t condone even today.  That’s a long time past, to be sure, but I’ve never forgotten it and whatever good points he had in my book were forever scratched away by it.  So, when I see a headline like the one that appeared this weekend, I grin with a special bit of amusement.  Here is another one to stick up your nose, Jimmy.

Post script – Aggies added girls in the early 1970s but were initially only able to fill about 25% of the student population with them; it’s still not yet 50%, but they’re trying.  The real question remains, now that you've got them, do you know what to do with them?

While starting my professional career with one of the large companies in the early 1970s, one of my new colleagues was a recent Aggie graduate.  Although reasonably social, he was quite timid and not at all sophisticated.  Talk got around to an Aggie engineering staple, their senior design project.  When I turned to him and asked what his project had been, he replied without thinking or hesitation, “a tractor seat."

‘nuff said.

POWER

Power has never been one of my driving ambitions, nor has respect for it.  However, I do recognize that situations vary and so do definitions of POWER.

This picture of a heavy cell closing in on downtown Miami some years ago is one that I've liked and have wanted to use as an illustration of one of my thoughts about POWER.  Donald Trump may not be the best person to use in illustrating my thought, but until I can find a better image, I hope he doesn't mind my use of his image.  I think he was actually defending his wife when that picture of him was taken.

There are plenty of times that you have to pick your fights carefully due to an imbalance of power.  Some fights are worth the fighting, and many aren't.  The writings of Sun Tzu are based on those notions.

In this illustration I imagine a situation where a powerful man, a substantial land owner, and an employer of other men in his service is confronted with a situation that he can neither master nor control.  He is the master of and controls much of those people and things around him, but alas, he is much smaller than the little dot. 

Imagine that powerful man (personified by Mr. Trump, or a suitable substitute) standing on the very pinnacle of his tallest building, surrounded by a cluster of his other tall buildings as he screams, shakes his fist, and demands that God take his crap somewhere else...then, imagine the lightning bolt.


Adios

NPR - Juan Williams - plus 76-days

This is a short update of an earlier posting on this subject back in October.  Juan Williams' titular boss, Ellen, was given her walking papers today and Ellen's feckless NPR boss, Vivian, didn't get her year-end bonus, aw shucks.

Williams came out of the deal sitting pretty.  He's got a big book deal and is being used more as a commentator on Fox News.

Meanwhile, today in the 112th House of Representatives first business session, the United States Constitution is being read into the record.  This is a useful thing to do, since the 111th House, led by former Speaker Nancy Pelosie, showed clear signs that the Democratics had no idea that such a document existed.  They took no time to read the legislation they rammed through, so the notion that any of them might have read the Constitution lacks merit.

As for Vivian, keep in mind that there is no way that Ellen acted in a vacuum when she fired Juan Williams.  Ellen almost certainly acted on orders from her supervisor....Vivian.  H-m-m.


Adios

Dead Arkansas Birds & Milford Sound

 

Here's the way my mind works...the recent bird kills in Arkansas and now Louisiana caused me to recall a fascinating bird event I saw in New Zealand some years back.  We had finished a long project in Australia and the airline offered a no-cost stop over in New Zealand on the way home.  We jumped at the opportunity.  It was after that trip that I decided there was no reason to visit countries that weren't predominately English speaking.  I was in Germany when the Russians invaded Afghanistan and had the eerie experience of knowing from TV news that something was going on, but couldn't understand a thing they were saying...then, they switched to playing Wagner. 

English speaking countries are generally safe, the food is fine to palatable, lodging is comfortable, you can understand what the heck is going on around you, and there are plenty of destinations that offer fine scenery and other reasons to leave a comfortable home for awhile.  That thought hit me as we were in an Air New Zealand DC-10 somewhere over the Tasman Sea bound for Aukland and had no reservations for the night, no rental car, and no worries about handling those matters after we landed. 

Knowing that jealous wags (both family and so-called friends) would be waiting back home to pick our trip apart in that snarky way they do, I suggested to wife that we include a jump down to the South Island in our itinerary.  Why?  Well anytime you hear or read of someone going to New Zealand, they always come home gushing about the South Island.  And when any of them had been to NZ, they always snarked about whether you had seen the damned South Island?  Why the South Island?  Well, that's where much of the spectacular scenery is, specifically Milford Sound, and that was our destination.  

Getting to the South Island is a matter of an hour flight from Aukland to Wellington, and on to Christchurch, about another hour or less.  From Christchurch it's about a day's drive to Queenstown, the jumping-off point for a visit to Milford Sound.  We were young enough to be beguiled by a long-practiced New Zealand travel offer that encourages you to rent a motor home and take your room with you wherever you go.  What a pile of crap.

Wife hated the whole motor home idea so much that she kept coming up with anything she could to delay our departure from Christchurch.  She insisted that we pick up a string of things for the trip as quickly as she could think of something else to increase the delay.  I was violent.  We were 4-5 hours late getting on our way and had to camp in that damned thing along the way that night...what a nightmare.  Not the camping...the wife!

I don't recall the mileage to Queenstown, but I recall it being a full day's drive in that dumb motor home under good conditions.  The motor home was one of those little Japanese truck jobs by a maker you see in Japan but not in the US and it was too small for my long legs...my knees kept hitting the steering column when I engaged the clutch or brakes.  However, along the way there was some lovely scenery...Mt. Cook, some bright turquoise lakes, and an amazing quantity of dead hawks on the road....(see, here's the tie-in...).

I was very puzzled about how so many hawks could have been hit along a mostly deserted highway.  Then I saw one...a live hawk was in the road ahead, feeding on some road kill.  As we drew closer and closer, the hawk did not fly away...it was determined to hang onto that meal and it was too heavy for him to lift.  That was what was happening to the hawks.  

I didn't hit the bird, of course, but a lot of others did hit a lot of other birds.  Maybe the locals saw it as an opportunity to thin the numbers of a predator that troubled them in other ways.  I don't know.  This New Zealand video illustrates how the birds behave...the first minute or so tells the story well enough-they won't leave the meal.

So after seeing a lot of dead hawks and a lot of lovely scenery we get into Queenstown, dump the motor home for a station wagon with an automatic shift and the road worries ended at that point.  Milford Sound?

Well, from Queenstown, Milford Sound is about 15-minutes by local air taxi, but a lot of bad weather is coming in...all flights are canceled...high winds and low ceilings, just like the top picture.  O.K., lets drive, we've got a good car now.  There's a problem.  That 15-minute flight takes about 10-12 hours by car.  Why?  You have to go south down the length of Lake Waktipu around the mountains, then north along the coast....weather was worsening.  There were reports of landslides and fatalities.  We decided to stay put in a neat lodge with a great view down the length of the lake.

I was still hoping for a break in the weather that would allow us to sneak over to the Sound, but no dice.  The Maori legends state that the giant Matau was burnt to death in his sleep after he abducted a chief's daughter, burning a massive hole in the ground and melting the ice and snow of the surrounding mountains, forming the lake. The lake is a large "S" shape, like a giant, curled up and sleeping on its side. Matau's head rested at Glenorchy, at the north of the lake, and his feet south in Kingston. Queenstown sits on Matau's knee. 

Late that afternoon into early evening an amazingly clear face formed in the clouds right over the lake...all of us saw it, clear as a picture.  It was a huge Maori mask...maybe it was Matau.  I don't know, but its appearance stayed there for a long time and abruptly ended any further ambition on my part to go see the Milford...several people died that night down the lake.  True story, so help me.  

See where my mind can go from a few thoughts about some dead birds in Arkansas?

 

P.S.  The first snark out of a back home wag's mouth...."did you go to the South Island?"  When they heard a one word affirmative, wilting was palpable.  

 Adios

Lake Eastern Hills

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Here is a little lake I’ll bet most of you never knew of, it was a pond actually.  It is still there and located just a few doors north of the EHHS campus.  As the pictures show, only about 10-12 homes back up to it and you would have had to know someone in those homes to have gotten a look at it.  Pretty little scene just off the school campus most of us never knew of.

A year or so before we entered EHHS, a few of us decided to build a raft and sail the pond.  That effort lasted only a couple of days before we lost interest in the enterprise and I think one or two of the property owners came out to object to our vessel possibly setting sail on their pond.  Ran across the photo recently and was reminded of our failed enterprise.

Adios

Otzi - Tut - George

Photography is only about 150-years old and although good portraits can be found of people taken about 100-years ago, really good portraits much older than that are nearly non-existent.  However, with recent advancements in computer modeling technology it is possible for scientists to start with mummified remains or even an accurate painting of George Washington and produce a 3-D likeness that is most likely very accurate to the original.

Enlarge the picture and imagine viewing someone from another time as they were at a point in their lives.  What would you say if they could talk?

Fascinating, isn't it?



Adios

Edward R. Stewart

Over the years several things of a relatively trivial nature have irritated me maybe a bit more than such things should.  I began to lose interest in football during the early 1970s about the time I first heard that an unremarkable lineman was making over $100,000/yr in the NFL.  That’s when a starting engineer made about $10-12,000/yr.

The same kind of high pay was going to major league hitters that had no better than .240 batting averages.  Then there were the early days of showboating in the end zones, the end zone dances and such, and breathless announcers dubbing one sports guy or another, a “hero.”  In my world, a hero was a far more substantial person than a kid showing off in the end zone. 

Then came the baseball strikes and free-agency where very highly paid athletes declared themselves “entertainers” and closed down the 1994 World Series.  Much to the consternation of family members I haven’t been interested in modern sports for a long time.  When I played, it was a different time and a different character.

As for news reporting, it suffered its own version of withering substance along with an increase in triviality.  Like most of us I’ve led a busy life working and raising a family, so there has been little time to contemplate the details of these changes around us. 

However, more recently I’ve taken more time to contemplate a variety of things and take note of the stupidity that seems to swirl around us every day.  I’m no longer interested in getting wound up about dumb things, but do find it interesting to dig a little deeper to find “the rest of the story,” the one that easily escapes us when we’re not paying close attention. 

I stopped all periodical subscriptions decades ago.  No time to read them and I got tired of hauling unread papers and magazines out for garbage pickup.  It dawned on me that all I was doing when I did read those things was simply reading a stranger’s opinion or report and I could draw those conclusions myself.  With growing demands on my time, it grew more important to choose my diversions carefully.  Now and then, in the event of encountering an outrageous or plain dumb piece, it was revealing to look up who the author was.

This past weekend a headline danced across the screen saying that the New York Times had (seriously) posed the notion that the comedian Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) may be this generation’s Edward R. Murrow.  Now, I ejected the New York Times from my approved news vendor list many years ago, mostly due to their slanted reporting which more recently evolved into shameful leftist propaganda.  It’s always been a big paper, so it was one of those that I frequently hauled out to the garbage, much of it unread. 

For those of you that don’t recall Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), he was a highly regarded newsman from the 1930-1960 time frame and an early TV news pioneer.  Jon Stewart is a talented comedian.

The Times writers’ premise was based on Stewart’s public (and comedic) charge to Congress to take care of the 911 police and firemen health problems.  Never mind that they were being taken care of by programs already in place and the new initiative was loaded with about 100% too much pork which would not flow to the police and firefighters at all.  Never mind the facts, this was a leftist foray.   

The illustration shows this generation’s proposed replacement for Edward R. Murrow and the authors of the NYT article so you can see the faces behind the words which is sometimes useful to help you decide how much credibility to give the writers.

Adios

John Belushi With Pencils in his Nose

Screen Capture

Studio Still

Some pictures just tickle me and remind me of interesting times past.  I think John Belushi was a true comedic genius and this particular picture from the film Animal House reminds me of myself  as a college undergrad.  Also, a lot of people hit this blog as a result of an image search for this picture and it is hard to find.

John...it was too fast and too short, mate. Thanks for the laughs and God bless you.


Adios

Third Shift Scholars

Anonymous posted this story in one of the comments sections and swore it was true. I don’t know, but thought I would share it in case someone else had heard of it.

Anonymous wrote,

“Almost 50-years ago, sometime during our senior year a master key to the school mysteriously showed up in the hands of one of our close circle of friends. I don’t recall exactly who had it when I first saw it, nor do I recall the story of how it came into our possession. However, I clearly recall some of the things we did and I am still somewhat troubled to have been a part of it.

“Apparently some prominent members of the Class of 1962, and maybe even of the classes before them, had established the practice of purloining 6-weeks exams and semester final exams. This was done during the second or third 6-wk period of each senior year and involved what was, simply stated…breaking and entering.

“About mid-way through the first senior semester the basic information of how to do it was passed from a ’62 to a ’63 Highlander. The means of entry was by breaking a window in the shop garage door near the latch handle, raising the door and walking in. I think the 1963 Third Shift Scholars used the broken glass method only once, then someone came up with a master key to all locks in the entire school.

“Of course, this was done in the dead of night and there were no burglar alarms, night watchmen, or video surveillance to worry about. The point of entry was in an area that was well below ground level and hidden from any passing traffic. Once in the school, there was still the problem of locked classroom doors, but seldom were the transoms locked. For a small group of lithe seventeen-year olds, boosting one of them up and through the transom was no problem and once in, the door was simply unlocked. After the master key appeared, even this bit of gymnastics was unnecessary.

“Teachers were creatures of habit, so the tests tended to be in the same place each time—Coach Willingham kept his American History exams under his small desk top lectern, other teachers used a certain desk drawer, and still others used a shelf in their cloak closet. We took only one copy of each test and checked to determine if more than one test version was being used. Although it is of little solace, we never caused damage or took anything but the tests.

“With the test in hand we retired to one of the guy’s houses to conduct a ‘study session’ where we would work out the answers and determine who would miss what questions and how many of them. We thought it important that we not all score 100 on the exams when a 96 or 98 would do and we also thought it important that we not all miss the same questions or finish too quickly.

“Once the answers were worked out, which often took more time than was allowed for the test itself, we had to commit everything to memory. Frequently the test questions were nebulous which triggered a spirited debate about their true meanings.

“I recall only one occasion that a teacher became suspicious and that was Mrs. Priddy in her English class. One of her tests was very, very difficult, probably designed to drive class grades down to enable her to implement a curve for reasons I never knew. We spent an inordinate amount of time working that test out and arranging the execution plan—who would miss what. When she returned the graded tests, I recall her having an exasperated expression on her face each time she reached one of our desks.

“Since our Third Shift Scholar program started so late in our matriculation, there could have been very little effect on the final standings which had been accumulating for almost 3-1/2 years at that point. Our goal was not to improve our class standing, it was to improve life our final few weeks in school before we would move on to the next 50-years or so.

“We caused some mischief on only a couple of occasions. Otherwise, nothing was ever stolen or vandalized. One of those occasions was very late in our last semester when we raised Mr. Johnson’s glass desktop with everything on it undisturbed and inverted his desk beneath it, then replaced the glass top with everything on it on the upturned legs, phone and all. I would love to have seen his reaction the next morning as he then knew for sure that he had a problem.

“For the next few weeks we knew that Tommy Castillion had been tasked to help find the culprits. His questions and conversation tone gave him away, so all we needed to do was not talk to him and we didn’t.

“The last time I went in was late in the summer after we had graduated. I suppose this was a kind of last hurrah before we struck out for colleges scattered around the country. Once inside the school, with no particular purpose in mind we noticed that all the card files for the fall 1963 registration were set up on tables in the hallways. Someone thought it might be amusing if those cards were missing when folks came in the next morning. So we relocated all the card boxes in some upstairs lockers leaving the tables bare. I never heard how that came out and never went inside the school again.

“Not knowing how your clever jokes played out was one of the downsides to the mischief. But talking about that stuff at all was simply not something any of us wanted to do. That is my story"


Gus says, "I'm speechless"

A Decade of Tech Flops

If you’ve thought there have been a lot of tech stuff thrown at you in recent years as I have, you’re right. Google: “ the decade's 30 biggest tech flops “ for an interesting pictorial essay showing and describing flops picked by Cnet. There are articles there for 2009 and 2010.   It’s an entertaining read if you are at all interested in this topic.

We Can, But Should We?

Now and then something comes along to provide a succinct illustration of a complex problem that would require lots of words to describe.  Yahoo's list of 10 things to avoid in 2011 provided a great example of why I'm a little slow to accept new technologies.  Read the words within the red box above.

It's not that I'm against new technology, it's that I'm not one to support racing to market with things that are not well thought-out and I'm unwilling to waste my time and money on "beta" products that serve mostly to assist over-anxious marketeers in their quest to get to market first with their wares.  Wait a couple of years, the bugs will be ironed out, and the marketeers will be focused on the next generation while closing out the things that are now debugged and reliable.  It's always been the best time to make your purchase.

I suppose it's the age-old battle between sales and production within a company.  "Sell the sizzle" scream the marketeers while "the damned thing doesn't work and it's dumb" grumble the production folks.  "Never mind" say the bosses, "ship it."

The coffee maker described above illustrates something that can happen when one company faction has technical skills, but no common sense, another faction builds it even though it's dumb, and the boss knows nothing more than how to read a balance sheet.

Apply this illustration to almost anything you see that causes you to wonder if people are really dumb enough not only to build it, but also to buy it and you could probably explain why so many dumb things occur.

And keep in mind that the techie crowd is pushing to operate airliners without pilots and the bosses can see only the balance sheet where the reduction in labor costs would appear as an increase in earnings.  Can it be done?  Well, it's being done now where armed drones over Afghanistan are being remotely "flown" from Tampa, FL.

We can...but should we?  Call me old school...I would not get onto an airplane without a pilot; in fact, I wouldn't get on one flown by a pilot named Kristin or Misty, either.  But that's just me.


Adios

Frogs & Roses

Rose Bowl Champions 2011.  Who would have ever thought?  Go Frogs.

How many of you ever picked up and played with a horned frog...the real kind?  Outside of Texas, people will nod knowingly when you ask them if they know what a horned frog looks like...but I think few of them have ever seen one and I think they are mostly a Texas native.

The last time I picked one up must have been in the 1950s.  Don't recall seeing them much after that, maybe I wasn't looking for them or maybe they were getting scarce on the ground...don't know.

I think they liked bare dry ground and we lived surrounded by St. Augustine in the 1960s.  We lived in south Texas in the early 1950s when I was about 5-6 and in my memory they were everywhere...so was a lot of bare dry ground.

For those of you who never had the pleasure of making friends with a "horny toad" as we called them, you missed one of those little childhood pleasures when times were carefree and your senses were sharpest.  It was easy to catch the little creatures as they were pretty slow.  Usually you took hold of their tails and hoisted them up to eye level to have a close look.

They had a reputation of "spitting tobacco" but I never saw one of them do that.  Often they would sit docilely in the palm of your small hand and just return your curious stare until both of you tired of the inactivity and went your separate ways.  To the touch, they seemed dry and clean...clean in a 5-year old boy's sense of the word...the toads were neither painfully prickly nor slimy nor did they bite. All in all, kind of a neat little bit of Texas fauna.

Go Frogs and congratulations.

Yes, Dear

Today is the first day of a new year, 2011. Were it not for my wife saving my life last spring, I wouldn’t be here to write this little piece today. We’ve been married for decades…each of us just once, and just to each other.

She’s no longer the person I married. She’s much better. Oh, yes I get frustrated with her. Sometimes it’s because she interrupts one of my too-lengthy stories or changes the subject in mid-sentence. I’m talking weighty topics, she’s thinking about what we’re having for dinner.

Sometimes she comes in while I’m writing and starts to babble like a parakeet drowsing on its perch. She’s working things out in her mind. I neither understand it nor make the effort. Once she’s got it worked out, we will converse.

All I recall is a sudden and extreme nausea…she recalls much more. While I lay slumped on the floor, she saw my body doing the ugly things a dying person does. As she calls 911, she keeps me from slipping away.

In ICU a few hours later I feel fine and ready to go home. Eight days later, three of them in ICU, I go home…I’m unsteady. She’s there, steady as a rock. She will fall apart later. I no longer get too frustrated with her.  

Happy New Year.

In Texas We Call it Walkin’

Regardless of his struggles with eloquent articulation and his relentless problems with an incredibly hostile press, I’ve never found much to not like about this man.  Oh, he was more liberal than I would have liked but I just found the guy about the same as so many outgoing Texans with whom I grew up. 

When the press picked on him about his “swagger” he simply commented, “In Texas we call that walkin’.” 

I really got a kick out of him when Queen Elizabeth came to visit Jamestowne and Williamsburg during our 400^th anniversary celebration in 2007.  He was very respectful but couldn’t restrain himself from tryin’ to break through her reserve.  One of the results is the classic picture below.

Some years ago when we visited Colonial Williamsburg, I was standing in line to get into one of the restorations behind an elderly, very English couple.  They were tall and proper.  He had the wispy white hair and tweed jacket with the cliché leather elbow patches of a professor whilst she looked more like the prim garden club type.  He sat on a planter reading a book while she stood in line.

I nudged her and asked, “Have you come to see what your ancestors gave up?”  Not missing a beat she sniffed, “Bit of a relief, actually.”  I doubled over. 


Adios

Snow & The Big Apple

Visits to NYC have always been a difficult thing for me. It’s just a hassle to get in and out and around. Hotel rooms are very expensive and timely transportation can be difficult. Good and reasonable food can be found but you have to look for it and planning a visit is time-consuming and necessary, if you aren’t very familiar with the place.

When a big snow event like this recent one hits during the Christmas holidays the place really goes into tilt because most of its working denizens are gone to somewhere else. So that leaves the second and third stringers scrambling to handle things and as we old footballers know, second and third stringers just aren’t the first string no matter how hard they try nor how good their intentions.

When things in NYC go to hell, the screaming begins, and so it has this week. The picture shows a local newspaper article reflecting the city officials attitude and a lot of lively retorts from locals. It’s amusing. The tow truck video shows one city worker trying to free a snow loader while he demolishes a SUV in the process. BTW, the SUV is a city vehicle, too.

Imagine what your winter visit would be this week if you had gone to the effort to go there. Few of the locals are there to serve, and fewer still want to be there.

Airline Deregulation – 1978

 

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I flew heavily on business during the first half of the 1970s and the last half of the 1980s, both before and after Deregulation.  Schedules were much more reliable before Deregulation.  Passenger screening consisted of nothing until late 1972 when metal detectors were installed throughout the country at the direction of the FAA.  Airlines were made responsible for the screening.

Airlines were subject to government regulation from their very earliest days, 1920s to 1930s, the reasoning being that they served a function much like a public utility and that the government had paid a lion’s share of aircraft development to that point in time.  Utilities have traditionally been seen as services necessary to the smooth conduct of commerce; transportation, mail, electricity, water, sewer, police, fire, communications. 

Free market supporters, being what they are, always see functions that produce large amounts of cash flow as potentially profitable enterprises, if only they were free of government intervention and open to capitalists to work their magic.  There follows an ongoing dance between ever increasingly inefficient, bumbling government regulators, pliable politicians, and ambitions capitalists to determine if government regulation serves its initial purpose or not. 

In 1978, after nearly 50-years of airline regulation by the CAB, the government under the auspices of Messer’s Carter and Kahn, effected Deregulation amidst great fanfare.  Within a few years, during the 1980s, we lost a number of old line carriers as they merged or liquidated, leaving us with the few majors we have today.  Low cost carriers emerged and disappeared.

Competition, such as it was in a regulated environment, tended to focus on the quality of cabin service (meals & comfort) and reliable schedules.  Prices were uniform and expensive.  After Deregulation, comfort disappeared, as did meals and reliable schedules.  On the other hand, owing to the true capitalist nature, prices could range from too cheap to outrageously expensive depending on who had the upper hand in the transaction.

In a regulated environment, airlines tended to be assigned in pairs to specific routes in order to ensure service to underserved destinations and to provide a kind of measured seat availability.  Their departure and arrival times were also regulated in order to ensure smooth traffic flow.  However, it could be a challenge for a traveler to piece together a sensible schedule since it often required changing carriers on a multi-leg journey.

After Deregulation, carriers switched to a hub and spoke arrangement, much like the package carriers had been using for years.  This permitted an airline to capture a passenger for the entire journey as it made switching airlines difficult, expensive, and irrelevant (it also rendered the DFW “People Mover” even more useless than it already was).  Unfortunately, it made choosing a competently-run airline more important than ever which was difficult to do for the occasional or unsophisticated traveler.

So, here we are over 30-years down the road and airline travel, despite propaganda to the contrary, is not as comfortable and predictable as it was.  Ticket prices are lower and I suppose that’s something; but, I couldn’t imagine being trapped in a plane on a tarmac for 10-12 hours for any reason whatsoever—I don’t care what excuses are given or by whom.  The risk of that circumstance alone is enough, in my opinion, to constitute a significant decline in airline service over the past 30-years.  And the faces I would attach to that accomplishment are those of Messers Carter and Kahn, both of them Democratics. 

Christmas Travel Mess

Thank goodness we discarded our Christmas travel urges and responsibilities decades ago.  Bad weather problems are about a 70-30 proposition in the snowy parts of the country this time of year.  Although it does seem that the mess was dealt with more efficiently years ago than it is today, you have always risked a day or two delay in the event of a big weather event in New York or Chicago during the winter.

Clearly, airline load factor management focus coupled with hapless government meddling has conspired to amplify already challenging conditions imposed by weather upsets.  Add in the club-fisted TSA issues and we’re content to stay put, and have been for years.  Ho-Ho-Ho !

Christmas Tree 1921

We never had such fancy ornaments on our trees.  This is a terrifically sharp photo taken of a D.C. lawyer's family tree.  Compare those ornaments with the ones you remember.  Also note the 12' tree in the 10' room.

MERRY CHRISTMAS - 2010

And a Happy New Year

Corporate Communications circa. 2010

Subject: quotable quotes....Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed...

A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert Quotes" contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real life Dilbert-type managers. Here are the finalists:

1.      "As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks." (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, WA.)

2.      "What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter." (Lykes Lines Shipping)

3.      "E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business." (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)

4.      "This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it." (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)

5.      "Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule."

6.      "No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them." (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)

7.      "My Boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected." (CIO of Dell Computers)

8.      Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

9.      My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me." (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)

10.   "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

11.   We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the memo mentioned above." (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division) 

12  One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!" (New business manager, Hallmark Greeting Cards) 

13   And the winner!! As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo in one of the sentences I mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office, and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for perverts (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired-and the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later, a memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words, which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)

Happy Health Care

 

PCs & 63s - Part 8

About 1917, the local DAR erected these 3 markers in a small, very old country cemetery in southwestern Arkansas. One of them is my 3rd great grandfather. He and the other 2 gentlemen honored by the DAR were soldiers of the American Revolution. Years ago, dad purchased a couple of books and did some light research of that family line but had done little more than work out the vitals and draw a crude family tree. What he knew of our great grandfather’s service in the Revolution was limited to the markings on that old stone monument. When Dad died, the books and the project passed to me. It was about the beginning of popular use of the Internet…the late 1990s.

About the first substantial project I undertook online was to dig into my family history, starting with this line. Like most of us, I was a native Texan with early lineage going way back to southern places east of Texas. North Texas stock generally came from Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Carolinas. Migration of that stock occurred over a period of a century or so and several generations.

Advanced genealogists were among the first groups to make good use of the Internet for communications and exchange of information. Working within that group I learned how to protect my privacy, get information I needed, and give others what I could without opening up to some of the lousy parts of dealing with the web.

Finding my roots was a useful and sobering exercise that really illustrated the potential of the web. Beyond dad’s rudimentary work, most of the knowledge I have came from making contacts over the web. There is little that is more boring than someone else’s family history and I won’t bore you with mine. However, I think it useful to show some of the amazing discoveries by way illustrating what is possible with the web.

Grandpa Jim Williams died in 1851 at age 87. On his DAR marker are 2 other names and it was those names that first opened up Jim’s story to me. Jim, himself, was an illiterate farmer who made his mark, an “X”, on legal documents. However, one of those documents was an application for a Revolutionary War pension made in the County Clerk’s office in 1833. The clerk wrote Jim’s words down and in them was Jim’s own statement of service during the Revolution. His words were not flowery, just a simple statement of facts that included several more names of men with whom he served. One of them was a regular correspondent with Thomas Jefferson and another was the first governor of Tennessee.

At age 15, Grandpa Jim was a junior member of the Overmountain Men; frontiersmen, who played an active part in settling early America and were living in settlements in the vicinity of today’s NE point of TN and SW point of VA. Daniel Boone was one of these Overmountain Men. Family lore has long had it that his branch of the Williams family came from Wales to Charleston about 1740. Finding specific Williams ancestors is about as tough as finding Johnson and Smith ancestors…and most males were named John or James in those days.

That Williams line goes kind of murky before about 1770 such that it has been impossible to firmly tie individuals to one another for a couple of generations. However, another bit of information learned in the study is that there is one of the earliest southern maps in a Carolina university that shows names of early settlers on the plantations lining rivers and tributaries…there were so few people on the land in those early days that it was the custom to name the plantation owners on the map itself.

A section of it shows 4 plantation owners named Williams located in the far NE corner of North Carolina, just inside the Outer Banks. Although it is likely that these Williams’ are not direct ancestors, they are most likely the first contingent of Welch Williams’ to immigrate to the New World. Where just 10-years ago I had to send off for a large copy of the map, it is now posted online in HD. A fifth plantation owner shown in the map is Boone.

Other interesting projects have been to flesh out my father’s WWII service in the Air Force and my great grandfather’s service in the Confederate Army. Both studies have led to some amazing discoveries and some wonderful connections with fine, knowledgeable people.


Quite aside from the armies of newly minted future business tycoons spouting CRM, ERP, Six Sigma, or errant daughters exposing themselves with cheap cell phone cameras, and all that other crap, the Web holds fantastic possibilities for anyone to learn just about anything he or she wants to learn.


Adios

PCs & 63s - Part 7

I’ve struggled a bit with how to wind this little series up and get on to more interesting things.  However, it’s probably been worthwhile to create a reasonably brief summary record of computer technology’s march through some of our lives, at least from one ’63 Highlander’s point of view.  Many of us struggled with this stuff for decades before we started retiring.

With the introduction of additional complexities brought to us when Internet connections started replacing our old familiar phones and fax machines, it sometimes seemed that all the new stuff was just a new way to add layers of complexity to an already complex working environment without really solving any of the lingering problems.  Indeed, it seemed that despite copious lip service given to the benefits of the newer technologies, lots of things that were relatively simple were made more complex.

For about 30-40 years MIS initiatives have been trying to find ways to automate more and more of the business environments.  The simple reason MIS proponents keep finding support is their promise of eventual labor and cost savings.  Automation of simple financial functions has found reasonable success; however, more recent initiatives have been pointed at automating more complex portions of a business.  People in operations and marketing seem to be more difficult to fit into CRM, ERP, and other such MIS schemes.  While I’m no expert in the subject of automation, I’ve been fortunate to have spent most of my working life in smaller, entrepreneurial enterprises where individual capabilities are valued and indispensable. 

After selling our last enterprise to a much larger multi-national, during the earn-out period, we had the experience of observing a new management team institute a state of the art CRM software program.  They promptly took a profitable enterprise to zero EBIT and then to a series of solid losses.  Although not lacking in hubris and arrogance, it seemed perfectly clear that their CRM approach was not producing what they expected.  If you Google “CRM failures” you will find a number of articles on the topic; and if you Google “CRM successes” you find fewer positive stories in the list.

Suffice it to say that this part of the computer revolution is a work in progress.  If all this has left you wondering what I’m talking about…good for you…you must not have had to deal with it in your former professions.  If you recall the FBI story of scrapping a $150,000,000 data automation project a few years back; or the Denver airport baggage fiasco when that facility opened; or even further back, the People Mover at DFW that was pretty much an expensive failure; or any number of other failures of a similar nature, then you have some knowledge of the CRM activities I’m dealing with here.  Finding specific knowledge of large failures can be difficult because those responsible for those failures will generally be pretty good at covering things up. 

One writer succinctly said it:  computer programmers know nothing of business and businessmen know nothing of computer programming and they don’t talk to one another.  Of course it’s not that easy.  Business schools all over the nation are trying to rectify that now by sending out legions of newly minted MBAs to serve as “coaches” for the implementation of current versions of CRM programs.  It seems to me that the problem is still in the businessmen finding the time away from conducting business to play around with the programs.  For most people in their day-to-day work life I think it’s just a nuisance.  I’ve about blown myself out on this…it’s not a favorite topic, but it is one that has been sucking up billions of dollars for a couple of decades now and for the most part it seems that the leadership has been supplied by a legion of clones resembling Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss.