It’s The Hard Knock Life? For Us?

Jigga What?“In my business, we like to say we’re from the hood. We’re not in the hood. By no means. Not even close.”

-Jay Z in “Water For Life”

I bet I catch some flack over this one, but it has to be said…

Over the last few weeks I’ve read several posts around the blogosphere about how tough times are financially right now. Gas prices are soaring, and…people are still complaining about traffic, so someone’s driving. The stock market is sort of…just steady. And I guess if you’re basing your assessment of your financial situation on how well your stock portfolio is doing, that’s not all bad. Interest rates are…near an all time low, though artificially. Unemployment is…5.1% (low). And the obesity rate of our country is reaching a level of crisis, so I guess there aren’t that many people going hungry.

Is this as bad as the Bush administration could screw things up? Is this all they’ve got?

Believe me, I’m a little frustrated too that times are so tough here in the land of milk and honey that we can only get milk and honey a few days a week. The other days we’re stuck with choosing either milk or honey.

Jigga's Problems

It’s gotten to the point that even the Jigga Man has problems. Based on what I’ve heard and the evidence presented in the graph above, he has at least 99 problems.

Then again, I don’t see any basic needs of survival listed as any of his problems either.

Seriously, I know there are people out there who are struggling just to get by. I know that. But what does “get by” entail here?  And how many bloggers are rummaging through virtual dumpsters to get a virtual meal via their high speed internet connections?

What are we actually struggling for? Bandwidth?

Are there problems? Hell yeah! Should we be concerned? Of course. But let’s keep things in perspective here. Having to sacrifice by doing things like cutting back to basic cable, making coffee at home and carrying a thermos, carpooling to work (with air conditioning), or not going to Disney this year are not the end of the world.

You hear it all the time, but it’s true. Go to some other country where people are really poor, and you’ll come back thankful for all of the luxuries the poorest of us enjoy here. When you see firsthand that “average” or “struggling” here is better than “wealthy” in many places, your perspective is changed forever.

It’s not just me, either. My grandfather, who grew up dirt poor during The Depression (capital letters, because that was for real) had this to say in his journal about his travels to New Guinea during World War II:

The only identity of men or women in their dress was their breast. I saw women with breast that hung down to their belt line. The men used pits to trap hogs and they would catch small pigs in them. I have seen women feeding babies and pigs also. They would feed the pigs until they could eat solid food or other things. They sure had a hard way of survival. I always thought I was poor and brought up the hard way. The only comparison I had up to that time was with people doing better than we were. When I saw a different comparison, I suddenly discovered that I had been rich all along and didn’t know it.

Not trying to trivialize anyone’s problems here, but please, let’s keep some perspective.  It’s not as though our women are breast feeding piglets to the point that they can eat solid foods so that we’ll one day (hopefully) be able to trap them, slaughter them, and have a meal.

By the way, if you are interested in helping someone who is trying to survive day to day have clean drinking water, please consider helping at PlayPumps.org.  You can also learn more about Jay Z’s travels to Africa to document their water issues at MTV.com.

My Only Remodeling Tip

Light blogging (and other stuff) for the last few weeks because I’ve been pouring a lot of time and energy into remodeling my old place (yes that place).  I’ve learned a lot during this process, not only how to do a lot of stuff I didn’t know before, but also some tricks and lessons.  I’ve also learned that I hate doing remodel projects.  I’m not a carpenter (or plumber, or electrician) and I don’t want to be.  I have a ton of respect for people who are good at these things, but that’s just not me.  So what tip could someone who sucks at handy work give you?  It’s pretty simple really:

The amount of time you have left on a project is directly proportional to the amount of money you’ve spent at your most recent trip to Lowe’s.

To clarify, your third trip of the day because the water to the entire complex is off and you need a tool to complete the job so you can turn it back on doesn’t count.  I’m talking about the trip you made based on the list you made of things left to complete.

For example, on my first trip to Lowe’s when starting the project I spent a lot of money on tile and wood flooring.  My subsequent trips were less expensive, but the cost went back up when the real estate agent said to replace everything in the kitchen and baths.  So I was back to spending a lot of money (again) on appliances and vanity tops.  In general, I spent less money on each trip.

Yesterday I had to buy a set of masonry bits and some new light switches–around $16.

Today I bought 5 magnets for cabinet doors and a sponge–just over $6.

Tomorrow I’m taking some stuff back and not buying anything.  That’s right.  They are going to give me money.

That means I’m finished!

What is a Recession?

According to Hoyle“…

Recession Two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP is commonly taken to be a recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research, a private organization, effectively decides when recessions occur, however, and the actual dating process is determined by judgment rather than a formal rule.

So which is it? Is there a firm definition, or is it completely up to judgment? I’d say both. Examining the clinical data, according to the BEA:

  • 2007 Q4 GDP — 0.6%
  • 2007 Q3 GDP — 4.9%
  • 2007 Q2 GDP — 3.8%

That doesn’t look like the classical definition of a recession to me. It looks like growth of the GDP is slowing, but not in decline. The economy is still growing, just not as fast. It’s very interesting that you hear so much about us being in a recession, or headed for a recession, or whatever. It’s almost as though someone is trying to convince us that there is a recession, huh? I think that’s where judgment perception comes in. It seems as though we are in a recession, mostly because everyone perceives we are. And that’s probably the only thing that really matters. I just hope that no one is using that perception for something like political gain.

Nah, that would never happen.

Airplanes For Sale–Lots of Them

I was brainstorming earlier tonight on how I could make this whole internet thing really pay off. Then it hit me–sell airplanes. Airplanes are a high dollar item, yet something that everyone would like to have. And even though I’ll only get a percentage of the purchase price, I figure that if I only sell 4 or 5 airplanes a day it should add up to a pretty handsome sum–enough to pay for my web hosting at least.

Then I realized there was a problem with this plan. Airplanes isn’t really a niche. And everything I’ve read says you have to have a niche. So I decided I’d only sell Cessna aircraft. I checked on eBay and there seemed to be a lot in stock, so I figured I’d just go ahead and offer myself a job selling Cessna’s for eBay.

So before you buy your next airplane Cessna, don’t forget to stop by here and check out my great deals in the sidebar! Here are a few of our most recent listings.

Hillary Clinton and the Economy

I can’t believe she said this:

“It’s time for a president who is ready on day one to be the commander in chief of our economy,” the New York senator said, reframing her leadership campaign theme. “Sometimes the phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House, and it’s an economic crisis.”

So what is the solution at 3 am? Do you get on the phone to the Chairman of the Fed and beg him to drop interest rates 0.75%? Do you decide to take away buy people’s property and pay other people to flood it? Do you log into your online account and borrow millions billions trillions from China to write out checks to the American people that are just big enough to allow them to buy some stuff from…China?

Do you then go back to sleep after one of these snap decisions, resting easy that the situation has been resolved?

To be fair, it’s not just Clinton, and the American people are encouraging them to stick their noses where they don’t belong. I can’t remember where I read this (thanks to public education), but it describes the powers and duties of the President of the United States pretty clearly.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Where does it say the President is in charge of the economy or even has anything to do with the economy? And seriously, do we want one person to have that kind of power? Wasn’t that exact situation a major factor in that war fought a couple hundred years ago?

And One More Thing…

I have just one last thing to say about the axing of Volunteer Voters.

If you own a big chunk of any media market (television, print, web) and it isn’t profitable, you have a management problem. The solution to your problem isn’t to let go of the reigns and crash the cart. The solution to your problem is to hand the reigns over to someone who knows how to steer the cart.

Give me Volunteer Voters’ traffic. I’ll cash some fat checks. But as I said before, I can’t see how a regional media outlet could afford to give up such a valuable asset whether it is profitable as a standalone entity or not.

Yeah, What He Said

The other day I posted a meandering attempt at not ranting about information technology and the manufacturing sector. Today, Seth Godin wrote a post about basically the same thing. The difference is, his post actually makes some sense.

Talent is too smart to stay long at a company that wants it to be a cog in a machine. Great companies want and need talent, but they have to work for it.

Stop whatever you are doing and read the whole post. If you don’t read Seth, you probably should. Whether you are the guy running the show or the guy who sweeps the floors at night, he has great insight delivered daily for free.

And here’s a nice bit of irony for you…Seth Godin’s blog (for whatever reason) is blocked by our corporate IS department. Luckily, the concept of RSS feeds and readers hasn’t trickled down to them yet, so we can still read whatever we want through them.

Give them a few years and they’ll get Google Reader blocked as well.

BIG Manufacturing. Last to Know, Last to Go

I was mulling my current employment situation over yesterday, and I thought of something that I think not many people have realized yet. Dare I say this is a bold prediction?

Big manufacturing companies are notorious for being late adopters of technology. From my experience, technology tends to happen to them instead happening for them. Allowing this to continue is fast becoming a dangerous approach to business.

Manufacturers (especially the large ones) prefer to dictate the market (especially the labor market) instead of adjust to it. When the market changes, most adjust slowly and reluctantly. They’ve been successful thus far with this strategy, especially when dealing with their production work force. But they are quickly falling behind in dealing with their IT work force.

Why are they falling behind and why is this dangerous?  Because IT is becoming more and more integral in measuring and locating the biggest threat to manufacturing margins–inefficiencies.  The cost for entry into efficiency analysis technologies is becoming cheaper and cheaper, which allows smaller manufacturers with more agile and hungry management to tool up with the same resources as BIG manufacturers.  As a result, the demand for those with the skills to implement these technologies is growing.

Many big manufactures haven’t tooled themselves to the point of realizing that their old methods of measuring inefficiency are themselves inefficient.

By being late adopters, many BIG manufactures are getting a late start to using the technology available to them, and even those who catch on early run the risk of losing their talent to market forces over which their control is diminishing because of their “business as usual” mentality.

Want to see what technology can do to big industries that try to maintain the status quo in changing marketplaces?  Check out what is happening to some other “bigs”–namely BIG music and BIG newspapers.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m completely wrong.  Time will tell.

In This Year of Political Calls For Change

I decided to make a few changes in my career today. Well, I didn’t actually decide today. I just put the wheels in motion officially. So there’s a good chance that I’ll be available for anyone who needs BI, software development, or sys admin work done. Of course, only high rollers need apply. I hit the ground running in two short weeks.

Might as well quote another Van Halen song while I’m at it…

Change, nothin’ stays the same
Unchained, and ya hit the ground runnin’
Change, ain’t nothin’ stays the same
Unchained, yeah ya hit the ground runnin’

Yahoo! With a Huge Web Hosting Announcement

The other day I mentioned Microsoft’s bid to buy Yahoo!

Today, Yahoo! made a pretty interesting announcement…Yahoo! Web Hosting
now provides UNLIMITED disk space and UNLIMITED bandwidth for less than $12. That means that those videos you’ve been uploading to YouTube (owned by Google) because they are big and take up bandwidth can now be hosted cheaply and you can keep your assets for yourself.

They are even registering your domain name for free, plus unlimited MySQL databases and email addresses. If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog or getting a site for your small business, this looks like a sweet deal.