Month: May 2018

Giving Up? Steve Jobs Would Never Give Up! (Except for the times he did)

“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” – Animal House

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The Boy prepares to defend Houston from The Hun.

You never know when you’re going to find opportunity.  A while back, The Mrs. got invited to a dinner by her graduate advisor with the other grad school students.  The professor and her husband owned a little cottage on a lake, and he owned a sailboat.  He asked if anyone wanted to go sailing.  I had never been sailing (and, to date, this is my only sailing trip).  My hand shot up.  I assumed that we would perhaps lay claim to a nearby cottage and maybe engage in some light pillaging.  Sadly, it was only sailing.  He looked askance at me when I had a full Viking regalia and torch (you only get to 80% pillage without the torch) that I brought for the trip.

I choked down the bitter disappointment and not going on a raid, but decided to go on the sailing trip anyway.  He took us out on the lake.  Making small talk, I asked what he did (since he was obviously not a proper Viking).  “I have an advertising agency.”

I pressed further, asking details of how it worked and how he liked doing it and if he liked drinking the blood of his enemies while listening to the lamentation of their women.  He said that was what they did in the 1950’s.  I finally asked, “When did you open your ad agency?”

I’ve always been fascinated to understand that spark – that moment when people toss off their day jobs and decide to open their own place.

Him:  “It was 1976.”

Me:  “Wasn’t that in the middle of recessions, plus all the inflation?”

Him:  “Yup.  Stupid thing to do, right?”  He said as he piloted his sailboat back toward his private dock by his cottage.

Duh.  Obviously it was stupid.  Why else didn’t he have a yacht and a private island?

And it’s easy to second-guess people who have great ideas and push for them to succeed.  But flaming messes like Enron® aside, we mainly look at the companies that survived and think, “Wow!  Those guys are so smart – they did everything right.”

enron

Hey, a stock I didn’t lose money in!  But I wish I could have been the guy to raid the burning building and hear the lamentation of their women.

We look at the survivors and judge their actions based upon their outcomes.  Even geniuses (Steve Jobs was one) get it wrong – his board of directors had to fire him to put him into a place where he could make the biggest business comeback in history, plus redefine at least two consumer product lines, nearly singlehandedly.

But he messed things up, too.  Jobs dumped all his Apple® stock when he got fired.  Oh, did I mention he hired the guy that got him fired?  And NeXT® computers were awesome, but no one wanted to spend $10,000 (1990 cash) to buy them.  And the Apple© Lisa™.  And the MacCube®.  And a whole bunch of other stuff that didn’t work out.

But the ideas that he had that survived were worth over a trillion dollars.

The pattern that I keep seeing is that people who are successful don’t try just one idea and give up, they try lots of different ideas and the ones that work are kept, and the ones that don’t are thrown out.

What we look at when we see success doesn’t show the failure that success is built on.

You never know when you’re going to find opportunity.  And you won’t find opportunity unless you try.  And try.  And try.

The Germans will NEVER TAKE PEARL HARBOR!

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Memorial Day and Memento Mori

“Ron’s sudden death was the catalyst for everything.  Deborah told me later that it had been like a wake-up call for her.  What people used to call the Memento Mori.  Ron’s massive coronary had reminded her that life was just too short to waste any chance of true happiness.” – Men Who Stare At Goats

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Philippe de Champaigne’s picture “Vanitas”, which was a Memento Mori – inspired picture – the fleeting life symbolized by the flower, death by the skull, and the amount of time until the casserole comes out of the oven symbolized by the hourglass.

Memorial Day in the United States is meant to commemorate soldiers who died on active duty for the United States armed forces.  The total number of dead is about 1 million, although many families use Memorial Day to remember their dead relatives as well, bringing flowers to graves.

It’s also an appropriate time to bring up the concept of Memento Mori.  Memento Mori is Latin for “remember death” – which is an admonition to, well, remember death.  And this isn’t just about your relatives that have passed on, and not just for the soldiers that died.  No, this is also a time to reflect on your own death.

And why should we reflect and remember death?

To start with, this is something that isn’t new.  Seneca, the Roman stoic philosopher, said:  “No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.  Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”  Throughout the middle ages, the phrase Memento Mori was the lolcat meme of the day, if we put lolcat memes on tombs.

Reflect on death – if you knew that you wouldn’t wake up ever again, what would you do with your remaining hours?  This reflection on death has multiple values to you and your character:

  • It reinforces that which is important to us, here today.
  • It exposes the frivolous that consume too much of our time.
  • It shows what’s really of value – the money you made will be less important than the lives you’ve changed.
  • You don’t have to worry about returning that library book.

All too often we think too little of those who sacrificed all for us.  All too often we think too little of how we are spending (or squandering) our own lives.

So, on Memorial Day, by all means salute those who reluctantly laid down their lives for freedom.  Spend time in remembrance of relatives who have passed on.  And work to understand what is really important in your life.

Besides PEZ®, I mean.

Sleep Apnea, CPAP, and how the Medical Mafia is Killing You

“Did I never tell you? I suffer from sleep apnea.  That’s why I had to bring this guy with me. My CPAP machine.”

“Oh, my God.  Did you just rent that so you could have your own bed?” – The League

apnea

So, to demonstrate how sleep apnea occurs, I cut a cartoon cadaver in half.  It’s messier than it sounds – ink went everywhere.    Fortunately I had lots of ACME towels to sop it up.  But then the towels exploded.

It looks like this cadaver died from being shot in the mouth with blue arrows.

Recently, The Mrs. sat me down and said that she was worried that I might be snoring . . . a bit too hard.  I disagree – I assured her that I had never heard myself snore, so she must certainly be in error.  Especially when she indicated that the snoring had, on several occasions, triggered tsunami alerts in Hawaii, and we live firmly in flyover central northern Upper South Midwestia.

I started doing some research.  Snoring’s not dangerous, right?

No.  Snoring can be deadly.  Very deadly.  Like 40,000 deaths a year in the United States (at least).  That’s more people than Rosie O’Donnell drives to suicide monthly.  Wow!

How does snoring kill you?

Cardiovascular disease.  Car accidents.  High blood pressure.

Huh?

Turns out that snoring, especially loud snoring, is a sign of sleep apnea.  Sleep apnea is where the “sleeper” periodically stops breathing for 10-60 seconds, up to 80 times per hour.  This, in turn (simply, neither of us are going to med school) causes a plethora of piñatas problems.  Increased carbon dioxide causes parts of your brain to die.  It also causes your heart to freak out, and beat harder and faster to get more blood moving.  It may even lead to shots of adrenaline that keep you from sleeping soundly.

The end result is you’re tired, all the time.

Your heart is getting stressed out, every night.

You are getting (subconsciously) stressed each night as you periodically are suffocated.  By yourself.

The causes of sleep apnea are fairly common.  Be an aging dude, be overweight.  Have allergies.  Have a thick, football player neck.  In turn, this leads to more weight gain, daytime sleepiness, heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents from drowsy drivers.

So, you’re saying, “John Wilder, you’ve convince me that this can kill me.  What on earth can I do about it?”

I’m so glad you’ve asked.

Give up drinking, smoking.  Lose weight.  Sleep on your side.

See the problem?  Drinking is certainly possible to give up, but why would you want to?  (I mean besides all the documented health benefits).  Losing weight is hard enough, but sleep apnea actually changes your body chemistry so it’s harder to lose weight.

What’s the solution?

CPAP.  (I’ve most often heard people pronounce this as “see-pap” as in “See Pap’s eyes as he has another heart attack???”)  The symptoms (including snoring) that you might need CPAP are being drowsy during the daytime, drowsy driving during the daytime, nodding off after Thanksgiving Dinner, and generally being able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.  I thought I had a skill – I could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, generally in thirty seconds or so.  It turns out that it might just have been sleep apnea, curable by CPAP.

CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Air Pressure, and not Constant Peer Alcohol Provision, as one might think.  Uncharacteristically, it is one of the three things invented by Australians that don’t involve alcohol, marsupials, or Australian Rules Football.

aussiefb

Back when ESPN® was good, it would show Australian Rules Football at 1AM.  All the guys on my high school football team watched it, mainly because the referees were so . . . amazing. 

As I was saying, Dr. Colin Sullivan, AC/DC fan and uncle of Angus Young (I made that up to make him more interesting) was a guy who treated people with sleep apnea.  At that time, the prevailing treatment method was a tracheotomy.  Yes.  They would cut a hole in your throat to stop the apnea.

So, Dr. Sullivan figured that there had to be a better way, even if it was less cool than slitting the throats of his patients.  He experimented with dogs (dingoes, maybe?) and must have found a group that snored but that didn’t drag off babies.  Here was the first CPAP.

After he got it to work with a patient whose throat he was going to cut open.  He put that first CPAP on the patient, and the patient had seven great hours of sleep in the first time since forever.  Unlike throat slitting, this was a medical procedure with no significant adverse side effects.  None.  Sadly, Dr. Sullivan deprived thousands of doctors of the joy of cutting open patients as the first commercial CPAP machines went on the market in 1985.

Now the crazy facts:

  • 22 million Americans are probably suffering from some degree of sleep apnea.
  • Machines are relatively inexpensive, with many costing less than $350.
  • Only 10% or so of sleep apnea sufferers have machines.
  • Sleep studies (required for the prescription of this harmless but helpful machine) cost between $600 and $5,000.
  • 40,000 Americans a year die from sleep apnea.
  • John Candy died from complications related to sleep apnea.
  • William Shatner has sleep apnea.

The facts speak for themselves.  Lifesaving technology is being kept hostage to gatekeepers that could be replaced by software or a cellphone app at very low cost?  Where have we seen this before?  If we let Silicon Valley “disrupt” sleep apnea treatments we’d probably have machines costing less than a $100, since your cell phone would become the machine brain and the data would be uploaded to some cloud site and analyzed and tweaked in real time to provide even better performance and better apnea control (hint: as a business idea).  Heck, it could even provide a real-time alarm if it saw actual life threatening patterns developing.

Oh, yeah, when I wrote about optometrists (LINK).  There’s a low-cost way to get a very accurate (I can attest) prescription.  But they want to scare you.  As would anyone who saw a lucrative meal ticket floating away.  Such as anyone who does sleep studies.  These are gatekeepers that server a very limited role in society today – their skills can be replaced inexpensively by technology.

I talked to someone I know from work (he doesn’t work at the same place as I do, but we talk frequently.  I asked him if he had ever used a CPAP.

“Man, that’s the best thing ever.  I love it.  I have been using it for years.  If you travel you will forget your toothbrush, your underwear, your deodorant, but you will never forget your CPAP.”

John Wilder:  “How was the sleep study?”

Him:  “Sleep study?  Didn’t get one.  Just ordered one off of my dad’s prescription.”

He described a fairly tough few days getting adjusted to the machine.

“But the first day you sleep through the night?  Oh, man.  You feel like you’re sixteen again.  Energy!  I woke up after four hours – more refreshed than I’d been in years.  I love it.”

As for me?  I think this system where you have to pay an artificial gatekeeper for proven, safe technology is immoral and strangles market competition and innovation.  And, as the facts would say, also fattening.  Quite literally, this market manipulation to serve a few medical professionals kills thousands of people a year, but since they have nice jobs and serve on the PTA nobody recognizes them for the killers they are – more efficient than organized crime.  More deadly than gun violence.

And the people in Hawaii are probably getting tired of the tsunami warnings, what with the volcano, they have enough on their hands.  They should take up a collection for a sleep study for me . . . or in a sane world, I’d just walk down to the store and buy a CPAP.

But the Sleep Mafia won’t let me . . . .

Repeat to yourself:  John Wilder is NOT a doctor.  Do NOT take medical advice from humor bloggers on the Internet.

Pournelle’s Iron Law, or, Why Conspiracy Isn’t Needed to Explain the Stupid

“An independent, international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion.  Above the politics and bureaucracy that undermine the integrity  of government-run spy organizations.  The suit is a modern gentleman’s armor.” – Kingsman, The Secret Service

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When we lived in Alaska and Texas, we learned that this was what the citizens thought of bureaucracy.  And taxes.  And regulations.  And postage stamp increases.

We discussed Dunbar’s Number a few posts back (LINK).

To refresh from that post:  Dunbar looked at primate group brain sizes, and compared to the size of the neocortex to the size of the primate “group” or tribe.  After running the math, he predicted that humans should have a group size of around 150 – it’s related to the size of working memory that you have about other people.  The commonly accepted maximum stable group size (average) is 100-250, which is all three of your inbred relatives and the 247 from your wife’s side of the family.

Dunbar further theorized that larger groups could only stick together under strong survival pressures – you’d have to be pressed to work together by a fate as tough as death.  Why?  .

Dunbar’s number has other implications as well.  We can’t work as tribes anymore, because the major feature of tribes is massive, wanton bloodlust on a national scale.  Tribes don’t trust the law to help deter another tribe – no.  Tribes kill to solve traffic disputes.  So, to work around tribal violence, and to avoid nepotism, bureaucracy was created.

We all love to hate bureaucracy, but the nice thing about those long line at the DMV is that they prevent the tribe from Pixley killing the tribe from Hooterville over who got their license first.

But is there a darker side to bureaucracy?  Yes.

Jerry Pournelle was a wonderful science fiction writer that I loved reading.  His collaborations with Larry Niven (Lucifer’s Hammer, The Mote in God’s Eye) are amazing novels that made me turn a page a minute when I read them as a kid in the back of the bus on the half-hour ride to town.  Dr. Pournelle also worked on the numerous defense department projects, and was a science advisor to President Reagan.  Dr. Pournelle was instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union, as his work on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or “Star Wars”) caused the Soviet Union to bankrupt itself attempting to keep up with our technology.

So, he’s kinda pivotal to stopping nuclear war.  What did you get done in the 1980’s, hmmm?

LucifersHammer

Okay, the title was just genius.  The writing’s pretty good, too.

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Possibly the best science fiction novel of the 1970’s, if you don’t count Richard Nixon’s autobiography.

Dr. Pournelle also made the following observation:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Pournelle picked on government – it’s known for bureaucracy.  And it’s clear that NASA® has ceased to have spaceflight as part of “what it can do” when Elon Musk can put his car into orbit on a rocket more powerful than anything designed by NASA™ since it was run by the Germans we kidnapped after World War II.  And Musk did it for less money than NASA® spends attempting to fix a launch pad.  It’s sad that isn’t a joke – it’s true.

NASA© is now run by people whose main job in life is . . . having a job.  They hire massive numbers of people, so they have a reason to be a manager.  Then they need a bigger budget, and crowd out all of the work the agency was supposed to be doing.

Pournelle’s observation is true for businesses as well as government programs.  I’ve seen managers fight to spend every dime they could in the last month of the year – just so they could justify their higher budget request for next year.  I’ve seen people move from department to department to department until they found one that wasn’t responsible for doing anything measurable.  Then they’d stay in that department for the rest of their careers.  Which, I guess, describes Congress perfectly.  But I digress.

Where I live, if you cut down trees and branches, and it’s cold, it’s completely legal to have bonfires that are visible from the moon.  My next door neighbor and I used to burn these on a dark night, new moon, when the temperature was around 40˚F (354˚C) and watch the flames lick the night sky.  He’s younger than me.  And we live in a state where you don’t need to stand in line for hours for a burn permit.  All you need is wood, leaves, branches, gasoline, lawn chairs, a match, and sufficient quantities of Bud Light®.

My friend and I started talking about politics (this is pre-Trump).

“John, when I look at this whole mess we’re in, it almost seems coordinated.  It seems like the government agencies (he works in the highly federally regulated banking industry) want to put the small banks out of business.  It seems like a plot.”

My response:  “That’s too simple.  It doesn’t require for there to be a conspiracy.  Let’s look at your business.  Do they regulate you exactly the same as large banks in New York?”

Neighbor:  “Well, yes.  They just have tons of staffers that can answer the bank regulator questions.”

John Wilder:  “And you told me you worked for a while as a banking regulator?”

Neighbor:  “Yes.”

John Wilder:  “Would you have gotten in trouble for pushing real hard on an infraction with a small bank?”
Neighbor:  “Never.”

John Wilder:  “Would you have gotten in trouble for pushing real hard on a big bank?”

Neighbor:  “I did.  I got in a lot of trouble.  It was why I quit.”

John Wilder:  “The big banks own the banking regulators – they’ve captured the regulators and the regulators only do what the big banks want them to do.  Every regulator knows that their next job isn’t with the federal government – it’s with the big banks.  Don’t rock the boat.  Small banks don’t matter.  Never mistake that a conspiracy is present when incentives are in place for those same regulators to think that they’re on a job interview with their new boss.”

Neighbor:  “I guess that’s why you never got in trouble for letting a bank not get in trouble.  Only by pushing the rules too hard.”

John Wilder:  “The people in Washington don’t really care about the outcomes of their regulations – the best pollution regulations came out forty years ago and cost very little for the companies to clean up 98% of their pollution – air, soil, and water.  The last 2% cost billions.  And that’s great with the regulators – they want to have a good budget and a great story to tell to Congress when budget time comes around.  The fact that the pollution that they’re cleaning up isn’t really pollution, costs billions to “clean” and is having zero impacts on anyone?  That’s beside the point.  Bureaucracy acts to save itself.  Right or wrong don’t matter.  What matters?  Department budgets and staff size.”

John Wilder continues to bloviate:  “There isn’t a conspiracy.  It’s a bunch of little people making themselves important.  Nobody makes themselves important by cutting regulations.  They make themselves important by adding new, complex regulations.  And they increase their value when they go to work from some company.  Heck, I was told by a guy that the main author for solid waste regulations wrote them in such a complex manner that they’re nearly incomprehensible.  He did that so he could get a high paying job afterwards because he’s the only one who knows where the loopholes in the regulations he wrote are.”

Neighbor:  “So, did we really land on the moon?”

At this point my neighbor was killed by a tribe of NASA™ ex-engineers.  If only we had a police force and a judicial system . . . hmmm.

Ben Franklin and his Thirteen Virtues

“Only one man in the colonies has a printing press fine enough to make these.  Our good friend Ben Franklin!”

“Uh-oh. Isn’t Franklin in Philadelphia?

“When he’s not in Charlotte or Marybelle or Louisa.” – Futurama

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My friend sent me this picture of Prince and Princess PEZ®.  Because when this Royal® Wedding© is long forgotten?  My precious PEZ™ will still be strong!

(I tried to come up with a picture of a Benjamin Franklin PEZ™ dispenser.  No results.  But if you do a search on “Benjamin Franklin PEZ©” an embarrassing number of the images from this blog show up.)

Ben Franklin, at the age of 20, put together a list of 13 virtues.  He decided that he’d try to live up to them daily.  He failed.  As would we all – we’re not angels.  But, over time, he improved.  The results?  In today’s world, he’d be one of the most acclaimed physicists (electricity was a big thing back then), richest businessmen ($10-$15 billion, yes billion in today’s dollars), popular authors (his books were bestsellers), statesmen (he brought France into the Revolution on our side, and negotiated the peace treaty that ended the war), and he was an inventor – refrigeration theory, bifocals, lightning rods, swim fins, and a much improved stove.

Yeah.  Pretty much everyone on Earth today isn’t fit to butter his pancakes.  Sure, that sounds tame today, but in 1760 that meant something scandalous!  His accomplishments outshine almost everyone today.  With the exception of Brian May, guitarist from Queen®, who also holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics.

Anyway, Franklin put the lists of virtues down in his biography.  Here’s a sample page:

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Notice he didn’t include Chastity in places where he’d violated his virtues??  Hmm?

I’ve decided that old me can always learn from Young Franklin, so I’ll (maybe) update you on my progress as I attempt to become more virtuous.  Why?  Because it’s never too late to get better.

So, here are the 13 Virtues of Ben Franklin (sounds like a romance novel, doesn’t it?):

  1. Temperance.

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Ben put this one first.  If you listen to later stories, it’s obvious that Mr. Franklin really did like to drink.  And did drink.

But he understood it well:

’Tis an old Remark, that Vice always endeavours to assume the Appearance of Virtue: Thus Covetousness calls itself Prudence; Prodigality would be thought Generosity; and so of others. This perhaps arises hence, that, Mankind naturally and universally approve Virtue in their Hearts, and detest Vice; and therefore, whenever thro’ Temptation they fall into a Practice of the latter, they would if possible conceal it from themselves as well as others, under some other Name than that which properly belongs to it.

But Drunkenness is a very unfortunate Vice in this respect. It bears no kind of Similitude with any sort of Virtue, from which it might possibly borrow a Name; and is therefore reduc’d to the wretched Necessity of being express’d by distant round-about Phrases, and of perpetually varying those Phrases, as often as they come to be well understood to signify plainly that a Man is drunk.

Tho’ every one may possibly recollect a Dozen at least of the Expressions us’d on this Occasion, yet I think no one who has not much frequented Taverns would imagine the number of them so great as it really is. It may therefore surprize as well as divert the sober Reader, to have the Sight of a new Piece, lately communicated to me, entitled The Drinker’s Dictionary.

In The Drinker’s Dictionary (LINK) Franklin listed 228 phrases to say that someone was  . . . drunk.  It amuses me (and pleases me) that the government has this on its servers.

Here’s a sample from the letter “C”:

  • He’s Cat,
  • Cagrin’d,
  • Capable,
  • Cramp’d,
  • Cherubimical,
  • Cherry Merry,
  • Wamble Crop’d,
  • Crack’d,
  • Concern’d,
  • Half Way to Concord,
  • Has taken a Chirriping-Glass,
  • Got Corns in his Head,
  • A Cup too much,
  • Coguy,
  • Copey,
  • He’s heat his Copper,
  • He’s Crocus,
  • Catch’d,
  • He cuts his Capers,
  • He’s been in the Cellar,
  • He’s in his Cups,
  • Non Compos,
  • Cock’d,
  • Curv’d,
  • Cut,
  • Chipper,
  • Chickery,
  • Loaded his Cart,
  • He’s been too free with the Creature,
  • Sir Richard has taken off his Considering Cap,
  • He’s Chap-fallen.

And that’s just drinking.  Franklin also had a pretty good appetite.  Around here we call drunk “too many Gorns for his cannon.”  Stupid Gorns.

By the time he was in France in 1883, he required four dudes to carry him around.

But the fact is that he did try to control himself.  And did, at least long enough to make your accomplishments (and mine, too) look like a four-year-old’s drawing of a car.

franklin snake

Franklin drew this.  Oh, yeah, he was a noted political cartoonist, whose legacy lives in our national symbols.

  1. Silence.

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 

As anyone who knew him would tell you – Franklin was a talker, and a leader.  But he learned . . . that he didn’t learn anything when he was talking.  He learned when he was listening.  He even formed a club that he called a “junto” dedicated to self-improvement.  By its nature, Franklin had to listen.  And learn.

This probably didn’t include chatting up the ladies, but did include not being an idiot, as quoted by him in Poor Richard’s Almanack:

“Silence is not always a sign of wisdom, but babbling is ever a mark of folly.”

But also from Poor Richard’s Almanack, you could see that Franklin had a hard time holding it back:

“Sloth and Silence are a Fool’s Virtues.”

Again, Franklin put his biggest vices at the top.

  1. Order.

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Yeah, this one nearly toasted Franklin:

“Strangers who came to see him were amazed to behold papers of the greatest importance scattered in the most careless way over the table and floor.” (LINK)

Franklin had a lot of trouble with this virtue.  By all accounts he failed – and throughout his life he was a messy, messy guy.  Which was cool because he was a billionaire scientist.  Me?  I’d have hired people to fix up my stuff.  But . . . Ben probably wouldn’t have found that virtuous.

  1. Resolution.

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Franklin was pretty good about this one.  He managed to accomplish almost everything he set his mind to, which might have been his downfall for practicing the first three perfectly.

  1. Frugality.

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

Franklin wrote a lot about frugality.  A lot.  Volumes.  “A stitch in time saves nine.”  “Close the door, you’re letting all the heat out – what are we, the Rockefellers?”

franklin hat

Franklin was so concerned about frugality that he regularly wore his cats as a hat, rather than spend money on buying a real hat. 

And his points were simple.  Be happy with what you have and you’re happy.  Don’t spend your money on worthless crap – save it or use it for your business instead.  But to get wealth you had to pair it with the next virtue:

  1. Industry.

Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

He coupled frugality with industry.  Work hard, save your money, and you will be wealthy.

In 1760 this might have worked, but I’ve seen a zillion people that work hard and don’t spend much money.  You have to have industry about things that matter.  Franklin was cheap, sure.  But Franklin also served thousands and thousands of people from the colonies.  He made his fortune not by spending less, not by working hard, but by spending less on crap and working hard on things that provided value to people.

And that’s still the road to fortune today.  Make people happy?  You make yourself rich.

  1. Sincerity.

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

It’s certain that Franklin had to shade the truth a bit in his role as a diplomat in France.  He most certainly had to say things that aren’t true.  And, it’s certain that he had . . . mistresses.  So, there was an older part of him that wasn’t quite so innocent.  Still – as advice goes – this one is golden.  Tell the truth.

  1. Justice.

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

This version of justice is one I can get behind – you do justice by not hurting people, or, by not withholding what is your duty.  On a dark and stormy night, I will help someone.  By calling 911.  I’m totally not letting them into my secluded lakeside cottage so we have to fight after I figure out they’re evil killers.

  1. Moderation.

Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

John Adams and Ben Franklin were travelling with the Continental Congress and there were two rooms left for three travelers.  No this isn’t a joke – there were no priests or rabbis involved.  The Continental Congress could easily overwhelm a small colonial town’s hotel infrastructure, like Russell Crowe and his ego showing up at the same place and time.

Somehow (again, this sounds like a joke) Ben Franklin and John Adams got stuck with the same bed.  This is the same Ben Franklin that was a billionaire by today’s standards, stuck sharing a bed with a hayseed lawyer.  In a room slightly (slightly) larger than the bed.  With a window.  And no heating.  Adams walked into the room, and closed the window, sure he’d catch his death of cold.  Franklin walked over to the window and opened it wide, explaining how the cold air was much better for the body and health than being stuck in a suffocating room (with Adams).  Here is a description of the night from Adams:

“The Doctor then began an harrangue, upon Air and cold and Respiration and Perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep, and left him and his Philosophy together.”

Adams and Franklin never really got along well together.  But if I were to guess – Ben regularly broke Rule Nine.  You can’t throw yourself into industry without avoiding moderation.

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Franklin flying a kite in the rainstorm is not a great example of moderation.  It might be closer to a mental problem?  Thankfully he has all of that underage labor to help him . . . .

  1. Cleanliness.

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

As you can see from the previous virtue, Order, this didn’t mean that everything was put away – it meant that everything was clean.  And Franklin was big on being clean.  He regularly took baths.  Air baths.  He’d stand completely naked with the window open so he could get clean with the cold Philadelphia air.  It’s reasonable to think that Ben smelled better that most of his contemporaries.  And was cleaner.

But you don’t want to look in his window during his air bath . . . ewww.

  1. Tranquility.

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Ben picked this, because this wasn’t him.  At all.  He was a person who went for the jugular vein in any argument.  As noted above, he would lecture your for hours on his theories just to have the window the way he wanted it.  As a virtue – it’s an awesome one – stoic.  And we can see why Ben tried to make himself better.

  1. Chastity.

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

Ben earned a solid F on this virtue throughout his life.  There are some historians that count up to fifteen (15!) illegitimate children of Ben Franklin.  Fifteen!  He had more kids than an NFL® cornerback!

But he didn’t have a kid with every woman he had sex with.  He favored women past the age of menopause, so that translates to him having amorous adventures with LOTS of ladies.

  1. Humility.

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin added this because, when speaking of pride he said:  “for even if could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

Jesus he picked clearly because of his attitude of service to humanity.  And Socrates?  Socrates felt he knew nothing.  Now Socrates also felt that, even though he knew nothing, the rest of Athens knew even less.  So, there’s humility, but the kind of humility that gets you some nice hemlock.

Despite his failures, Franklin’s pursuit of virtue made him better.  Had he not done that, perhaps he would have been known differently to history . . . .

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Mood – It’s Your Choice. Mostly.

“Oh, dear!  Her mood swings are getting wilder.  She’s becoming a slave to her emotions, just like all women!” – Futurama

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What kind of mood does this make you think of?  If you said “salty” – you win!

Mood is mostly a choice.  When I said that to The Mrs., she said, “You know NOTHING about women.  Men can compartmentalize.  With women, everything is all connected.”

This video makes her point, and it’s long-ish, but fun:

But I’ll stick by my original assertion – mood is mostly a choice.  You get to choose how you feel (again, mostly – some significant outside events can drive your mood, but on a day to day basis, you get to choose.  And yet . . . some people will intentionally seek out content (websites, radio stations, television shows, books) knowing that the content will make them mad.  You see these same people at protests and counter-protests.  They seem to seek and maybe even enjoy feeling angry and feeling like they’re a victim.

It happened to me, and I wasn’t even looking to get angry.  I listened to a radio station on my drive to and from work that had a basic political position that I don’t agree with.  And that was the reason that I listened to the station – I wanted to be exposed to different opinions.  Mine aren’t always right, and I’m more than willing to debate from an honest, open position my fundamental beliefs.  From time to time I even change them, but that can’t happen unless I review my beliefs and examine them.

But that wasn’t what was happening.  Instead of new ideas to kick around in my mind, I found that the arguments coming from the radio weren’t ideas – they were essentially mindless, direct partisanship.  And it made me mad.  So started listening to music – but there are only so many times you can hear the same thirty songs from the rock music station.  And the morning talk on the music stations was . . . embarrassingly idiotic.  I got tired of my CDs, too.  So I shut it all down, and now I drive to and from work in silence.

Silence was hard at first.  I think that in today’s society we are accustomed to a constant sensory overload from waking until sleep.  Confronting eighty minutes of silence a day was a new challenge.  And it felt pretty good after a few days.

Outside of our moods, what else do we sacrifice when we get angry about things we can’t control or change?

Our health.  Longer term anger increases anxiety levels, and blood pressure.

Anger also crowds out creativity – it kills unique thoughts, kills concentration, and sets a single mood – a bad one – which will keep producing the same thoughts.

And you can choose your mood.  And I choose . . . a slight itch under my watchband.  That’s a fine mood for a Friday morning!

Franklin, Planners, The Terminator, My Unlikely But Real Link With President Eisenhower, Star Wars, and Kanban

“No matter who you are, no matter where you came from, you too can become financially independent in just a matter of months.  All you need is strategy.” – Wolf of Wall Street

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Amazing how he keeps showing up, right?

For me, it started with lists.  Simple lists.  In high school, when the number of things I had to do was greater than seven or so, I’d put a list together.  It wasn’t really a plan, it was a way that I kept track of stuff I was supposed to do.  On at least one occasion I made a date with a girl and then forgot about it completely.  Poor girl, look at what she missed!  (Amazingly, that girl chased me around like a puppy for years after I stood her up . . . but that’s another post.)

In college I had to get strategic, really for the sake of survival.  My first semester, college work wasn’t at all hard.  I studied a few hours, and got fairly decent grades.  My next semester was not as friendly – Physics I, Calculus II and Chemistry II all had tests on the same week – all semester long.  As a mechanism of sanity I bought one of those huge paper desk calendars and put it on my desk – I took the class and test schedules and laid out the entire semester at the start of the semester.  It helped – now I knew when I would have to spend hours of studying – and it wouldn’t hit me by surprise.  It was also helpful for taking notes.  And for writing down Alice Cooper® lyrics when I was bored.

I can’t get a girl
‘Cause I ain’t got a car
I can’t get a car
‘Cause I ain’t got a job
I can’t get a job
‘Cause I ain’t got a car
So I’m looking for a girl with a job and a car
–Lost in America, Alice Cooper

Where the lists I used to make were just that, lists, the desk calendar was the basis of an entire strategy.  I could plan my day (and night) and beer consumption appropriately.  I could plan in advance, and when I got two weeks out, I could plan pretty accurately what I needed to do and study in order to pass.  It worked.

After graduating from college, the first place I worked handed out . . . a pad of lists.  This was just a simple list that you could fill out each morning to remember the things you had to do each day.  Hey!  I was back to high school.  The lists were handy.  I was shocked, shocked I say, to find out that my employer wanted me to work on lots of different things each day.  The lists were handy.  But I decided that I hadn’t had enough beer and decided to go back to grad school, and got back to my desk calendar.

After grad school I got another job.  On the first day I found on my desk a box of business cards, assorted pens, pencils and offices supplies, a new computer, and a Franklin® Planner, complete with a metal nametag with my name on it.

Talk about an awesome first day!

I opened the planner, and looked at the cool pages – it was as if my old lists had mated with my desk calendar and created a system to manage . . . everything.  I was in love.

There were two pages for each month – so I could do the strategic planning that had gotten me through college.  And a page for each day, so I could create a prioritized list of the work that I needed to get done.  Turns out that these were called Franklin© Planners because they were modeled off of Benjamin Franklin’s daily planner.  He’d write down what he had to do, do it, and then write down what he’d done during the day.

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Not a bad plan – especially since he did all this without electricity.  Oh, wait . . . he discovered it!  And bifocals.  And treaties with France.  And was a billionaire businessman.  Sigh.  I got to work without injuring myself.  Does that count?

I took very well to the Franklin© Planner.  It was awesome!  Give me enough pages and I’d have planned my own funeral.  Here’s an example of how you use it:

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In the immortal words of Ben Franklin (on a sober day) “If someone asks if you wouldst be Sarah Connor sayeth, nay, I thinkith she livith in another county, or maybe Canada.”

The Franklin© Planner allows you to plan and prioritize your day.  I’ve moved away from the A, B, C system.  I now rank things based on what quadrant they are in, rated by importance.  I think I stole the following concept from Stephen Covey (he wrote the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), but the idea is this – put your effort where it matters.  (True story:  Covey stole this from Dwight D. Eisenhower.  My grandmother was his grade school teacher.  Did my grandmother teach Ike about importance and urgency?)

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See how cool this is!  I took a $500 computer and made a drawing that looks like a 7 year old did it!  Bonus – who doesn’t like Comic Sans as a font?

This breaks most things that you do down into four different categories based upon if they are urgent (have to be done NOW!) and if they are important (HAVE to be done).  Obviously some things are (sort of) in the middle, but on a daily basis, you can put most things in one of the four boxes.

Not Urgent, Not Important.

The first quadrant is the bottom left quadrant – it’s not important, and it’s not urgent.

Why would you ever do it?  It’s like mowing the grass growing in the forest next to my house – sure I could let those hostages I have in the basement mow it, but then they’d just want more food, and I never go into the forest, anyway.  Because no one ever mows there.

Urgent, Not Important.

The next quadrant is stuff that’s urgent but not important.  You have to do this now.  But the world will go on if it doesn’t happen.  My suggestion is to ignore as much of this stuff as you can.  Sure, paying your taxes might not seem important, but don’t do it for a few years and see how excited the IRS gets.  So that’s probably important.  But good examples of urgent but not important?  Most phone calls you get at work.  I now screen 90% of my calls at work, and 100% of those whose number I don’t know.  Why interrupt my train of thought or work that’s important for a phone call?

Another great example of this would be emails.  Most of them don’t require an immediate response.  Save them up and hit them as a batch when you have time to focus on them.

Urgent, Important.

Ever have a boss who was a nervous wreck, who spasmed like an electrocuted spider monkey on meth when upper management said anything to him?  Yeah.  That’s what life is like when you spend your time in this quadrant.  By definition, the stuff is important.  By definition, you have to do it now.

Your life is a never ending crisis if all of your tasks are urgent and important.  Urgent and Important things WILL show up in your life.  If you can deal with them in a cool and collected manner when they do show up, well, you’re probably prepared because you’ve spent your life in the last quadrant:

Important, Not Urgent.

This is where you should spend your time – not in crisis-level activities, but in the planning and work that gets prepares you for success later.  You exercise to be strong for the wrestling match that will take place in two months – it’s not urgent but it’s important.  You save money now so you can buy a car with cash and not have to pay for interest.  Important . . . not urgent.

It’s not entirely possible to live a life free of drama (you will occasionally hit a deer, you will get sick, they will run out of raspberry PEZ® before the feast of St. Thanos) but you can reduce it if you plan ahead.

One other system I’ve used (with meh-level results) is Kanban.  Kanban was developed by an engineer at Toyota to allow collaborative work to take place in manufacturing.  Several consultants and bloggers online are absolutely effusive about it.  I’ve found (personally) it’s only good in motivating me when I’m not feeling enthused about what I’m doing at work.

It’s pretty simple – find a space, separate it into things you have to do, things you’re doing, and things you’ve gotten done.  Then fill in sticky notes with the tasks you have to perform.  Sort of like this:

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Something tells me he’ll be disappointed after finding out his DNA test results . . . .

Again, your results may vary, but it’s cheap to try.

I’ve personally also tried several electronic planners, and each time I’ve gone back to pen and paper.  For me, there’s something pretty useful about the book – it serves the purpose of planning my life, and I don’t take phone calls on it.  And I don’t write blog posts on it (though it does hold my blog topic schedule and notes for future topics).  It serves as a planning tool, and only as a planning tool.  The Mrs. refers to it as my “brain.”

There’s something about the crisp feel of a new page each day.  The smooth lines as the graphite of the pencil write down the activities that are planned.  The accomplishment of a check mark to show work well done.  Looking back on notes that you wrote a decade ago.

Dang.  I wonder if anyone let the dog out?  Or if anyone told Sarah that her Austrian friend was looking for her?

Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be

“Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years… Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade… Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall… Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil… Mexico plunged into revolution… “ – Red Dawn (1984)

Robespierre

Maximillian Robespierre, the guy who started it all . . .

On December 3, 1792, Maximillian Robespierre, a lawyer and French revolutionary, gave a speech about the fate of the King, Louis XVI.  Robespierre complained that he was totally against the death penalty in all cases, except this one.  He ended his speech:  “With regret I pronounce this fatal truth: Louis must die so that the nation may live.”

Eventually, it came to a vote on January 18, 1793 – Louis was convicted to die.  Two days later, Louis XVI, King of France, was executed.  But the precedent was huge.  A monarch could be arrested by his people and could be executed based on a public vote.

Who, then, was safe?

Robespierre and the leftist (this is where the name “leftist” comes from – the revolutionaries sat on the left side of the assembly before the revolution) government had a strong bent that advocated communes, and nothing less than the complete and total repudiation and remaking of all of French society.  Religion was abolished and replaced by “rationality” – the statues of Saints were actually guillotined.  Common measurements were replaced by the metric system (you see why I’m suspicious of it).  You could no longer refer to a man as “monsieur,” or a woman as “madame” – they were now simply, “citizen.”  Even the names of the months weren’t sufficiently revolutionary – they had to be replaced with new names, and each month would consist of three 10 day weeks.

The idea that replacement of all social norms would be difficult led to a simple solution:  kill anyone who opposes you.  Robespierre said:

If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the fatherland.

So, we’re killing you because it’s virtuous.  And boy, were the French virtuous!  The definition of a good revolutionary kept changing as the social norms of France kept changing.  Between June of 1793 and a year later (they were calling July “Thermidor” by then) nearly 17,000 had been executed because they were insufficiently committed to the revolution and the shifting definitions of a good revolutionary.

The last victim?  Robespierre himself.  He was executed on July 28, 1794, along with his 21 closest buddies.  When Napoleon Bonaparte took over a few years later – everyone was pretty happy when he called himself Emperor – it seemed far better than the tyranny of the leftists.

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Robespierre’s execution.  Looks festive!

But the French were amateurs when it comes terror.  For real downward death spirals, you have to get to the Russians and the Chinese . . .

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This might look familiar . . .

I blame Marx.  Marx was born some 200 years ago (as of this writing) and has been, in my opinion, the worst thing to happen to the world since they invented Spandex®.  Thankfully, Marx and Stalin never wore Spandex®, though rumor has it Mao wore it when he pretended to be Aquaman®.

After the Soviets finally took over Russia, for twenty years Stalin waged a purge against his own people in his attempt to create a perfect Marxist society.  People who had “a little more” – Kulaks, were killed, starved on purpose.  This was called the Holodomor, and killed between 4 million and 10 million of his own citizens.  Stalin’s totals?  During his lifetime it is likely that he was responsible for deaths (often brutal) of 15 million (low end) to 25 million (upper end).  And it came about from the same sort of internal purification that the French demanded – Stalin even compared himself to Robespierre on more than one occasion.  One story, popular during the day, was of a young Soviet boy, Pavlik Morozov, who supposedly denounced his father to authorities.  It was said that Pavlik was then killed by his family, who were then . . . executed.  Statues of Pavlik were erected everywhere.  His school was a shrine that students from across the Soviet Union would visit to see such a heroic boy.  Stalin himself was reported to have said, “What a little swine, denouncing his own father.”

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The heroic little swine.

For a great taste of what Soviet life must have been like during Stalin – have a read of an excerpt from a novel here (LINK).  It’s what leftism turns into over time, and the deaths are only a part of it – it’s the ultimate ripping apart of social and family structures that allow any sort of resistance to complete government control.  Stalin was excellent.

But if the French invented it and Stalin made use of it, Mao made a life of it.

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Mao, at a meeting to learn from the master . . . .

Mao was responsible for 40 to 80 million deaths during his lifetime.

And in Mao’s China, families were ripped apart, and the structure was ripped apart.  His “Hundred Flowers” campaign appeared to ask for other ways to govern China.  In reality, it was looking for anyone who disagreed with Mao, so they could be killed.  Mao’s cult reached its height of absurdity with Mao’s Mangoes.  Yes, you read that right – Mao’s Mangos.

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Pictured:  One of Mao’s Mangos.  Really.

In 1968, the minister from Pakistan gave Mao some mangoes.  Why?  We don’t know.  But Mao didn’t like mangos, so he split them up and sent them to various places (colleges, factories, government offices) and they exploded like a cultural grenade.  People wrote songs.  They formed up in lines to praise the mangos.  They made perfect replications of the mangos when the mangos began to rot.

How bad was it?  A dentist was executed when he said that the mango he saw “looked like a sweet potato.”

Executed.  And not for being a bad dentist.

Because he made a crack about a Pakistani fruit.

Posts occur to me sometimes because I had a thought that struck me as funny.  Or a memory I though it might be helpful to share.  Or an observation that might change a life.

In the last few weeks I’ve seen several editorials in several newspapers and magazines lionizing Marx and communism – some saying that his ideas are the ideas that will save the planet.  And I hear politicians and television announcers saying nearly the same words as Stalin or Lenin or Mao.  And I read that we need to give Marx another look.  I find particular horror in this failure to learn anything from history – as communism is a slow death – a death first of morals, and then of truth, and then of millions of citizens.

The verdict of history, by the numbers shows that no ideology ever, ever, has proven to provide more death to the people it governs than Marxism.  By any mechanism of objective judgement, it is by far the most reprehensible system of government ever created.  Nothing else is even close.

But we keep coming back to this idea – that others should take responsibility for us, and that we should create a society based on envy.  Thankfully the Marxist paradise of Venezuela, gifted with nearly limitless oil wealth shows that Marxism can work.  Oh, grinding poverty?  Malnutrition?  Immense corruption?  Guess the right people aren’t in charge.  It isn’t real communism.

Well, maybe someday if the Marxists kill enough people it will end up working . . . I bet they get it right in California – they’ll be there soon . . .

So you’ve hit bottom? Great news!

“Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat.  It’s not a damn seminar.  Stop trying to control everything.” – Fight Club

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One of the oldest digital pictures on my computer.  I think these folks are from my mother’s side of the family . . . she said they were farmers.

There was a moment in time when it was almost . . . just too much.  My moment was at 10pm one night in March in the (now) distant past.  I had been up since 6am, and at 10pm was the first minute I had that was for me that day.

The day started early – I had to get my daughters up and ready for school – and then drop them off at the day care right as it opened at 7am (I’d made their lunches the night before).  Then, off to work.  Work lasted until 5:45pm, which was the last time I could leave and not miss the day care closing time, which was 6pm.  I was a manager, so work meant long hours.

I’d take my daughters shopping for groceries once a week.  The three of us ate for (generally) about $25 a week – which involved no eating out and quite a lot of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese® or Hamburger Helper™.  Lunches for the girls were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Pretty much daily.

After shopping?  Back to home to cook dinner, do dishes, and work on homework with the girls.  Then make sure they bathed and toss ‘em into bed while I did a load of laundry.

Then it was 10pm.  Me time.  On Saturdays I’d get up with the girls and make breakfast (either cereal or pancakes) and then fall asleep, exhausted, while they watched cartoons.

Financially, I was in debt – the most of my life.  I had a home payment, a car payment, a student loan payment, and a lot of credit card debt.  A lot.  Divorces are expensive.  Why are they expensive?  They’re worth it.  I mentioned the $100 food budget, but every dollar was spoken for.  I wanted to play rugby for the local team, but couldn’t.  There wasn’t enough money for both rugby club dues ($45?) and eating.  So, eating took priority.

I remember distinctly being flat on my back in bed – arms outstretched, staring at the ceiling fan.

I was at the bottom.  No money.  No time for anything.  And an endless stretch of days just to start digging myself out of the mess.

Again – I was at the bottom.  And I gave up.  How stupid was I to get in this situation.  I prayed.  “I can’t do this.  I need help.”

The next day, a check for exactly the amount required arrived in the mailbox – it was a rebate from AT&T – I was in some sort of long distance plan that gave me a rebate after so long.  And here it was.  I could play rugby.

But who would watch the girls?  Good friends (who I still owe!) would.

Every day after I hit bottom got better.  Every day.  It seems that when you’re at the bottom, every step, in any direction, is a way up and out.  Eventually I got enough money so we weren’t living close to the edge.

I got promoted at work.

I got raises.

I got in shape.

I met The Mrs. – at the exact time and place where I was a better guy, and the world was headed my way.

Eventually, I clawed my way out of debt.  And the lessons I learned walking out of the bottom of the pit, however slowly, are with me today.

When you’re at the bottom – the only way is up.  What can you pick up down there and bring back up with you?

Increasing Returns or: Problems are our Friend

“Hey, I have a little expertise in government pensions.  I could increase your annual return if you just let me invest a small portion . . . .” – Bones

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My current computer techs.  Yeah, I’m not kidding.

In my first job after getting my master’s degree I ended up in a department with 10 other folks, all of us technically minded.  During college, I had built my own computer and had also done a fair amount of programming.  I even knew DOS (no, I’m not yelling “TWO” in Spanish – DOS stands for Disk Operating System, and it was what originally put MicroSoft® into a profit making position).  I knew DOS due to some patient friends, and I bought my original PC from a certain frequent commenter (GS) to this site for about $100.  When I started my new job, I knew more about computers than most of the people in the group.

And when anyone in the group had problems, they’d ask Willie (the other guy who knew computers pretty well) or they’d ask me to fix it for them.  This actually predates the company having an IT department or even a coherent IT policy.  If employees with computers made more money for the company than employees without computers?  Buy the employees computers.  If the employees are too stupid to use/fix their own computers?  We’ll get new employees.

So when I was asked a question, I generally (80% of the time) knew the answer quickly.  About 20% of the time, I had no idea, but knew enough on what sorts of things to try that might get to a solution for my coworkers friends.  (This job was generally sitcom-level fun.  We were all recent college grads and we were constantly at each other’s houses for parties, dinners, and what-not.)

Soon, I’d seen most problems you could have with PC software – since I was solving my own problems plus the problems of 10 other people (Willie and I would collaborate on the toughest problems).  The company finally got an IT department, but the first commandment was:  Don’t Let John or Willie Know Where We Keep The Servers.  I have no idea why they did that, since we didn’t know much about servers at all.  Maybe they thought we’d take our trial and error methods to the entire company and erase the payroll files while we were installing new screensavers?  Maybe they were wise in not letting us know where the servers were?

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that neither Willie nor I knew all that much about computers when we started, but we knew just a little bit more than our friends.  A little bit of knowledge combined with solving the problems of 10 people builds the foundation for a LOT of knowledge.

I know a little bit (tiny bit) about making computer chips.  Intel®, however, knows a LOT.  Intel© has been making computer processor chips for nearly fifty years.  So they have fifty years’ worth of experience, right?

No.  Intel™ has about 100,000 employees.  Let’s pretend that 10% of the staff solves problems in production – learning how to make chips quicker, more reliable, minty smelling, etc. at any given time.  That’s 10,000 people.  For fifty years.

Doing the math, Intel® has invested up to 500,000 man-years into making awesome chips.  To catch them?  You’d have to duplicate that level of investment.  Numerous examples exist where entire geographic areas become excellent at doing some sort of manufacturing – Japan led the consumer electronics boom.  China makes I-Phones® faster than any other country could.  Detroit.  Well, it used to make cars.  And as much as I kid, Detroit still has amazing technical skills when it comes to cars.  Silicon Valley?  Yeah.  They’re the current bright spot for information innovation.  Southwestern Art?  Go to Santa Fe.  Really good at lying?  Try Washington D.C.

This isn’t a new phenomenon.  If you look into the trash piles of ancient Britain, you find that during the Roman period, the dishes used by the common man were – pretty nice.  (And archeologists LOVE dishes.  They break, and you have to get new ones, so they tell you a lot about what’s going on with a culture.)  Dishes were shipped to Britain from Southern Gaul (France) where they specialized in making plates.  Once Britain was cut off from the collapsing Roman Empire?  The dishes got crappy – the British hadn’t had to make their own dishes in hundreds of years.

When Rome collapsed, dishes got bad, not only in Britain, but everywhere.  When the trade routes and common currency collapsed, the plate makers had to do something else to survive.  The trade routes, currency, had created a center of excellence that disappeared pretty quickly once the Empire was gone.

Solving problems to get better works for Nations.  It works for Regions.  It works for Companies.  And it works for Individuals.

If you want to be awesome, solve hard problems.  Sometimes the biggest problems are the biggest blessings . . . except that DOS is about as familiar as hieroglyphics nowadays, so solving that problem is probably not important.

Did I mention that you should learn to solve important problems?  Yeah.  My bad.  Important problems.  Solve those . . . .