Excelsior!

A New Day is Born

A new look for a new decade!

Well, let's say that is the excuse I am using for finally restarting a blog to which I last posted in 2009 just months before my life took a turn that no one could have imagined.  One simple word: Cancer (Multiple Myeloma /Bone Marrow Cancer)  It was always something that happened to others, deeply sad and incomprehensible, yet at the same time there was a veiled thought, "There but for the grace of God go I."  And then it stopped at my door.

On a recent trip my wife Ginny pulled out her prayer journal and asked, "Did you know that it was today on October 9, 2009 that we received the diagnosis of your cancer?" I hadn't remembered because my view has been steadily forward to the next step, whatever that was, and there have been many of them: New home, new city, new church, new "used" vehicle...new pains, new hopes, new fears, new career, new connections.

In the course of the last two years, I have found that I love writing as a way of crystalizing experiences, insights, and perspectives on life.  Perhaps this grew out of Caring Bridge, a wonderful free blog for cancer patients and their families. I used it both to keep those who loved me up-to-date about my welfare and to chronicle the journey through my particular valley of darkness.  It helped keep me honest and I was overwhelmed by the more than 14,000 responses that bathed me in love.

So here I find myself, squinting at the screen and wondering just where this will take me but excited to launch out on the journey.  You'll find all sorts of content here from technology to theology and all the stops in between. The one common denominator will be the perspective of an aging baby boomer with a renewed lease on life looking forward to the next adventures to which the Lord calls.  I will continue to cling to the promise that "...we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago."  Eph 2:10  Thanks for stopping by; feel free to add a polite (old friends and family members are permitted clean shots) comment.

And now...as I have often said on Caring Bridge, "Excelsior...Onward and Upward!"

In the War on Terror Bigger is not Necessarily Better

Three stories about digital spying and vandalism and the ongoing saga of the Somali pirates make me think of the American Revolution and how far we, as a nation, are from that.

First the news:
Wall Street Journal claims Chinese and Russian hackers have infiltrated the US power grid system leaving the spector of our enemies suddenly pulling the plug on our gadget crazy culture. Why bother to bomb us when we can be so easily stricken at one of our most vulnerable points? (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914805204099085.html)

AT&T Broadband and Telecom Paralyzed in California Attack on Fiber Optics lines
Last week 10's of thousands of Californians had no cell phones, Internet access or 911 services because "vandals" cut a series of the fiber optic cables that not only supply Internet access but also serve as the "backbone" for many of the cell phone companies in the area including Sprint. Subsequent commentaries have show similar incidents in the past year around the country leading some to speculate that these are terrorist tests for our vulnerability.
(http://www.domain-b.com/companies/companies_a/AT&T/20090413_saboteurs_paralyse.html)
17 year old Cyber punk infects Twitter with a worm...because he was bored.
(http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2009/04/13/daily5.html)

And then there are the Pirates of Somalia (the screenplay is probably being written somewhere in LaLa Land even as you read this.) Easter Sunday was a resurrection for the US captain recently captured and a moment of judgment for three pirates who died. The drama has not ended with their deaths because the piracy continues with increasing boldness even in the face of a massive, multinational naval presence in the area. How is it that these pirate warrior clans can prey with such brazen impunity? The answer to this question and the truth that ties all them all together is utterly simple: Bigger is not better and we were the ones who taught the British.

King George's army landed on American shores believing that the undisputed might of the British Navy and Army could squelch the colonial uprising only to find that the Minutemen didn't "fight fair". Guerilla tactics defeated over-extended supply lines and armies of professional soldiers found they could not defeat an impassioned populace fighting in their backyards for the right to "live free or die". Bigger was not better.

American military might, billions of dollars and some of our finest young men and women have been spent in two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). Those struggles have helped to bankrupt our economy, scar a generation of young and impassion some of the world's deadliest terrorists, but by no stretch of the imagination can America claim to have won these contests.

Now the battle seems to be coming to our comfortably insulated shores. 911 showed us just how patient and bloodthirsty our terrorist enemies can be. The vulnerability of our electrical power grid and its penetration by hostile foreign agents show the breadth of the internal threat. The fiber optic vandalisms, according to some reports, showed a high degree of sophistication (knowledge of the underground locations and which wires to cut), and they smack of probes by terrorist cells testing our infrastructure further. All of these threats were executed by small numbers of strategically placed, small units. Bigger definitely is not better.

Detroit: Resurrection Postponed

Ironic, isn't it? As the Christian feast of the Resurrection (Easter) approaches, a local judge has struck a blow to make sure that the city of Detroit doesn't have an even chance to rise from its ashes.

Quoting Thursdsay April, 9 Detroit Free Press:

Wayne County Circuit Judge Isidore Torres held that Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. had no power to veto the City Council's rejection of the state law creating the authority....The decision puts into doubt the $288 million that would have funded an expansion and renovation of Cobo that has been viewed as essential to preserving the city's signature event -- the North American International Auto Show.

Detroit's Queen of the Council, Monica Conyers, was ecstatic: It gave her a chance to deride Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel once again and babble on about how this keeps Cobo's assets under Detroit City Council's control. Read: Somebody was trying to cut Detroit's inner political circle out of the loot. This in a city reeling from tales of graft, incompetence, feather-bedding, bribes, nepotism and all the other earmarks of a corrupt, self-interested political machine with one goal in mind: Keep the control and the devil take the hindmost.

Detroit, now more than ever, needs a miracle resurrection that will transform this profoundly compromised political landscape into one that will become part of a regional coalition to revive this once great metropolitan era. Monica Conyers and her supporters have assured everyone who will listen that she will have no part in that unifying and healing process.

Tell us, Monica, when the North American Auto Show follows the rest of the industry out of town, exactly what will you be left to rule?

The End of the American Empire

The 20th Century was arguably the prime 100 years of American economic ascendancy. Our industry put the world on wheels, armed our forces and sent heavy equipment around the world while, among other things, our granaries fed the world. Our burgeoning middle/working classes gobbled up goods and services like there was no tomorrow, particularly after WWII. But that all changed as the century drew to a close and teetered on the brink of destruction amidst the smoke and ruin of 9/11.

We suddenly found ourselves in a world where our economic obesity was being fed by Chinese made goods, most major economic controls lay outside of our borders and our vaunted manufacturing centers were being replaced by cheap foreign labor. Greedy investment bankers put the final nails in the coffin by first feeding unreasonable expectations of continued prosperity and then avoid any accountability and bailing themselves out with help of their political cronies.

This is a new world where China suggests that the dollar is no longer a viable measure of currency while it artificially suppresses its own currency and Hugo Chavez, military dictator in Venezuela, recommends oil as the basis of economic exchange. A short 25 years ago both ideas would have been laughed off the world stage; now President Obama approached the G20 meeting of leading economies less as a rock star and more as a supplicant.

I believe our economic healing will begin with a new generation of Americans who see themselves as less entitled to the good times than they are dedicated to creating new value for global markets. My fellow members of the self-focused Boomer Generation may have to be pushed off the stage seeing how so many of us have run the economy into the ground and then taken fat bonuses. Maybe necessity will then become the mother of a whole new culture of inventive people looking over the horizon and outside the overstuffed chair that their elders have occupied.

Who do you think will lead us out of our economic swamp and into a new land of promise and opportunity and how will we get there?

Where's the paper?!

Is it coincidence that this week we have learned of a whole host of Michigan newspapers (Saginaw, Bay City, Detroit, Ann Arbor) that announced they are closing shop or reducing home delivery and going online? I don't believe in coincidences and neither do a lot of our listeners. One very articulate email crossed my desk that I want to share with you because of all the questions it raises about the changes. Our listener agreed to let me post it anonymously.

As you also know, home delivery customers typically pre-pay 6 months of subscriptions. This provides the Freep with free cash flow they don't have to get somewhere else. The time value of money is worth something, as well.

I'm a 25+ year home delivery subscriber to the Free Press. It seems that I, and other long-time customers, are being singled out as a profit problem and I just don't get it. I haven't read anything about renegotiation of the Teamsters contract nor any of the press production unions, so I'll assume that didn't happen. And, as I mentioned before, they can somehow "afford" to deliver newspaper to 18,000 retail locations, but not to home delivery carriers? I'll also assume they didn't renegotiate the debt load to cover their new presses.

So, I am left to conclude that their contracts with the home delivery carriers are the crux of the problem. But they can still "afford" home delivery a magnanimous three days a week. The old monthly subscription rate was $14 and change for 7 days a week delivery. Now it's $12 a month for 3/7 of the product. That looks like close to a 100% increase in price to me.

And no, I don't plan to read the digital free press, which presents me with an exact duplicate of the printed product. Who cares? The electronic version should be better than the printed product. Freep.com is still free and nytimes.com is also free.

One last comment - the next time someone from the Freep appears on your show, please ask what the cost is for a full page ad in the printed newspaper. Then, have him explain how he would hope to generate that much revenue on-line. Also ask if their jump in web traffic might have had something to do with the Kwami mess.

Oh yeah, I recently retired after 28 years with Hewlett-Packard. So I am well acquainted with technology. But I just don't envison firing up my PC in the morning and staring at a screen to read the paper. I could do that now if I choose to. Don't need the Free Press to do that, which at best is no more than a barely adequate regional product but it's the only morning game in town.


What is your reaction to the changes?

Apple's Killer Application

All the fuss about the changes coming to the iPhone's 3.0 operating system missed the real "killer application": the lack of voice commands. Yep, the world's smartest smartphone is utterly stupid when it comes to using voice commands, deadly dull, I might add.

The iPhone is the first phone that has nearly caused me to lose my life and I have been using mobile phones since 1972 when I had to connect through an operator and the transmitter weighed 20 lbs. and only fit in my trunk. There is simply no safe way to use this mobile phone when you are mobile in a car. The lack of buttons means that you have to look down at the screen even to pull up your favorite numbers for speed dialing! God help anyone near you if you have to search for a contact in your address book. Heck, my treasured old Palm Treo could do that easily and still keep me alive because I could at very least FEEL the buttons and still focus on the road.

Now Apple has proudly announced their great leap forward in phones with the new OS 3.0 and one of the first innovations mentioned is Cut & Paste, one of the simplest functions in a handheld computing device. Then, to add insult to injury, they utterly ignore the one glaring safety issue for mobile users: voice commands. Yes, I know you can buy applications that try and make this work or, and this is probably the point, pay AT&T another $5/month for their clumsy version of voice dialing. This is basic mobile phone safety, Apple, get it done and keep the customer base alive!

As much as I have loved the iPhone for nearly two years, I don't know if I want to continue gambling my life on it. What do you think?

A Modest Proposal for Dealing with AIG Execs Bonuses

Outrage can feel cleansing but ultimately it is rather useless. Right now public outrage is boiling over at the news that top AIG Execs will receive $165 million in "bonuses". Correct me if I'm wrong, but a bonus is supposed to be a reward for outstanding or at least above average performance. These guys are the same ones who helped torpedo the world's economy with their shady practices and are the same shameless crew that threw a big party at a posh resort to celebrate shortly after the first "bailout" payment. There was public outcry then but the party was already over by the time their self-indulgence had been discovered.

This time AIG's top dogs were caught before they divided the booty but are now claiming that they are obligated by contract to award these bonuses or the incompetent executives who have brought our economy to the brink of disaster might sue them! Again, remind me what a reward/bonus is. It appears these porkers get to waddle up to the trough and slop regardless of their performance. But I digress, back to my premise: outrage is ultimately useless.

Here is my modest proposal: Expose these managers to public scrutiny. Post the names of all AIG executives receiving any of the $165 million in the recent payoff on a public website and then let nature take its course.

Within a few hours the full addresses, email and a whole lot more information will be public knowledge thanks to "public outrage" in action. Following that, people will do whatever they want with that information, hopefully in an appropriate and legal manner... of course. I have a few suggestions, all legal and decent, but I'll keep them to myself for now.

So what do you propose we should do to these professional porkers?