The inability to count

People I know...  I'm not naming names...

They don't seem to be able to count.  Simple math kind of count.  The electricity or water gets cut off every other month.  Some sort of crisis is always happening in that household.  And the funny thing... several years ago, I thought they were doing awesome. 

I know it's strange.  But 6 years ago, I knew several families like that.  All of them seemed to be going somewhere.  Everything was just awesome, and the world was rocking along great.  It was 2010, and the world was wonderful. 

Now, we're entering 2017 and I wonder what happened to those families.  I know what I did.  I started making a budget and following the thing.  It doesn't help if you make a budget and don't follow it.  I got my wife on board, and we look at the budget regularly.  We adjust as needed.  She tells me she needs things and I try to fit it into the budget.  We discuss everything.  The budget makes that possible. 

The other families?  They lurch from chaos to chaos, barely surviving what are normal and expected rocks of the ship.  See, emergencies happen.  So they aren't really emergencies.  Those "catastrophes" are normal occurrences.  You just have to plan for them.  And a stack of cash helps.  It's not a lot of cash.  Just $1000.  But that's a life changer.  It's just enough cushion to keep the big bad from beating down the from door.

But the people I know... they get payday loans. 

Six months ago, they said "payday loans are the devil". 

I guess that's the biggest trick of the devil.  He convinced the world he doesn't exist.

But then there is another side of the coin.  The part I don't understand.  I don't have to.  I just have to believe.  And I do.

See, I started going to church six years ago.  And it was a church that preached the new testament, and told me what the Bible said.  It wasn't about what someone thought.  You had to argue against the Bible.  Not against some random person.  Not against the thoughts of the world.  Against the word of God.  And there's a lot of parts in there that don't make a bit of sense to me.  But those parts are the ones that are the most important. 

As I heard someone say once... If you hear someone say "It doesn't make any sense" then that person has an invalid perspective of the world.  The world always makes sense.  It's not the world that doesn't make sense.  It's our view of the world. 

Now, the average person would tell me that the budget made all the difference.  But I know going to church and doing what the Bible said had an effect.  "Have faith and believe" it said.  I did.  That's all that was asked for. 

See, you really need to read the new testament.  It's a hard book to read.  Not for the words.  The words.  The words are easy.  They concepts are hard.  It's filled with a lot of differing and complicated stuff.  I don't pretend to be the greatest scholar of the Bible in the world.  What I do know is the main portion is so stupidly simple it's hard.  "Have faith in the living God and his son Jesus.".  That's the main thing.  

Because a lot of what people teach is flat out wrong.  Or at least contradicted by other parts of the new testament.  And if we're getting into a Paul vs Jesus interpretation, I'm taking Jesus any day of the week.  I think Paul is the problem with a lot of Christianity.  But that's an argument for another time.

I guess the biggest thing I want to leave with is this: Jesus is knowable.  I'm not saying you are going to understand it all.  But he is knowable.  And it's worth knowing him.

The hilarity of it all

Life is really, really funny.  I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. 

Eight years ago, Barrack Obama was elected president of the United States, and the right decried the death of the free world and the end of everything they saw as important.

One month ago, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, the left decried the death of the free world and everything they saw as important.

8 years ago, Texas started talking about secession.

1 month ago, California started talking about secession.

It's ridiculously humorous the parallels between what happened eight years ago and what happened a month ago.

Everything the right was saying eight years ago, the left is saying now.

History is doing a bit of repeating, and it is hilarious.

Schedule, Week 1

Week 1:

Think and Grow Rich, chapter 1.

The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, chapter 1

Heaven's Wealth Food, disc 1

Listen to these at least 3 times.

During the first week, it can be complicated to listen to the same thing over and over again.  Think of this as training mental discipline.  Discipline is doing the right thing when no one is watching.  It's easy to not do what you should be doing.  Growth is hard.  But it is worth every minute.  Continue listening, despite the mental fatigue.  

Work book: From John Maxwell

1) Which gap is the one that keeps you from growing the way you should have.

2) Rework your calendar to fit growth into the schedule 5 days a week, fifty weeks a year.  

Discuss what you did to make this fit.

Book sale!

Tomorrow is the 2nd library book sale of the year.   I like the book sale.  What's better, it's a brown bag of books for about $5.  Sure, they are used books.  But books are books.  I've gotten entire collections of books for practically nothing. 

So...  support your local library.  Go check out their books and visit their book sales. 

They are awesome.

Loss of Routine

I just realized why I hate on call.  I am not currently on call, so that is not the issue.  I will be in a couple of weeks.  But that's a future problem.  Who's going to solve that one?  Future Matt. 

Right now, I know why I dislike on call. 

It breaks my routines.

That's about it. 

I have several routines that I go through Monday through Friday.  They are simple actions that result in a controlled beginning to a day.  Occasionally, the day crashes and burns.  Other days, it goes fine.  But my routine stays with me.

 When I lose the ability to perform that routine, things go haywire.  It's not something I inherently like or am happy with.  It's just a gigantic failing.  It's unpleasant.

And my entire week goes to hell.

I can tell it's been a bad week when the last time I shaved was Monday.  Shaving is a boring ritual.  Along with brushing and flossing.  Shaving happens three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.   This week, I only shaved Monday.  Tuesday was the last day I performed my routine. 

And I'm headed to the end the week, dragging this controlled crash into the best possibility. 

I want my routine back. 

something started, something finished

I've heard it said that writers end up writing the book they need to hear, not necessarily the book they live by.  I think that was true of the post yesterday.  I'm fully convinced that is what happened.  I've been writing a story about what would happen if dimension hopping became a thing, and the guy going dimension hopping was a self-centered asshole out of to save his own skin from his own stupidity.  I've been writing that story for a while, off and on.  It's currently sitting about 19 pages worth of material, but the story isn't finished and it's going to take a few more pages before I even start to finalize.

The problem is that I haven't been adding to the story very frequently.  I'm a proponent of tracking most things you do during the day.   I don't do it near enough, but I'm a proponent.  I can give you a rough estimate when I will finish the book I'm currently reading, and I can tell you the average days between when I write.  And right now that average days number is sitting at 26.

The simple answer is you are never going to finish anything if you don't pick it up but once a month.  It doesn't matter how many words you write during those single sessions.  And I can almost guarantee when you do write for that one session, it's going to be way shorter than you thought.  On Average, I write about 360 words per period.  The max I've ever tracked in a day was 757.   So that tells me is I'm not going to finish this thing any time soon if one of those numbers doesn't change.

Given that collection of numbers: 26 days between writing, 360 words per session, a maximum of 757 words in a day.  The easiest of those numbers to change is the 26.  See, it's all about math.   360 words seems to be where my brain starts to falter.  Or my limited time runs out.  But...  If I got to the point of writing at least 5 days a week, that would cover about 94,000 words in a year, skipping weekends.


I started this post...  sometime back in 2015.  I finished the story back in August.  It took well longer than it probably should have.  I added 9 pages until I finally came to a conclusion I wanted.  Or at least that's where the story seemed to want to go.  It's interesting that stories have a tendency to take on a life of their own after a while.  Sometimes you have ideas.  Other times, the ideas just flow from the characters you create.

It's interesting forcing those characters to life.  It sometimes feels like a birth.  Maybe, maybe not.  Maybe that's where the real interesting stuff happens.  It's between the point where the idea ran out and the execution is all there is left.  That's where the most complicated bits lie.  It's also where you end up having the most fun and force the best of life out of the story.  Or the worst.  It's also at that point that the characters start taking on a life of their own. 

There was a point in the story I was talking about where I thought about adding a secondary character.  But that didn't fit with the character I had created.  It just wasn't that person.  So I moved forward and changed the idea.  All based on the character that I created.  It was...  the way things needed to be. 

I can't say I'm really an impressive writer.  What I can say is that I try to show up.  And that's where I'm at with that.

I should probably go back to working on the story I'm currently working on.  It's the nightmare I had turned into a story.  Not sure whether it's a horror or something else.  It sounds like it.  But we'll see.

Belief vs Belief

This post is about belief versus belief.

I run into many people who believe things.  But it doesn't change what they do. They say they believe in something, but they choose to do nothing that proves that belief. 

Perfect example.  A person goes to the doctor and the doctor tells them they are at risk for a heart attack.  You then get two scenarios. 

Scenario 1: the person comes back the next year looking considerably better.  They have changed their diet and dropped a few pounds.  They believed the doctor and took action.

Scenario 2: the person has a heart attack. 

Belief existed in both scenarios.  Scenario 1 combined belief with action.  Scenario 2 believed but didn't do a thing. 

I find believers in global warming fit in the second category.  They believe in global warming, but its hashtag activism.  It's a pathetic belief that causes zero action. 

So...  going back to the scenario I proposed earlier: which one actually believed?  

I'm going to guess only scenario 1 truly believed.  Because that person changed their actions in accordance with their beliefs.

So if you believe in global warming...  which category do you fit into?

Still not believing (in global warming)

I don't believe in global warming.   My argument is pretty simple.  I haven't heard anything that points out otherwise.   I haven't actively searched, either.

Simple argument is thus: quantifiable inputs to global warming follow an exponential growth curve, not a linear growth curve.  I think I'm getting my wording right here.  The point is best illustrated by a finance joke.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet walk into a bar.  The average net worth in the bar goes to $30 billion.

Not much of a joke, but it illustrates the Pareto principle pretty good.  Let me add another couple of lines.

In one corner, a man is losing his entire net worth gambling on a horse race.  By the end of the race, the man will have lost $500,000 dollars of his net worth and he will be homeless.  The average net worth in the room will be completely unaffected.

In another corner, a woman has won the lottery.  She just won $5 million dollars.  The average net worth in the room will be completely unaffected.

Now.  Let's go re-examine that story.  It well illustrates the power of exponential growth curves to destroy averages.  That doesn't mean those lives weren't affected in the gain and loss.  It just means the average is unaffected.

Now, lets apply the idea to pollution.  Of all the polluters in the world, 20% of the polluters produce 80% of the pollution.  It's the same concept as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  Let me give you an example.

A household is told to reduce their pollution by turning the AC up 5 degrees in summer.  That will "solve" global warming.  Compare then a TV studio and audience.  That building uses energy at a greater rate.  Given common electricity usage rates, that TV studio probably has monthly electrical bill of $3,000.   The house has a monthly electrical bill of $100.   I'm guessing on both of those.  So one studio is the equivalent of 30 houses.

The other part of the equation is the house has a higher use rate than that TV studio.  The TV studio probably runs about 10 hours a day at high capacity.  Lets say 70% occupation.  The rest of the day, it runs closer to 10% occupation.  It is either empty, or has very few people.  The house is a study in contrasts.  It runs at 0% occupation for 8 hours, and 60% occupation for the other 16 hours of the day.

Which building is better capable of reducing electrical usage?  The TV studio.  The changes in that single building would easily dwarf the changes to 30 houses.

Now, the second part of this is in the implementation allowance.  Or should I call it the "put your money where your mouth is" tax?  The people most likely to declare the need for changes regarding global warming are, by a high percentage, unwilling to make meaningful prolonged change.  Despite everything, that person wants to continue their lifestyle while you cramp yours.

Let's look at this another way.  How many large metropolitan areas have city ordinances against windmills and solar panels?   Why?  Because solar panels are reflective and remove the picture postcard view of the city.  It narrows down to the "not in my back yard" problem.  So people want you to change, but won't change themselves.  If you are that adamant about something, you'd do it first. 

I think I've covered that section pretty well.  Next...

The next part is one that drives me up the wall.  It really does.  It's the lack of a failure state in global warming. The lack of a failure state is invalid in most events.  There is a failure state built into all weather forecasting models.  That's why you get a percentage of a chance of rain.  That's why forecasts longer than five days are negatively correlated.

In global warming, there is no failure state.  If the weather gets colder, it's global warming.  If the weather gets hotter, it's global warming.  If the weather stays the same, it's global warming.

There is no condition where the global warming crowd is ever wrong.  Except when they are.

Anyone remember acid rain?

I remember acid rain.  It was the rain the was going to fall and burn our faces off.  I was a kid, and had assumptions about what acid did.  Mostly the horrible, horrible kinds of acid that destroyed things badly.  You can still see such idea propagated to movies.  And when you hear it, it causes you to stop.

Because there never was any acid rain.

But the people who declared there was going to be acid rain suddenly changed their position when it didn't happen.  Amazing how that happens. And it was like they never preached to the choir about acid rain.  It just quickly disappeared.  And then suddenly global warming is here.  And then global cooling.  And then global weirding.

Yeah.  There is no failure state.  There is no point where these scientists sit back and declare "yup, I'm wrong".   Everything has a failure state.  Everything.

The third part of all of this is the lobbyists.  Yes, the lobbyists come into play.  But not the science ones.  No, these are the lobbyists from the power company.   Why would the power company have lobbyists?  Simple: remember that 80/20 rule discussed earlier?  Who's the 20% doing 80% of the damage?  The power company.   Who's the 20% that is likely to suffer the most from individuals generating their own power?  The power company. The power company builds its business model off of monopoly.  It's not designed to compete.   It's designed for winner take all, and loser becomes illegal. 

There was a point when that was required.  But I think we're beyond that point.  There will probably still be the need for a public utility company.  But that company needs to have to compete with private individuals in order to become more efficient.  There is no need for the power company to innovate due to the nature of their monopoly.  And they will protect that monopoly to the best of their ability for as long as they can. 

And the thought of individuals living off the public grid is something that does not appeal to them. 

So what would it take to generate an off the grid solution?  You'd need some sort of solution or a partial solution.  And an electrician.  The solution would probably be a one box solution.  And you need an electrician to safely wire the thing into your house.  There's a giant boom for the electricians and a major loss for the electric company. 

I wonder what the lifetime loss is of one person leaving the grid?  What about 1% of the population?  I'm guessing its astronomically huge. 

Color redesign

I decided to change the colors around this morning.  The old background was my dinner table from a few years ago, and is now sitting out on the back porch.  Not terribly impressive, but hey.  It's out there. 

The new one fits more with the manilla folder idea I've been obsessively using in the past few decades.  I remember a website I created back following the days of GeoCities where I had a manilla folder background.  Nothing terribly impressive, but it takes me back to those days.

This one was a little more professionally designed and actually tiles like it is supposed to. 

At work, I've recently been using TWiki a lot.  Seems like a good platform.   After my vacation a couple of weeks ago, I realized the catalyst for much change is documentation.  If you don't document, then you are going to keep repeating the same tasks over and over again, and wondering why no one ever gets around to changing. 

You can't shove a part of the job you don't want to do on someone if you do not document.  It's that simple. 

If you will not document, then you will do the same thing over and over again.

Once the documentation is complete, you must then hand the documentation off to someone else in order to test your documentation.  If your documentation is never examined or tested, it's not really documentation.  

You must also revise and expand on your documentation to the point where it is excessively long.  You have to realize the person you are handing your documentation off to has no clue what a native VLAN is or why it could affect communication between a router and a switch.  And why have a native VLAN in the first place.  I've probably heard that question before, but I don't remember the answer.   I know the difference between a native VLAN and a non-native VLAN.  Hell, I brought up ISL in the conversation in order to back up enough to provide a starting point.  

But in the end you must document to the point of excessive.  All you are going to do is take up disk space, and disk space is relatively free. 

Anyways.... 

Upgrades Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week.  At least the prep work is mostly done on them.  So they should go relatively quickly. 

Falling back into a routine

I'm falling back into a routine.  The first few days were a fight to get the routine going.  The few days afterwards have been empowering.  I can't say they have been great.  But it's been a lot easier keeping the routine. 

I think that's with all new practices.  The initial period is always horrendous.  It's a few days or a few weeks of thinking about doing something, but never doing it.  It makes me think of Confidence and Paranoia from an episode of Red Dwarf.  Lister ended up getting sick, and his confidence and paranoia came to life as external beings.  Your confidence, to paraphrase Lister, is the guy who tells you you're great, you're wonderful, you're sexy, and everyone loves.  Your paranoia tells you you're stupid, you're ugly, and everyone hates you. 

Both are just competing opinions in the brain.  The answer is simple and obvious: trudge on regardless.  Start regardless of what you think. 

It gets easier to follow the routine through days 3 and 4.  Though the first few days are pretty much like pulling teeth. 

Is it automatic yet?  No.  No where near.  But it is at least to the point where I can see a benefit in going through the motions and doing the exercise.  I'd generally say give something at least two weeks, but I know I haven't done that before. 

But then I'm also influenced by the thought that people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year.    Broken down, some goals aren't that hard when spaced out over a year.  There just has to be definite progress throughout.  And there almost never is definite progress.

Recent books I've read:  
The Four Hour Chef by Tim Ferris

The Boring Details

I've been spending a lot of time contemplating automation recently.  Automating things is rather great.  But I think there is an unwritten side part to automation.  I'm going to write that down.

In order to automate anything, you must first document the entire process.

After reading that sentence, you are probably thinking a lot of sarcastic comments.  I'd like to agree with you, but the stupid simple is what most people miss in the first place.  How often has business classes shown case study after case study of ridiculous levels of bureaucracy that can be removed and processes that can be streamlined by knowing the process. 

But then that involves a lot of boring drudgery.  That's the part that no one does. It's a simple thing, but doing that simple thing is all that really needs to be done.   By the end of the process of documentation, you've got an in depth understanding of the events that take place.  Often in the process you start thinking about why certain things are done, and you realize just how much time you can solve by automating.

I looked at the same idea when I was fighting the Windows Automatic Installation Kit.  Sounded like a great idea.  I could never get the network drivers to work on my builds.  So I basically burned through a lot of crap and none of it worked. 

So after that, I went back to partial automation and partial manual.  If part of the process is copying files and creating directories, why not automate that?  A batch file is perfectly acceptable for that and it becomes automatic and the same everywhere. 

I want to do the same thing with network discovery, but Python is giving me hell.  Something I'm not certain of is causing me problems.  I can't get the data file to create.  

Anyways, I guess this is the call to do boring but important things.  Documentation is boring.  But it solves a world of problems.  It also gives you the ability to solve all sorts of problems in the future.  And it gives you the best ability: delegation.  If you have something well documented, you can then delegate the task and give it to someone else.

finishing projects

I actually finished Causality Crimes today.  At a whopping 21,123 words before editing, it probably shouldn't have taken me more than 2 years to finish.  I started (keeping track) in January of 2014.  At that point, I was at 3,000 words.  August, 2016 I'm finished at 21,000 words.  It didn't go the way I would have expected.  I don't know what I thought about the story going in.  It's probably going to require some serious rewriting.  I started out in a first person omniscient and moved towards a third person.  I'm not sure that was the right thing to do with this story.  It might have been a good transition.  I don't know.  I'm going to have to get a break from the thing to figure that out.  I'm not even sure I like the title any more.

With that complete, it's off to finish the second story I was writing before finally publishing my second work.  Short stories, collection 1.  I may try to find a physical book, but I'm doubtful.  It will probably be another Kindle release.  I'm okay with that.

Now it's off to re-read what I've written about a nightmare turned story called The Gray Lady about an intergalactic space virus.  It might be interesting.  It might not.  I've got to finish it to figure it out.

And yes, it really was a nightmare I had that started the entire thing.  I took notes.  They were...
-nasty intergalactic space virus
-makes non-sentient life forms sentient
-tries to kill sentient life forms. Red bands on top of armsthat wrap around to cover the wrist and slice through.

Bands are capable of being cut or broken
-Creates telepathic capabilities in sentients, but none have ever lived through a case of it.
-Called the Gray Lady because it creates a gel/smoke/shade likeshadow around the foot when infected.
-100% infection rate. 100% lethal. Any ship infected is blasted out of the sky, no questions asked.

Amazing what a completely screwed up dream can turn out.  

CCNA

One last day before the CCNA.  

After a bit of testing, I'm pretty good on the LAN side.  It's WAN and routing protocols that I need to spend the most time on.  I can get the necessary points out of studying OSPF, EIGRP, PPP, and Frame Relay.

Still working on Mnemosyne on my studying.  I covered the LAN side way too deeply.  Basically means I can answer LAN side questions without a second thought.  But WAN and routing protocol side is weak.

On the practice tests, I've been getting about 65%.  So that means I only need to improve 20% or so.  Easy.

Back tomorrow afternoon with results.

Learning the Right Lesson

I finally set a date to take the CCNA.  Actually, it's the part of the CCENT.  So I'm doing the two part CCNA thing.  Anyways, now that I have a date I have a limited time left to learn everything that I could possibly need to pass this thing.

And I'm doing everything different again.

See, success is a bad teacher.  I think I heard that from Bill Gates.

So far, I've had success.  But there were certain places that I had limitations.  Mental gaps in the knowledge.  I should be strong in all the information, not just sections.  But there are sections and specific information that I needed that just wasn't making it into my head in the correct manner.

It's funny.  At one point I was turning my CCENT notes into a book to sell.  That project was abandoned for various reasons.  But the main one being that what did good for the CCENT may not be good for the CCNA.  How can I know?

So I've been using Mnemosyne.  It's a flash card program that allows you to create your own flash cards.  So you end up getting a lot of flash cards that you study.  It seems I heard about flash cards for years, but always avoided them.

I didn't avoid them because they were complicated.

I avoided them because they were work.  I didn't need to work to learn everything.  Until I did.  And the methods I was doing weren't working.  And they didn't work for years.  YEARS.

So now, it's time to quit avoiding work.  Because that's what all this searching has been about.  Avoiding work.  And flash cards are work.

You are what you repeatedly do.

I think Aristotle said that.

Success is a bad teacher.

So if you want success, you must repeatedly do something.  And it's probably going to be work.  And it is going to suck.

And you can either do it now, or spend the rest of your life avoiding the work.

And you will keep ending up in the same scenario: wondering why you only get so far.

You are what you repeatedly do.  Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.
Success is a bad teacher.


Strangeness indeed.

redirection

I started listening to Scarcity again.  I've got it on audio book, so I can go back through the thing whenever I feel like it.

I think I'm beginning to understand something.  I was going to call this post the Kansas City shuffle, but I wasn't sure if that was correct.  So I decided to call it redirection.  I don't know if that makes it a lot different, but it seems more accurate.  Going back to to what I was actually going to talk about.

The thing I noticed was something Scarcity pointed out, but didn't provide an answer to.  It makes me realize how Alcoholics Anonymous works as well.  All major projects and adjustment schemes operate on the same principle.

Scarcity (the book) points out that being focused on something causes us to ignore other things.  The social and mental problems generally are caused by an incorrect focus.  So the answer to solve the scarcity problem is redirection.  And that's why everyone suggests exercise.

But I just made a jump there.  To get that jump, you have to go to a different book.  For that, it's over to Mastermind.   Mastermind points out that in order to think of something, you have to redirect your mind and let the unconscious processes work on the problem.

So, the answer to solving those stuck in a rut problems seems to be redirection by causing a mental separation.  The task needs to be sufficiently tedious to take the mental process away, or grind it down.  Exercise and manual labor seemed linked to the process.  Shoveling dirt for an hour or two or running both result in the brain not thinking about what it had been thinking.

So the answer to the rut problem seems to be exercise.  Or at least one answer to the problem.  I'm sure there are others.

Which makes me also wonder if the authors of scarcity ever went back to look at scarcity mindset on people who practice meditation or mindfulness exercises on a regular basis.  Meditation could easily cause that same mental separation seen by exercise and manual labor.

Though it makes me think that whatever the mental separation exercise is, it should be different than the day to day task.  A manual laborer couldn't use manual labor to create separation.  I say that, but I'm mostly guessing at this with no background in psychology.  I guess it's just what I've grown to understand.

Maybe I'm crazy.  But then again, exercise is considered a habit dominated by the rich over the poor.

things in control

Seems strange to me that people are obsessed with things completely out of their control.  I can understand a little worry when it comes to something in your teams control.  That's normal.  But completely out of your control and your realm of influence?   That's just humorous.

How can someone obsess over the treatment of another person while sitting on their couch, stuck to a phone?  What gives phone monkey the right to dictate anything?  The person that's not even capable of real action is completely obsessed with other peoples action.

My wife asked me about the weather.  She wanted to turn her phone off for the night, but there was a vague rambling of a storm.

I do not live in a ramshackle hut.  It has survived every thunderstorm thrown at it so far, with only the loss of a few shingles.

I told her to turn it off.

And what if the storm hits?

We have two tornado sirens in close range.  They test them on the last Friday of the month.

We have three kids.  All sleep with sound machines.  Which means as long as the power runs they will sleep through anything.  Should the power go out, they will go into full panic.

Our kids are also relatively afraid of thunder and lightning.  They often need comforting, or possibly  daddy shirt if the weather gets too bad.

I guess you could say I'm not terribly worried about the weather.  It's either going to rain or it isn't.  I'm not terribly worried about politics.

When you think about presidential politics, you have to think of it as a foot ball season.  No matter who you root for in the regular season, it always comes down to AFC versus NFC.  And other than a few pictures, there's not a lot of difference between the two.

There is no radically different candidate.  All those have been wiped out, and will always be wiped out prior to general election.

So what you get is a generic amalgamation that's pretty much what the last guy was.  George W Bush wasn't Satan, and neither was Barrack Obama.  Neither "destroyed the fabric of our nation" like they were declared to have done if they were elected in the first place.

The only things I worry about are the things I can control.  And I seek to understand so I can attempt to bring things that were previously out of control in to control.  Simple.

I was watching an interview with James Mattis.  He was asked if he still carried a copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.  He answer that was true.  And his reason was thus...

There is nothing new under the sun.  Everything you are experiencing has been experienced before.  This situation is not unique.

I'm expounding on a short comment there, but the truth holds.  

Strange thoughts

It's interesting.

After being at work for 60 hours in one week it's hard not to work.  I've been on call this week.

And the chaos has finally subsided for a bit.  But now I can't seem to do anything that isn't work.  Sure, I've only got about 30 minutes to go.  But its my free time.  And I don't have anything that can't wait until after lunch.

I just can't seem to do anything that isn't work.

Weird, isn't it?

Or not really.

What you think about and what consumes you is what you do.

The more you do something, the more you think about doing.  Talking about doing something doesn't count.  That just counts towards talking.

Anyways... back to work.   Or lunch.  Whichever I end up doing.

the passenger

It's been almost 10 years since I was last in Iraq.  I've got to wait until March 2017 for that time line to pass.  It's taken me that long to understand a few things.   Probably the wrong things.

Such as: why was I so willing to die for my country?  Why was I not willing to put the effort in to to my own interests?

I guess this is the conclusion I came to.

Regardless of who you are, you are going somewhere.  You can easily think of it as a car ride.

The question is simple.  Are you driving the car, or are you riding?

It doesn't matter which you are doing.  You are going to end up somewhere.  Would you rather that be a place you decided.  Or would you rather it be a place someone else decided?

The interesting part of the equation is regardless of what you want to do, you are still going.  The car is still driving.  You can be in denial about that all you want.  But it's still going somewhere.  If you have children, think of yourself in the back yelling how you don't want to go to school as your parents take you to school.  All that complaining didn't help then.  It's not going to help now.

My days of dying for random ideas are gone.  Now, I have concrete things to protect.  I have  people that depend on me. They are small and ornery some times, but I still love them.  And they are still worth protecting.  It's worth it to provide them opportunity.

So figure out what you want to do.

Do you want to control what you can about the journey?  Or are you going to complain every step of the way.

Either way, you're going to end up somewhere.

Question is: is it a place you want to go?

Start

Because you have an idea.

Because everything you think about that idea is wrong.

Because it's time.

Because it's worth it.

Because trying and failing is better than never having tried.

Because you don't want to be Al Bundy.

Because you currently are Al Bundy.

Because all the problems are in your head.

Because you aren't even aware of the real problems.

Because someday never comes.

Because you can.

Because you should.

Because it's still worth it.

Because failure is not an option.

Because if you don't start, you will fail.

Because there are more reasons to start than their are to not.

Because you are wrong.

Because you have the wrong reasons.

Because you have the right reasons.

Because you have no reason.

Because it sounds like fun.

Because you don't owe anyone an explanation for your dreams.

Because they are your dreams.

Because you can achieve them.

Because it's going to be hard.

Because it's going to be hard for reasons you aren't even aware of.

Because.

Thoughts

I read an article on Forbes a week or two ago about a person who was mad.  I don't remember what the title of the article was, but it was humorous.  It was one of the advice columns.  The writer complained they kept jumping into startups and then the startups sold.  The creator/owner made a killing while the employee didn't.  

What was more humorous was how the author declared that having these high profile jobs caused them to buy a horrendously expensive house due to California's expensive real estate market.

The part that bothered me most was the author/responder didn't tell the person a fundamental fact.  The person probably got caught up in the hoopla of the question.

The fundamental fact is this:

It is not your employers job to make you rich.

It is not your employers job to make you rich.

It is not your employers job to make you rich.

Do I need to say that again so that you hear it correctly and without question?

It is not your employers job to make you rich.

It is your job to make you rich.

Your employer agreed to pay you for the work you do.  You agreed to work for that price.  That is all.  If you want to be rich, then quit waiting for your employer to make you rich.

I'll go with a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but I've heard it attributed to many different people.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

If you want to be rich, start doing the things that will make you rich.

If you do not know how to be rich, go study people who are rich.

Quit waiting for someone else to make your future and go create your own.

CCNA class

The final class of CCNA prep is done today.  I've got to take the final, and then the formalized class is over.   It has been kicking me up one side of the street and down the other.

It's not that material is hard.  It's just that there's a lot of material covered in an incredibly short time period.  What is normally a 16 week class has been reduced to 8.  And that's pretty crazy.  That's nothing for many classes.  But a bunch just turns college into some horrendous grind.

I guess colleges needed to find a new way to make money.  And grinding students through faster always seems like a good idea.   How much do I want to bet they are charging the same amount for the 8 week class as they were the 16 week class?  Nothing.

Anyways.   Once the class is finished, I need to start studying to take the CCNA.  I'm aiming for about one month out for that.  My goal is to have it done before July 1st.  Maybe June 12th, as the place I take the test schedules on Thursdays.

Seems like that is the next thing I need to do.  Schedule the CCNA, so I have a definite date in which I'm going to take the thing.  Definiteness adds a sense of urgency.  

Why I homeschool

Something I've been thinking about lately.  One of the local schools here said they were going to have to release teachers after the senior year because they didn't have enough students.

Good.

I feel sorry for the individuals.  But for the school?  I'm happy.  Why should the populace accept such failure as we get at public education?  There needs to be a culling.  For people who's only answer is "spend more" it's time they learned to deal with the inadequacies of their methods.

For some reason, whenever I think of this I imagine either a teacher meeting with a dozen teachers lined up like the inquisition.  That occasionally vacillates towards a giant room full of people.

So, let's talk about the socialization program in school.  Let's discuss ages, curriculum, and time spent.  Well, there's speech class.  So socialization is taught in school at the very end to people who by and large are now phoning their effort in?   Great teaching job.  So if school isn't teaching proper social behavior, who is?  That would be the other students.  So you send your kids to school to learn how to socialize.  They are then taught by people who are also learning how to socialize.  And the teachers are doing what?

Guess no one ever thought of teaching power distance at an early age?   Yet that's more of a defining characteristic for success than intelligence.  Malcolm Gladwell spends an entire chapter on it in Outliers.  That is one of the greater definers of a person's ability to succeed in life.

I know a person who was trying to get into college.  Power distance defeated him until I gave him a pep talk.  The college kept telling him he couldn't go, but he didn't understand why.  I got him to ask until he know the answer and could explain it.  After all that fight, turns out his FAFSA was turned in late so he couldn't get federal aid.  If he couldn't get federal aid, he couldn't afford college (at least in his eyes).  Now there is an answer.  All it took was a little persistence and understanding of power distance.

And why is someone having to learn how to deal with people of greater authority at 20 as opposed to 5?  Why all the deferral?  Couldn't this have been easily taught in kindergarten?

It could have been taught.  But that's not the purpose of school.

So we've beaten up on the first idea of public school.  What about the rest of it?

What about those schools who profess their "quality of teaching"?  

And I ask: in comparison to what?  The children and adults of today have to compete on a global scale for many things.  Being the only shoemaker in town doesn't benefit you anymore.  Anyone can go on the web and order any individual item they want.  Unless your profession is in the trades, you need the ability to compete globally.  Even the trades aren't a good example.

Let me illustrate.  Company A has a preferred electrician.  The electrician does good work, and always fills the order as requested.  Unless that electrician stops performing, Company A will continue to hire that electrician anywhere that electrician is licensed.  150 miles away?  Pay the trip charge.  300 miles away?  Pay the trip charge.  Why?  Because you know the quality of work you are going to get out of that electrician.  And quality work is worth the extra expense.  So hometown electrician isn't competing on those big jobs with Company A because Company A is going to hire the same person over and over again.  Until that subcontractor pisses off Company A.  And the subcontractor knows it.  So that person makes Company A happy.

Once again, in comparison to what?  To the local schools?  According to Pearson, the United States is 14th overall, 11th in Cognitive Skills, and 20th in Educational Attainment.  So "best of the best" in America is still pretty pathetic in comparison to South Korea.  Or Japan. Or Singapore.

Unless you are being compared to the best, you are not the best.  The cream of the crap is still crap.

How do you solve that problem?  Pretty simple.  Eliminate stuff in the daily class load, and spend more time in teaching each skill.  Math goes from 45 minutes a day to 2 hours a day.  When was the last time a student was at the board solving a problem in American public school?   Once a week?  Once a month?  With homeschooling, that child is answering questions and getting direct solutions to problems every single class period.

What happens if one student falls behind in public school?   Nothing.  What about a lack of understanding?  Also nothing.

Until the student fails school and can't move on because they didn't understand material that built on other material.

In home schooling, the class never has to go on until the student understands.  Period.


There's probably more.  I'm sure there is.  But I'm done with the hippy failure mindset of the US.  Go out.  Be more than a conquer.

Opportunity abounds everywhere, yet many can't get beyond minimum wage.  What has the education system taught those people?  Why are they failing?

walking in the rain

Saturday,  I took a walk and got caught in the rain.

It was an interesting experience.

Normally, people avoid walking through the rain.  The instant a down pour starts, people scatter.  We can't stand the thought of being drenched and out in the cold.

As the rain hit, I realized I would be just as long to turn around and head home the way I came.  The path behind was longer than the path before.  So I walked on.

Years ago, I used to read a comic called Hound's Home.  The author made a comic where a person is desperately running to get away from the rain.  Only to make it home and take a shower.  The contradiction has stuck with me for more than a decade.

So I decided I wasn't going to pick up and go at any faster pace than I had been.  The rain started lightly, and I kept walking.  And I realized: despite the seeming trouble that I happen to be in thirty minutes from now I will barely remember any of the experience.

And the rain got harder.  I could see the house as I turned the corner.  There was an urge to break into a run.  I didn't.  And that realization hit again:  ten minutes from now, I'll walk into my driveway and stare at the rain, protected and observing.  Twenty minutes from now, I'll be playing with my kinds.  And thirty minutes from now, I will have completely forgotten about the rain.

And I was right.

And it happened just as I thought it was going to.

It made me realize that some of the darkest times in my life have suddenly just disappeared.  And then it's back to a sense of normalcy.  A place where nothing seems to be complicated.

The problems of the moment are the problems of the moment.  Nothing more.

When the moment passes, the problems will be gone.  The moment might be twenty minutes.  It might be two days.  It might be three years.

But one day, after slugging through the rain, you will realize you have walked into your carport, and the misery is behind you.

Keep walking.

observations

My wife had wisdom teeth removed on Thursday. I took a couple of days off from work to watch the kids.  During this period, I think I've made some strange but interesting observations.

I will start with a story or two.

I had one of my wisdom teeth removed in 2005, right after getting back from Iraq for the 2nd time.  It was part of that post deployment list of things you want fixed before you go off active duty.  I'd put wisdom teeth down at the end of the 1st tour. I budged at the point, just wanting to go home.

At the end of my second tour, I wouldn't budge on the tooth.  I have all four wisdom teeth, but only one didn't grow in properly.  There was a gap in between the tooth and the final set of molars.  I would have been messy down the road.  And I wanted it out.

Finally, the military capitulated and sent me over to the base dentist at Camp Pendleton.  Not much later, I was short one wisdom tooth.  I don't remember the instructions they gave me.  I just remember a couple of prescriptions and off I went.

11 years later, it's 2016.  My wife wants her wisdom teeth out.  Twenty minutes to numb the mouth, and twenty minutes to remove the two teeth and we're done.  We got our instructions and the prescription and we were out the door less than an hour after our appointment time.

My wife's family considers themselves medical experts.  They know everything there is to know about every single affliction.  On any given day, they will diagnose you with afflictions you have never heard of.  None of them are doctors, or even trained beyond basic medical care.  But they are medical experts.

They were very concerned with dry socket.  I have no idea what dry socket is.  It can happen after you get a tooth removed, I'm guessing.

Now here's the observation.  The medical professional who removed my wife's teeth didn't mention dry socket.  He didn't mention any specific issue.  He gave some simple instructions and sent us on our way.

Now this is the guy who has to treat the effects of mismanagement of the healing process in the mouth.  Everything I've heard from "experts" were not mentioned by the practicing professional. So the guy with the most experience and professional knowledge with didn't think it was important enough to mention this issue.

Only the amateurs were concerned with all these medical maladies.  The dentist had a success mindset.

My wife's family has a failure mindset.

The failure mindset finds every possible reason something can't succeed.  It point to specifics and tells good stories as to why something will fail.

Let me reiterate: the medical professional didn't think it was important.
The medical professional went to school to become a dentist.  He passed dental school.  He has been a practicing dentist in a dental practice for years.  He was asked to consult with one of the other dentists on the diagnosis while we were waiting for my wife's mouth to numb.  So at the very least the other professional dentists in the practice believed he was competent.  He didn't mention anything about failure.

How is it that the amateurs are often aware of every possible method of failure, but the professionals don't even contemplate how something can fail?

It's pretty simple.  The professional is aware of failure.  But the professional is also better aware of the likelihood of failure.  And he didn't feel the likelihood of failure was high enough to even bother mentioning.

It leads me to this idea: when starting something new, gather information.  But only enough to get started.  Because the more information you gather, the stupider and less likely you are to actually perform.

passivity.

The more I read, the more I realize that there is a wide variation between knowledge and action.  Reading is a very passive action.  Despite the vast potential of knowledge, most of the knowledge is just a gathering.  The gathering system usually doesn't have an output.  And without the output, the knowledge becomes a cesspool.  It goes in and just festers.

But that's just what successful seem to disagree with.  The system of input only doesn't really work.  It's just like the system of consuming TV.  Just a content input with no output towards any greater good.  And that output is what improves society.

I guess that's why someone said the greatest pile of innovation is found in the graveyard.  Most innovation dies without creation.  What could possibly happen if everyone created?

Who knows.  Really, it's a large pipe dream.  Too many people content to live with what others will give them, as opposed to working on creating something different and unique.  They are far too content to accept handouts.

The mass producers will continue to produce.  The consumers will continue to consume.

Perhaps there a chance that all this will change.

But that's unlikely.  The stakeholders have no motivation to change the system and in order to make it work better.

The other question is simple: how do you get the average person out of the consumption mentality and in to a creation mentality?

cisco 4 class

Back to class for Cisco 4, and I wonder where the passion is.  There are a lot of people in the class spouting the typical stuff.  Worried about how much homework they have and how to get out of it.  A lot of spurious griping and complaining from people.

I wonder why they are there.  What's the purpose of giving up your Thursday night for a class you don't care about?

I guess it's part of the degree plan.  But where's the drive to be the best?  Where's the drive to do something great in the world?  To make a name for yourself in your position?

It doesn't exist in the classroom I'm in.

I guess they haven't learned yet.

You do not rise to the occasion.  You fall to the level of your training.

And if your training sucks, so will your response in stress.

How did we get here

I work for an established company.  The company has changed since I've been a part of the company.  Partly because I keep driving change.

Why in the world would I want to do that?

And that, is the essence of this tirade.

It's very easy to sit back and say you are an original thinker.  It's also very easy to sit back and criticize someone else's plan.

So I present the Dale Carnegie/man solution.  The next time you find something that doesn't make any sense at work, don't gripe.  Seriously.  Don't gripe.

Ask people why that policy is in place.  Ask questions about how the policy was put in place in the first place.

If the answer becomes "because that's the way we've always done it" then you are ripe for revision.

"I don't know" is also a good one to work on.

Whether you believe it or not, there are many policies and procedures that end up "because that's the way its always been done".  And there is a lot of "I don't know" in the procedure.

So... once you've find something like that, figure out whether you have the ability to change it.  If you are in IT, you aren't going to change marketing without some deep evidence.  You aren't going to change operations.

Initially, look to change your own department.  Because then you are dealing with people you know and policies you have internalized.

There are two ways to approach producing the change.  The first is to get permission.  The second is to implement and ask forgiveness.

I usually go with the second approach for two reasons.  1) No one understands the need to adjust the policy, and rocking the boat is probably not going to happen.  2) Your idea might sound great on paper, but suck in implementation.

So implement the easiest possible answer to the problem, and start using it.  You might come to the conclusion that your idea sucks.  Good.  Kill it then.  Go back to the drawing board and come up with a new solution to the problem.

If the idea is awesome, show other people.  Get them to start using your idea as opposed to the other policy.  See if people gravitate towards the new policy or the old.

I ended up implementing a Cacti server in this way.  I think it was a great idea, but no one uses it other than me.  So to me that's a partial success.

What I've been working on recently is a different way to document.  It's mostly a combination of PHP, Apache web pages, and a MySql database.  So far, the implementation doesn't work.  But the idea seems valid.  So I'll keep working on it until the idea is operational.  Documentation is always the hardest part of the IT world.  The second hardest part is designing a knowledge base that people are going to use.  You want a solution that is easy to implement and follow.  And a webpage seems to be a good idea.  But the non-technical parts of my team aren't going to run queries against a database.  That's beyond them.  So I have to provide a solution for them.  And that's what this approach is.

Try it.  You may find the cruddy company policies go away.

And you may find yourself with a load of new work.

Either is good.

Those who have seen war...

To those that have seen war know that the war never ends.

The location changes, the faces change.  The weapons change.  But the war starts and never ends.

I remember when the war started.  It was March 20, 2003.  Since then, it has never stopped.

The battlefield has changed.  I haven't been in Iraq since 2007.  No more sunsets in the desert sand storms blocking visibility.  The M4 has long since been returned to the armory, and I probably couldn't even set the headspace and timing on .50 cal any more. Those skills have atrophied with lack of use.

New skills have replaced the old skills  I use a keyboard and mouse now.  Electrical scissors and crimpers.  The speed at which I used to be able to disassemble and reassemble an M16 has been replaced with the speed of making Cat5 ends.  I fight with command lines and code.  Programming languages and interfaces.

The enemy hasn't really changed.  The enemy is still amorphous and dodgy, never wearing a uniform or showing his face.  Sometimes its Haji.  Sometimes its the apathetic indifference of your own coworkers.

The war is still here.  Fought in bursts of insanity and boredom.  Sheer terror and force of will.

It has never ended.  It just moved locations.

And it will never end.


And the rest will choose not to see it.  War exists all over the world.  Right now.  And nothing is changing about that.

It will never change.

Accomplishments

So, a few weeks ago I started reading my goals twice a day.   You can read about that here.  So I've been reading them.  And making some progress.  But not the progress I want.  See, reading is just a simple action.  It requires little effort.  You are effectively done reading your goals in a few minutes.   But reading goals and accomplishing goals are two different things.

So I've started to keep track of my goal accomplishment in a spread sheet.  I just started today.  I'm not sure how well this setup is going to work, so I may tweak it.  But at the moment its something.  The end result is to start accomplishing goals more.  To do the work to accomplish the goal.  Which is a lot harder than just writing the things down.

I have to admit.  Writing them down and reviewing them on a daily basis is causing me to  put some effort in.  Just not the effort level I want to put.  The hope is small accomplishments spread out over time resulting in a big goal being accomplished.  Not some giant, one time step to accomplish the thing.  There's no exoneration in this plan.    Just straight up dirty labor.  Never ending dirty labor.  But that's what gets things done.

Now, back to reading.  I've got 6 more pages on one goal today, and I want to get those knocked out.

Parenting... (a how not to)

I've heard the statement before.  I'll hear it again.  And it's completely false.

"Kids these days..."

That's how it always starts.  It's a giant discussion about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket because the kids these days aren't doing what they should be doing.  I'm not going to blame most of it on the kids.  They get a bad rap, and childhood is a pain in the ass.

I'm going to blame it on the parents.  Children by and large are a direct representative of what their parents do.  Let me be clear: I didn't say what their parents say.  I said what their parents do.  If you yell at your kids, your kids will yell at each other.  They will be you, but with less of a filter.  It is both weird and creepy.  I've seen it out of my own kids.

If I want them to start listening more, I have to start listening.  To everyone.
If I want them to quit yelling, I have to quit yelling.

Do as I say not as I do doesn't work.  Yet that's what many parents use.  For a while.  Then they phone it in and quit trying.

It's strange how we start off wanting our children to be the president when they are four.  By the time the child is 15, you're hoping to avoid jail.

Where did that come from?  How did we fall so low as parents as to go from supremely high achievement to less than the average?  Where did our grasp disappear and our fight go?  Too many bills and too many problems in the world?

Parents, you must hold on longer than you think.  Maintain the discipline longer than you think is necessary.  Especially in the teenage years.  There is a time for responsibility, and that is as the child earns it.  Fail in responsibilities, reduce responsibilities.  It's a constant give and take.

We want women to achieve in life at the rate of their male counterparts, but what do we teach them via most children's education method?  TV teaches most children.  And you demonize business or anyone starting a business.  And you end up with some single mom on TV with multiple kids and a contrived story about how they got there.  Might as well say the sperm donor walked as some of the crap they come up with.

If you want to see women succeed, start writing successful women.  Start teaching that parenting requires two parents.  And it requires full time effort from both parents.  I don't care if you are tired at the end of a work day.  You aren't done until the kids go to bed.  Quit dialing it in and being a dead beat parent.  Achieve something.

And...  don't let the hippies teach you how to parent.  Because they haven't got a clue.

I've heard numerous stories, and I'll leave you with one from "the old Corps".  I heard it during Corporals Course in Iraq back in 2007.

An instructor was asked about the differences between the "old Corps" and the "new Corps".  He said there was a Marine who would show up to a unit, and be great for a few weeks.  Then the Marine would start becoming insubordinate and rude.  Eventually, the guy would be taken out back and beaten up.  It worked OK for a few days.  And then he was back to the same old thing.

He was moved to a new unit, probably due to his disciplinary issues.  Same scenario proceeded.  The man would show up and be great at his job for a while.  Then he'd turn insubordinate and rude.  And he would be taken out back and beaten.

And that same thing persisted until he was finally discharged.

Following the end of the story, I remember a bunch of people looking like it was something to look forward to.  Like they had missed a great institution.  But they missed the crucial point.  Despite the beatings, the man never changed.  The beatings did not fix the problem.  It was a stupid application of force that only temporarily solved the problem.

And yet here was Insanity rearing its ugly head again.   Over, and over, and over again.

Happiness is...

I've heard people discuss how a store experience can make a customer happy.

If you hear someone selling this, run the other way as fast as possible.  They are disconnected from reality and will not solve your problem.

First, happiness is a choice.  It has nothing to do with the circumstance.  It has nothing to do with what you have or don't have.  You choose to be happy.

If you are not choosing to be happy, you are probably basing your happiness on external factors.  As such, you are probably either affected by stuffitis or you have no direction in life.  You buy stuff to make you happy, and wonder why you aren't happy.  That person has confused happiness with temporary amusement.

Second, don't try to make your customer happy.  See point 1.  You are not a psychologist (unless that's your business. I'm assuming most of you aren't).  Try to engage and entertain your customers.  But don't try to make them happy.

Because you can't make them happy.

That bears repeating again.

You can not make your customers happy.

Engage your customers.  Entertain them.  Delight them.  But realize all of these are temporary, transitory emotions.  They fall suite to whim just like everything else.  But that just means you have to keep bringing your A game every time.  Because every single experience is a new opportunity to engage a customer.

Random Theories

Still reading the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Several thoughts struck me as reading this.  I was particularly going through the chapter on the bell curve.  In this chapter, Taleb talks about network theory.  It says the more connected something is, the more stable it is to a point.  But there are certain nodes in that connection that can affect the entire ecosystem.  The edges of the system are incredibly stable, the center is highly affected by problems.

Which made me think of Apple.  Apple is a highly centralized company with a highly centralized development/distribution system.  Then compare their ecosystem to network theory.  With Apple, the central connector is Apple itself.  So the one thing that is most capable of being effected by a black swan is the center.  They have the possibility of other interconnections in their suppliers, but by and large those are mostly fungible.  Foxconn is probably their biggest non-direct control node.  Failures at Foxconn can temporarily bring the company to its knees.  Otherwise, they have deep control of their own black swans because they have deep control of their network nodes.  The biggest problem Apple faces is internal.  They are unlikely to be effected by large external variations.

Conversely, that also seems to mean that their explosive change and variation must also come from inside.  They can't have explosive growth in a non-center node that effects their entire system.  So Apple has direct control of their scale.

Google/Android operates under a different model.  They use the Microsoft model.  The Microsoft model uses a large, highly decentralized network to build resources.  Which creates two results.  1) They are highly affected by explosive growth in the wings of their network.  A side business that Google has no control of has the possibility to take complete market ownership.  2) They are capable of being negatively affected by wings of the network.  Depending on the strength of the network node, they could easily be taken down by a shift in an influential node.

Which shows the difference in two different development/business methods.  Neither is better or worse.  Just different.

I'm probably wrong.  Humans are notorious in being bad predictors.  I'm also very likely to have used affect/effect wrong in several places.

Anyways.

The Next Revolution

The next revolution will be in energy, but I don't think it will be in the way people think.  Many of the current revolutions have come things that were commodities and were innovated in the off-commodity market to create a new product.  Phones and Internet are great examples.

With energy, you have two issues.  One is storage, and the other is creation.  Both need answered.  With current energy creation methods, you create way more than you need, and force it down the path (the electrical grid).  In 99% of cases, all the energy isn't used and it just burns off somewhere.  Where?  I haven't a clue.  In that 1% case where you don't have enough energy going down the path, you have brownouts.  So you want to avoid the brownouts by forcing too much energy down the path that will never get used.

So, that comes to the second problem: storage.  If you have too much energy coming down the path and you don't just dissipate it into the air, then why not store it?  Storage could easily come in the form of individual homes and municipality wide storage.

Now the problem has been explained.  What are you going to do with all that new energy?  The better question is: what can't I do now that new energy is going to solve?   Almost anything.

Giant mechanical robots?  Need new energy.  Space ships that are worth a darn?  New energy.  Flying cars?  New energy.  Laser blasters?  New energy.

Because the big problem with most of these technologies is the ability to produce sufficient energy to make it work.  A giant robot is easy, just so long as you leave a tether on it.  But who wants a giant robot that is tethered to a cable?  Diesel engines are nice, but they are incredibly inefficient and need to be exceptionally huge to produce the kind of energy you need.  And after creating that huge engine, you need a place to put all that fuel.  Where is all that going to go?

And I have a distinct feeling that an institution is not going to create this new form of energy.  It's probably going to be someone pissed at paying their electric bill, trying to deal with the next fuel crisis.  Because solving rocketing heating costs by building a new technology is very likely.  Revolution usually happens when the issues with the existing system become so onerous that someone starts looking for an answer.

If it's going to be American, then the cost of fuel prices will necessarily have to skyrocket to create a sufficient pinch.  When gas prices were jumping towards $5 a gallon, people talked constantly about 100 mile per gallon cars. At $1.25 a gallon, people don't even think about it.  So the issue is likely to be solved by someone from Africa.  It's that need issue.  When you don't have a power grid, you don't have the issue of dealing with regulation.  And if you can create power in Africa, then you can solve lots of issues.

It's that lack of alternative that causes such amazing growth.  When there is no other option, a new option must be created.

And I have no faith that government is going to fund or create the next energy revolution.  They think wrong.  And you have to solve the thinking issue before you start solving any other issue.

Which leads in to why I think people should get out of debt and get on Thrive.  More energy to solve your issues and more money to experiment to create the world you want.

 

Wayne Hose Assignments in Base 39

So POP discount wouldn't work.  And POP discount is something the company wants working.  We were dealing with a Commander, running a base 39 application.   Verifone had told me I needed to set everything up for Wayne auto configuration.  My pumps are all 3+1. In layman's terms, that means I have two physical hoses on the pump.  One hose distributes 3 grades of fuel.  A 2nd hose distributes another grade of fuel.  In this case, the 3 represents Nolead, Plus, and Super.  The +1 represents Diesel.  Nolead and Super are pure grades, and Plus is a 60/40 blend.

Wayne says you should set up a 3+1 as Diesel, none, none, Super, Plus, Nolead.  Fuel assignments worked great, but POP discount didn't work

A short discussion on acronyms.  POP can either mean Point of Presence, or Point of Payment.  One refers to a gas pump.  The other refers to a pin pad.  At one point, I knew the story of who created two same lettered acryonyms in the Verifone world.

Anyways, the answer.  Or maybe not.

I asked a person who went to VASC school, taught by Verifone itself, back in December. Dude aced the test.  He had no idea what Wayne auto configuration was.

So, Verifone told me the hose assignment should be set up as Gilbarco normally set them up.  Gilbarco setups up their hose assignments on a 3+1 as Nolead, Plus, Super, none, none, Diesel.  Now, Verifone told me to use the "Gilbarco" method to assign hoses, but don't skip positions.  Great, so we just missed true Gilbarco setup.

So, the new hose assignment is Nolead, Plus, Super, Diesel.  I go check pumps.  And everything has hose assignments, but it's not right.

In the midst of the drive back to the town, I figure out the answer, and its back to SFC days.

SFC is the Smart Fuel Controller.  Imagine a box that is way too small fitting way too many wires and is a bit too complicated.

So...  Change the hose assignments to (and here's the real answer)....

Diesel, Super, Plus, Nolead, none, none, none, none

So...

That's it.  

The Not So Monday Post

I know it says the "not so Monday post", even though it is still technically Monday while I'm writing this.  Monday evening to be exact.  Which is a bit different than Monday morning, though not by much.  I didn't watch the Super Bowl, so anything I say can't be blamed on the greatness (or failure) of something I am completely unaware of.  Strangely enough, I didn't even know who was playing until some point in to the game.  My wife was Facebooking ,while I was doing something else.

I couldn't really tell you what I was doing at the specific time of the game, seeing as how I didn't watch the game.  What I can tell you is that I got back to teaching my kids math and reading.  I know I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how best to teach children.  I also know I've been thinking about how best to automate a good deal of the process.

The problem is I need to start teaching now.  My kids aren't learning what they need to learn while I try to figure out the entire equation before I begin.  That would be great if I could.  But it doesn't look like its going happen for the first two kids.  I've got two more years before my youngest starts school.  Hopefully, I'll have it figured out by then.  If not, then I think I'll still be okay.  At the very least, I'll have started and produced something.

I'm currently using Saxon Math for home school.  The scripting seems to work for me, as I'm not terribly sure what I should be teaching.  I guess I don't realize how much I know without any sort of background of when I started knowing it.  Sure I can read a calendar.  And a map.  And I can navigate using a compass.  Do I remember when I learned those things?  I can't narrow down the basics of compass navigation, but I can remember when I learned the final refinement.  I know it because it was relatively recently.  Reading a calendar?  That has to have been 30 years ago.

My current reading book is also script based, though my kids have gone decently off script.  It's Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  I'm currently on lesson 45, and my kids can site read most of the material.  So no need to completely follow the script.

I think the bigger part of all this discussion is that in the beginning, you must start somewhere.  Start with scripts, start with anything.  Just start.

And get some Thrive so you can make it through that teaching session after 12 hours of work.

The Monday Post

It's Monday, so I suppose it's time to post something.

I shouldn't have that feeling, but I do.  Anyways.   I am on Thrive.  It's pretty awesome.  You should go check it out.  After a week, I've cut my coffee intake to about 1/3 of a cup per day from 1 cup per day.  And I actually gained weight.  I'm not as incredibly scrawny as I was.

So that's definite progress.

After reading something on LinkedIn, I started reviewing my goals twice daily.  I don't think I was spending enough time on them, and really they weren't even in the forefront of my brain during the day.  How can you possibly achieve your goals if you aren't focused on them?  When was the last time you looked at your goals?   I'm guessing it has been a while.  Probably right after you made them.

I did this with an Outlook calendar event.  I'm not sure this is the best way to do it, but it is definitely the most portable.  It is also the version that is likely to be with me at any given time.

Running out of time this morning, so...   I'll be back.

Content Production

A while ago, I was thinking about content creation.  And I was thinking that the ratio should probably be better than a 2:1 ratio of production versus consumption.  It was just some number that randomly popped into my head.  And the number sounded good, but that's...  quite unrealistic.

A production of that level would mean for every 2 pages you write, you would read 1 page.  Which sounds like a great idea, but I consume a page at about every 2-3 minutes.  Production of a page can take upwards of an hour.  So the time comparisons aren't really comparable.

And then you deal with esoteric subjects like measuring production of non-text info.  What about drawings?  Or 3D models?  You don't really consume 3D models.  You could consume drawings in the form of comics and cartoons.  But how do you measure progress on those things?  It's a good question.

So, rather than use absolute measures of production/consumption, I think the measure should be time spent.  I'm still convinced you should maintain a 2:1 ratio, but it's two hours to one hour.  Two hours of content production can produce different levels based on the media, but it still produces.  It also causes long term progress towards goals.

One hour of consumption allows you to get a more absolute measure.  Because really, it's all opportunity taxes.  An hour spent consuming is quite literally an hour you will never get back.  An hour spent producing is also, paradoxically, an hour you will never get back.  But it makes you feel a lot better to spend an hour working on something that will lead you to accomplish your goals.

Finding Problems

Based on some ideas I heard on a podcast, I’ve started writing down things that annoy me.  I’ve got two plans on this.  One, I want to know whether I’m focusing on issues that are important or issues that are completely out of my control.  But second, and most important, was that it provides a list of potential opportunities that can be fixed.

So to do this, you simply need to write down three annoyances a day.  You do this every day for 30 days.  After those 30 days, then you have a list of problems that you have the potential to solve.  What I’ve found is that I’ve trained myself to not complain.  And I’ve been trying to start this project for several days. 

But I drive around, and I work, and I run into things that annoy me.  And they piss me off for about 3 seconds.  And then I’m off again, without any remembrance of what made me mad.  So I’ve had to take special effort to both remember what pissed me off.  And I also have to take special notice to write down those things that piss me off.

 

Funny thing is… once you’ve trained yourself to not be so critical of the world, it’s hard to go back to be critical.  But those observations are just what you need to find opportunity.

Breakfast thoughts

As a person who is chronically scrawny, I find the weight gain segment of the market heavily under served.  Though the solutions to both weight loss and weight gain are simple, it seems like ten thousand books have been written on weight loss, and only 1 or 2 on weight gain.  I guess people see it as a non-problem.

I've been reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  It's quite an interesting jaunt into the world of the highly improbable.  I've made it through chapter 5, and I'm beginning to agree with most of what he has written.  I'm guessing it's very easy to underestimate the importance of things the can scale.

The thought I had while sitting in church was fairly simple.  Maybe it's the one I should be paying attention to.

Are you working on a solution that scales?  If it doesn't, stop.  

Scaling is the only hope of financial explosion. 

Which, that fits correctly with everything else I've read.  It ties in nicely with Robert Kyosaki, and countless others.  The problem is a simple one: the employer only gets paid for the work they do.  If you want to get paid more, you have to put in more time.

The entrepreneur creates one thing that can be sold to many people.  The thing is created once, and then you sell it for as many as you can possibly make money on.  Because of scaling, your idea went from one to millions in a short period.  Your financial situation was thrown for a loop.  Why?  Because you realized a profit on your idea that scaled.

Anyways... the day is calling.

Time to go think of things that scale.

 

A New Beginning

It’s a new year and a new beginning.  What could I say about it? 

I’m not sure.  Because my current blogging status is based off whim, I really haven’t had anything to say.  Or at least I don’t think I have.  The problem with operating by whim is you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what you are going to say.  It’s time spent waiting for inspiration to show up.

Which is exactly opposite of what I normally teach. 

So maybe the answer is I should start talking about the complications and problems associated with trying to get something started.  But then, most of those are mental.  And the answer is “quit procrastinating” and do something.

It’s really that simple.

Whenever you get the idea, start then.  Don’t wait until the beginning of the week.  Start right then. 

Hopefully, you’ll get a small victory before the grind sets in and it becomes a lot like work. 

And if it doesn’t, happy grinding.