In Defense Of Low Tech

The life of a digital gypsy. Sounds kind of fun, huh? Technically speaking, you could spend your whole life working, communicating, and wasting time without being plugged in somewhere. I mean eventually you would need to recharge the batteries on all your devices but think of it, using a cell phone to conduct business over the phone and a laptop to work on with a Wi-Fi signal at say, Panera. You could remotely work from home or at your favorite coffee bar.

Hell, if you were savvy enough you could make a good living without ever stepping foot inside an office or perhaps even own a residence. Companies would pay you to work for them, traveling the world, squatting in an empty cubicle in their office and housing you at a hotel or some sort of alternate housing. You could be a Wi-Fi nomad. But what happens when the signal stops?

NPR recently ran a story about a digital gypsy who does everything without being connected by wires. If you can get past the interfaces of working on a smart phone or laptop then maybe that’s the life for you. Personally, I want a hardwired connection somewhere in my life. I have digital voice for phone and while it may be nice to have something shiny and high tech I recently wanted to go back to the old rotary phones of the 70s and early 80s. Why? We had a little thing lovingly called Snowmageddon this past Winter. We suffered through severe snowfall that darkened the homes of numerous customers up and down the Mid Atlantic. I was without power for two days.

Ok, that doesn’t sound that awful. Sounds like camp. Well, it’s not. I’m not saying that I was close to jumping the cliff because I didn’t have cable or couldn’t harvest my crops or play Bejeweled Blitz. But three things took place that forced me to vacate my home until the power came back on there.

1. First and foremost, the heat. We had no heat in the house and the temperatures dropped into the 40s by the end of the first day.
2. No power means no good sleep. I am a CPAP user and without power, sleeping is rough for someone who quits breathing while they are asleep.
3. No power means no phone. Again, I have digital voice that runs through a modem fed by my cable company. I can’t just pick up a corded phone and call someone. Granted we have cell phones, but see how low tech would have triumphed here?
4. No power means no Internet. Oh the horror. Since I run an online business as a side gig, I could not update this blog, my websites, or my websites’ blog. This is, of course, the least problematic thing I experienced.

Now, I know there were people in more dire situations than mine. A man died waiting for paramedics to get to his house through poorly plowed streets. But think of how many people rely on power and wireless signal to do anything.

I may be Chicken Little but haven’t we seen, firsthand, how putting all our eggs in one basket is a bad thing. We let the banks run amok and we ended up in serious trouble. The automotive industry collapsed and people lost their jobs. People lost their homes. America lost its financial footing and we are still coming back from the brink. Take that lesson and apply it to the Internet and wireless technology. What if we find ourselves without a signal?

IT experts will tell you the Internet’s infrastructure is built for redundancy, that it withstands numerous attacks from hackers, viruses, or anything as simple as a undersea cable being severed. But how long can we continue to rely on something so vastly complex and touchy. How long before we have some sort of EMP disaster that slows us down to a 14.4k speed. Remember Wargames? Same idea. Somewhere in all of this wireless world we need to have a cord plugged in somewhere. In our financial industry, our defense and security infrastructure, and our basic city infrastructure.

Here’s another example. NYT is removing a number of routes from its service to save money wherein they will have to spend an ungodly amount to redo all the signage for subways, bus lines, and maps and ticketing. While it might be less expensive to maintain digital signage and the use of apps for smart phones to be able to freely change information on the fly and reduce the need for costly revisions, what happens if we have a power outage like we did in 2006. Granted the transportation system might be affected but taxis and busses can still run. What if that outage extends into weeks? People, unfamiliar with the layout of Manhattan will not have any way to navigate around. Eventually, old printed signage will have to be brought out costing more money to install and maintain until Con Edison comes back up and running.

Everyone talks about business continuance and disaster recovery of online systems but are we truly prepared to address a situation that involves no t having any systems? How many times have you walked into a room and tried the light switch when you know the power is off? It’s habit. It’s not that you are checking for power. You are assuming it’s there. Can we afford to assume that the power will always be there? And it’s not like I’m spelling Die Hard 4 type of cynicism about our country's ability to handle a crisis. I’m talking in terms of the everyday digital gypsy. If we have a collapse of our networking infrastructure, how does someone who relies on it to do business expect to stay connected? Instead of the factory worker who gets laid off you have the white collar consultant. That person that squatted in a cubicle and lived at the Hyatt using his laptop and crackberry to make sure he could afford that latte habit would be isolated. There are more out there than you think and they are probably responsible for a lot of commerce that helps keep the economy chugging. They may be the second line of impact after the bigger systems like banking, agriculture, and automotive, but those industries might rely on the digital gypsy to keep them working.

For me, I want to stay plugged in somewhere. I want to know that when one thing fails, I have a backup plan. It may not be perfect, but it’s a start.

Cult of Wessonality

Politics is a slippery slope. You grease the wheels for months, garnering support for your cause, and when you get a hold of the brass ring people expect results. I’m not even talking about the ones who paid for it. I’m speaking of us, the general public who made the call. Unfortunately, instead of being patient while plans are set in motion, we’re looking for instant gratification and so is the ticker on Wall Street.

The economy is in the outhouse and most of America is in the poorhouse. Well, not everyone. The tenet of “He who dies with the most toys wins” is alive and well in America. In recent weeks, there has been more fingers of shame pointed at bad behavior then ever were, domestically, in the past few years. To equate to an office environment, the Obama administration is calling everyone into the break room and informing us all that we are all required to work more efficiently and cut down on expenditures. Usually, the boss wouldn’t name names in public. He’d address the group as a whole allowing the guilty parties some anonymity in order to change their actions but folks from AIG to GM are still thinking that the Administration is talking about someone else and continue to do business as usual. Finally, Obama had enough and publicly called out AIG for its bonus scandal and also asked Rick Wagoner to step down as CEO of GM. Both of which have had polarizing effects on the public and the economy.

Then the question arises, should Obama have done it? Is this positive movement towards that ‘change’ thing he spoke of for months prior to the election? In a word, yes. There are those who think that it’s not the job of the White House to make these requests. However, who’s job is it? It’s obvious that the reason we are in this mess is because no one bothered to watch the trends. It’s not just the fault of the previous administration, but it’s their fault that is wasn’t stopped sooner. The fact remains that this is a country of the people, for the people, and by the people and we have every right to question what we think is wrong, whether you are for the current administration or against it. Either way, we gave the administration the right to cover our asses.

When we elect an official to put our best interests forward, we give him/her the power to speak and act on our behalf. When that entails our tax money being used to bail out troubled corporations, whether they deserve it or not, the official exercises, by proxy, our wishes. Therefore, we and the elected official acquire the ability to make that call. Now, the President can ask for the resignation of Rick Wagoner, but it was up to the board of GM to approve it. There is the rub. Everybody talks about how this is the first step towards Socialism when all it is calling out someone for farting in the car. As long as you ignore the problem, Stinky McGee will keep letting them rip.

Then there’s the case of Bank of America wanting to spend TARP money on sponsorships for sports deals. Well that’s just great. We just gave Jack our only cow to sell and he came back with magic beans. It’s like giving someone money to pay off their debts and instead of doing just that, they turn around and try to double it at the craps table. I didn’t spend my stimulus check or tax refund on scratch and win tickets. I paid off some debt and bought some items for the home. I stimulated the economy.

Maybe we’re asking for too much here. Maybe bailing out these big companies was a bad idea. We hoped that by shoring up their assets, they’d help grease the frozen wheels on the economy and get it going forward. Instead of doing that, perhaps a better message to them would have been to reap what they sowed. Of course, letting them fail would have been the first domino in a huge That’s Incredible display that would have made things worse. Yet, everyone was so quick to get the TARP money out to stop the bleeding that nobody bothered to make sure that we were stitching up the wounds and not just putting a band aid on it. There should have been some provisions on how the money was spent. Grants given with some language attached that specified the purpose of the money. Instead we gave Joe, the copy room guy, an expense account and sent him to Vegas for a conference. Now, AP is looking over Joe’s expense report and asking, “What the hell is this $500 charge for special services?”

Here in Pittsburgh, we faced a similar situation. The city was given a grant in the neighborhood of $400 million dollars, to construct a tunnel from the main part of the city to the North Side. The purpose was connecting downtown with the main sporting areas and a new casino that is being built near them. In a time when the city was in jeopardy of losing a major hockey franchise, needed a new arena constructed for sporting and other events, and also needed major overhauls to the transportation system and road infrastructure, it seemed silly and irresponsible to spend that kind of money on an underwater tunnel for an underused light rail system. Yet, that is what the money was allocated for by its donors. We didn’t have a choice. We either had to use it or lose it. So, drilling and construction began on what is called the North Shore Connector.

Now, there is talk that it may not be completed because of a ballooning budget due to materials and the poor economy. Still, the money, given to the city, was specified for a certain project. Not like the drink tax or Onorato tax, as we like to call it, which give the city the ability to add a 10% tax to alcoholic beverages in order to pay for the Port Authority’s budgetary expenses. When the final tabulation was made at the end of its first year, there was a huge surplus beyond what was forecast. Instead of using that money for its intended purpose, Onorato wanted to spend the money on other projects like bridges and roadways. This was met with huge amounts of criticism because the opinion of instituting this tax in the first place was a major point of contention with residents who were then threatened with the idea that if they don’t pay the drink tax, property taxes have to go up. Let’s say the shoe was on the other foot and the Bar and Restaurant Owners Association was hurting for money. If the Port Authority had added a tax increase on transit fares to help them out, which they would never do, and the Bar and Restaurant Owners Association decided to use that money for other expenses instead of their budgets and payrolls, there would have been a major uproar over the issue.

Now, in the case of public opinion over the economy, we need to either be a little more patient and make more concessions. This was my biggest fear when Obama was elected. Not ‘what’ he would do, but how we would perceive it. We believed in change, yet we want someone else to do all the work. We need to take a little more responsibility for making things happen. That goes for unions, CEO’s, and everyday Americans. Our short attention span approval ratings need to get a reality check and we better start realizing that we need to be the force behind change. The coach can call the plays. He can design them, inspire us with a rousing “Gipper” speech, and give us all the tools for success, but ultimately, we have to go out on the field and win the game. For once, in a long time, there has been no glossy film put upon a Presidential Administration. We got what we asked for and there’s been no attempts to hide any actions. It’s just time for us to grease the wheels a little bit on our own and make the country go a little smoother. Thing is, we all have to give it a little push.

15 Companies that might not make it in 2009

As the economy slides further and further down the slippery slope of recession, odds makers are starting to look forward to the potential loss and closing of more companies. Here’s a compiled list of 15 companies that might not make it to 2010.

1. Rite Aid
2. Claire's Stores
3. Chrysler
4. Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group
5. Realogy Corp.
6. Station Casinos
7. Loehmann's Capital Corp
8. Sbarro
9. Six Flags
10. Blockbuster
11. Krispy Kreme
12. Landry's Restaurants
13. Sirius Satellite Radio
14. Trump Entertainment Resorts Holdings
15. BearingPoint

Looking at this potential list, I only recognize half of the companies, a product of my sheltered Southwestern Pennsylvania life. I can only speak to those I am aware of, so this is not a complete analysis by any means.

Rite Aid
Perhaps the first major retailer to fall in the wake of Wall Street’s woes not solely at the fault of Wall Street. You can probably bet on seeing more stores like this collapse under the weight of Wal-Mart’s integration into everything America, especially during a recession. If Rite-Aid does go, keep an eye on CVS. They have roughly three times the revenue as Rite-Aid but again, competing with Wal-Mart is like going into a gun fight with a spork.

Claire’s Stores
One of the last bastion of 80’s fashion accessories, I’m surprised the chain is still around. Blame a hefty acquisition by its parent, Apollo Group, last year for signs of doom and gloom. These are the same folks that bought Linens-N-Things right before they went bye byes. Another factor, mall traffic is waning as people tighten their belts further.

Sbarro
Not even Michael Scott’s love of the Italian eatery could be enough to save them. Their financial standings aren’t that bad. Again, mall turnout is a definite factor in the loss column as is their competition from juggernaut’s Dominoes and Pizza Hut.

Chrysler
If The Detroit 3 were comparable to the Laff-A-Lympics, Chrysler would be The Yogi Yahooeys. They’re not as evil as The Really Rottens (GM), but not as strong as The Scooby Doobies (Ford), which boasted powerhouses Captain Caveman and Blue Falcon. You just can’t compete with one team that is pure evil and the other which has better players like the Taurus and F-150.

Blockbuster
The media rental giant has been fighting an uphill battle ever since OnDemand became part of the digital basic service. Not to mention, they didn’t make any friends with their problems concerning late fees a few years ago. While they’ve tried to compete with NetFlix in the online mail order service, their brick-and-mortar approach is their strong suit and unfortunately bad economy equals less trips to the store and more home rental service through cable and satellite providers. While die hard cine-philes while still go to the store to rent DVDs for the extras, the general public has only the attention span for the movie by itself and needs only one night to watch defeating the no late fee perk Blockbuster has adopted. Similarly, my own local Supermarket staple Giant Eagle did away with its DVD and game rental service in house and opted for the vending machine style Red Box kiosks outside the store. They’ve already surpassed Blockbuster’s number of locations and require no Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarrantino types on the minimum wage payroll.

Sirius Satellite
Desperate times call for desperate measures. In this economy people are going to start looking at the things they can do without and a subscription to satellite radio is not safe even with Howard Stern as its biggest feature. As XM and Sirius decided to join forces instead of die alone in the satellite market, HD radio has tried to carve out its niche by touting more music for free. Frankly, I can’t find enough good music to listen to on regular radio, why would I pay for satellite or even an HD receiver both of which could cost hundreds of dollars. I’ll stick to my iPod and NPR for my tunes and news. Most people will either resort to buying CDs or songs from places like iTunes and becoming their own DJ, commercial free.

Krispy Kreme
Talk about having two strikes against you. The donut giant exploded onto the scene in the 90’s and its impact was much like a sugar rush. Fun and exciting at first, but the withdrawal and crash later was detrimental. First off, the healthier conscious America began shunning the franchise, which started closing locations, some months after they were opened. Now, with the recession, donuts are less of a necessity and more of a luxury. Unless the stimulus package can gave an insulin boost to the economy, the Hot Light may go out for good.

Six Flags
This one surprised me. Granted, they bought up the defunct Sea World park in Ohio, before turning around and selling it to Cedar Point’s parent group Cedar Fair, but being paired with a Hollywood Giant Warner Bros. should count for something, right? Six Flags has been in trouble for years with investor issues and having to sell off assets to pay off debt. Unfortunately, the economy has taken the plunge over the lift hill and it’s a hell of a drop before it goes into the next hill. Bad economy = no money = no vacations = no riders = no fun.

Trump Entertainment Resort Holdings
The fact that the namesake left in February should give you an indication of how bad things are. They also filed for Chapter 11 and casino buying is the third rail in a bad economy. No one will touch them. People aren’t going to gamble what little money they have, especially if they have to travel outside a certain radius and possibly pay for lodging as well.

You have to take these prognostications with a grain of salt. It shouldn’t take a psychic to see what sectors of the economy are going to suffer the worst in a recession. Entertainment, luxury items, and businesses that have direct competition with other businesses that can undercut their prices are going to suffer. A powerhouse like Wal-Mart can pretty much outmatch any niche store because of all of its offerings.

The bleakest looking outcome for this mess would be that only two things will be left standing, the U.S. Government and Wal-Mart. In that scenario, Wal-Mart will buy the U.S. Government, offering to handle all of its services at a discounted rate, and we will finally be under the rule of the Chinese. In this case, learning “Would you like fries with that?” is not going to help you.

McScrewed

Bailouts.. TARPs… Recession… Stimulus… No matter how you label it we’re a little McScrewed. I use that term because that’s probably where I’ll end up working with the way things are going. The government seems fit to throw money at organizations that have shown they can’t be trusted with money. The promise is that the Federal Government is giving IOU’s to banks to stabilize credit and in return they pay back the loan with interest. In theory, there should be a profit.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the last time I used an IOU was when I was a college student and a little short on cash around the holidays. I used my student computer account and Photoshop to create these little “Coupons” for my parents that basically stated that I would clean out the garage or wash the cars instead of buying them a present. That was 15 years ago and I never did make good on those IOUs. So, how do we know the banks will pay back the Government? In essence, the Government just became Fannie Mae and the banks became the American homeowner who bought a sub-prime mortgage.

For the most part attitudes have changed but still people are conducting shady business as usual. John Thain, there’s a guy we’ve all read about in the news, he was the Merrill Lynch CEO that used $1.2 million dollars to renovate his office and gave out billions in bonuses to executives days prior to the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America. In his defense, he cited that a lot of the losses Merrill Lynch suffered were due to his predecessor. Ok, the man had a $1400 garbage can in his office. You tell me who is to blame for this? Oh, and his answer for why he gave the bonuses, “if you don't pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise.” Well, guess what, Bucko. You were supposed to be the best and you almost destroyed the franchise.

This type of mentality doesn’t surprise me when you hear about all the rumblings along Wall Street in response to President Obama’s decree that salaries will be capped at $500,000 for executives of companies receiving TARP funds. Now, there is anarchy and bedlam in the board rooms as executives find themselves suddenly in a salary freeze. What to do? What to do? Rudy Giuliani has said that if you take away bonuses and incentives from these people that the rest of New York will suffer from reduced patronage at restaurants and other establishments. Sorry, Rudy, but these guys aren’t going to McDonald’s or even Houlihan's and they aren’t creating unemployment buy losing a few zeroes in their paycheck. They already created unemployment by letting their companies become so screwed up.

Look, if you are a company that is going to the Government and asking for millions of dollars to help keep you afloat then you need to tighten your belts, too. Guess what? Everyone else has to so don’t think we’re picking on you guys. My salary got frozen along with a lot of other folks’. You’re going to have to start living like the rest of us. If you can’t, then you’ve proven our point. You work for a financial institution for pity’s sake. Did you not learn how to manage your money? Now, if your company was solid and didn’t need financial assistance from the TARP, then by all means, do what you want. By that token, you should be acting responsibly and mindfully of the economy. If anyone believes we’ve already seen the bottom of this hole, then they’re just as delusional as bonus backed bankers.

Just like we, as regular taxpaying, nine to five working folks need to realize that everything didn’t change in November. You try stopping a speeding locomotive on a dime. It’s impossible, even for Superman, and sorry to say, Obama is not Superman. No one is. It’s going to take a lot of time and patience to slow this speeding train and get things working properly. Unfortunately, we are an short attention span audience. We want something to happen right now. We want our credit lines to be fixed, our jobs saved, and our President to wave a magic wand and make all the bad people go away. An economic stimulus package won’t solve all the problems. In my opinion, I don’t think I’ll be getting one of those rainbow sherbet looking checks with the Statue of Liberty on it. I think this package is more for the businesses that give us our other checks, the ones we get every other week. That’s so we can keep getting them. This isn’t a hand out. This is an opportunity to create jobs to fix roads and bridges. It’s a chance to upgrade our cities instead of building up on the degraded infrastructure that has been allowed to lapse into the old standards of the 20th and in some really depressed areas, the 19th centuries.

Is the Government doing the best they can for the nation. I hope so. I don’t think you can narrowly point to one man, one company, or one administration and say, “Shame on you.” This has been allowed to go on for years and people figured, it’s only wrong if you get caught. Somebody out there screamed and waved their arms, trying to be heard as the voice of reason and was ignored as is usually the case in any disaster movie. Well, now the economy could be the basis for a new Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich film, in fact they’re probably sitting around trying to figure out how to work in huge explosions to take out their fictional Fannie Mae’s or Lehman Brothers. Be sure that Hans Zimmer is firing up the synthesizers trying to find the right set of chords to play as President Obama, as played by Will Smith or Jamie Fox, slowly stands up with that stern look on his face as the camera pans up and around him in slow motion. This is the moment you’ll be waiting for because that when he’ll get pissed and go on the offensive, taking out bankers left and right without having to reload. Once you wake up and realize that life is not a movie, albeit almost a bad one, you’ll go back to your job, look at other companies’ postings and wildly throw your resume about hoping that one of them is in better shape and willing to hire you.

If you think that throwing money at the problem will make it go away, then all you’ll do is live from bailout to bailout, stimulus to stimulus, and we’ll be right back where we started when this whole mess reared its ugly head. We all need to be aware that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. We need to change our course as individuals whether we make $500,000 or $50,000 a year. We need to realize that when it does get better, it won’t stay that away. We need to be ready for the next big hole or out of control locomotive, otherwise we’ll be saying “Would you like fries with that?” instead, “I’d like to supersize that.”

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