A Goofy Foot in Mouth

I don’t want to talk about the election results. That has been well covered, and while I disagree with many of the conclusions, I would like to call out one important thing. Maybe not at the end, but there were a lot of “undecideds” at one point. The massive shifts in Republican polling during the primaries show at least half of that dynamic. But for some reason all of these idiot political consultants have done everything possible to prevent politicians from connecting with voters. I have written about this before, but chief among the glaring barrier between candidate and constituent has been the lack of the use of analogy to make political and policy arguments more cogent.

Imagine you are a farmer from a long line of farmers producing fresh crops for the local community. Your parents teach you the craft and when the time is right, you take over the family business, a 100 acre farm. Each year you look at last year’s production, advances in technology and most importantly how many people there are in the community that will buy your crops. No sense in planting too many acres if you can’t sell it. Conversely, you don’t want to farm too little, else your customers will go somewhere else, even at higher cost. These predictions are paramount to your success, your livelihood and the future of your family farm.

The tractor is getting old and during the winter you decide to buy a new unit in the spring. There are many different models for selection. Factoring the payment, your margins and anticipated future potential, you obviously don’t want to buy something too big. It’s time to figure out what your prospects over the next few years will be and estimate trended demand. So you naturally look at what you have been farming over the past years. Looking at your notes you see that while your parents had once jam packed all 100 acres, because of bumper crops and people moving out of town, or buying frozen vs fresh and other trends in the local community, that you are down to only farming about 80-85 acres. What’s more, you see that couples are marrying later and having fewer children later life, so you can estimate that the trend for fresh vegetable demand over the coming years will not go up. Bottom line, you can buy a smaller tractor and save some money on the monthly payment, which will already be tough to cover, given your projections.

Is there anything here that does not make prefect sense? Even if you are not a farmer, can you understand, appreciate and even support the decision of the farmer? Sure we may argue about adoptions adding people to the community or the new community center drawing in a few new families, but those are arguments at the fringe. While, the farmer may want the super huge John Deere model 9560R, it is not justified for a farm in the 80 acre range. Buying it would be irresponsible, negligent, and jeopardize the livelihood of her family. Right?

Last week Salem held a hearing with the school committee to discuss a possible plan to close one of the 6 elementary schools in town. Over the past 5 years the town passed articles to fund massive renovation projects for 3 of the 6 (now complete). A warrant to renovate the other 3 was voted down in the last election. So the school committee did the responsible strategic-minded thing, and went out to hire a professional firm to study student population growth over the next 5 years. After seeing the numbers trend down so steeply, the committee, with the superintendent, thought it might be prudent to ask the town to only renovate 2, since the third could be closed keeping projected class sizes the same, even with the smaller footprint. As a kicker, closing one school would save an estimated $900k per year in operating costs.

At the meeting, I was the only one to stand up in support of what to me seems like the only rational course of action. A high schooler got up and rambled for 10 minutes about the need to renovate the high school (well established fact, but not part of the agenda) to thunderous applause. A “graduate” of the school in question talked about the soul of the school and what it meant to him. There was anger over the (heaven forbid!) need to possibly bus students 2-3 whole miles further than they do today…gasp! And then my favorite: A fellow employee and financial advisor described how we were in a cyclical bear market and soon we should shift back to a cyclical bull market and when that happens there will be all this crazy demand…for a school? Hey Meg, if the market goes up 10% let’s have another baby and get him into, the school system ASAP. Are you kidding me?!?

I was livid. Even if births in the area were to suddenly spike, it took 2.5 years from start to finish of the 3 school renovation plan to be voted, funded and completed. As Bubba would say, it’s arithmetic. If I see 500 new babies born over the next year to replace the estimated drop in enrollment, I still have at least a year to plan the school renovation and have it complete before those babies turn 4-5 and enter that school. Geewiz, how do I know that? I can read a calendar. This stuff is not hard to figure out. What’s more, if Congress is unable to do anything to set this country on a stable path to prosperity, do you really think the economy will magically cycle back to a bull market and there will be massive expressions of peace and love and unprotected sex happening throughout southern New Hampshire? If you are the farmer, how many acres do you plant as a contingency for THAT scenario?

I went to Cogswell school in Bradford, MA for second and third grade. I think it was built as the town hall in the 1800s and later became a grammar school. Today it is empty, for sale even. Does that change the status of my degree as class of ’80? Tear it down and plant corn for all I care. Somehow when this country acts as a democracy, we respond with emotion first. Yet somehow we formed an emotional bond with a detached an aloof Harvard law grad turned community organizer. In the absence of a rational argument people gravitate to the familiar old blanket, even if it is full of holes and no longer keeps warm.

The term “Compassionate Conservative” seems to have been a complete farce, attempting to play on people’s need for a warm blanket. This has no meaning to me and certainly provides no hint of how to approach problems with the interest of actually solving them. I will aim to be a Rational Republican… That movement starts today.

I was driving home from work the other day and as I passed through a neighborhood, a young kid maybe 14-15 was skateboarding down the middle of the road. This was a two lane residential street with space for on-street parking on one side. Cars were lined on the opposite side so that leaves maybe 24 feet for me and oncoming cars. Of my 12 feet, this kid decided to go right down the middle. There were sidewalks on both sides of the street and despite the fact that he was moving at a walking pace, they apparently weren’t good enough. My young friend looked back at me several times and as I approached to within 50 feet or so, he saw no need to give way.

Wanna hear me sound old? “When I was a kid…” yes we actually feared cars on the road…they hurt! Oh sure we’d say “hit me and I’ll sue” because everyone knew that the surest way to fortune was a six figure settlement from some litigious ambulance chasing scumbag lawyer. But times were different, when you went out to “play” there was a 90% chance that you were going to get hurt. Riding bicycles? We didn’t even know there were helmets. Skiing at the Bradford bump? = Chinese Downhill (where does that awful name come from anyway?). Sledding down Nottingham? The whole point was to push your opponent into a tree or a parked car. Bumper skiing behind the bus? Sounds awesome until you realize you are going too fast and have to let go.

I could go on, but I think you get the point that actions actually used to have consequences. So fear really meant something. I know I am being hypocritical here. We protect the girls so much that they don’t even really realize that there are recreational activities that actually hurt. When life has no consequences, there is no reason to act responsibly. You could say my skateboarding friend is no different from irresponsible bankers lending money to wannabe homeowners with no means of paying a mortgage. Those bankers are in their 30s and 40s, my age. Declaring bankruptcy is so easy now that who cares if you screw up. You get 3 lives in Donkey Kong, don’t you get a “do over” in life too?

I’m a big fan of personal responsibility. It is emblematic of the New Hampshire spirit. I like to meet people with that can-do, take-charge-of-my-own-destiny mentality; shovel my own driveway, build my own deck, change my own brakes, repair my own sled (aka snowmobile). It helps me to believe that it is possible that the next generation will have at least some people that believe that they have responsibility for their lives and what happens to them. People that know what it is like to take risks, to understand the consequences of excessive risk will always be the ones that understand the satisfaction of personal success as well as the consequences of not taking any risk. You want to play in the street? Fine, but have the respect, the responsibility to know when to get out of the way. When did the world become so “me” focused that kids now feel entitled to own the road? Is the new ‘normal’ an attitude that someone will provide for me, so what difference does risk make? Given the way my generation was raised, yet displayed some of the irresponsibility that created the Financial crisis, what will this new generation grow up to become? They know no responsibility- they feel entitled to gadgets and technology and the ‘everyone gets a trophy’ mentality such that they don’t even make risk-weighted choices anymore. Mommy and daddy will come through for me, my lawyer will get me off because I’m just a kid, why learn anything when I can Google it?

Life’s lessons of risk and consequence should be baked into everything, that is how you raise a generation with respect for natural and given resources. Unless you have seen Wayne’s World, no one even knows what “Game Off” means anymore. When we played street hockey, we didn’t even have nets. We set up 2 rocks at either end of the street. No one took wild shots: you had to chase the ball. You wanted the side going uphill even if it was harder running: the ball didn’t roll as far. When someone parked on the street: you knocked on the house door and asked very politely if they would move their car so we could play. When you see a car heading this way: “Game Off!” and step to the side of the street. We would even make sure to use low profile rocks: Who could afford to pay for undercarriage work if a car hit one of the rocks when driving over? In a world where everyone plays in organized leagues with refs and protective equipment and liability release forms and cheering parents and trophies and designated snack providers and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who even thinks about risk anymore?

Football season doesn’t really start for me until the first home game of the regular season.  A home game means tailgating.  Tailgating is awesome.  This is my 11th year of being a season ticket holder and I will never get sick of it.

Sam and I run the tailgate.  Tomorrow’s 1pm game means leaving the house at 7 am and getting home at about 7pm.  Drinking beer in the morning is a little silly, but bloody mary’s do the trick.  We like 4pm games.  Those feel about right.

Some of you remember that last year marked the creation of the tailgate box.  During the offseason there were numerous surgeries resulting in greatly enhanced capabilities.  We learned a lot last year because there were many 4pm games.  The best part of the later game is that when you get to the parking lot at 11:45, there are usually 2 nationally televised games.  So with my regular TV and Sam’s portable plugged into the box, we could watch both games.  But that wasn’t working, so I got a bigger TV.  For tomorrow, we will be watching pre-game on the little screen and an old SuperBowl on the big screen (32).

I also finally painted it, did some rewiring and added a lid that holds more stuff, including an espresso machine.  After all, we may be rednecks in the parking lot, but we aren’t heathens.  Here is the picture of the box folded up.

I really like having everything in one unit so I don’t have the mish-mash of setting up and lists to make sure I remember stuff.  Plus other groups love it, they all come over and ask if I am going to sell them.  Little do they realize I have at least 100 hours into this thing.  At some point I will build version 3 and it will be all powered by hydraulics and make sound effects like in the Transformers movie. Dad is sending me a battery meter, how cool is that.

Here is the unit opened up in the garage.  I will try to post video of the setup process from the parking lot tomorrow, so keep a look out.

There is something about tailgating with the guys that makes football so much more enjoyable.  I built regulation cornhole boards, and Meg bought me ladder golf.  We’ll have the table going for a pong tournament.  Most likely some other crews will come over and play in some games.  There is a genuine feeling of camaraderie in the parking lots.

We have other traditions.  Like our system for DJ’ing music.  Last year we came up with the approach that everyone gets to play 5 songs from their ipod/phone.  This year we had to cut it to 4, because CMAC kept getting skipped.  The only rules are that 1) no song can be longer than 5 minutes and 2) there is no crappy pop dance music.  Whatever ridicule comes your way, you gotta take it, but the song plays til completion.  We can get pretty rough.  I can’t wait for tomorrow.  I am playing a 4 song funk set.  Superstition, Jungle Boogie, Brickhouse, and of course Play that Funky Music.  Sam  is going to explode.  He can’t take anything but G&R or AC/DC.  Last year CMAC played a full set of Michael Jackson rock covers.  Spence mixed in Pink Floyd and Cake.  Awesome.   This season is going to be a blast.  Even if the Pats don’t win, we always know it’s a good day in the parking lots.  See you boys tomorrow.

In January I set some goals for the year.  I am a little late on my review, but this morning’s blog post hit one of them, so this seems like a good time to go through the list with comments.   Here it goes.  Progress noted in Red

Read books- I read 2 books in addition to my regular reading and podcasts
Post 26 times, add comment to form auto-biography- Done, but I have not completed biography
Start tailgate site as coding test case, use squarespace- I tested squarespace on a different idea and have decided to move in a different direction
Finish House projects, inc water and parking at skihouse.  Not even close, but making progress
Surf at least 3 times- Not even once. FAIL
Break 100 in golf- Done. two weeks ago I shot a 95 on a great day at Killington
Organize life and schedule each week on iPad- Kind of, still working tech challenges
Business- Nope. But lots of pivots here and even some new ideas from Joe that could make it really work.

Start coding – Nope
Beta for 1 business, have something to pitch – Whiteboard notes, but no
Pitch medical idea internal Fido – Idea already built, but pitched other ideas and my career may be at an inflection point
Figure a way to fund development of something in house – Plan for January will happen with oDesk or new idea

Break 20 min for 5k- I haven’t run one yet, missing Salem this weekend, maybe a turkey trot
Sub 170 lbs – 177, nope
Run 3 obstacle races – Finish top 5 for my age group DONE.  And close enough on being a top finisher. Triathlon (1:21 bad), Local Mud (22nd of 355 overall ), Spartan Sprint (94th of 3644 overall, top 3%)
Keep up SEALFit Plus added Sealgrinderpt

I’ll post goals for the rest of the year soon.  Hopefully I can make some more progress.  Spartan Beast and Hampton Beach marathon coming up in a few weeks.

I have been struggling with how to frame this post for a while now. The subject matter may be a little touchy to some. I personally don’t think it is an issue. Maybe I am just rationalizing. Either way, I will frame my rationalization here and you can be the judge if the logic is sound.

I am reading the 20th anniversary edition of Cigar Afficianado. In it they went back to many of the subjects of their cover stories to interview them on their experiences with the story and to gain some base details about their enjoyment of cigars. Whenever I read biographies, I like to imagine how I would respond to some of the questions.

When did you start smoking cigars? I don’t remember my first but I do remember the one that really exposed me to enjoying them. I was in San Diego for the SCT Summit conference about 1998. My friend Julio and I were walking through the Gas Lamp district at night after dinner. We walked past a very small cigar rolling shop and the owner was sitting in the front window, rolling cigars by hand. I was fascinated so we went in. Turns out this guy grew up in the town next to Julio in the Dominican Republic. He pulls out a special bin of tobacco and rolls a cigar just for me. That was one of the best cigars I’ve ever had.

What is your favorite moment enjoying a cigar?. I don’t have one special more than others, but I do have several that are memorable. A few months ago with dad and Derik on the cruise in Alaska. At Derik and Jenn’s wedding with all of the guys and Derik’s uncles singing old French drinking songs. The fire pit at Bachelor Gulch late one night with Tom at our ski trip to Beaver Creek. With Meg, Loren and Michelle at the Kenny Chesney CountryFest in Foxboro.

Why do you enjoy smoking cigars? Megan is always yelling at me that I don’t know how to relax. I guess I just don’t like to, it feels like a waste of time. I enjoy reading, but because I only read non-fiction, my brain is always moving and I am always trying to put facts into context. I just don’t slow down and enjoy the moment. Given all of my priorities and other stresses, there are only a few times that I really relax. Playing golf, après ski,and tailgating are times when I feel like I slow down enough to enjoy the moment. For some reason, the act of enjoying a cigar forces me to really focus on those times and not other worries. I never listen to music anymore, but at night after everyone is asleep, I sit out on the deck and look at the stars, listen to some jazz and smoke a cigar, and I truly feel at peace.

For the record, I am not a fan of smoking. It is a relatively disgusting habit, and I know that Megan won’t kiss me for 24 hours after a cigar. Taylor hates it and is constantly worried that I will die from my one cigar every few weeks. My stress level is so high that I need those moments of clarity and focus and introspection. I don’t know why, but enjoying a cigar gives me that. I exercise over an hour every day, so I am in great shape. I feel that my running, offsets the negative effects of not inhaling a cigar now and then. For me, it helps me to cope with all the other stresses in life. For me, the mental health I gain from the hour of enjoying a cigar, offsets the negative health side effects. For me, it is all about balance. It is one positive thing that helps balance a lot of potentially negative ones. I may be making excuses, but I think the important thing is for each individual person to have at least one little thing that gives them moments of clarity and focus. Cigars may not be for everyone, but they work for me. How about you, what is your balance?

Since father’s day I have been working to think of a way to post something about my dad. Nothing has really worked until just recently.

I was coming home from Vermont with Tay last weekend and Meg called me to tell me that the washing machine made a loud horrible noise and the rubber gasket on the front was all messed up. That was the full description. Naturally I concluded that she killed the washer, and that because of her negligence I was “inheriting” a broken machine and we needed to buy a new one or spend a lot of money to fix it.

I know what you are thinking, before I even know anything about what happened I say that Megan killed the washer and I am blaming it all on her? Seriously? Well sure as it was George Bush that ruined the economy and not Congress and/or FNMA encouraging home ownership as the prime goal of personal finance, and financial institutions creating instruments with no transparency or an accurate pricing model, and most importantly stupid people buying houses they couldn’t afford then she MUST be the one that killed the washer. Because it couldn’t be the dumb engineer who created a bad design nor the inept Chinese assembly plant that put it together wrong, or any of the 10 years of wear and tear before today that did it in. Sorry, I digress, that too is a dad trait.

Growing up, dad would fix everything; cars, anything electrical, tvs, appliances, it didn’t matter. Dad has this philosophy that 90% of fixing stuff is just taking it apart, cleaning it up and putting it back together (correctly). That earned him the nickname “fix-em dad”. But it was the other 10% that earned my admiration. Back to the washing machine…

So at 8PM while the girls watched Olympic Soccer I took the washer apart to figure out what was wrong, because that’s what you do in these situations. Watching dad, I learned to line up the screws as you take them out or rethread them as you go. Be methodical, or as dad would say, “don’t do it half-ass”. I line up the parts too, First out is the closest and last one in.

So it turns out that while I thought I was buying a full stainless steel tub, that only metal is just the screen piece that spins inside of a plastic tub (that you can’t see in the showroom). The plastic tub catches the water during the wash/spin cycle to pump out from the bottom. The motor, pully, and pump are all attached to this plastic tub held up with struts (little shock absorbers) on the bottom and suspended from the metal box by two heavy duty metal springs. This way when a lopsided heavy load spins, the force is absorbed by the springs and dampened by the struts.  All of the pieces float inside of the white metal box you see in your laundry room.

Pretty good idea except that the METAL springs that shake a whole bunch are hooked onto a PLASTIC hole. And while one spring has a nylon protector to alleviate friction, the other must have been lost during assembly.  Hence the wearing out of the hole and the break.This is how the other spring looked

Megan of course wants to call a repair guy or just buy a new washer. Now the only way to replace this part is to pull the whole tub out, disassemble the screen, replace the tub and put it all back in. That’s got to be 4-5 hours plus the cost of the part = lots of money. A new washer would be $800.  I am not ready to quit.  So I decide that I can use two of the screws that hold the two halves of the tub together and splice several layers of galvanized strapping in between to create a new hole for the spring hook.  Note: galvanized strapping is like duct tape, except for people that want a longer term solution.  I use it for everything.

After about 4 hours, as I am finishing, Megan wakes up and says “You’re still working on this?”  Well after all that effort the washer is working now and hopefully I can get a few months out of this solution.

This story sums up my dad and how he has affected me.  I don’t give up on creating solutions and I hate wasting something that still has value.  When everyone else thinks something is done, I am still going at it, messing with new ways to make it work.  I can’t tell you how much I have saved over the years by not throwing things out and making the most of a bad situation.  I have lots of nicks and scars to show for it, plus a lot of cost savings, but most importantly to me, a stubborn perseverance to find a better way to do things that makes me who I am.

It really was a nice fix-em, thanks dad.

Today I am reading all sorts of stories about how Syria has finally admitted to its stocks of chemical and biological weapons.  They are threatening to use them on any foreign invaders and not the Syrian people.  Not anywhere can I find word about where they got these weapons and scud delivery missiles.  This is some of the worst reporting ever.

In Nov 2002 under the directive of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, weapons inspectors (Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBarade) searched Iraq for long suspected chemical and biological weapons.  They were thwarted at every turn.  CIA surveillance photos showed trucks leaving out the back of government installations as inspectors walked in the front.  Where were these trucks heading?  Yeah thats right, their northwest neighbor, Syria.  In all fairness, we have no idea what was in the trucks or where exactly they went.  Shortly thereafter, the “coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq and then found no weapons of mass destruction.

In September of 2004 I delivered the following speech at Temple Emanu-El, Haverhill a few months after I became president.  I don’t think many people understood what I was getting at; the metaphor was probably better understood if you read it rather than trying to listen and focus after 12 hours of fasting (it was Yom Kippur).  As I wondered back then, and I wonder now, what was in the trucks and how did Syria get chemical and biological weapons?  I don’t know the answer, but someone should ask the question.

At Rosh Hashanah I spoke to you about our congregation and personal actions.  Today as we look inward, I would like to take the opportunity to examine how we come to make decisions.

When I was in college some of my favorite classes were my liberal arts Philosophy courses.  I remember one that taught me the skills to form a logical argument.  Whatever we chose to discuss, the rule was that all of your conclusions must be driven by statements of fact.  It’s an interesting exercise.  For example:  If I take the position that Blue is my favorite color.  That is a statement of pure opinion.  How do I prove it?  I might start like this: The sky is blue.  When the sky is blue, it is usually a clear bright day.  Clear days allow me to do lots of outdoor activities.  Outdoor activities make me feel good.  Thus the color Blue leads me to think of things that make me feel good.  That is a possible reason that I “like” blue.

If you choose to disagree with me about my opinion, my favorite color, you must disagree with one of the facts in my proof or if there are multiple facts, you weigh them differently.  “Hey Josh, snowboarding is an outdoor activity you enjoy.  Snowboarding requires snow.  Snow only comes on days when it is grey and cloudy”  Good point.  I might reply “Yes but that is the creation of snow, not the act of snowboarding.  Snowboarding is still best on a bright, clear, blue-sky day”

Now most of us don’t have the concentration or time to go through this kind of internal analysis for every single opinion we have.  Instead, we often take shortcuts.  The problem is that in this age of TV and internet news, talking heads, ‘embedded’ reporters and channel X “experts”, we have become lax in our duty to analyze issues.  Pop-media editorials magically become our opinions.  We have lost the art of analysis.

We might see the simplicity in someone else’s analysis and decide that it works just fine for us.  We may have inherited opinions from our parents and choose not to form our own opinions about the same collection of facts.  The real danger is that instead of creating our own opinions, we blindly ingest those of others.  By doing so, we homogenize the thought process and corrupt our own individuality.

In all of our lives, time is the enemy.  And so one alternative to the lengthy analysis process is to extrapolate parallel ideals from other opinions we have already proven to ourselves.  Using these analogies is no substitution for critical analysis, but it can help guide the process: Instead of starting with nothing, we have an outline to follow. 

I am an OK story-teller.  Stories are a great way to look at scenarios and help you to make correlations to lead your analysis to a conclusion.  This particular story works best if you are a parent, if not, well…work with me. 

My wife and I like to think we are pretty good parents.  We have a 16 year old son.  We let him make his own decisions in life.  We believe that by showing him respect and affording him his autonomy, he will make the right choices.  So far he has lived up to these broad expectations for communal living.  But we always know that if he starts to stray, we would need to step in and set him straight for his own good, after all he is still growing and learning.  One day we start to notice that he is hanging with a new crowd.  He is dressing differently, he looks like a degenerate.  Sometimes after he comes home from hanging out with his friends, we notice that his eyes are bloodshot and he seems to be slurring his speech.  Once while he is up in his room with his friends, we notice some smoke emanating from under his door.  It’s a strange smelling smoke that seems eerily familiar.  We decide to be open and forthright with him.  We sit him down and ask if he has tried smoking marijuana.  “No way guys, no way”.  We want to trust him and we take his answers at face value.  A few weeks later we smell it again after one of his buddies brings a small paper bag up to his room.  This time we are more stern.  “We want to inspect your room, will you let us?”  “Sure dad, just let me clean a bit, come up in a few minutes”  There are piles of clothes and junk near the outer walls, he could hide a Ford Expedition in there.  We check randomly, desk drawer, underwear drawer, under the bed.  Looks clean.  “Son, just make sure you are not letting those friends of yours push you in ways you don’t feel comfortable.  We love you and just want what is best for you.  If you need to talk, or if you need any help, we’re here.” 

Time passes and one day I hear loud music coming from his room as I drive up to the house, smoke is wafting from his open window.  That’s it, I’m heading in there.  As I bang on the door ordering him to open up, my wife drives home and sees a few of his buddies with a backpack jumping out the window to run home.  He lets me in, he smells of pot, there’s smoke everywhere, but no ashes and no trace of any marijuana anywhere.  I turn the room upside down, pleading with him to tell me the truth.  He is impassionate as if he knows I will find nothing.  He is quietly smug with an attitude that he has gotten away with something.  Later I overhear a phone conversation “Dude, we got away with it.  That was close”

Do my neighbors think that I had grand aims at subverting my son’s independence?  Or that I was violating the sanctity of his sovereignty?  Of course not!  I am reacting to sociological facts that we read about in the papers every day.  It’s not the little things that scare me, it is the doomsday scenario that gives me pause.  Because I know that once a kid tries pot, they are sure to try ecstacy.  And once you’ve had one pill why not try speed.  And once you’ve had that high you’ve got to try mushrooms.  And after one psychedelic, you’ve got to try LSD.  Pretty soon my son is snorting coke and shooting heroine.  So you’ll have to forgive me if I am a little paranoid and I always fear the worse.  I’m a good parent and I want what’s best for my family.  What scares me even more is that one day, my 5 year old will find my son’s needles and play ‘doctor’ with our infant.  Is it right for me to get this crazy right now about a little experimenting with pot?  Yes, because I have already concluded that the only way to stop this obvious progression, is to stop the rolling boulder while I can still control the slide. 

The decision to storm my son’s room was a no-brainer.  Would any of you have acted differently given the signs?  I tore the place apart to find nothing.  But maybe he’s smarter than me and he found a way to hide the stash where I couldn’t find it at all.  It doesn’t matter because while I am there, he’s got to clean his room and he’s got to let me back into his life.  We have to find a way to co-exist.  I had already decided this course of action to protect all of our future; I needed to act preemptively for his own good.

I’ve worked this scenario in my head a million times, and I’m pretty sure that most of you would have done the same thing.  Caring for your family and seeing where they will be in 2 months or a year or 5 years, is what keeps us up late at night.  But can we all say that we would apply the same standard to other similar scenarios in our lives?  Can this scenario, one in which the conclusion is crystal clear, help guide us in how we shape our opinions about other worldly circumstances?  Possibly.  On one hand, we might look at the facts and react in a way analogous to how we would react to the preceding story.  Conversely, we might look at a similar set of facts on a larger scale and come to a different conclusion.  What makes the exercise so valuable is that each of us looks at a collection of facts, and assigns weights based on our own internal experiences and evaluation.  In the end, our conclusions might be contradictory or they might align perfectly.   Hard to believe, but our convictions may not be as clear as we tell ourselves they are.  Much of it has to do with perspective.

I’ll tell you another story, this one is true.  Megan and I bought our current house just shy of 3 years ago, December 2001.  My next door neighbor put in a pool just before we moved in.  He did not have a fence installed when we got there.  I figured I’d wait for the Spring to see if he would put one up when the ground thawed.  Pretty soon it was summer and still nothing.  I had a day off one day and so I went to the Town Hall Building Inspector’s office.  I wasn’t sure if New Hampshire had the same rules for a 4 foot fence around a pool, that Massachusetts does.  Turns out we do.  I almost pleaded for help with the woman behind the counter.  “By any chance do you ever go back and spot check building permits?  I really don’t want to start a war with my neighbor, because he seems really nice.  I was hoping that maybe you might accidentally discover through a random review of files that he doesn’t have a fence.  By the way, I live on Lake  Street and I think his pool went in last September.”  “Sorry sir, we can’t do anything without the address, are you reporting a specific infraction?”  I left the office in frustration.

There still is no fence.  And when friends come over it is so easy for them to criticize me for not having the conviction to report him.  I remember problems we had with neighbors as a kid.  They had Dobermans, and not getting along made life miserable.  But today my friends see the same devastating future, the doomsday scenario, as I do:  What if one of our kids wanders over there and falls in the pool?  My goodness, how would I live with myself?!?  I can see a future and I know what I need to do to prevent that eventuality.  I am forced with making that choice every day, and I admit I lack the moral conviction to take action.  But oh, it is so easy when you live in another neighborhood.  “Really Josh, just call the Inspector, it’s been long enough”

Isn’t it interesting that with the pool I know what the right thing is but I am paralyzed to actually do it because of a little thing like proximity?  The slight sense of control I get from thinking that I can watch my kids and protect them when they are playing outside, somehow placates my inaction.  In a post 9/11 world, is that not the most dangerous thought you’ve ever heard? 

On the other hand, when I had no immediate control of my son’s actions inside his room, I see the threat as imminent.  And there seems to be clear justification for action.  But when you get right down to the knowledge I have on hand to make these two decisions, is there really a difference in threat to my kids?

Two similar scenarios can lead to different conclusions.  In one case, all my self analysis leads to one clear decision to act.  On the other hand, little pieces of extraneous history skew my analysis and have paralyzed me with procrastination and inaction.  Bystanders, who can stand back and see the issues from afar, are free to do the right thing, free to exercise their moral conviction without repercussions or risk.  They are free to perform their own self analysis and come to completely different opinions than I.  Does my friend have a moral conviction that I do not, simply because she thinks the solution for the fence is so easy to enact?  I say No.  Perspective does matter.  Acting today to thwart a perceived future threat, seems perfectly clear.  However, taking action sometimes risks more danger and strife, when actually trying to curb it.  No matter what the position, you have to respect and admire people that have the clarity of vision to see the future, to realize the potentials, perform their own analysis and know just what to do:  No matter what the recourse.  For them and hopefully for us, it’s hard to do the right thing, but sometimes you just know there is no choice.

I really hate voicemail.  My outgoing message at work even says so and asks people not to leave me VM.  It really is a useless mode of communication.  Inevitably after 5 minutes of trying to get the message and rewind and write down a phone number to a name that I can barely understand, I get it wrong.  If I am at work, I respond via email.  So send me an email instead.

There is only one VM I really appreciate.  And that is the rant from my good friend Loren (FPOTT- Former President Of The Temple).  Loren will call at random times of the day and lecture my phone for well over 2 minutes about whatever it is that is bothering him that particular minute.  If VM runs out of space, you can be sure that he will call back to finish, cursing Verizon for having the audacity to cut him off.  I wish I had saved some of the classics.  Most come while he is in the car and so there tends to be an automotive theme as he screams at me through the wireless microphone: The calamity of “Solah Glayah” (aka solar glare) on 128, the idiots who clearly don’t know how to drive to Fenway while crossing the BU bridge, the governor and his desire for higher taxes, street construction in Bradford, and the list goes on.

I haven’t left a rant for Loren in a while.  There is an art to it, sometimes I even have to write notes and practice.  In his honor, I think we deserve a new medium, and so I will share with everyone here on my blog- minus the colorful language that usually pervades the message and makes these so meaningful.  Note that a rant begins calmly and as you think about the issue more, you become more…lively.

First some back ground.  I work at one of the largest financial services companies in the world and our de-facto head is female.  She has done an amazing job of defining product and focusing on customers in ways that previous male leaders did not.  It is an exciting time.  I work with some exceptional female colleagues and VPs, one whose team I really want to join (hint hint).  I also work with incompetent men and women.  Some make more than me, and some less.  Some are promoted when I think they deserve it and some are promoted to my disbelief.  But inevitably, in 2012 and with everyone I talk to, your success is based on being in the right place at the right time and/or taking a risk on something by working your ass off to be an expert in some speciality.  This applies to women and men equally.  You can’t make evaluations of the current micro-workplace by looking at retroactive statistical macroeconomic measures.  There is a story to every individual employment action and none of them are the same.

So while the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act sounds like such a great idea, all it really did was to change a Supreme Court ruling on how to interpret a statute of limitations clause.  It didn’t change behavior and it won’t directly change statistics.  Today, opportunities are fair, and while the numbers may not have caught up to that reality, corporate America treats everyone the same.  Women that leave the workplace for children are not rewarded for their devotion to the firm, the same as men who take a leave of absense to deal with “family matters” (I know both).  Women who know their s–t are respected and promoted ahead of those women and men who don’t.

But here is where the workplace is fundamentally UNfair.  We need legislation NOW to correct the debacle that has become known as; Business Casual Clothing in the Workplace.  And so begins the rant, press 1 to listen to your message, beeeep…

Yo buddy, sorry I missed you but here’s something I have been thinking about.  Clothing.  Men and women that wear suits to work are about the same.  Pants or skirt, uncomfortable shoes, uncomfortable shirt, maybe a tie/scarf and a jacket.  That is fair.  Young kids don’t understand norms, and so I understand that there are too short skirts (girls) and black dress “sneakers” (boys) from the interns that show up every summer.

But business casual has gotten flat out ridiculous.  Men for the most part wear dress shoes that are uncomfortable just like their suit counterparts.  Please explain to me how women get to wear fricken flip flops that because they have a quarter inch strip of leather are somehow dressy?  How exactly does that work?  And why is it that even their dressier shoes have no tops and no backs?  No socks?  So I have to look at and smell stinky feet as they slip off those shoes in meetings just cause they can pop off so easily?  The equivalent used to be nylons, which have somehow become taboo for business casual, and while I may agree that they look silly, THAT IS NOT THE #$%@ POINT!  If that was the identifier that signified equality in hosiery, why do they get to arbitrarily declare it no longer “in style”?  How is that fair?  Can you see me wearing leather sandals to work?  Loafers or boat shoes with no socks?  Yeah right!

Lets talk pants.  The most comfortable I can swing is a pair of beige soft cotton kackis.  But women can wear capri’s?  With flip flops no doubt.  You think I could show up without a belt?  But women get to wear stretchy flowery prints with elastic waistbands?  Bend over to pick up a pencil and I see underwear?  How exactly is that equality?

We’re moving right up now!  Maybe, just MAYBE on a hot summer day I would feel safe wearing a polo shirt with a collar.  How do chicks justify a tee shirt just cause it’s made of satin or some fabric that looks fancy?  I am usually in a button down, which oh by the way is SOOOO uncomfortable, it totally sucks, and it is always tucked in.  They tuck in shirts maybe 50:50.  Tank tops?  How come that is ok?  I can see a tattoo?  I would get marched to HR!!

I don’t want to hear a single peep about hair and makeup, that is ENTIRELY MANUFACTURED BY THEM as an excuse to go shopping for chemical-crap-de-la-DuPont that does absolutely nothing!  You spend 30 minutes on that per day, times 5 days a week means I am inherently more productive for net 2 hours per week, right?!?!?

I am seriously sick of this.  I feel so repressed and flat out discriminated against.  It is not fair and I should be able to sue someone.  There should be some sort of EEOC or DOL rule that regulates exactly what “business casual” is and what is acceptable dress for both women and men.

Coming up on my exit, hugs and kisses to the family.  Give me a call later.   Beeeep!

So now you know how all good legislation begins.  Please support the FACE Act of 2012(Formal Attire and Clothing Equality) , I will be writing a draft next week.

After reading one of my blog posts Dr. Eric Burger recommended that I read a book called True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo, who writes for Salon.  He is reading it too (a lot faster than I) and is thinking of using it in one of his classes.  I am not finished yet, but the book made me think of a picture and since I have been wanting to try to include a photo in a post, I figured I would use this as an opportunity.

The first chapter is almost impossible to get through.  Manjoo insists that John Kerry was defeated in 2004 almost single-handedly by the Swift Boat veterans and their false claims that Kerry should not have won the medals in Vietnam.  What I remember at the time is that these guys were very angry and while all of their claims were proven false, that is not the reason why Kerry lost.  To summarize, we hated his ‘I know everything’ brahman tone and attitude.  The quote “I actually voted for it before I voted against it” was a HUGE blunder.  The fact that he married a friend and colleague’s widow who just happened to be worth $300M (and she was not exactly a sympathetic figure), was a little ‘creepy’ as Taylor might say.  And most importantly, was the iconic photo from Vietnam.   Which of course I can’t find now.  But it’s the one with him in the field and a camera around his neck, rifle shouldered.  He’s got a camera in the field and then testifies to Congress about the atrocities of his fellow soldiers.  It all just didn’t seem right.  That’s why he lost.

Once you get past that chapter, the book is a really great study on how people surround themselves with only the opinions they agree with and completely close out conflicting thought.  Look at your friends and family with whom you disagree, what kinds of stuff are they always reading and emailing?  It is very powerful, and somewhat scary that we have evolved this way.  Brad Feld wrote a great piece about “Grinfucking” and how  CEOs should avoid that thinking with their companies.  But having this be so commonplace in the rest of our lives is staggering.  Furthermore, there are studies showing that people actually agree with an opinion more, when they like the person giving the opinion, regardless of whether they actually understand the position or not.  The data in the studies is amazing.

One thing that the author denies is the liberal bias in the media, and he cites the existence of Lou Dobbs, Fox News and the “Right Wing” blogosphere as examples of how those outlets create balance to what could be viewed as a leftist slant in other media outlets.  This is a major hole in the argument; you can’t compare a bunch of blogs and talk radio to the big 3 news stations, even if you add in Fox News.

Look at this picture from CBS News during the 2008 debates.  I always say that media bias is subtle, has there ever been a news story on this blatantly biased coverage to date?

This was a picture I took of my TV while watching the debates.  Notice that my TV had a nice indicator of the exact middle of the set by the power button just below the Sony logo dividing the speakers.  I added the black lines for effect.  McCain was talking at this point, notice his mouth is open and Obama’s is closed.  But notice the split screen percentage?  CBS decided to shift just slightly the emphasis to Obama, he probably has 52% of the screen.  Why would they do this?  Notice the relative size of the candidates’ heads?  I drew a horizontal line at the bottom of McCain’s chin.  His head fits on the screen but Obama’s extends beyond the top and his chin extends lower when compared on that horizontal line.  He clearly appears as the larger man.  Does it make him seem to have greater stature?  More powerful?  You can be the judge as to the psychological effects of this kind of media coverage, but you can’t possibly deny that this behavior takes place.

Get the media to love you, the coverage will follow, and people will start to like you and trust where you want to lead the country, no matter what you say.  A new strategy indeed.

The conventional wisdom in VC circles is that you fund good teams and worry about the idea later.  I still think this is silly, but I am starting to see the logic, at least as far as accelerators are concerned.  Given what is coming to be known as the YC Bubble, this is clearly the foundation for what I would estimate as a plurality of the startup world.  Who cares about the idea when you have a team that will live on Ramen and work 20 hour days steering a company pretty much wherever a bunch of ‘mentors’ and ‘advisors’ tell them to go.  A “pivot” in an accelerator is a nice way of saying, “yeah that’s nice kid, but why don’t you build the product around…”

I used to wonder how this can be considered a rational strategy but then I started to think about studios, and the notion of funding a captive group to build your own ideas.  Accelerators are a nice variation on that theme, letting you act like a VC, create incentives for the founder, but build products as they would in a studio (it’s not really the founder’s idea if they change it as a result of interactions in the accelerator program).

Ever wonder why the rich keep getting richer?  Because it is really easy to make money when you already have it.

On my computer I have a series of folders with product ideas.  I am working through probably 5-7 right now, plus a few ideas for work-work because I might have a better chance at getting those moving.  All I really want to do is build something meaningful.  I still dream of the 8FE (8 Figure Exit), but a little pride, recognition and the feeling that I actually contribute something to society, would be nice.

This is college graduation month and I like hearing who the commencement speakers are.  I try to catch a few of the speeches on YouTube when I can.  This year Princeton is having author and alum Michael Lewis speak.  He was on Meet the Press this past Sunday and talked about how he decided to be an author at a young age, but that it was a costly decision that he would not have made 10 years later.  I am turning 40 and that realization is more poignant than ever.  Some of my greatest hits for roads not taken…

I quit IBT in 1995 to start a business called The Stofler System (named after a crater on the moon).  The idea was a wiring product for home theater rear channel speakers.  Sounds silly now, but no one was doing home theater 17 years ago.

There were the dark ages of my career in higher ed, we prefer to skip over that time.

In 2007, Joe and I talked about doing a data management analytics start up to manage data on our platform.  No one even used the word “cloud” back then.  Today there are at least 20 vendors.  I still think my marketing strategy of targeting banks, creditors and equity holders is better than selling the altruism of managing by metrics.  But it seems no one that I share that with agrees.  Bizlytic, I still think that’s a great name, I have other ideas for it.

A few years ago I read Global Trends 2025 published by the office of the Director of National Intelligence.  It talked about a future where micro-NGO’s would be operating in third world nations more than any other single entity.  I had a great idea to build a web platform to allow fundraising, organization, info-sharing, etc for what I thought would be a wave of college graduate PeaceCorps wanna-be’s.  Not to mention I would be adding value in the world.  Too late on that one too…

About 5-6 years ago I had a great idea to create a healthcare payments clearing house through Fido that would enable liquidity and enhanced efficiency.  I talked with Tom Sager one night at Peddlers and he thought it was a great idea.   Just the other day, the leading provider raised $14M in a follow-on round, wonder what that pre-money number was.  And they can’t even provide the money management component.

Just last month I had a great idea to do crowd sourced video that would let people produce entire movies filming on green screen with editing software.  Bunch of those already exist, though not the same model and definitely not to support green screen movie production.  Given what Suster says, I think this is the best way to lower per-minute production costs on high quality video to monetize on YouTube/Vimeo.

Chances are I am missing a great opportunity in Rockledge, FL right now.  Like everything else, I just can’t seem to find a way to make it happen.

If only I had some money and a studio full of developers.  Wouldn’t that be cool.  Those VC guys are right, it’s not the idea, it’s the execution.  What makes things happen, what gets things done?  The same as everything else in this world, MONEY.  For those that don’t get it (Mr. President) this is why capital markets are so important, it is also why finance is a product that has value in the US and what makes our export of financial services so critical.  Everyone has ideas.  I’m sure my readers right now have a few.  What makes them useful is the capital to make them reality.  Capital creates opportunity, opportunity creates jobs, jobs create wealth, wealth creates growth, growth creates more capital.  Fascinating, the economy is, hmmph?

Last fall, I interviewed a college senior for an entry level position at Fido.  This kid was unbelievably smart.  During a break I told them to hire him right now for a different career track.  Big companies don’t work that way and I was unsuccessful in persuading him to join and be a peon.  But I think I was successful in encouraging him to strike out on his own and take some risks, especially while he is young.  I haven’t heard from him in a few months, but I like to think that our little talk was like my commencement address to him.  Hopefully I was more inspiring than Roger W. Ferguson Jr. (president and CEO of TIAA-CREF).  Maybe Jaymin is taking the tough road, and not missing HIS opportunity.  Does that count as an opportunity I realized?