Observations, Sunday 6 AUG 2017

It's been a long time since I have posted in my little blog. Much of the reason is that I have been either too busy, exercising discretion on what I post, or the desire to not bore the world with my ramblings. Here are summaries of what has occurred: Politics (obviously): Aside from voting, I have given up trying to persuade the world to change it's ways. The last Presidential Election was a clear sign from Elvis that life is now a "reality show", instead of a comedy. Highly depressing. Has Art now taken over Life, completely, instead of following it? When creatives have no restraints, the results are often *worse* than Sturgeon's Law would predict. Work: We have now transitioned into a world where Excel pivot tables, instead of intelligent management, have destroyed life for talented people, regardless of person or profession. Additionally, I've encountered employment environments that are nakedly about extracting the very last value out of talented people, then, unceremoniously destroying them. Many of the previous generation who knew the values of leadership are simply gone. They have been replaced by two generations who act solely out of their own self-interest, or petty ego. There is nothing that can be done about this. Politics has become the exercise of business by other means, to paraphrase Clausewitz. Humor: Very little. Real Estate: Ironically, I am now in the position where I wanted to be seven years ago, renting, rather than owning. Jettisoning home ownership has been a most liberating experience. I also live where I can walk to many,many things. Markets. Retail. Car repair, Post Office, public transport. Simplicity of living. I still miss having a back yard, a dog, and a decent place to see the sky, and listen to radio. My apartment is almost a perfect one to survive most tornadoes, however, although I cannot see the sky from it, or have anything but the most powerful local media stations reach it. I cannot force a dog to live half a day in a reduced space, just for my convenience. That loss of companionship still hurts. I am still angry about how blind I was in re-investing in my home, after being forced out of the caretaker position at my mother's house I had assumed. I had hoped for three months to find new quarters. My sister gave me thirty days. She wanted her money. The fact that I could not properly grieve, or recover from the case of pneumonia I had contracted from lifting Mom, and working full-time simply did not matter, compared with cashing in her lottery ticket. Moving myself, with no assistance, destroyed my health. The combination of the two made the rest of the decade a dark one indeed. Many of my co-workers do not understand that buying a (grossly overpriced) home on the periphery of the metropolitan area, with no public transportation, can be a fateful decision. In our fluid employment world, your job moves more easily than you can. A house, as I have found to my dismay, is an illiquid asset. It's a trap, as well as a home. They have yet to discover that blind fate *can* reach you, and leave you stranded in a very poor geographic location. Both of my co workers travel thirty miles, one-way. This is unsustainable. sooner or later, the price in time and transport will come calling (not to mention age). Friends: I have good ones. They have helped, when help was needed. My health has kept me more isolated than I was before, and they are also aging as well. Sadly, one of our original group has died recently. Weather: What's that? :( I only find out about the bad news, once I have to clean off my car of the snow accumulation. Fortunately, there are few slopes to traverse, such as my old home's driveway. Or, when my utility bill arrives. The loss of connection with the outside world is similar to the Scandinavian problem of isolation. I fell less connected to the world, than before. The only courtyard in my apartment complex is full of smokers. Not good for someone with respiratory problems. Transportation: My car, Blue, has gone through a mid-life crisis. It has absorbed much of my cash. It now drives wonderfully. I hope that continues.. Medicine: After politics in the last year, my medical bills/medicines have become far more expensive. Additionally, my dental work, without the care of Dr Bruno, has taken it's toll as well. I have had two teeth extracted, rather than crowned, due to expense. Fortunately, a competent dental office is within walking distance, something the whippersnappers will discover the hard way. Almost all of this was paid for in cash, through my HSA, one of the last protections against destitution, via the healthcare industry left standing. All but one insurer has pulled out of Missouri, in my price range. No words can suffice. Money: None. All surplus income is now absorbed by unplanned expenses. I travel very little now, to work and back, and to maintain the car, or for missions that cannot be walked to. This does mean that the car has very low mileage, but it means a weekend to visit friends is right out, much less traveling to the Chicago museums, or Wright-Patterson. In all likelihood, I will never see the Smithsonian. I have yet to collect the meager health plan my position allows. It is just barely superior to the minimum ACA plan, that requires a 20% co-pay on everything after the first $6,000 from my HSA. Games: There are now wonderful board games in the world. I only wish my old body could stay awake long enough to visit my friends, and play them. I walk many, many meters on my job. I need no step counter. By the time I get home, my feet and blood pressure quash any ideas of a weeknight outing. I feel a traitor. But, dying is not the best option. My rest is hampered by poor respiration, and my rest time needed has increased greatly. Work, or have friends. I love just how great America has become. Now, my game time isolates me more, since it is on the computer. Internet access is good (fiber), and I have few problems. It is no substitute for human contact. Additionally, everything that has driven the work and political worlds has been echoed exponentially in the online game world. It is a griefer's paradise, with few consequences. Additionally, game content has bee monetized to a degree that would make Mammon green with envy. And to survive, one must play the game as a full-time job. Art, imitating life? No. Life has become an art form. One can only live, in the true sense, by evading the illusion of Six Sigma perfection in ones own life, and admitting to your own limitations. I guess that's as good of a summation as I can get.

Infallible, And Incapable Of Human Error

In my reduced circumstances, I have to take orders from the Volcano Gods, who operate an infallible scheduling program I shall call Clack!. If you've been exposed to any navigational or logistics problems at all, you should know about the old Traveling Salesman routing algorithm. Using one person, hit all the stops using the shortest distance, or time. The Euhler Seven Bridges of Konigsberg problem is an example of this. Try to take a route that covers all seven bridges, and not retrace your steps. Euhler proved it could not be done. The computer repair business is a mature one. Squeezing more revenue out of customers is difficult. So, what do the bosses do? Up the call quotas per tech (they get paid per call). There seem to be a near-infinite number of burnt-out geeks available, if one geek should not be able to make the quota. As long as they can get away with it, they will. Until Murphy's Law strikes. So, the Volcano Gods order Clack!, in Tagalog, to generate the schedules. Clack! then generates the routes, which seem to be optimized to maximize distance traveled. It pays no attention to geography, topology, call volume, or logic. It is infallible, and incapable of human error, and is also immune to the phrases "overbooking" and "minimum time needed onsite". So, it generates *negative numbers* for onsite time, if there are sufficient calls in an eight hour period. If you can strip a laptop down to bare chassis, then rebuild it in *minus* 27 minutes, you have a future with us. Depending on the meaning of the word "future". That future could be shorter than you might think, if you follow Clack!'s schedule, and drive 90.56 MPH through Wash U's quadrangle. Just using Google Maps, I beat Clack! by 30% on mileage alone today. That helped make up partially for the two systems that had half the securing hardware missing, and one unit that simply should have been shipped back to depot anyway. Or the customer who was *shocked* that his outfit used laptop disk encryption, and I did not have his company's proprietary unlock codes. And held on to me for half an hour before he accepted defeat (after calling his internal IT department to complain). In four hours, the Volcano Gods will speak, again. I am truly sorry for what I did in my previous lifetime :( The company saves 30-50% on programmer and support costs by locating at Clark. Until it goes off, again.

Observations 27 APR 2014- The Cycle Resets

Obviously, a lot has happened since my last blog post. The Winter of DeathCold and DeathSnow forced me into taking action on something I should have done long ago: I can no longer afford to maintain a house. Something about $300 monthly heating bills, siding being ripped off by storms, and adjustment to a 40% reduction in income. I now live in a basement apartment, five minutes walk from two grocery stores, a post office, and a MetroLink station. The move nearly killed me. If only I had done this when my Mom died. I had been planning something similar, but Mom died much earlier than I thought. Foolishly, I moved back into the house, and poured cash into it to make it more saleable (I thought) and habitable. All of that money was wasted, in the end. It just bought me four years of increasing expenses. Once again, I have had to jettison the past. And I do mean jettison- so much physical material had to be gifted, donated, recycled, or trashed. The operational plan was simple- only bring what was needed to live in the apartment. No attempt, this time, to stuff the house into the apartment, or the old life into the new one. It's a more profound concept than deciding what junk is to be saved. It worked. But at a cost. For my health, the backbreaking haul nearly finished me. But, once established in the bunker, my allergies diminished. I was eating food cooked by myself. I was walking more. I brought the bike, and am now using it to ride the nearby bike trails and parks. Additionally, you can stuff a lot from the store into the bike's saddlebags. The bunker is *quiet*. Peaceful. In the doghouse, every neighborhood event was noticeable, and I was aware of the slightest changes in the weather. In the bunker, I have to check the computer for the weather. The heating and cooling of the bunker is far more stable, and there are no doggie destroyed carpets to make me sneeze. There are neighbor noises, but I'm in a corner location, and sheltered. Ironically, I may be in the best place to ride out a heavy storm. There is no sign of water damage, and I've checked thoroughly. My sleeping has improved. Greatly. I've had to give up my radio and TV gear, for the most part. There is a nearby electrical substation that plays merry hell with HF, so I may be down to a handheld, soon. UHF is now my most reliable band. Less than two miles from most of the STL area's major TV transmitters, the TV sets suffer from overload. Worse, Channel 9, PBS, has to be caught by using a reflected signal off another building! GRRRRR! On the other hand, my internet connection is far superior, and I am now watching much streamed material. I'm catching up on decades worth of material. Also, I am using Skype and other methods of remote social media to connect with others, now. From a social and societal standpoint, I may be part of a trend. From degreed professional, to working poor. I'm starting my elderhood a little early. That is something the Millenial generation is facing: There may not be an American Dream anymore. (Actually, it's been dying since 1973, when real wages began falling in the US). The political board is as mad as ever. They are arguing about gun control as the rest of us are just trying to survive, and getting even more "triage fatigue" (what to sacrifice next). Monday morning steadily approaches. Time for bed.

787 Dreamliner teaches Boeing costly lesson on outsourcing

787 Dreamliner teaches Boeing costly lesson on outsourcing The airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late. Much of the blame belongs to the company's farming out work to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries Los Angeles Times Online 02/15/2011
Author: Michael Hiltzik

The biggest mistake people make when talking about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by U.S. companies is to treat it as a moral issue.
Sure, it's immoral to abandon your loyal American workers in search of cheap labor overseas. But the real problem with outsourcing, if you don't think it through, is that it can wreck your business and cost you a bundle.
Case in point: Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner.
The next-generation airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late; the first paying passengers won't be boarding until this fall, if then. Some of the delay stems from the plane's advances in design, engineering and material, which made it harder to build. A two-month machinists strike in 2008 didn't help.
But much of the blame belongs to the company's quantum leap in farming out the design and manufacture of crucial components to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries such as Italy, Sweden, China, and South Korea. Boeing's dream was to save money. The reality is that it would have been cheaper to keep a lot of this work in-house.
The 787 has more foreign-made content - 30% - than any other Boeing plane, according to the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union representing Boeing engineers. That compares with just over 5% in the company's workhorse 747 airliner.
Boeing's goal, it seems, was to convert its storied aircraft factory near Seattle to a mere assembly plant, bolting together modules designed and produced elsewhere as though from kits.
The drawbacks of this approach emerged early. Some of the pieces manufactured by far-flung suppliers didn't fit together. Some subcontractors couldn't meet their output quotas, creating huge production logjams when critical parts weren't available in the necessary sequence.
Rather than follow its old model of providing parts subcontractors with detailed blueprints created at home, Boeing gave suppliers less detailed specifications and required them to create their own blueprints.
Some then farmed out their engineering to their own subcontractors, Mike Bair, the former head of the 787 program, said at a meeting of business leaders in Washington state in 2007. That further reduced Boeing's ability to supervise design and manufacture. At least one major supplier didn't even have an engineering department when it won its contract, according to an analysis of the 787 by the European consortium Airbus, Boeing's top global competitor.
Boeing executives now admit that the company's aggressive outsourcing put it in partnership with suppliers that weren't up to the job. They say Boeing didn't recognize that sending so much work abroad would demand more intensive management from the home plant, not less.
"We gave work to people that had never really done this kind of technology before, and then we didn't provide the oversight that was necessary," Jim Albaugh, the company's commercial aviation chief, told business students at Seattle University last month. "In hindsight, we spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we tried to keep many of the key technologies closer to Boeing. The pendulum swung too far."
Some critics trace Boeing's extreme appetite for outsourcing to the regimes of Harry Stonecipher and Alan Mulally.
Stonecipher became Boeing's president and later chief executive after its 1997 merger with McDonnell- Douglas, where he had been CEO. Mulally took over the commercial aviation group the following year and is now CEO of Ford. The merged company appeared to prize short-term profits over the development of its engineering expertise, and began to view outsourcing too myopically as a cost-saving process.
That's not to say that outsourcing never makes sense - it's a good way to make use of the precision skills of specialty manufacturers, which would be costly to duplicate. But Boeing's experience shows that it's folly to think that every dollar spent on outsourcing means a cost savings on the finished product.
Boeing can't say it wasn't warned. As early as 2001, L.J. Hart-Smith, a Boeing senior technical fellow, produced a prescient analysis projecting that excessive outsourcing would raise Boeing's costs and steer profits to its subcontractors.
Among the least profitable jobs in aircraft manufacturing, he pointed out, is final assembly - the job Boeing proposed to retain. But its subcontractors would benefit from free technical assistance from Boeing if they ran into problems, and would hang on to the highly profitable business of producing spare parts over the decades-long life of the aircraft. Their work would be almost risk-free, Hart-Smith observed, because if they ran into really insuperable problems they would simply be bought out by Boeing.
What do you know? In 2009, Boeing spent about $1 billion in cash and credit to take over the underperforming fuselage manufacturing plant of Vought Aircraft Industries, which had contributed to the years of delays.
"I didn't dream all this up," Hart-Smith, who is retired, told me from his home in his native Australia. "I'd lived it at Douglas Aircraft."
As an engineer at McDonnell-Douglas' Long Beach plant, he said, he saw how extensive outsourcing of the DC-10 airliner allowed the suppliers to make all the profits but impoverished the prime manufacturer.
"I warned Boeing not to make the same mistake. Everybody there seemed to get the message, except top management."
The company's unions have also kept singing an anti-outsourcing chorale. "We've been raising these questions for five years," says Tom McCarty, the president of the Boeing engineers' union. "How do you control the project, and how do you justify giving these major pieces of work to relatively inexperienced suppliers? There's no track record of being able to do this."
It would be easier to dismiss these concerns as those of unions trying to hold on to their jobs if they hadn't been validated by the words of Boeing executives themselves. A company spokeswoman told me that it's not giving up on outsourcing - "we're a global company," she says - but is hoping for a "continued refinement of that business model." Yet Albaugh and other executives acknowledge that they've blundered.
"We didn't want to make the investment that needed to be made, and we asked our partners to make that investment," Albaugh told his Seattle University audience. The company now recognizes that "we need to know how to do every major system on the airplane better than our suppliers do."
One would have thought that the management of the world's leading aircraft manufacturer would know that going in, before handing over millions of dollars of work to companies that couldn't turn out a Tab A that fit reliably into Slot A.

On-the-job training for senior executives, it seems, can be very expensive.

Will IBM's Watson put your job in jeopardy?

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/15/will-ibm%E2%80%99s-watson-put-your-job-in-jeopardy/

The technologies that power Watson will likely find their way into a variety of software applications and robots that can compete for both high and low skill jobs. As artificial intelligence software improves and hardware becomes dramatically faster and more affordable over the coming decade, job creation in both low and high skill occupations risks falling short of expectations. And employers in a wide range of industries may increasingly choose technology over people. Few, if any, economists seem willing to acknowledge that scenario, but if it does come to pass, what we consider unacceptable levels of unemployment today could become the new normal tomorrow.

Getting Your Hands Dirty

My job requires mental and hands-on physical effort every day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?em

Desk Rage

http://700wlw.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=104673&article=3936232

4T indicator?