Corporate Robots

We no more want to give corporations the rights of persons than we do robots. Either one will doom democracy. Corporations don't (and shouldn't) act like people, they are purely selfish. That's why they need to be regulated. I would not loan money to a friend, hoping and arranging things so that they would not be able to pay, so that I could make more money. But that's exactly what the banks and financial institutions did to their customers.

Senator Graham’s ‘blame the victim’ mentality in this situation is a perfect underhand pitch to the financial industry. Not to mention the reporters, commentators, and clowns on financial ‘news’ channels like CNBC who latch on to this myth. These folks must surely awaken every day amazed that they still have a job. That would explain why they spend so much air-time scrambling for new ways to keep up the charade that they’re competent. Don't forget that these are the same people that held up Bernard Madoff and Sir Robert Allen Stanford as heroes of unregulated free-market capitalism.


President Obama pointed out:
"Americans don't choose to be victimized by mysterious fees, changing terms and pages and pages of fine print. And while innovation should be encouraged, risky schemes that threaten our entire economy should not," he said. "We can't afford to let the same phony arguments and bad habits of Washington kill financial reform and leave American consumers and our economy vulnerable to another meltdown."

The President gets it.

Feature Evangelist vs. Product Evangelist

I've seen a lot of start up companies over the last few years that came out for the gate with really exciting, clever, and popular products only to see them stagnate. Lately I've given some thought to the cause of this phenomenon. One problem I've seen is when the product team focuses too hard on a specific feature request from a specific client. Typically, this is a big, well known, or VIP client with an internal 'friend' or evangelist for the start-up's product.

The scenario goes like this...
The Evangelist calls up the Product Manager and says that there's some growing traction for the product among senior management. A deal is likely, but that the start-up needs to make some changes to the feature set to make the product meet all of the features in the Request for Proposal that the potential customer has been sending out. The Product Manager, getting pressure from Sales and Marketing, is eager to help land this great account. One of the worst parts is that at some point, and probably unbeknown to the Product Manager, the sales person has promised a deal to the client that has all but precluded any profitability on the account. So now the start-up is in the situation of having to spend time and resources on a new feature for a product so that they can sell this product at a loss.

This happens more that you'd think, and it's too bad. The solution is not to ignore the customer (that comes later, if you're a Geoffrey Moore fan) so much as to be aware and on the look out of the customer or client that is too focused on a few features. Ask yourself if the client really is a strong supporter of your product, or are they simply using your product to advocate for a pet feature that does not represent an overall product improvement

Hollywood Park

I heard recently that the Inglewood City Council is likely to vote to close Hollywood Park, and replace the racetrack with a 'Multi-use, residential, retail complex'.

My advise is don't do it. Once you do this, you'll never get it back. This is the type of short-sighted, misinformed thinking that got this country into the economic mess it's in right now.

My prediction is that this city council will commission some big study at great expense that will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that if they do all this fancy re-building like other cities have done over the past decade, that they will see this giant gain in tax revenue, and earn the eternal gratitude (and votes) of the people.

Except... that won't happen. Instead, we'll look back on this in twenty years and say, "Gee. How sad it is that the city of Inglewood decided to destroy the things that were unique, and gave it an identity. Didn't they see that at the end of the day they were trading that uniqueness for a sameness that could not compete?" Trying to be more like Santa Monica, Westminster, or El Segundo is a losing game for Inglewood. The forum will be gone, Hollywood Park will be gone, and with them any opportunity to preserve the thing that makes towns and cities great: uniqueness.

Seligman and Ashfork, AZ

I took some pictures as I drove through Ashfork. But nothing came out.

It was getting dark, and I’m a bit rushed since by this point I still haven’t figured out the whole plan. The other thing is that I’m still not sure what the goal is. Here in Arizona, I wish I were back in Erick, or Elk City. There’s this odd sense that I’ve been too antsy, too quick to move on that the next stretch of road and not spending enough time finding the interesting stuff in each place. Post trip research reveals that many of the buildings in Ashfork burned down in the 1970s.

In Seligman, I took some pictures of the Rusty Bolt and another building (I think) that sells souvenirs and groceries. I think that's the building pictured here.

Yikes! I forgot to get gas in William!

This damn-near ruins the whole thing. Here I am in the middle of the night, don’t know how far out of Seligman I am, and the gas light comes on. Since this is not my car, I have no idea how long I can drive without running out of gas. I’m going up and down some hills, so the light is on while I’m going up, off on the way down. I’m starting to wish that I’d done more paperwork and mileage checking. Nah, it’s sort of funny. Running out of gas would suck, but only because I’d feel so stupid. Fact is, I have clothes, cash, a phone, I’m on the interstate, and I’m not even very hungry. It could be a lot worse. I gotta figure you can go 50 miles once the light goes on solidly. That seems reasonable, and I figure it’s about 55 miles to Kingman. No towns that I know of between here and there, but there’s likely a truck stop. So, I could turn around at the next exit, but I don’t know how far I’ve come, and I’m can’t remember the last gas station - but it was some time ago.

Williams, AZ

I stopped for dinner at Rod’s Steak House. Rod’s is where I went with the family back in 1975 or so. I only recently learned that this is where my Dad always stopped on his way across country. Back in 1975, when we were driving through Williams, we had dinner there. The thing that stuck in my mind was that Dad always teased us (or, maybe just me…) about Rod’s. I have a vague memory of this night. What I remember most, is that someone (probably me) spilled a drink, or threw up or something. Anyway, the dinner was ruined, and from then on, Rod’s Steak House was synonymous with kids ruining dinner-out. Remind me not to make fun of my kids for the dumb stuff they do and spoil their childhood memories.

William is a cool little town. This is the place to spend the night. Next time, I won’t make that mistake.

Recession Babies

My dad was a Depression Baby. While I was born on the tail-end of the Baby Boom, Dad was born in 1930 – right at the start of the Great Depression. People who were kids in the 30s developed a certain perspective on spending and wastefulness. My parents carried those perspectives with them their whole lives. A lot of the clues to my parent's upbringing could be found in small gestures, like re-using paper towels, saving corks, and huge jars of nuts and bolts. There was another thing too... my parents were reluctant to spend money to fix non-essential features that broke on things. Like the channel knob on the TV set, or the antenna on the radio. If the back hatch on my dad's minivan wouldn’t stay up; Dad would have never dreamed of taking the car to the dealer and paying to have it fixed. Dad would have gone out to his work shed, found a length of 2x4, cut it to length, and tossed it in the back of the car so it would be there when he needed it. That’s the type of thinking that I think we need to get back to.

This weekend I replaced a set of struts in the car. Both my family and my neighbors expressed more than a little surprise that I would attempt my own automotive maintenance, particularly on something as seemingly (to them) as difficult as that. For the most part, many of my friends and associates come from a culture that sees nothing wasteful in paying someone to change a set of wiper blades or pump their gas. I’m all for supporting the local economy through spending money, but I need to save money as well. The decision to build/fix vs. buy/hire was probably much easier for me since I’m among the recently laid off. But I would argue that everyone should start considering taking steps like this... now. If you’re unemployed and living off your savings, you need to save your cash wherever you can. If you’re working, you might want to think about spending a weekend or evening saving some cash and adding it to your emergency fund. Plus you might be learning a skill that could help you save more if you find yourself out of work. I'm going to track the $ money I save on the car repairs and report back...

Meanwhile, I think I'll go out to Dad's shed and find those old black and white TVs with the vise-grip knob turners and take them to the e-waste center

The Wigwam

The cop who pulled me over in Holbrook gave me directions to the Wigwam Motel. It seems that I’d past the turn off. I also took some shots of the deserted Sun n’ Sand across from the wigwam.