Autumn 2009

.
The leaf explosion happened right on schedule this year in my neighborhood. Bigtime. It didn’t last long, there were only a few days of color until rain and wind brought it all to an end. We all know what's next.


My new pup Dottie is growing fast. Here's what she looked like last August. She’s four months old now, very healthy at just over twenty pounds and as feisty and loveable as a setter pup can be. Any nightmares of having a puppy in the house (such as chewing on woodwork) have yet to materialize. Confining her space, close observation and a lot of love and understanding makes the difference. We've learned from experience.


Dottie responds well to her name and we have turned the corner on house breaking. All it takes is patience, positive reinforcement and a lot of paper towels.

Since I have been commuting to the city daily for the past month my personal time with her has been short.


Going for a long walk with Dottie late this afternoon was pleasant. I took these photos on one of the few sunny weekend days we have had this month.


Dottie was easy to control on the leash. Better yet, she was zigzagging in front of me without a too much aggressiveness. This is a good sign for a young English Setter pup with strong field trial lineage. Field trial dogs love to work far out and breaking them to work close in takes a lot of effort, discipline and consistency on my part. It’s too early to tell how we will do in the field a year from now but I like what I see so far.


In another month or so we will begin serious obedience training exercises daily. Judging by her desire to please, Dottie may be my easiest subject so far. I can only hope.

Time will tell.

I can't wait to put her on live birds.
.

Do You Feel The Lovie?

.
Nope, just anodder heart attaaack my friend.


Suddenly I find myself in a serious Bear Fan funk. I don’t get it. WTF?

For a very short time (three weeks) I was drawn into a rapture with the thought that Jay Cutler was the real deal and his leadership would make the others play better. He looked so good at times especially during those late game rallies. He has the skills. He had the papers. He also had his multi-generational retirement plan set up last week with a contract that gave him an extension adding about $20 million in guaranteed money to the $30 million extension.

Cutler or not, the Bears best days may be years away unless drastic moves are made. Shuffling defensive and offensive line player positions isn’t going to cut it. Elevating second-tier players with the hope of finding a diamond in the trash is a crap-shoot even if Lovey claimed how deep they were (on defense) during the pre-season.

That Bears defense resembled a group of life-size cardboard cut-outs last weekend. On offense few elite running backs could find a hole to run through with that offensive line not to mention those costly turnovers.

Tonight on a dark, rainy train ride home from Chicago while reading the Sun-Times one local sports media guy had the guts to step up and write what I have known for the past few years. The problem with the Bears lies with head coach Lovie Smith.

Most local media sports pimps shy away from negative commentary when it comes to Bears management or ownership. They fear being cut out of the inside access food chain at the Bears Lake Forrest compound.

Chicago sportswriter and talk radio host Dan McNeil is a northwest Indiana native. He has been involved in Chicago sports talk radio since it’s inception. Dan worked for sportscaster Chet Coppock back when Chet was the only sports talk game in town.

From the published Dan McNeil article I read today in the Chicago Sun-Times:

“Barring Cutler, the Bears' business model is wallowing in the mire. Gone are high-round draft picks (for Cutler and Gaines Adams). They need at least three new beefcakes on the offensive line. Their secondary is dreadful. Kickers excepted, Lance Briggs is the only consistent high-level performer on the team. Smith's choices for assistants, including his stubborn defensive coordinator -- himself -- earn very low grades.”

Kick some ass, Dan!!!

This is the only internet information I could find on Dan tonight, then again my internet research efforts are generally short (yawn) lived.

What isn't mentioned is Dan graduated from Gavit high school in Hammond Indiana. He is a bit younger than I am but grew up within five miles of where I lived. I had the pleasure of being on a fishing weekend with him about fifteen years ago at the time when he earned his first prime-time Chicago sports radio program.

One of the Magician Lake regulars invited Dan up for one of the two traditional spring and fall Bass fishing weekends at my cousin’s lakeside cabin. Mike, who is a regular at these bi-annual events, went to school with Dan. Seems that Dan enjoys bass fishing. A dozen of us had a ball that weekend even if the weather sucked.

As I remember that trip the rain was falling with real gusto all weekend assisted by a stiff wind. I hate fishing in the rain. I do own the finest rainwear money can buy but that is only so I can stay dry on the speedy ride back to the cabin or public launch or sitting in a duck blind all day.

On this particular weekend years ago most of us (all Notre Dame fans) spent Saturday afternoon in the cabin in front of the hot fireplace watching Notre Dame football, talking crap and drinking after a soaking wet morning in the boats. Not the guys in Mike’s boat, no. Mike is as serious about his fishing time as they come. Mike, Dan and another of their high school buddies spent hours in the rain that afternoon fishing out of a fourteen foot jon-boat. Sheesh. When it finally got dark they returned…soaking…freaking…drenched.

They had no fish to bring to the table. None of us did that weekend. Bait and tackle shops exist because of guys like us.

The first thing Dan asked when he walked through the door of the crowded cabin dripping wet that evening was, “How did Michigan do today?” He’s a big Michigan fan. So, nobody’s perfect.

We mercilessly pelted him with lead split shot, empty beer cans and whatever debris was handy. Later in the evening he shared some bizarre Chet Coppock stories. Lots of laffs.

Dan is one of the few Chicago sports wags I have respect for. Any guy willing to spend a windy and rainy autumn day in a 14’ jon-boat when he could have been holding court near a dry lakeside cabin fireplace watching college football earns my respect. No matter how dumb that sounds.

If the Bears gag against Cleveland this weekend (don’t be surprised when that happens) maybe more media experts will jump on the dump Lovie bandwagon.

For now it’s just me and one Chicago sports wag named Dan. Neither of us feel the Lovie.

In all fairness you may read an opposing viewpoint here.

Feeling Young Again.

.

But dressing up on Halloween is out of the question.

It has been crazy busy for me this month. Suddenly my free time is tight. A fat, juicy one-week on-site downtown Chicago contract dropped into my lap early in October and they soon offered to extend the contract.

Suddenly, I feel like Jay Cutler.


Look at it this way, when you encounter a face-down well-dressed passed-out drunk in a dark, Chicago River North alley with a fat wallet sticking out of his back pocket loaded with ca$h and nobody is looking what would YOU do? After all, it IS the Chicago way.

What I really wanted to comment on during some rare time-off is the Chicago Bears display of courage along with their strategic and tactical excellence last Sunday in Cincinnati led by Coach Lovey Smith. But I decided to spend my only free afternoon casually blowing leaves and mowing the lawn while comfortably riding on my little John Deere tractor sipping an icy gin & squirt in a plastic cup on one of those rare, sunny, seventy degree October days instead.

I missed out on most of the Chicago Bear action but my garage television was tuned in to the game. While stopping to refill my plastic cup I would check on the score. Bad idea. I stopped looking and just kept mowing.

A month-long string of rainy, gloomy days have been a real pain in the azz as well. It’s been rare driving to or from the commuter train on dry pavement. Departing and arriving home in the dark sucks as well, but the money is really, really good.

Did I mention feeling like Jay Cutler?
.

Crazy Advertisement

I am certainly not an advertising expert and I guess one key to advertising is catching the eye of the passer-by. But I have no idea what they are trying to get across with this Aja steak house in Chicago but she appears to be an attractive woman covered in that green goop like in nickelodeon.

Billboards

Every so often we get all of our neighborhood billboards changed out. Had to have a laugh when I saw these two billboards - one for atheists and the other touting that heaven has bagels (or something to that effect).

Fall Colors

On Sunday I went to the Morton Arboretum to check out the fall colors. I am not an expert in this sort of thing but apparently the weather (cold) and rain (lots) made this a great season for viewing.

Citified Truck

I think a car or truck is "citified" when it has been seriously banged up and you just don't care anymore. I like this truck totally covered in graffiti and then even painted over that... no bother, just drive it on your normal rounds like it is no big deal. Is this the sign of a good catering company? Also like it in front of Excalibur that hangout for drunk suburbanites and tourists in town with the dragon up top. Not something everyone typically sees while walking down the street.

TGMPCBC, Part 7 - Region 4

Well, I finally have gotten around to getting up the last few posts on the CBC. Today is region 4.

Old Milwaukee vs. Modelo
Foster's vs. Miller High Life
Below is the first pour of Modelo vs. Old Milwaukee. Note how light the one on the right looks. Trust me, the heads on both of these went away in about 30 seconds.
Beer 1 - very moldy smell, with an indescribably horrible taste, sort of like the corn has gone bad.
Beer 2 - smells like caustic chemicals and I could hardly detect any beer flavor at all

I think this one takes the cake as the two worst beers I have tried thus far (and that is saying something). The one on the right takes it for being less bad, and the winner is Old Milwaukee.

Below we have the pour for Foster's vs. Miller High Life. I honestly don't remember which was which as my wife was helping me with the blind taste test.

Beer 1 - Has a not horrific smell, just mildly bad. The beer itself was almost drinkable.

Beer 2 - Smells musty and tinny. It had that classic crappy beer moldy taste with a long BLAST of aftertaste.

The winner - Miller High Life!

Old Milwaukee vs. Miller High Life - not even close. The winner of this region is Miller High Life and it gets the coveted picture with me before it goes down the drain.

As a sidenote, I have been known to drink Miller High Life out of bottles while doing yard work or other outdoor summer activities.

So the finals match up like this:

Semifinal number 1 - Miller Lite vs. Milwaukee's Best Ice

Semifinal number 2 - Miller High Life vs. Miller Genuine Draft

Wow ALL four of the semifinalists are Miller products. Carl is dancing in his condo about now.

What Happens on the Plane to Vegas, Stays on the Plane to Vegas, Part Two

Based on a true story.

Part one is here.

Joan had pulled a fast one on me. She had convinced several of the passengers that I was her husband and had arranged for me to sit next to her on the remainder of the flight to Vegas. I was on the aisle, Joan was in the middle and a Mexican woman who spoke no English was on the window.

For a moment I really wanted to go back to my original seat as I was more than content reading my biking magazines. But I would have felt like a jackass (since everyone thought I was Joan's husband) to make everyone move around again so I sat down next to Joan.

I was relieved at first as we simply continued the small talk that we had started in the bar. I got mildly concerned when the drink cart came down the aisle.

Joan ordered three rum and cokes for herself and I ordered up a Beam and coke for me. As in the bar she was out drinking me three to one.

As Joan got more and more hammered, the conversation started to move to more...how should I say...saucy topics. She began telling me very intimate details of her life with her three current boyfriends. Once in a while she would start some worthless banter with the woman who could speak no English. As an added bonus, the woman behind us was from Costa Rica and did some translating.

Joan began to get louder and louder and I asked her to please keep it down a bit, as she was drawing attention. After this, her hand slid over to my thigh, and I removed it from my thigh. Next time her hand wandered it was a good bit higher, and it was removed once again. I stood up in the aisle just to get away from her for a minute.

While I was standing up I surveyed the plane for an empty seat to change with to no avail. The plane was packed. As I sat back down I politely asked Joan to keep her hands off of me. She said OK. She then motioned to me as if she needed to whisper something in my ear. I leaned over and was flabbergasted to receive her tongue winding it's way through to my inner ear. Ugh. Joan then excused herself to go to the bathroom.

Upon her return, Joan brought back with her more booze that she had comped herself from the flight attendant area for herself and me. I wasn't really interested in boozing anymore but she started drinking the Bacardi right out of the little plastic bottles. She notified me that the bathroom was indeed large enough for both of us to fit inside and that we could for sure have sex in there if she propped herself up in a certain way. I had to laugh at this one and just told her to pipe down PLEASE or it was time for me to call in a flight attendant. I was then invited to share Joan's limo from the airport to her hotel and to stay the night at her place. Joan then informed me that she had some nude photos of herself on her cell phone and tried to pull them up for me.

Mercifully, Joan then mumbled something and passed out. I glanced over at the Mexican woman on the window seat and she seemed as relieved as I was. I told her (in English, of course) that this woman wasn't really my wife - the Mexican woman just stared at me and muttered: "Que?".

When the plane landed I made a mad dash for the jetbridge and left Joan in the seat, blocking in the Mexican woman. As I was hauling ass through the airport the showgirl came up to me and asked me how my flight was. I told her the story and we both had a good laugh. We shared a cab as she was staying in the hotel next to me. We then met later for drinks with her boyfriend, who also gave me the same stellar advice on which t1tty bar to patronize in Vegas. After just two drinks I excused myself and went to bed.

What Happens on the Plane to Vegas, Stays on the Plane to Vegas, Part One

Based on a true story.

Unfortunately for me I couldn't make the times work for a direct flight from Milwaukee to Vegas. So I was stuck flying from Madison to Dallas to Vegas.

Upon arriving in Dallas for the layover I found the need for a beer to relax and strode up to a bar in the Dallas airport. I sat down next to a woman and we began a conversation. I found out that she was on my flight and that she had been a Vegas showgirl in a previous life. I checked out her frame and it seemed probable. She had lots of stories from her travels all over the world being a showgirl. She even said that she did lots of topless shows. That was also probable from what I could see.

This woman then asked me what I did for a living and that was a pretty short, unexciting conversation as it always is. Heating and air conditioning parts and equipment doesn't exactly get people on the edge of their seats. She asked me which t1tty bars I was going to in Vegas and I said that I wasn't really going to any (true). She didn't believe me and gave me several recommendations. I thanked her and again told her that I wasn't going to any. She then told me that she enjoyed frequenting these establishments with her boyfriend and that whenever they go that both her and her boyfriend each get a lap dance from a selected performer. More than I needed to know.

The conversation between the showgirl and myself continued for a bit, mostly small talk. Then up came a woman who sat on the other side of me in the bar. I will call her "Joan". She was slightly overweight, had long black hair and was dressed pretty much all in black. Her first order was a double rum and coke. The showgirl and myself included her in our conversation and found out that Joan was on the same Vegas flight.

By the time that I had ordered my second beer, Joan had knocked down two more double rum and cokes. It was amazing watching this woman drink.

After a while it was time to board and all three of us got in line with the rest of the passengers. The showgirl was in the front of the plane, Joan was around row 10 and I was toward the back, I am guessing around row 20. I buried my head in my biking magazines that I had brought.

About 20 minutes into the flight the two elderly people sitting next to me got up and I saw some people moving about toward the front of the plane. I asked the elderly folks what was up and they said that my wife was waiting for me a few rows up and that people were moving around so we could sit together.

I was so excited. My wife and I have not been alone on a vacation for nine years - since our firstborn came on the scene. We have had a day alone here and there, but not any extended time alone. I couldn't believe it - my wife must have dumped the kids off and worked it so she could meet me on this flight out of Dallas - I had emailed my itinerary so it was perfectly feasible that she would work this. I stuffed my magazines into my briefcase and almost ran up the ten rows or so to find waiting for me...Joan.

Part Two in a few days.

A Bridge Too Far

.
The Chicago River bridges went up after attending a short mid-day business meeting in downtown Chicago not long ago.


I was trapped from getting back to my car parked in the garage north of the river at IBM Plaza. The bridges went up to allow luxury yachts and sailing sloops a safe river exit to their winter dry docks.


The sky was blue, the lighting was perfect and I had my camera with me. So I walked around the State Street bridge taking photos to pass the time. Not being in a hurry I snapped over two dozen images. The Marina City corn-cob condos made for an interesting image texture.

A few photos came out fine. Most had bad subject tangents or weren’t framed properly. There was something about these starkly contrasted color images that made me think of good old black and white photography.


Converting a color digital image using Photoshop is a simple two-step process, one to discard color information and another to adjust the levels.


A quality digital SLR may cost in the upper hundreds but considering the cost of film and processing a few short years ago my Nikon has paid for itself a few times.
.

Britain and Electricity - Asking the Wrong Questions

Recently I wrote about Britain and electricity and the fact that Britain isn't bringing new capacity on line in time to stave off a looming crisis as older plants go out of service and electricity demand rises.

This article, titled "Questioning the invisible hand", has the sub title "Can liberalized energy markets cut carbon emissions? Britain is starting to doubt it".

The first myth is that Britain, like America, really "deregulated" or "liberalized" their markets. A better description would be that the markets are "regulated differently".

In the old markets, utilities had a duty to plan for customer demand growth and re-invest in future capacity. Many of the deregulation schemes split off generation, transmission, and local energy distribution into separate companies, which is fine in theory because then each of these three components could be optimized. In many cases local citizens were given a "choice" of electricity providers at the distribution level, but these distribution companies still essentially utilized "legacy" transmission and generation assets.

The reason that these schemes were only partially deregulated is that 1) barriers in the market place ensured that it was difficult to build base load capacity of coal or nuclear power, meaning that the older units ruled the market 2) the spot price of generation was determined by gas fired units, which essentially meant that it fluctuated with the price of natural gas 3) building transmission is so onerous (getting permits, siting it) and funding is so uncertain that the grid was not significantly improved. What did happen is that price controls on generation were lifted and rates were capped, so for a decade or so there weren't increases in the price of electricity from the generation side.

From the article:

The committee's diagnosis was stark: the market, left to its own devices, is failing to deliver (carbon reductions). Consumers are not buying energy-efficient appliances or insulating their houses... and power makers still prefer fossil fuels to greener alternatives.

Well of course consumers don't do un-economic things - unless the price of electricity skyrockets, it doesn't make sense to over invest in energy reduction. And as for the power companies, why would they invest in anything at all when they could just keep running their fully paid-for units until they keeled over; after all, it wasn't their responsibility to plan for future generation anymore (that was left to the broken market).

Those that are obsessed with carbon gases have been touting nuclear power and renewable power, but of course 1) basically no nuclear plants will be built anywhere because of financial and regulatory uncertainty 2) renewable power is a money loser unless it is massively subsidized, which the generating companies aren't going to do.

Thus now the politicians in Britain are apparently telling companies what to build and when, per the Economist. But it will be interesting to see how they can make a company build a nuclear reactor when this is essentially assigning them to bankruptcy and never ending legal and publicity battles with the looney left.

In the document they really started to figure it out though:

Low prices (for electricity) were as much a result of firms sweating their assets as of competition and ingenuity.

CLOSE, but no cigar. The REAL reading is that companies were able to keep prices down not only by sweating their assets, but not investing in the future (on the generation side, at least). When I was in the industry a "rule of thumb" is that you should reinvest capital equal to depreciation; else you were essentially winding down the business (of sorts). If you don't reinvest in generation and are a generation company, you will have a massive windfall to your current investors. Not only that, but since there are big barriers to entry, as your asset base degrades, you will be able to charge MORE for what is left, making you probably just as profitable over all, since there isn't anyone else out there with a base load nuclear or coal plant.

The mix of carbon limits and taxes and a busted deregulation scheme which encourages no investment in base load generation is just adding fuel to the fire that will rage when we start pulling the older base load units off line. Future rate payers will certainly curse us when they get the bills for paying for the future's high cost electricity (a mix of broken base load plants and high cost renewables) while they pay exorbitant amounts to fund high cost new base load plants.

And shame on the Economist for focusing on carbon while the real issue is that the lights will go out unless something happens to build new base load power.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

China in Africa

I don't know if it is true or not but I was told once that the writers at "The Onion" start with the headline and then write the story. If that is true, this is an example of an absolutely perfect headline that summarizes China's role in Africa today:

Don't Worry About Killing People

This article from The Economist describes how a large Chinese company is signing an agreement with Guinea's dictator, a man who brutally put down a rally and killed at least 150 protesters who were calling for an end to military rule. While this type of activity horrifies the West (Guinea is a former French colony and they made strong condemnation of this activity), it doesn't bother the Chinese in the least, who seem to be willing to cut a deal with anyone to obtain raw materials and resources.

While rules and regulations such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act limit US participation in Africa, there are obviously no such constraints on the Chinese, and they are going great guns in Africa. Many of these types of mineral agreements plow the money right back into the corrupt leadership that took power, usually through illegal means; the Chinese don't seem to care.

One item that makes the Chinese substantively different than the West is that they typically build infrastructure; various sources (I can't seem to find a solid one) say that over 1 million Chinese are working today in Africa, mostly on these types of projects. It is simply amazing that the Chinese are importing labor into Africa; surplus labor is about all that Africa has in abundance.

In many ways this shows the folly of the West's policies and is almost an exact mirror of our plans for global warming; whether the threat is real or not, the Chinese are throwing up coal plants as fast as they can and making a mockery of any attempt to reduce carbon emissions world wide, since we all have one big atmosphere. In the same manner, the West is just writing themselves out of having a say at all in Africa by upholding high(er) standards while the Chinese just scoop up all the contracts.

The final irony is that at the back of this article Kagame in Rwanda, whom I profiled in this article about the War in Africa, is now thinking of throwing his lot in with the Chinese. After all, as the Economist points out, he is an autocrat.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

Recession & Recovery

One of the broad assumptions behind recessions and recoveries is that during the "boom", excess capacity is built into the system as manufacturers & service providers expand to meet increasing needs (today, and in the future). During the recession, manufacturers & service providers pare back, leaving capacity idle.

Part of the reason that the recovery (typically) gains steam is that bringing back this idle capacity (both in physical and human capital) is cheaper than building (or training) new, and it allows the economy to "roar" back into high gear. In some high level sense WW2 leveraged all of the physical and human capital that was idled by the great depression; while huge plants were built and millions of workers mobilized much of the initial lift was caused by leveraging what we had that was unused at the time.

When I look at this "boom" and recession, however, from the point of view of the USA, it doesn't seem that we over-invested in productive capacity. Much of the investment was in residential real estate and commercial real estate for distribution, retail and services.

Outside my window I see at least a dozen new high rise buildings for commercial and residential buildings that weren't here 5 years ago. On the commercial side, especially, they are taking tenants from older buildings (like One IBM Plaza) and bringing them into the new buildings. I can see the lights go on in the sixty story building in front of me and while I am sure that it is nicer working in the new building that old building is still also sitting in plain site and I am scratching my head a bit to see how this makes us significantly more productive.

On the retail side, it is even worse. The number of vacant shops here in River North is astounding, made worse by the fact that most of the new buildings (residential, commercial) put retail in their ground level units. There can only be so many tile stores, furniture stores, hair salons and the like, apparently.

Around the US there was a massive investment in residential real estate, along with upgrades of existing houses. Everyone can see what has happened there; this "bubble" wealth has evaporated and house prices are down significantly. More importantly, the nation pushed our investment incentives into real estate (through the deduction on mortgage interest and now the $8000 tax credit and artificially low long term government backed mortgages) and not into something that is creating "real" wealth for the nation.

In general, I think that our over-investment in real estate, not manufacturing and productive capacity, will make this recovery much slower. It will be a long time before we fill up all of this empty real estate, and moving from the old still-functioning building to the new "glossy" building didn't significantly raise productivity in the first place.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

Wolf Point

While walking home from work I took a photo of a piece of land near the Merchandise Mart and adjacent to the Holiday Inn. This is called "Wolf Point" and it is interesting to think of the Chicago that never was. At this site way back in the 1960's they were going to build an 80 story apartment building here, probably about the time of the iconic Marina Towers. This probably would have turned into one of the top residences in Chicago, and today it is a parking lot. Here is a link to the planned skyscraper on Emporis.com, which is a cool site if you have some time to look at all of the high rise buildings around the world.

On a Chicago history program I saw they said that Wolf Point used to be a thriving port when the Chicago River was one of the biggest waterways for merchandise in the country (hard to believe since today there are only a few brightly colored kayaks, sailboats, and the ferries full of tourists).

IPass Issues

IPass is a small transponder that you can put on the inside of your car to avoid stopping at the various cashboxes all along the Illinois Tollway system. As you can see from the photo below, the IPass users can speed along in the far left lanes, where those who do not have an IPass must pull to the right (sometimes in SUPER long lines) and manually pay cash for the tolls - and the price is double if you don't have an IPass. As an aside, the IPass also works on the Indiana Toll Road.
Yesterday I received a notice from the Tollway Authority that I was in violation - that I had skipped four tolls in September and that I was going to be fined $20 per violation. This is extremely odd as I had paid tolls around each violation which would mean in theory that I would have had to have my transponder up in the windshield for one toll, then take it down in the next, then put it back up after my so called violation. This obviously didn't happen, but as always I am guilty until proven innocent so I had to call the phone number on the violation sheet.

Before I called, I went online and retrieved the records of my transponder to have them ready when I called. As I thought, I had paid tolls in and around the violation times.

The call center is open from 6am to 10pm. I called last night at 9pm. I waited on hold for 45 minutes without getting through and then went to bed.

This morning I was furiously dialing right at 6am to try to be the first one in. I felt like a kid again, trying to get tickets to REO Speedwagon or something.

Bingo, I got in! I talked to a cold soul who asked me a bunch of questions to verify my identity. Then she removed the violations and billed my account for the tolls in question. I asked her if there was any sort of confirmation number or case number that I could record for my records and she said - and I will quote "your confirmation number is that you talked to Beverly now is there anything else I can help you with?" No Ma'am.

I notice that the charges were put through on my account this morning, I just hope to god that the violations were also taken care of. I recorded as much as I could of the phone call, and printed out the new charges on my account, in case the violations weren't wiped out and I need to prove my case to someone else in the future.

Future Plans

I am now in a position that I wasn't in last year, nor did I think I would ever be in. I am sitting down with a calendar figuring out which events I plan on participating in next year. By events I mean runs and rides. If you didn't know, there are runs, rides, and duathlons (not to mention triathlons, but I haven't entered that arena YET) everywhere, almost every single weekend outside of winter. At times I just shake my head and wonder what happened inside my cranium to give me this drive to be physically fit.

I remember the one day that I decided to lose weight - I think it was six or seven years ago. I had just gotten out of the shower and saw my fat, out of shape self in the mirror and decided for whatever reason right then and there that I needed to get it together. It wasn't any one traumatic event or thing that set me off, but from that day I was obsessed with eating right and exercising. Pretty weird. 50 pounds ago and several years later, I am bordering on being an elite amateur athlete. Not many people can hang with the fitness schedule I put in. Not bragging, just sayin'.

It has been about a month since my last half marathon and my body is getting happy. I am still going to wait another month before I begin serious training again. Right now I am still doing my strength circuits (oh BOY do my abs hurt today), Muay Thai, fighter training, and light cardio workouts. Funny that my light cardio stuff is now five mile runs and 40 mile bike rides, or 45-60 minutes on the bike mounted on the trainer. How far I have come.

I have limited myself to only one cardio workout per week and that has helped me out too as far as getting myself back together. I will jack that back up to two or three when training in earnest begins again. In this interim of lowering my cardio, I have put on about five pounds, all muscle which is interesting. The massive amounts of running and riding appear to not allow me to add muscle mass from my strength training. It is amazing how in tune you get with your body when you workout a lot. You just notice things that you never would think about before.

I still am not sure if I am going to do another half marathon next year. It is also apparent that I scheduled WAY too many events for myself this year. On top of my MT, strength circuits and fighter training, I did the following events (and worse yet all of the training that goes along with them): a 5 mile run, a 10k, a 20k (practically a half marathon), two half marathons, a duathlon, a century ride on massive hills equivalent to 11k feet of rise, a 75 mile race/ride, and I am sure I missed a few. After the Chicago Half Marathon my body was absolutely destroyed and still is to an extent. I just did too many runs and rides over the summer, on top of all of the other training I did.

I might also volunteer at some of the local events, sort of as a thank you to the event people for doing a good thing. This is equivalent to one of the reasons I blog - to give back to the intertubes a little.

So what to do, what to do. Carl has tossed out the idea of a "destination" 10k or quarter marathon which would be great in the dead of winter. I really wouldn't need to jack up my training any for those distances although my times wouldn't be top notch (for me) if I didn't. But you know what, that is OK with me now. I really have enjoyed my lighter cardio workouts of late. It is fun and relaxing for me to go on a slow jog or ride. I have plenty of time to beat my personal best times. I don't have to go balls to the wall every time I get out there (although it is a new concept for me).

I think no more than one half marathon next year, if any at all and one long ride, probably a century on hills. Those events and the training leading up to them are very taxing. And also it is certain that I will never do a century ride on massive hills one Sunday, followed up by a half marathon the following Sunday. That was a huge mistake. I have to spread out the major events to give my body time to recover.

I know you are probably bored to tears by this post, but I am sorry - I use this blog as a journal and it is very helpful to me to go back in time to see where I have gone and where I might need to go.

Rebuilt Brown Line

When I first arrived in Chicago I used to live by Wrigley and occasionally would work in the office (I mostly traveled) and would take the "L" downtown. I took the Brown Line, which is one of the oldest CTA lines, being over 100 years old.

If you sat in the front car and looked out the window looking ahead it was kind of terrifying. There was an abandoned track adjacent to the track we ran on and it was covered with weeds and plants. The whole route was very slow and the infrastructure looked ancient. Back then most of the cars weren't air conditioned, and seemed very old (per wikipedia they upgraded the fleet in the mid 1990's). One thing fun about the Brown Line was that it was above-ground the whole way which made for interesting views, as opposed to the Red Line (and most of the Blue Line) which is underground most of the time near the Loop).



It seemed like they allowed the Brown Line to decay to the point that it was almost unusable. The trains got slower and slower and the stations were like museums.



This summer when I took the Brown Line it was positively transformed. The trains went MUCH faster, because I guess they fixed many of the "slow zones". The stations were also much nicer - most of them have been completely rebuilt (as you can see in the photos).

If you are in the City and have some time to burn I would recommend taking the Brown Line from the loop maybe into Wrigleyville and then back. The kids love looking out the window and are well entertained. The city did finally invest in the mass transit system and it is about time.

One more thing - if you have an iPhone (or an internet enabled phone) I'd recommend using the CTA tracker which tells you when the bus is arriving. I have friends that swear by this program, because waiting for the bus can get quite annoying (especially at night or on the weekends, when it may be running a more erratic or slower schedule).

Chicago Marathon 2009

Today was the Chicago Marathon which runs right through River North. The music was going by about 7am as the chilly volunteers prepared for the race. It seems hard to believe that just a couple of years ago it was almost 90 and people were dropping in the heat... today it was in the low thirties at the start and damn cold.

We are about at the half way point so how it goes is that first we see the wheelchair racers scream by, then it goes about 15 minutes or so, and then we see the first pack of runners, invariably Kenyan. After a while the few other leading runners go by, and then it is the big pack.

In the picture on the upper right of this collage you can see the eventual winner, Kenya's Samuel Wanjiru, who is 22, who set an all time record for a marathon in the US at this event. He is in yellow. On the upper left you can see the volunteers who are holding out cups of water - the pack of winners don't slow down.

The big picture is a view of the runner pack to the north, and the smaller crowd view is a runner pack to the south. You can see the picture where the ambulance is following who I think is about the last person running the race - he has a leg brace on and is moving very slowly, but still moving on. Must be a bit unnerving having the ambulance follow you (that would probably be me if I even made it to the half way point). A relative of mine is a paramedic and he says he hates working these running events because by the time the runners give up they are in bad shape, often covered in #1 and even #2.

Idiotic Comment on Blogs - now we're Scabs

When I was reading that "Deadline: Hollywood" blog I decided to go through some of the comments just for grins. I usually don't bother because they are so vitrolic but I couldn't help myself with this one, on the topic of how newspapers can "monetize" their content behind firewalls (like the WSJ):

The free ride is coming to an end. News gathering operations cannot sustain themselves by giving it all away, and freebie blogs cannot provide the accurate, unbiased hard-news reporting that professional news organizations provide and that feeds the freebie beast. There will always be unpaid people who write for the ego trip — I liken them to scabs who fill in for striking union workers — and the most popular blogs will draw enough traffic to survive on ads. But it’s like the difference between buying a TV from someone selling it out of the trunk of their car and buying it from the store. You want reliability? Pay the subscription fee.

So here it is - this is really what the traditional news media probably meant to say (since they are a heavily unionized organization) - that we're just "scabs" taking food out of their mouths, living off their creativity.

We are certainly "unpaid" and yes, there is some sort of an ego-trip to writing and putting your thoughts out on the internet where anyone with 2 seconds of time can throw a rude or inane comment onto your post. The part that that really sets me off is the idea that the journalists KNOW MORE than the typical blogger - this likely ISN'T TRUE - since the bloggers (that we're talking about) write about topics that they know well and care about intensely. In our own way, we are trying to make the world a better place, to enlighten and maybe entertain, and to raise topics that often very intelligent people further analyze and provide comments on (ignoring the trolls, of course).

OK, enough of this, it is as bad as politics... I'm moving on.

Lame Newspaper Justification at Chicago Sun-Times

Traditional newspapers are under intense pressure from a financial perspective. Newspapers provide much of the material that is linked to on blogs and other websites but they make little money for providing this service, while Google (owner of Blogger, which runs many sites on the internet) is a financial and stock market titan.

In addition to the financial threat, newspapers have a more "existential" crisis as they attempt to justify their role in the new world. They are often "scooped" by blogs and other media, which feature focused, partisan and expert writers on specific topics, as opposed to the "generalist" model used by traditional journalists.

In Chicago the Sun-Times has been rescued from bankruptcy by Jim Tyree of Mesirow Financial, who paid $5M and assumed $20M in debt for an enterprise with $200M of revenue / year. This rescue was accompanied by significant work rule changes from the unions that run the Sun Times, which are supposed to enable Tyree to restructure the enterprise to become profitable.

With all of this drama, the Chicago Sun-Times had an excellent opportunity to re-establish their voice and champion their role as journalists and their importance to the city. Let's hear what they had to say in an column by Neil Steinberg titled "Hard choice lets city keep 2 newspapers"...

If the Trump Tower toppled into Wabash Avenue this afternoon because its builder secretly mixed Cream of Wheat in with the concrete, the Chicago Sun-Times... would instantly rush people over... to talk to people stumbling out of the twisted wreckage. More important, it would set reporters to work, figuring out just how that Cream of Wheat got into the cement, and what we could learn from the fiasco.

The question that the Sun-Times needs to answer is WHAT would be missed if they were to exit the scene, and HOW that would impact the citizenry of the City of Chicago and the other cities that they serve.

This completely feeble example is so far off base that I don't even know where to begin. The most important value of journalism is to get AHEAD of stories before they become disasters, so that the disaster is averted. This means that they learn about an industry or topic, watch what is occurring, and raise the alert to the public before the event significantly impacts the population.

If Trump fell over, we don't need the Sun-Times - a million news organizations would rush over, especially the glib TV news crews that would thrive on images like this - and the Sun-Times personnel would just be lost in the shuffle. Even E News would probably be there, talking about how this impacts Donald and his girlfriends and TV shows.

The story that the Sun-Times SHOULD have been touting would be their ability to learn about Illinois politics and local corruption and expose it so that the city could reduce taxes and / or improve services for that same amount of taxpayer money. And the corruption is everywhere, along with high taxes, poor services, underfunded pensions, and too many more issues to list. THIS hard, thankless work (the politicians will fight them tooth and nail) is in fact valuable, and if the Sun-Times threw their efforts into this and pared off the things that they do poorly (cover pop stars) this could be an important role and mission statement for the paper.

They need to do something that would be MISSED in the media landscape if it was gone, and pare away everything else that doesn't support this goal.

Even sports will be a hard one to sell if they don't get better; ESPN has wall-to-wall coverage and then local fan sites pop up filled with insanely knowledgeable fans who can speak more directly to their potential audience.

Meanwhile, while the Chicago Sun-Times misses the opportunity to define themselves along with most of the "traditional" media, there was a long article in the New Yorker that is highly recommended titled "Call Me - Why Hollywood Fears Nikki Finke" that discusses the enormous impact that her essentially one-woman web site "Deadline Hollywood". From the article in the New Yorker:

Finke is fifty-five, and a longtime entertainment-business reporter. She runs the Web site Deadline Hollywood Daily out of her apartment in west Los Angeles; in three and a half years she has made D.H.D. Hollywood’s most dreaded news source. Marrying tabloid instincts to a strong Puritan streak, Finke portrays many of the town’s leaders as jackasses who golf at exclusive preserves, elbow underlings aside to hog the spotlight, downsize those underlings while lining their own pockets, and generally besmirch the fabric of civilization. Jeff Zucker, the C.E.O. and president of NBC Universal, is “one of the most kiss-ass incompetents to run an entertainment company”; Charles and James Dolan, who own Cablevision, are a “clown parade”; and Sumner Redstone, the chairman of Viacom, is a “crazy old coot.”

A combination town crier and volcano god, Finke evokes in her readers both anxiety and respect. One top studio executive says, “Nikki’s blog you have to check, and the others you have to delete from your in-box. She’s very, very, very accurate, extraordinarily so—you have a supposedly private conversation with two other people, and it’s on her site within an hour.” She usually posts five to ten stories a day, some of them just press releases or minutiae about elections at the Writers Guild, but many of them transfixing: anonymously sourced accounts of clandestine negotiations; photos of newly fired executives with red X’s slapped across them (after she’d broken the news of their impending demise); boasts of “TOLDJA!” when something happens that she predicted, or, anyway, half predicted; and helpful career advice (“Stick it where the sun don’t shine, you asswipe,” she recently counselled a CBS publicist).

Whatever you think of Finke and her site, you can see that this is impactful journalism. She completely understands her field of choice, and since she is credible she receives tons of tips, and she isn't afraid to eviscerate her subjects in explicit terms. The traditional dispassionate journalism isn't turning heads anymore - this is what journalism would look like if it started from scratch, today, which in a way is closer to the bomb-throwing pamphlets back in Paine's time, as an example than the boring teleprompter reading of the evening news.

If you are also interested in journalism and the history of newspapers, I highly recommend the PBS documentary "Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times" which chronicles the rise of the LA Times and a very interesting review of the start of Los Angeles.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

Only the Best (part II)

Taunting Dan for more of his great crappy beer challenge... note that the glass of Miller Lite I received was a "Taste Activator" glass, no less.

Summer's Gone

Summer seemed to evaporate this week after the Bears' game. We had a beautiful day on Sunday and the sun was out and now it is just rain and crappy weather. Unfortunately this likely will stretch out through May or June given our winter last year. I'm just putting up this picture of flowers on the balcony and a sunny day trying to hold out until next summer.

Stimulus Money

This is where the stimulus money actually is being spent... on new curbs and sidewalks here in Chicago. In the modern version of "ditch digging" these are the transformational projects that seem to have been chosen. On virtually every street in my neighborhood they are breaking up the sidewalks and installing ramps or fixing curbs in the corner. And I was told that they were going to use these funds to fix the US transmission grid for electricity, but apparently that's "too hard".

Note also the mandatory "Green" label on the side of the cement mixer. Right...

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

Natural Gas and Power Generation

Power Generation:

The US power generation portfolio is primarily made up of nuclear power, coal, and natural gas. Hydroelectric can be significant in parts of the country (and in power coming from Canada) but no one is even thinking of adding new hydro assets (in fact they talk about tearing down the dams we have today). Despite all you read in the press, "alternative" energy including solar and wind energy makes up a minuscule portion of total US generation (and almost none of the critical "base load" generation which is reliable).

In many posts over the years I have written about the media myths about power - one of the most prevalent is that nuclear power is enjoying a "renaissance" - nothing could be further from the truth. You can click on the sidebar (here) to view my previous posts on this topic. Nothing of substance (i.e. shovels turning dirt, committed orders occurring) is happening in the US; even in Europe where the revolution is also occurring one of the few new Western nuclear plants under construction (in Finland) is plagued by cost overruns and difficulties - from this NY Times article:

Areva, a French nuclear construction company, said this week that its project to build the world’s most powerful reactor remained mired in delays and was over-budget by 2.3 billion euros, or about $3.3 billion. The price tag of the plant in Olkiluoto, Finland — the first of a fleet of so-called evolutionary power reactors that Areva foresees building in coming years — was about $4.3 billion in 2003 and costs have steadily increased. The reactor was meant to have gone online early this summer but Areva no longer is committing to any dates for its completion.

With all of these difficulties in building coal or nuclear plants, the industry has turned almost exclusively to natural gas in order to provide extra capacity for the US. Natural gas plants are relatively cheap to build and easy to site; they emit less greenhouse gases than coal plants - but their down side is that with the price of natural gas up near $10 - $14 / unit (as anyone who uses natural gas to heat their home can attest), these plants are much more expensive to run. In addition, US supplies of natural gas have been limited (by exploration constraints and lack of LNG facilities and pipelines to get the gas where it is needed).

Natural Gas Today:

Often in this blog I criticize journalists for their poor understanding of business concepts; but I need to instead praise the Wall Street Journal for an excellent and succinct article on natural gas on Monday, October 5th.

The article is titled "Natural-Gas Glut Posts Risks for Independents" and is about the impact of lower natural gas prices on independent power producers (traditionally known as IPP's). This article is on the back page of the investing section, called "Heard on the Street". The articles here assume that the reader has a pretty in depth knowledge level of what is being discussed and as such get right to the point.

The article is specifically focused on the IPP's and how the market is perceiving them typically as linked companies and giving them similar values; however, the IPP's predominantly fueled by natural gas (particularly Calpine) are different from the other IPP's and should be viewed uniquely by investors.

The article starts with the critical background element - natural gas prices have fallen from their high of $14 / unit to around $4 / unit or so. If prices were to stay at this level, natural gas would be competitive with coal fired units, especially if coal units were hit with a cap and trade tax, as well.

Then the journalist of this article, Liam Denning, shows that he has a pretty decent understanding of what really happens in the market. The "market clearing price" for a market is set by the last generating unit that turns on - which is natural gas. Per the article, if the cost / BTU of gas means that the price of the natural gas units is $80 then you add in a bit of extra costs and come up with $90 / MWH, that will be the price that everyone selling in to the spot (that day's) energy market receives for their "juice".

But if the price of natural gas at around current costs would be maybe $50 / MWH, meaning that existing coal plants could become un-economic if they are hit with a "cap and trade" levy and thus the IPP's on the list with coal would benefit from natural gas but get hurt on the coal side.

Regardless of what happens to the IPP's, who make up a relatively small percentage of the US energy market (when you factor in the major utilities, public utilities, and even Federal entities like the TVA), the decline in the price of natural gas has changed the pricing for energy to a significant extent. Natural gas prices have fallen for a few reasons 1) high prices of up to 3x and 4x current prices inspired drillers to bring new capacity on line in the USA 2) LNG plants which allow foreign countries to bring in supplies of liquified natural gas have been built and are up and running, so our capacity increases 3) pipelines have been built that allow the gas to get to where it is needed, mainly from the Rocky Mountains to the midwest and East coast.

Another element to factor in is the decrease in demand for electricity. The current recession has hammered industrial demand and given the industry respite from having to increase their overall peak.

It will be interesting to see if natural gas prices rise this winter if we have another harsh winter, or if the current pricing is going to stay for a more extended time. Gas prices also move based on the home heating market which takes up a significant portion of total demand, and is very seasonal (on the coldest days).

Hats off for a succinct and well written article that illuminates a key point on the role of natural gas as a "market clearing" price for electricity.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

Party Bike

.
We all know Dan is a cycling enthusiast. He rides for fitness and fun and it’s all good. My bicycle gets used maybe three times per year.

But if I had a bicycle customized similar to this it would be used daily.


Saw it on this Pizza Blog. It is a pizza/party delivery vehicle.

One flaw I detected is that the pony kegs do not seem to be properly iced. The pizza blog offers few technical details.

One comment is worth noting: “Surely they could have installed a wood-fired pizza oven on the rear rack.”
.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Assessments

I recently was walking down LaSalle avenue in River North and saw some new construction. Aside from the usual accoutrements such as more bathrooms than bedrooms and everything made of granite, one item REALLY caught my eye:

Low assessments - $200 / 2009

When you purchase a condominium, you need to consider the price, financing, property taxes, and assessments. I went out to the web to get a definition of assessment:

What's an assessment?
A condo assessment, sometimes called an association fee, is a dollar amount paid each month by the condominium owner to cover a proportional share of the common expenses of the property. These expenses can typically include, but are not limited to: gas; sewer; water, electricity for common areas; scavenger; lawn cutting; snow removal; hallway cleaning; insurance for common areas; professional management, parking lot maintenance; legal and audit fees; as well as short- and long-term replacement reserve. Be sure to consult the budget for any particular property to learn what is covered in the assessment for that property.

The dirty secret is that assessments are typically very low when you purchase the property new from the developer; but they seem to rise significantly after all the units have been turned over to owners. While my experience may be unusual, our assessments have roughly doubled since the owners took over the building from the developer.

Why is this? When the building starts out, there typically isn't much of a reserve fund. Without a reserve fund, any type of major expense that comes up requires a special assessment, which becomes very painful since they are usually unexpected and can't be planned for in advance. Everyday expenses tend to rise, too, as well as utilities and property taxes.

I laughed out loud when I saw $200 / month for a 4 unit luxury building. As your building becomes fancier and higher-end, everything costs more. You don't want to spend $1M or more for your unit (I'm only speculating, since I wouldn't pay anything near that to live in a condo) and then cheap-out on the little things, like the tile in the common entry way, the concrete on the driveway, and flowers in the entry. I can't even imagine what the assessments of $800 / month would buy (4 units) in a building like this... could that even pay the scavenger fee for refuse removal, and the common utility bills? I'd be surprised if it did.

I did live in a building once with assessments nearly this low. We took turns shoveling the parking area (this is a BIG job, because you need to clear a lot of snow and move all the cars around, too), mowing the lawn, and one of the owners even shoveled the roof every time we had a big snowstorm. If something broke, someone in the building tried to fix it, or at least took a day off work while someone came in to fix it (ever try to fix a common alarm system or a door strike... what a pain).

I'm not for or against a condo, and assessments are a necessary evil, but I'd bet a large sum of money that the assessments for this "luxury" real estate will NOT be $200 / month come 1-2 years from now. And if you are buying new construction, I'd advise to plan for increases in your assessments far beyond what the developer is telling you.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

NFL Promoting Exercise

I rag on the NFL a lot for a lot of things, but I thought that I would give them an 'atta boy for something I saw yesterday.

During the Bear/Lion game they kept hammering the "Play 60" commercial. If you go to NFLRush.com, it is explained.

The idea is to get yourself and maybe other kids from your school to exercise for a total of 60 minutes per day. Here is a form that the NFL created so the kids can keep track of their exercise (massive PDF file here).

The NFL Rush website has all kinds of things that explain to young kids how they can get active.

I can't quite wrap my head around why the NFL is doing this besides maybe for good PR like they are getting from this blogpost. It also keeps the NFL logos and name in front of the kids that take the fitness challenge.

Like I have said, I bag on the NFL a lot for their non-enforcement of steroid rules, blatant hypocrisy on gambling issues and other things, but I think that this promotion of physical fitness is nothing but a good thing.

Morning After in River North

In the morning I was out walking early on a Saturday after the bars and clubs had closed but before most people started the new day. As I strolled around I took a few photos of the stuff that I usually see under the L tracks on Franklin avenue.

You always see someone who couldn't hold it in, and a bunch of beer cans and Red Bull cans strewn about. There usually is some stray clothing of some sort; I like the way that the abandoned sweatshirt soaked up the moisture from the pavement. And then there are the abandoned cars, receiving the boot. Those are expensive to remove.

Not shown here - broken flower pots. For some reason the bar and club denizens almost always have to smash any available planters, turn them over, and pull out the plants. Don't know if that makes them feel better, or is their small parting gift to my neighborhood, but it is a constant. Thanks.

NY Times on Job Creation

The Sunday editorial page of the New York Times has an article titled "Wanted - Leadership on Jobs". This article describes the current unemployment situation as bleak and requests "leadership" from politicians to arrest this trend. The brief editorial is nine paragraphs long; 8 of them describe the problem, and then the 9th (summary) paragraph includes their recommendations:

If successful, ambitious goals like health care reform and energy legislation may generate jobs, but officials have not persuasively linked them to job growth. Congress and the administration also have not done enough to directly create jobs. That could be done with more stimulus to spur job creation, or a large federal jobs program, or tax credits for hiring, or all three. Or surprise us. Just don’t pretend that the deteriorating jobs picture will self-correct, or act as if it is tolerable.

Often times our debate with the NY Times is presented as a left / right political view issue. However, in this case, the differences are even more profound - the NY Times simply has no idea what the problem set is, so they can't even fathom a solution.

Job Creation

The first and most profound misunderstanding is that jobs are not "created". They don't come about from a fiat by government and can't be "willed" into existence.

Jobs are a by-product of:

- Either a successful (profitable) business or a business in growth mode
- That has a need for services or labor to meet a business requirement
- That they can profitably sell to a third party, or leverage as part of a broader business venture

The issue of whether or not to hire additional employees is an issue that all of the employers that I have worked with or consulted for over the last two decades have wrestled with continuously. If government or the NY Times wants to increase the number of jobs, they need to peer inside the head of a business executive and work to push the levers that would make them more likely than not to hire. Thus the first and most significant problem with the lack of understanding of the NY Times is that they don't even frame the problem correctly - if they want to create jobs, they need to think like a business person.

From a business point of view, the first issue is whether to automate systems or add additional labor. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in productivity boosting items such as computers, automated production, systems for coordinating with suppliers, and the like, basically to reduce headcount in tasks where automation is feasible. Many of these efforts have been successful; there are fewer individuals performing manual labor at many companies and other rote tasks have been automated. Web sites and IVR systems replace phone operators; and the web eliminates entire distribution channels.

A parallel issue is WHERE to invest. The United States is not a "closed" system. The United States has the least favorable corporate taxation regime in the developed world. The United States has the most unfavorable legal climate in the developed world, as far as the likelihood of being sued and hit with an unfavorable judgment (although this is still superior to the risk of property simply being stolen or copied in the developing world). Unions are also on the rise under the current administration; it goes without saying that virtually all businesses view unions as a detriment to profitability and seek to expand where union power is weakest.

If you choose labor over automation and can even overcome the hurdles of investing in the United States, which has a hostile tax and legal environment, why would you hire permanent staff when you can hire temporary staff, or outsource to a foreign nation? These options are often financially compelling and / or offer flexibility that permanent staff can't match.

Another element in hiring considerations is uncertainty. "Cap and Trade" and "Health Care Reform" will (likely) place big burdens on business and / or potentially change the hire / don't hire / offshore / temporary equation. Thus if you are on the fence about hiring, uncertainly is going to reduce your chances of "pulling the trigger" on a new hire. Plus all of the Federal programs and borrowing will likely lead to higher taxes (plus virtually bankrupt state and local municipalities) which needs to be factored in for long term planning, as a significant negative item to come.

A parallel item is that most job creation doesn't come from large enterprises, it comes from smaller companies. These companies have been hammered by the recession, and find it difficult to raise capital. These companies are also very likely to be impacted by items like the probably rise in estate taxes, and the continued increase in marginal tax rates, which reduce the payoff to match the significant risks taken by entrepreneurs. Minimum wages are higher, and any sort of employer mandate on health insurance will be a body blow that has to color any sort of hiring decision on the horizon.

The overall summary isn't that I have the answers to the "job creation" conundrum; the summary is that at least I understand that jobs don't "exist" independent of a need for labor by profitable enterprises that overcomes all the uncertainty, other options, and hurdles involved in this sort of decision in the current difficult business climate.

The NY Times apparently doesn't understand that at all.

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz

Really Great Lakes

.
If it’s October in the semi-rural Northwest Indiana snow-belt and you’re not paying attention, winter will grab you by the short hairs before you know it. It’s time to prepare.

But not today.


Winter is near but I'm not yet willing to give up riding the motorcycle or winterizing my fishing boat but there are other tools that will need attention soon. How’s your leaf blower? When did you last crank it up? I use mine weekly so no problem here.

What about that old snow blower? Late last winter I noticed a skidplate on my ancient snow blower had rusted out. I must get that fixed if I want to get in and out the garage on a slick uphill driveway during an early November icy surprise. Last year it snowed the first weekend in November and the chill lasted until May with the help of a twice weekly series of heavy lake-effect snowstorms. I should break down and get a new blower but my genetic frugalness whispers no.

Looking on the bright side, there’s enough seasoned hardwood in my covered rack to keep the fireplace going for two years.

Today I was reminded that I need to get busy soon. All the signs are there.


Good friend and next-door neighbor asked me to help crew on his annual trip to the dry dock. He has a 40+’ Viking docked at the Michigan City marina. The twin screw Detroit Diesels and all the electronic toys that make great lake power boating safe and enjoyable were there and ready to go.

After a short trip to the Michigan City fuel dock and holding tank poop sucker we headed out to blue water.

Destination: Pier 1000 Drydock, St. Joe Michigan.

Leaving the harbor there were a few salmon fishermen on shore casting at the last of the big Chinook fall spawning run. There were even a few diehards trolling in a tiny aluminum boat along the breakwall.



As a sidebar I learned something interesting. When I asked why larger boats needed no state registration numbers the answer was interesting. It is because these boats are federally registered. What that means is IF we were at war and the Navy so desired they could commandeer any federally registered vessel including luxury yachts. It also means boaters save big $$ in sales, state and federal tax dollars. Now I know.

Modern GPS equipment takes all the guesswork out of navigation. He sets the waypoint and autopilot steers a direct line to our destination about 30 miles northeast. Not only does it save fuel (over $1000 to fill the tanks) but we can socialize and enjoy some iced tea while technology does all the work.


Nothing like a calm day on the big blue water one last time…traveling on a luxury yacht. Nothing like having good neighbors.

Life...is truly good.
.

All Wound Up

Oh holy hell I have my "patalones caliente" all wound up. There are fights at the gym tomorrow.

The gym is hosting another smoker - a smoker is an event where people who aren't professional get to come together to test their metal aginst each other. The fights are not sanctioned, and they do not count against anyone's records. Most of the fights are being run under amateur Muay Thai rules. That means that everyone must wear headgear and shinpads and there are no elbows. Don't kid yourself, this doesn't mean no pain. There will be blood and bruises.

Which brings me to liability - I hope the gym owner has everyone sign their lives away beforehand. I am not sure if paramedics will be there, but I hope they have them. I know how hard these guys hit, kick and knee.

I have helped train a bunch of guys (and one girl) for these fights and am seriously jacked up to see how they will do. This is what I call my "fighting by proxy". I am too old and have too much responsibility to get in the ring, so I will let my fighters do it for me. DAMN it is tempting sometimes to sign up for a fight though. I always do well sparring with these guys. But this isn't for me.

I will have a couple of jobs Saturday at the gym - one, warming up fighters on pads and two, I will be cornering for at least four of them, maybe more. I love the fact that the fights start at 1pm - this means that I will get home at a decent hour. We have 17 fights scheduled. At least two will be cancelled for no shows, and some of these fights will stop short for knockouts and/or injuries.

I just can't wait.

Here's hoping that I will see good sportsmanship tomorrow. We have a lot of young men in there with a lot of angst - but I cherish Muay Thai for the traditions and one of the most important is to respect your opponent. I plan on showing respect for the opposing corner as they do in Thailand by saluting the opponent and his coaches with a "wai". Hopefully others will be respectful as well. I do worry about the combatants not showing proper respect and sportsmanship. We will see.

Any way you slice it it will be a great day.