Author: blambert

The “Promise” of jobs?

The main reason jobs are an issue is that the “bread and butter” manufacturing jobs of the post World War II economy disappeared over the last 35-45 years.  While the Military Industrial Complex is well in America, it is not the employer of the ages gone by.  The component pieces of our military, consumer, and industrial goods are manufactured overseas in factories whose employees are economic slaves within that country and whose employees cannot rise out of that desperate situation.

We Americans cannot compete with that economically as our costs of living are astronomical high compared to those employees.  Further efforts to tax or tariff the import of cheap goods is going to raise our costs without any increase in employment in our country.  The international cartels of corporations will keep the price just under the level that would make sane business people invest in making the goods within our borders.

When we have frittered away the trillions we needed on infrastructure, gutted the Affordable Care Act, defunded Medicaid, and otherwise allowed the fanatical conservative right of the Republican party to refuse to support the society, we will begin to experience subsistence living akin to what our ancestors experienced around preindustrial agrarian times in America.

Simple things like running water, roads, food, electricity, communications, and transportation will become carefully and closely managed priority needs for every one of the 98%.  The promise of “increased productivity” simply means that the corporations will minimize the use of humans beings and human knowledge to produce the products for those same people to consume.

As that has gone in my lifetime the erosion of “native talent” went with it. In my parents time, post WWII, all you needed to do was produce because the want and need was unfulfilled and you could largely name your own price.  Today incomes are so low that we must return to “going without” or “producing it ourselves”.

Most people do not have the basic tools and skills to accomplish this.  The patient planning, preparation, and forbearance required for raising food is beyond most American’s skills and means.  You can still get a couple of burgers, fries, and a drink for less than five bucks. This will be available until the water, electric, fuel, and infrastructure fail or crumble.

History dictates that all civilizations will rise and fall.  The governments organized by the citizens are the cause of their demise.  Government overburdens the citizenry and causes the citizen to overdrive the resources fueling their lives.  It is gradual and ultimately leads to individuals working alone and away from the encumbrances of the politicos and their surround.  The hard working, thick skinned, determined, and unafraid will wander off and care for their small clan.  The ability to learn will be more valuable that accreditation.  Knowledge will be employed.  Philosophies will be simple.  Actions and their results will be most valuable.

What do you think?

Dan Rather’s Response to DonJohn’s speech.

We’ve seen this before. After a period of sustained chaos, Donald Trump ascends a podium, and for a moment at least, reads a relatively measured speech from a teleprompter. For the most part, in tone and temperament it is a world away from the Tweets, and the press conferences. In many ways it was standard conservative Republican fare on such topics as tax cuts, although watching Paul Ryan stand and applaud lines calling into question free trade and major spending on infrastructure shows how much the GOP elite has swung behind President Trump.

The President’s call for economic populism is a popular instinct in the country, that I think cuts across party lines. If that was the centerpiece of his agenda, I suspect his poll numbers would be much higher. But of course there is so much more we have seen over the past several weeks that show how the most controversial rhetoric of the campaign has continued from the President in office. Tonight, Mr. Trump referenced history on many occasions, seeking to give his very unconventional administration the trappings of its place in sustained American values. There were many lines that will be seen as smoothing out the edges. But bubbling beneath the surface was still a President who is stoking division. I think the most noteworthy section, and one that history will mark, was his focus on crimes from immigrants. It is a dangerous and disingenuous strawman. Yes illegal immigrants have committed crimes. But what about the Indian worker who was just murdered in Kansas? Or the little children and teachers in Connecticut? Or African Americans in prayer in South Carolina?

Nevertheless, I think that this is a speech that will play well the President’s base. If Democrats or Independents hope that Republicans in Congress will challenge the Administration, the numerous standing ovations show how faint that expectation currently is. Democrats will read between the lines on health care, the President’s language on “law and order,” his framing of foreign policy. They will claim rampant disingenuity and a glaring lack of specifics. And some may sense the low rumblings of a demagogue. But that is not how most people watching speeches judge them. Overall, I think the effect was more successful than many had expected, perhaps because of the low bar of expectation.

But there is a fundamental difference between a campaign and a presidency. The first is about words and promises. The latter is about delivering. Whether President Trump and the Republicans who back him continue in a position of strength or falter in the election cycles to come will not be determined by a few lines read to a national audience. It will be measured by jobs, health care and education. It will be shaped by the general mood of the country – the level of anxiety versus safety, calmness versus chaos.

The news cycle doesn’t stop. New challenges will emerge. New investigative reporting will be published. New legislation will be proposed, or it won’t. And our 45th President will have to appease and persuade a volatile and engaged population in a diverse and divided nation that he is the right man for the job.

  • Dan Rather – Facebook post February 28, 2017

The next evening DJ went nuts on Twitter again!

Controlled Obsolescence

One of the promises of the new electronic age was that reliability and product life would be improved.  While a transistor can live longer than an electromechanical relay for the purposes of switching or controlling, it may not meet the promise of reliability purported years ago.

The enemies of all electronic devices are heat and uncontrolled currents and voltages.  Modern electronics run on five and twelve volts.  All devices used in the home and business desktop tend to use this by way of power supplies which convert the power from the outlets in the wall to something usable by the electronics of the device.

Troubleshooting those devices requires a complete set of documents that detail the schematic design as well as the expected outputs from large scale integrated devices used within the device.  In some instances test points are available and documented well by the manufacturer so technicians can service the device once it is in use.

Because the actual cost to manufacture these devices is so incredibly cheap compared to the old methods, things like the radio, phone, television, and home appliance are only made today using this new technology.

Unfortunately the economies in manufacture are not always passed along. While it is true that a modern smart phone can run circles around the supercomputers of yore, they burn up on the dash of your car in Arizona and cannot survive a short fall unless somehow “armored” with an accessory surround.

To make matters worse manufacturers and marketeers have prevented the distribution of complete manuals for owners as a nuisance and unnecessary cost for the products.  Citing that users are not concerned with such minutia, the obfuscation of operation, care, and maintenance information is lost and or unavailable.  The Internet forums are testament to how rampant that is.

What is really unsettling is the engineered death of the device.  An example I love to cite is how the microcontroller on your self-cleaning oven, which approaches one thousand degrees Fahrenheit, is located immediately above the oven and in the exhaust stream from the oven.  It stands little chance of survival in the long run.

Then there is the abuse of the customer by way of grossly overpricing the replacement parts and service technician costs.   Electronic controls on that same oven cost half of the price of a new oven for an electronic controller that was manufactured for a few dollars.

Early unexpected device death is easily taken care of by replacing the device.  That is why people buy new products. They want a warranty to cover defects in materials and workmanship.  The entire package is replaced.  The defective device is then often returned to the manufacturer and shredded for recycling or refurbished for discounted resale.

So what the oven example shows is that twenty dollars of decorated sheet metal with exotic features provided by a microcontroller and a few switches plus a few fans and heating elements will sell new for six hundred to several thousand dollars and become unusable or unreliable within a designed period of time.

To further the need to replace the oven, the cost of problem diagnostics and replacement of the parts becomes prohibitively expensive.  A fresh customer is born.

What do you think about the “Kleenex” age of modern technology?

BearTracks RCPM

In the last of the seventies and first part of the eighties bulletin boards were the means for file sharing and messaging.  In searching the Internet today I have found that I was a pioneer.

In 1980, after building a few S100 bus systems and microprocessor based machine controls, I put an Osborne computer online for dial-up access.  I stored files useful to CPM (Control Program for Microcomputer) users.

At the time Gary Kildahl’s CP/M from his Digital Research company was the going thing.  While programs were being packaged with and for the TRS-80, Apple II, and Osborne, there were many more to come by way of BBS sharing and contributions from the early users and developers.

Famous works like Ward Christensen’s Xmodem made file transfers on analog telephone line feasible.  In the very early days we used “glass teletypes” to copy texts of assembly language files which we could in turn compile on our own systems.  Ward’s work made that much easier. Read about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Christensen

The first BearTracks RCPM (Remote Control Program for Microcomputer) used an assembly code version of a program called BYE.  It ran in the 48 kilobyte transient program area of the early machines while delivering, directory services, file transfer services, and messaging services.   At a point in the mid eighties I switched to a Pascal program called ROS by Steve Fox.

Xmodem and subsequent versions with variable length transmission packet sizing allowed a user to move a considerable amount of data reliably over poor quality POTS analog lines.

Remember that an analog phone line had a limited usable bandwidth. Poor transmission quality could easily reduce data transfer rates.  First systems used acoustically coupled modem devices and use 110 baud and 300 baud as the maximum speed.  Advances in modems made progress in steps of 1200, 2400, 9600,19,200, 28,800, and 33,600 baud.  Compression and noise cancellation advances over that same time made realized data rates of as high as 115,000 kilobits per second.  You can read more about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem

The BearTracks RCPM used Hayes and US Robotics modems throughout the operating years 1981 through 1990.  The computers were Osborne I, Kaypro II, and Kaypro 10.

IBM did not come into the market with the IBM Personal Computer until 1981.  Around that time Digital Research’s CP/M had an installed base of some three hundred thousand systems worldwide.  The early offerings from IBM were meager and because IBM chose not to pursue litigation against copying of the BIOS design of the systems a clone industry was born.  IBM PC Compatibles outsold their offerings and usually were much less expensive.

With the growth of the PCDOS and MSDOS operating system user base the BearTracks RCPM began offering CPM and DOS files.  The CPM users were generally more technical, sought code, and were very helpful in debugging and extending code offerings.  The DOS users were much less willing to perform in that manner and contributed little to the software offerings.  The BBS days of free and open exchange were over by the end of the eighties.

While most efforts on the part of BBS users were a balance of uploading and downloading with freely offered assistance to those seeking help, the benevolent and altruistic mood of the new DOS users and developers approached mercenary in their nature.  Over the decade intellectual property theft, copyright infringement, and blatant disregard for the original contributors to a software or code page caused me to ultimately shut down the BearTracks RCPM as it became a thankless pursuit.

In retrospect I would not have done anything differently.  I learned at a fantastic rate and made good money doing BBS work.  I marketed my software electronically before there was any such thing as Internet ecommerce.  The BBS activity prepared me for the next step of Internet based services offerings that I would make.  That Internet experience feeds me well today.

In the early seventies I stood in the Palo Alto Research Center looking at Alto and listened to Bob Metcalfe talk about this new thing called Ethernet.  I never imagined how much change I would then see in my lifetime.

– Bernard Lambert February 15, 2017 (forty plus years later)

Hitler Is At Work

Read or watch these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler’s_rise_to_power

https://www.quora.com/How-did-Hitler-come-to-power

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm

Adolf Hitler

 

After you digest this, would you not agree tht DJ is emulating Hitler? Please post your comments!

Mismanagement

A former colleague sent me an email about how the latest manager of their department quit after just one week on the job.  This was in the wake of the dismissal of the former boss, a twenty plus years veteran of the corporation, and the retirement of their second, another twenty plus years veteran, shortly thereafter.  Months would pass before a new manager would be hired.

I had just left the corporation as my contract was not extended after seventeen months. In the last of the months I was assigned to a “NOC” which was really only a relabeling of the “Integrated Command Center”; an administrative group which notifies team leads when corporate systems run afoul.

While the room is filled with displays, few deliver meaniful information and are too small to read.  In my tenure I identified the lack of complete monitoring of all the one hundred and forty applications, the lack of integration of the toolsets in use, and the failure of any of the displays to provide proactive capabilities for the “NOC” team.

This situation was exacerbated by the total lack of training, nonexistent documentation of processes or procedures, dire staffing shortages, and unfinished monitoring tools of every ilk.  Further the team skillsets were groomed for responding by starting a bridge call or alert paging of a subject matter expert.  No direct intervention and remediation was allowed.

There were manual health checks going on while completion of automated health checks went unfinished.  This consumed hours of work effort daily and prevented work on remediations.  This vestigial practice also required hourly updates to upper management.

Emergency change control processes in the corporation were requiring three day prior approvals by a team of executives without any comprehensive understanding of the complex interrelationships among the technology pieces.  Their preoccupation seemed to be to prevent priority one events which adversely affected their bonuses.

I was sure the new manager had a grip on this and all the other issues within the ICC.  He was well informed as to the needs of a “NOC” and quickly became aware of the problems facing him.  Within the first week his findings and interactions with higher management caused him to rethink the “opportunity” to which he had just committed.  He promptly left the corporation.

Now I really liked the folks I worked with at that corporation’s ICC and the network teams.  I tried my best to make the work easier for them and help take up some of the load where it was possible.  When I heard of the new manager quitting just one week after arriving I sent this response to an ICC team member:

< name deleted to protect from retaliation>,
I’m afraid I may have informed the man too well. I think that the financial issues are substantial. Because everyone avoids talking money except at the very high levels, then it’s a surprise to everyone when they get down to the actual nut cutting.

The same thing is happening in places like the build area for networking where impossible expectations are raised and no resources are provided or no means are provided to accomplish the desired outcomes. Wishing in one hand and craping in the other.

Don’t despair however because cash is flowing into your pocket and they can demand their ass off but the human being can only do so much and you are not accountable for anything more than what you can do in your time. Long gone are the days where basic human respect are part and parcel of the job.

Young managements, and this company has some very young management, cannot possibly raise a reasonable expectation and carry with it the respect of those individuals actually producing the work. It is beyond them! It is far beyond them.

The old structure of corporate management hierarchy used to involve a board of directors that trusted the executives that executed upon the corporate policies and the corporate direction. Today there is no trust between the board members, the stockholders, the middle management, the chief executives, or any of those nonproducing ranks.

The modern problem is that there are very often 10 to 20 management types who don’t actually “Hands-On” make anything involved in the chain of processes that make a product or deliver a service.  They have no experience creating or making anything.  They definitely do not have the coping skills necessary for the work.

None of them is truthful about their cost to the organization nor are they willing to admit to how much of a burden they are financially upon the operation. You will even find that their cost is not even accumulated anywhere or is obscured among many other costs.

So it gets to the bottom line and when they’re trying to cook the books as they are this time of the year and address issues like the performance of the machinery that makes money, they have hidden so much and mistated so much they cannot determine how to get themselves out of the quagmire.

It is at that point they realize they do not know what actually goes on and what the cost of continuing to operate that way is going to be. They reassess what the expectation is and generally back off the amount of the expectation so that it can be accomplished with the reduced resources and the hidden liability of not knowing what anything costs.

Concurrently other middle managers raise their expectation of all of those around them and in the chain of command their demands are supported as it is necessary to the operation of the machinery or the processes. Thus the expectation grows for the actual producers in the organization while the available resources to accomplish that are reduced in order to meet financial expectations.

Good management today is measured by how well you can transfer the responsibility for something to somewhere or something else. All of this comes to roost when you finally have consumed all of your resources, all of your people, and all of your time. That is the point to which the corporation has arrived.

Fortunately you work in an area that assures that cash flows from someplace else into the corporation’s coffers. When this fails you are charged with contacting the “responsible” parties so that cash will return to the proper flow rate. This work effort will never be satisfactory in the eyes of the dysfunctional management.

If you were to accumulate metrics and telemetry to show how you are working effectively and efficiently they would dismiss it as untrustworthy information. They’re actually so dumb that they would argue with you that the sun has come up or not when they’re sitting in a different time zone.

Don’t despair however because they’re so inept they can’t even find a replacement for you. So long as you show up, put in your time, and make your effort they’ll pay you and bitch, moan, piss, and complain the entire time.

They can only withhold love and honor if it matters; does it matter to you what the **** they think?

Sadly in my experience this is prevalent everywhere. If you were to seek out other opportunities you would run into the same problem. You’ll have to work on your self-esteem through some other means than employment. You see the poor bastards you work for don’t have any self-esteem so why should you?

Do not dispare that you are somehow an enabler for these inept and incompetent pricks. They eat their young, they eat their seed, they eat all of the food and leave nothing to invest with. They can only clear-cut the forest and they have no idea about replanting it.

Other than that I’m fine. I’m sitting at home fielding phone calls for new job opportunities. It’s actually an excellent time to get all my garden ready for the summer and spring. I got all the apple trees and peach trees trimmed and already have blooms on the apple trees. I will very soon have that pickup truck that I’ve been working on so long ready to go and drive down the street. I even went so far as to remove the blackout curtains from my bedroom because I no longer need to sleep in the daytime having worked all night to keep things running there.

Tell everyone I’m thinking about them. I hope the best for them. Please keep me posted. Pass around my contact information please. I have managed to misplace my cell phone yesterday so I’ll be finding that then I can be reached by phone 480-382-6720. It is a Google voice number and it will ring all of my phones and take voice mail.

Bernie

 

Good Viewing

Since the election of the new president elect I have been doing some viewing of documentaries in a search for some sense of how things have gone and how this will go.

It is good mental practice to think of past, present, and future.

To that end I would suggest watching these two documentaries:

Requiem for the American Dream – Noam Chomsky identifies what has happened to the American way of life as it was once known.

The Best of Enemies – Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. do intellectual debate.  This centers on debates held by ABC news in 1968 at the Republican primary in Miami and at the Democratic primary in Chicago.

This will cause you to think about how things have changed!

Unacceptable Behaviors

Dogmatic  Misogynistic  Bigoted  Antagonistic  Egocentric  Gauche  Bullying  Unmerciful  Untruthful  Intimidating  Elitist  Prideful  Corpulent  Acerbic  Racist  Prejudiced  Sardonic  Noncreative  Virulent  Pernicious  Vitriolic  Overentitled  Uncompassionate  Acrimonious  Malevolent  Baleful
Unoriginal  Nonveracious  Rancorous  Obese  Antisocial  Obsessive  Hardhearted  Manic  Psychopathic  Deceptive  Narcissistic  Atheistic  Avaricious  Acquisitive  Amoral  Covetous  Intemperate  Maladjusted  Neurotic  Unbalanced  Disfunctional  Unstable  Malcontented  Overindulged Condescending  Aloof  Unethical Deprecating  Eccentric Gratuitous  Unreasonable  Specious  Casuistic  Fallacious  Deceptive  Spurious Feigned