Transition Time

It is transition time!  From summer to fall weather, holiday decorations in the stores, and the executive branch of the federal government from republican to democratic control.

The summer to fall transition is reflected in our time change.  Maybe we should make that the “official” end of summer.  Once you start messing with daylight you may as well attach a season to it.

Yes, I was serious about the holiday decorations transition too.  The coffee shop I went into today was decked out for the holidays.  Granted, they were using a brownish color theme—maybe they’ll swap it out for traditional red/green later in the season—but still, isn’t this a bit early?  Only those in retail truly know.

Finally, about the government transition thing, well nobody is questioning that.  I debated picking up a newspaper for a keepsake but then thought, “Nah, that’s stilly of me.  People don’t do that anymore.”  I got home and heard the New York Times went back to the presses, producing an extra 75,000 copies in the wake of huge demand.  Guess I was wrong, maybe this is a sign the printed news press isn’t dead.  I’m OK with that.  I still like something about browsing a newspaper, the way news stories are laid out in a way that Internet surfing can’t replicate.  There is also the tactile sense of a folded newspaper in your hand and trying to hold the pages so they don’t fall apart or flop over just where you wanted to read something.  Reading a newspaper really is an acquired skill.  Nevertheless, I digress.  This was about transitions, not the fate of the printed press.

If you were to think of the federal government like a corporation, the CEO was just fired and the board of directors has been shaken up.  What’s a line worker supposed to think?  Probably not much since it is a big organization.  As long as the whole place isn’t going to fold over night there really isn’t much that will change quickly.  Big organizations (corporate or government) turn slowly.  Even with the PR about new management and change, the new organization has to operate with the same external constraints.  The money situation hasn’t changed and the works in progress are still there, and while the long range goals may be altered today’s work still has to be done.  Probably the biggest influence short term will be the addition of some entertaining (if your amused by such things) speculation about who will get what job in the new administration.  Just like a corporate takeover, the influential people will jockey for position and there will be a long list of rumors about who is going where and doing what.

So the transitions are on.  I’d suggest you find the good in them all and focus on that if you must.  One thing is certain about transitions; there will always be another one coming.  Seasons of the year, store decorations, and people who want to be boss.

A side note on the $700 Billion “bail-out”

Another post on the topic of applying an MBA.

One of the skills that gets tuned (or at least well exercised) in an MBA program is looking at an issue and combining it with other issues then developing a combined solution.  You may have heard of this widely used methodology outside of the MBA world and referenced with the phrase “two birds, one stone”.

I wrote the following when commenting in an e-mail thread about the proposed $700 Billion bail-out.  Keep in mind this is just called a ‘bail-out’.  That’s just a catchy name for the media, but maybe I’ll get into that another day.  For now we can move on to something completely different…

In the future we may look back at this bail out as the point at which we privatized social security.  We all know a couple things from events of a few years ago:

1) In over simplified terms Social Security is not “Funded”, there is no bank account or lock box.

2) The ability of the government to make Social Security payments in the future is based on the ability of the federal government to make either (a) payments from income (taxes in, social security checks out) or (b) to make payments from assets accumulated through the sale of treasury securities, securities that are backed by the good faith and credit of the United States Government.

But what if those treasury securities are backed not just by the good faith and credit of Uncle Sam, but also backed by actual shares of real mutual funds (constructed from traunches of various grades of mortgages) held by the federal reserve?  Isn’t that essentially the same as “privatizing” social security?  I know its not the individual accounts usually associated with privatization theories, but in essence the ability of fulfilling social security obligations in the future would rise and fall with the value of these government held assets.

Conspiracy theorists, start your engines.  Maybe this is all part of a Grand Scheme…

It’s the process, stupid (or stupid process?)

I thought it’d be good to write some entries on how I’m applying MBA knowledge at work.  Long pause.  Yeah, I too then thought that sounded boring.  So all I had to do was figure out a way to write about applying MBA knowledge *without* it being boring.  This of course also assumes this MBA knowledge can be and/or is applicable.

Let’s take care of that last issue first. It is applicable.  Pretty much any past life experience can be applied to things you do today (and will do tomorrow) so that isn’t saying much.  It may not be a direct “you learned X at b-school and apply X at work” type of applicability.  Sometimes the knowledge could be more subtle; like more naturally being patient, thinking through an issue then presenting a counter point (or support when appropriate) when an issue is raised.  The knowledge might be a side effect, like better writing skills.  In my case, you only need to read this post to think you can rule that one out, but my work-related writing has improved.  Think of this writing as just us chatting.

Then there is the process related knowledge.  In the MBA program I went through the school used a very formulaic approach that I’ve mentioned several times and referred to as problem based learning.  Call it what you want it’s a process, repeatable and applicable to many different topics and scenarios.  You probably use many different processes each day and yes, some are discussed in MBA programs.

Some of the processes used in business are not formalized in a document, like individual ‘getting into work and getting started’ process but are carried out in the same way every day.  Others are probably documented in a way that is needlessly complicated (everyone knows how to play Monopoly but probably wouldn’t describe it the way the official rules do, now go read your companies computer security or document retention policies and procedures then see if you do it but don’t describe it like that).  Others may seem made up (see human resources recruiting and candidate evaluation processes).  Sometimes the process itself, with or without documentation, can be complicated (go ask someone in IT how to approve a change to a capitalized software project).

Identifying processes at work and determining how to participate, manipulate or improve them has to be one of the most common MBA knowledge applications I’ve encountered.  It’s also a hybrid of the “subtle” and “side effect” types of knowledge.  There wasn’t a course in it; it came along with a couple years of going through an MBA program.

So for those still in a program (and judging from comments and web stats, there are quite a few of you here), take a moment to think about the process your classes are using.  You may be aggravated by it now, but examining it and working though may turn out to be one of the most useful things you get out of some classes.

Good Blogs, Does Where’s Adam’s iPod make the Grade?

Sometimes things just come together.  Take this post for example.  It is overdue according to the task list item that tells me to make time to write.  After a couple days of repeatedly skipping over that task, I had an idea motivated by a comment written on a previous post.  The comment was “So, where IS Adam’s iPod?”.  Good question.  The blog is actually about Where Adam’s iPod *could’ve* gone had I won it.  I didn’t win, and I don’t recall who did.

So I started to think I should get busy on the next post when an idea came to me.  The idea was that I’d write again about where Adam’s iPod could’ve gone this weekend; The Great Minnesota Get Together.  It started today and a few hundred thousand people are expected over the course of the next dozen days.  It’d make a much more interesting blog post after having gone, and conveniently enough I had another task list with an overdue item.

This other task list is a list of time wasting things I want to do.  They usually involve looking up something obscure that I heard about or recall from a while ago.  In this case, the item was “Browse 43Folders.com”.  It is a website dedicated to espousing ideas for how to better manage you own time.  My words, not the author’s; I’m sure he has a better way of describing his own site.  Regardless, I finally got around to checking the site and came across a topic I talked about not long ago without coming to resolution; what makes a good blog.  The jist of my thought on this topic was that good blogs have a topic.  A topic the author cares about and has either some knowledge of or a desire to learn and willingness to share in the successes and failures of getting that knowledge.

Mr. Mann (of 43Folders.com and other fame) had a more detailed answer to this question.  He was actually asked, “Which blogs do you like” but chose to employ a MBA student technique; sometimes you can write better stuff if you change the question.  He wrote several points that define a good blog, let us see how Where’s Adam’s iPod scores.

1. Good blogs have a voice.
Check.  Voice.  Not the revealing kind of info Mr. Mann advocates for though.  He’d have me tell you where I live and what I drive; or more importantly what drives me.  This blog is a sort of in-your-face response to not winning an iPod, so we’re already pretty far off the road anyway- end analogy.  A quarter point on this one, the voice of this blog is like the Charlie in Charlie’s Angels; you never saw him but also never questioned his existence.  And this blog had 3 clearly human voices in the DC Trip entries.

2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things.
I’m glad he threw in that “maybe even five things” escape clause.  I’m only giving myself partial credit here, say another quarter point.

3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go…There’s a story here.
OK, so for a couple years this blog took the readers on a journey through MBA school.  But the rest of the time, its a loosely connected set of “wish your iPod was here” type things, so again- partial credit, half a point.

4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated.
Heh, heh.  He said defecated.  I’ve read some blog entries that are not so much paragraphs- more like journals.  Not to Mr. Mann’s taste, his experience seems to center on not wasting time so he probably finds the “Journal” style a bit taxing.  This one feels a bit heavy on opinion, and desirous of a focused blog.  Stylistically this blog is readable paragraphs (except the DC Trip entries), so three quarters of a point for this blog.

5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect.
Excuse me, but this seems to be a contradiction of #4.  Apparently there is an allowance here for blogs for amusement rather than productivity.  Oh, and I did look up Curation.  From the word Curate, which (think museum curator) actually also means Priest’s assistant or parish keeper.  This blog is a “post-format” blog so no points here.

6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s.
This is probably the best use of the phrase “fart noises” I’ve read.  It’s a tricky phase to work into polite coversation aside from intentionally trying to shock.  It makes the point in this case and while the concept of this blog is wierd, the content isn’t so much.  Half a point.

7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog.
I like this one.  I have blogs because I thought them interesting, but only after reading several.  I can’t say anyone has told me they started a blog after reading this one, so zero points here.  In interest of full disclosure, I haven’t hunted down the people behind the blogs I like and told them either.

8. Good blogs try…A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
Hmm.  Try, yes.  Obsesses more, not so much.  Quarter point maybe?

9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules.
Bingo, full point here.  While the MBA tangent this blog took for almost two years could be connected to the “Where’s Adams iPod” idea that started the blog, it clearly wasn’t what I had in mind when I started the blog.

So totaling up the points, Where’s Adam’s iPod gets 3.5 points.  Two of the point categories contradicted one another so technically only one could have points, leaving a possible score of 8.  So about 44% for Where’s Adam’s iPod.  Good thing school is already out, that’s a pretty weak grade.

Recovering from Grad School, One Step at a Time

Recovering from Graduate School includes reversing the sedentary lifestyle.  After a couple years of working during the day at a “sit at the computer and type, type, type” style job following by evenings of “sit at the computer and type, type, type”, it can be hard to get back into a more active lifestyle.

This weekend I picked up a pedometer to help chart my progress away from the desk chair.  It seems very accurate, and very disappointing.  It works fine; I seem to be the problem.  Using the somewhat trendy “10,000 steps a day” principle as a guide, I found myself at about 2,000 steps half way through the work day.  At that rate I’ll need to circle the office three times in an imitation of a person with obsessive compulsive disorder any time I think about going to the printer or walking over to ask someone a question just to get close to the 5 miles 10,000 steps will roughly equal.

A quick Google search shows that the advocates of 10,000 steps also advocate starting with a week of normal behavior just to lay down a baseline.  Then they suggest trying to increase your daily average by 500 steps each week until you get to averaging 10,000 steps a day.

If the afternoon goes like the morning did, I’ll add another 2K.  If I can persuade the new puppy at our house to go for a walk (she’s young and still very shy about leaving the yard- a good trait in a suburban dog, bad for me tacking miles on the pedometer) that’d be another easy 2K.  But then I’d still be 4K short.  I thought finding supporting documentation for a research paper was hard; finding a way to burn a couple extra miles of shoe leather each day will be an entirely different kind of challenge.

Diametric Opposition, Cable Cuts, and Consulting Clings

It has been a while since I’ve written any blog posts, here or elsewhere.  In that time I’ve found there are two ends of the not-writing spectrum.  On one end you have “having nothing to say”, on the other you have “too much to say, I don’t have the time or energy to write it all”.  In spite of being diametrically opposed to one another, those two have the ability to gang up together and grab “nobody cares anyway” and to go on a trip to procrastination city for the day.  And the next day.  And the day after that.  You get the idea.

So here’s an abridged version of what missed out on.  The transition from grad student to ordinary citizen seems to be complete.  Several of the household projects that were put on hold pending completion of school have been started and completed.  A few unexpected projects have also been muddled through, ranging from a mysterious cable modem outage and a not so mysterious cable and telephone cable cut (unrelated events) to a deep and dark foray into spinal cord tumors and dog euthanasia (sadly, related events).

What to do with Where’s Adams iPod has not been firmed up.  So in the absence of a good purpose and topic, the original purpose will have to suffice; enumerating and documenting the places Adam’s iPod could have gone had I won it, with occasional tangents on how things learned during the process of getting an MBA are being applied in Real Live Corporate America.

On that note, an update on consulting.  The assignment I got at a time when I was heading into the home stretch on my MBA and everyone else was midway between thanksgiving and Christmas lingers on.  An assignment I had expected to last into April of this year still has its claws in me and at this point won’t relent until after the fryer grease has been heated for cheese curds at the State Fair at the end of August.  A funny thing about software consulting; on the surface it looks like if you are good at it you can save your client money.  If you’re really good at it, to the casual observer it would appear they are so happy about the money they saved that they don’t want you to leave, resulting in them spending more money.  Of course, the truth is that people work in companies and sometimes they like you and want you to stay around and help with other projects rather than go through the head hunting process that pervades contract IT services.

Price-per-Gallon Versus Dollars-per-Pound

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I haven’t been writing a lot lately.  I have a reminder note to post something each week, but each time it came to writing, the little bit I’d put together was followed by ‘close document’ and when asked ’save file?’ the answer was ‘no’.

Today I was thinking about gas prices.  I’m of the opinion that gas prices aren’t necessarily “high” these days, they were just extraordinarily “low” before.  We buy gas by the gallon, but I’m a big advocate of thinking of it as “cents per mile”, as in what does it cost you to travel a certain distance?  And if gas prices go up 10, 20, or 50 cents, what was the change in the cost of a trip?  In my case, I’m at about 20 cents a mile right now.  That means I spend under $6.50 round-trip to work these days.  I make considerably more than that during the day’s work, so making the trip is worthwhile.  If I took a bus it would cost me about $4 and take twice as long, so the paying the extra $2.50 to save time at the beginning and end of each work day is worth it to me.

Thinking about gas in terms of price-per-gallon is probably about as meaningful as thinking of a grocery bill as dollars-per-pound.  Sure, you can figure it out that way, but what does it really tell you?  At the end of the day you still have to eat, and if you can afford to feed yourself and feel OK about the food, you probably are not going to grumble about a change in the price of your dinner.  Likewise, while you may talk about gas prices being an annoyance, you probably aren’t going to do much about it.  What you can do is figure out what the price of a trip is and then decide if you want to go.

Consolidate a couple errands into one trip rather than two or three and you could save more money than clipping coupons and without the risk of paper cuts.  Do both and you may come out better off than before gas hit $4 a gallon.  It seems we could all get smarter about where we go, when we go, and why we go rather than complaining about the cost of the trip.

This site has gone to the birds; A Mystery Solved

Who’d have thought that Pigeon Man would turn out to be so popular?  While reviewing the stats for a website I noticed a huge spike in the number of downloads of an audio file.  That audio file was linked from a blog entry made during a trip to Washington D.C.  During that trip we encountered Pigeon Man.  I took a picture of him, feeding pigeons from the trunk of his car.  We talked about the event that night, and that discussion became the audio file.  All that happened a couple years ago.

Fast forward to this week, when I notice downloads of that audio file have spiked.  Normally a small number of downloads has turned into hundreds.  On a whim I Googled “Pigeon Man” and was surprised to see a familiar picture- yep, my picture of pigeon man gets top listing on Google.  A click on the picture shows the blog post and one of the nearest links is the audio file.  Mystery solved.  Almost.

Why is pigeon man so popular?

MBA Browsers, Searching for Fire Trucks, and Finding the Library of Congress

After finishing my MBA, I was given permission by almost everyone I’ve met to slack off for a bit.  Fair trade; spend almost two years working on something, take the day (or week) off.  Now I’m trying to adapt to a new pace.  Without someone else setting my due dates and timelines, I’m working on home improvement and pet projects.  The natural sensation is to feel like nothing is getting done, so I’ve decided to start using my status reports from work to track my pet projects.

One of those projects (OK, maybe sub-project is a better description) is deciding what to do with this blog.  It was originally started to record where Adam’s iPod (could have) went.  I say ‘could have’ parenthetically because I didn’t win the iPod.  So the blog morphed into a sort of “in your face” showing all the exciting places the iPod could’ve visited.  Then the blog morphed again, as the (virtual) iPod spent a lot of time working on an MBA.  That is more of a ‘What is the iPod doing’ rather than a ‘where is the iPod going’, but you get the idea and I digress.  The ultimate question is now should Adam’s iPod go on, and if so with what purpose? The stats on this blog show most of the visitors are either:
A) Reading about MBA experiences,
B) Looking for answers to class questions (for the last time- use the online library, you’ll find more than you need there and have to sort through some stuff but that is sort of the point)
C) Looking for the Library of Congress (I kid you not, but it is funny on so many levels I had to mention it)
D) Searching for Firetrucks (honest, it is listed as one of the top search terms that people entered prior to landing here- welcome, there is no fire).

So I’m left with a puzzling blogger question that I’ll leave you with for today; when the topic of your blog and the interests of your audience diverge, do you follow your audience?

Not on a bus.

In a bit of a twist, this entry is about where Adam’s iPod is not, it is not on a bus. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if it was possible to take a bus to work. My commute is about 16 miles one way, but like a lot of people it is from one suburb to another. Buses in my metro area tend to go from suburb to the center of the city. Those of us that have more lateral commutes, suburb to suburb, tend to be out of luck if we want to ride a bus. I don’t really want to; I just wanted to know if it was possible.

Let me first clarify that I have nothing against buses. Oh sure, like most drivers I’d prefer not to drive behind one. But aside from that they’re fine; I even rode them about a fourth of the time (five times a month on days I just didn’t feel like driving) when I worked in the center of the city. Aside from commuting to the middle of the city for people sick of traffic and crazy expensive parking, buses do tend to be a mode of transportation that most people use because they don’t have a better option. In these days of increasing fuel costs they also tend to be marketed as an option that conservation-minded and congestion-annoyed people should consider. So I considered them.

I noticed a bus each day going home, so I knew the route number that went near work. I’ve also seen the buses in my home suburb, so I knew the route number there too. Plugging these into the local metro transit website I came up with a commute that was shocking. I’d have to leave home before I usually wake up and the commute, about 40 minutes in a car (including a stop for coffee) would take over an hour and a half by bus, involve one transfer, and still require about a 10 to 15 minute walk at each end of the commute. The cost would be $4 round trip by bus, versus about $5.76 that I pay for gas (based on the .18 per mile my car costs to drive with gas at about 3.25 a gallon). So I’d save about $1.75 per day and loose over an hour and a half of my day to the commute, not counting walking and waiting time. Even if gas cost $5 per gallon, the savings of riding the bus is less than the cost of that cup of coffee I stop for. Given the route the bus takes, it would also travel much farther than my direct commute. Given a diesel bus I’d hope it gets better mileage than my gasoline powered ride, but factor in pollution differences and I’d call the ecological impact a wash. There are very few people who would choose this trade off.

In my musings on energy saving I also checked into what a scooter would do for me. I was impressed with how many people I saw using them to zip around Rome, at a time when gas there was over $5 a gallon (conversion rate applied) and there didn’t appear to be any place to park. They look like fun too. The smallest models (50cc engine, legally a moped in my state) cost $1,800 here and get about 95 miles per gallon. But those small models also have a top speed of 30 miles per hour (doubtful given my observations, maybe downhill with a tailwind). But doing a suburb to suburb commute would require some segment of highway driving in my neck of the woods and a 30 MPH top speed isn’t going to cut it (or even be legal if connecting to an Interstate). Larger models that can attain safe highway speeds cost over $6,000 and require a motorcycle license. No problem, except for in the rain and winter. Clearly this is an occasional solution at best.

So put a door and roof on that bigger scooter, add two more tires and you have a Smart Car. I saw these zipping around Rome too and they look like a lot of fun as well. If the US website is to be believed, the cars sell for $15,000 and get 35 MPG city mileage. Disappointing. My car gets about 18 MPG in traffic, with the air conditioning turned on. That means I’d save about 7 cents per mile in a smart car, and it would take over 200,000 miles for me to recoup my investment in the car at those rates. Put another way, that works out to 17 years of commuting to work if I worked 7 days per week. I don’t.

I guess I should feel good about all this. Clearly I’m doing about the best I can in terms of balancing energy efficiency, time, and money. I suspect there are a lot of us, and those are probably the folks I see on the road every day, doing exactly what I’m doing, driving to work.