Money Danger Opportunity

Now here is something that I was fortunate enough to come across that is not exactly what you might think--when you see the word "conspiracy", don't get immediately turned-off by thinking that is something like "the 9/11 conspiracy" or "the New World Order conspiracy"...not exactly, anyway. Here is the link, but read my explanation:

The Eight New Rules of Money

I'm sure some of you have heard of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books by Robert Kiyosaki, and you might have even read a few. I've read three of them and liked them all very much. Here, for free, is his newest one that it is being posted on the Internet, chapter by chapter as they get written, because the author believes that the normal publication time (about two years to hard copies being available in bookstores) would be just too long; in the light of the kind of history that is being made right now today, it would be too late for this information to help anybody.

Robert Kiyosaki's most important point is that people are not educated about money. The schools don't do it, and he feels that there is definitely a reason for that: the schools were made by rich industrialists to train WORKERS, not rich people. Another man I admire greatly, John Taylor Gatto, has been saying this for years, which is why the schools are so awful (they are factories designed to keep the people DOWN).

Kiyosaki's real dad (the "Poor Dad" in his books) was practically a socialist (in this new book, Kiyosaki actually calls him a socialist, although I doubt if his father "knew" that he was that directly). (Please forgive me if I have gotten some of these details wrong...it's been a while since I have read these books. The gist of what I am saying is correct, even if some facts may be wrong.) He worked for the government (I think as a teacher?) and depended upon the government mediocre salary and government security in order to survive. While he was a nice and smart man who taught Robert a lot of important stuff, he was NOT someone who understood how a person could become a huge success in life. Robert's "Poor Dad's" idea was to be a drone--secure, and it is hoped, safe, but nevertheless a drone. (But such safety is a delusion as many people have now discovered.)

However, in contrast to the "Poor Dad" philosophy, Robert had a friend whose father was very rich. This friend's dad had (if I remember correctly) a large string of stores and maybe also commercial real estate. (By the way, let me interject here that Robert had been saying for years that people had to watch out when they considered their house to be an "asset" instead of a "liability". Again, this has proven to be nearly prophetic.) Robert's friend's dad had a enterpriser's or entrepreneur's concept of how to live, and he impressed Robert very much. Robert started out as a kid working in one of the man's stores and learning everything he could from him. He "adopted" him as his "Rich Dad," and the one who really taught him what he needed to know about money.

The lessons in Kiyosaki's books are immediately obvious, and yet they make you think, "Why didn't I ever understand that before?" That's because NOBODY ever taught us any of that before, and, in fact, there is a definite ENERGY in the country to KEEP us from learning it. Kiyosaki wanted to change that, because he believed that an educated and fully productive society benefits ALL of us (even the super-rich, who don't seem to get that...although I will add here my own contention, and that is that most of the super-rich of the "Rockefeller" type don't have the slightest idea how to go out and make money; they've inherited all their millions or billions and are ignorant of the real process, which makes them very afraid of those who DO understand it. Unfortunately, these people nevertheless do have a LOT of power.)

I was inspired enough by Kiyosaki's books to put together my own "money course" for after school at the school where I work, using Kiyosaki's two different "Cashflow" games as a method of instruction (one game for little kids and the other game for older kids). Unfortunately, the kids really weren't interested (maybe I wasn't a very good teacher?); they'd rather just play. While I did have several very smart and interested students, the majority of them were disruptive and undisciplinable kids that made it impossible to function, so after two exhausting trimesters, I stopped offering the course. One lesson that I learned from that experience is that most of the wisdom offered is really only for a very few students, anyway, which is why "forced schooling for the masses" is such a failure. In the early days of our republic, students only took courses in and learned material that they were interested in and really wanted to learn; for the rest of their time, they were making a living, such as helping on the family farm or in someones enterprise, in whatever capacity they could (of course nowadays, our child labor laws would prevent the latter).

Despite my having read three of Kiyosaki's other books, I had no idea that he had the particular background in thought that he talks about in this new book...that is to say that he is philosophically one of "what I am", or maybe I ought to say that I am "one of him". He was greatly influenced by a book of Buckminster Fuller's; he seems to share the same understanding of education as John Taylor Gatto; he says that the only honest politician running for president and the one who had correctly warned us YEARS ago about what was going to happen was Ron Paul, the one I supported (with donations and my vote in the primary). So I'm feeing a real kinship with Kiyasaki that I didn't know was there.

And I think he is entirely worth listening to. So far, of course, I have read only the first and currently available chapters of this book, but several times I found myself having an "Ah-ha" experience about things I THOUGHT I understood but didn't really. He explains things so simply and logically, that even if at times he maybe seems to be talking down, that is exactly the level I need to be talked at (wow, badly written sentence, but I think you know what I mean). Simple is fine with me if it gets me to understand!

You, too, can read this book as it comes out, if you want to. There is a certain level of "signing up," although I THINK that just setting up a user name and password is sufficient. However, I went all the way with a complete registration (name, address, etc.), because I knew that along the way, I was going to want to participate in the forum's discussions, which is another aspect of this. If doing that worries you, I think you don't really have to...but check it out and see. As for me, I thought it was worth it.

Okay, in many ways I am easily impressed (but I appreciate that about myself, because it shows a level of humility). For example, a few days ago I had an appointment with a new doctor in Malibu, and afterwards, I decided to treat myself by coming back home via the Pacific Coast Highway. Of course, I am eternally envious and amazed at those people who have houses RIGHT ON THE SAND along that route, something that seems IMPOSSIBLE to me. I decided to have lunch at Duke's, a restaurant on the coast that I had long wanted to try out, but so far never had. I got there just as they opened for lunch (11:30). It was a beautiful Southern California day, the kind of thing that people pay so much money to be here and enjoy, but which I don't enjoy as much as I should because I resent not owning a house (but yes, circumstances ARE changing). I sat outside at their "Barefoot Bar" and had a delicious macadamia-encrusted Oho (or is it Ono?) fish from Hawaii with saffron rice and salad, and with a coconut-milk and pineapple juice rum drink, all of which my personable waitress referred to as "The Consummate Duke's Experience" (which I also understood meant that I was a perfect patsy for the "Consummate Duke's Marketing", but so what, I DID enjoy it...in fact, it was ALL perfect).

I sat there right up against the plexiglass partition directly on the lava boulders upon which the waves were crashing and surveyed the scene that curved out before me. Just beyond the flat, empty portion of beach began again a string of houses directly on the beach with their decks jutting out over the water and their intimate stairways down to the very sand, ah, how wonderful, and then across the highway and high up on the hills above, even way up on the mountain tops, were other multi-million dollar houses. I marveled at the people who had successfully done such a thing, placed a house right on the beach or else infinitely high on a mountain I didn't even know you could reach by car. I was reminded of my idea about "how late" it was now to do this in L.A., and how marvelous it might have been to have come here in the 40s or 50s when things were only just beginning, and yet I also chastised myself for fear and inaction; I thought about the many notices I continually see on Internet sites such as "The Sovereign Society" or magazines that I receive such as "International Living" where they discuss waterfront property for sale in Brazil or Panama or Uruguay, or islands off the coast of Asia, or in developing former Communist regions of Eastern Europe along the Mediterranean (Dubrovnik, etc.) for prices like $30,000, and I think "Well, aren't these like 'LA in the 40s or 50s?"; in other words, I understood how easy it was for me to succumb to "fear and inaction" in the face of genuine opportunities elsewhere. Something I really need to fix about myself (and I think more understanding of money and how it works will help with that).

But then Robert Kiyosaki did a video on his site that was taken in his backyard in Hawaii, and he made no bones about the fact that it was ON WAIKIKI BEACH and I knew that those waves crashing up against the border of his property and that sand had to be among the most expensive oceanfront land on the face of the EARTH, and Robert Kiyosaki is a self-made man, having started out working in a store and whose real father had a government job. Robert Kiyosaki is not a Bill Gates, for example, who managed to ride the crest of one of the world's major economic and technological developments, a "once in an eon" opportunity that Gates happened to be at the forefront of. Kiyosaki achieved his achievements in a way that virtually anybody could also do if they knew how, and had the foresight, courage, and energy to do so. This is not to denigrate Kiyosaki's achievements at all, because primarily what he did was fill an essential need that had long needed to be filled and he was the one who did it...but my point is that such opportunities are infinite and do not require any special place and time.

And even when times seem dark and getting darker, we must not make the mistake of riding the waves of those times down into a treacherous whirling sinkhole of personal resignation and destruction, but should, instead, see that the opportunities to fill hungry needs are even more numerous than in the good times. So when the things are the darkest, so do rays of light shine the brightest.

So, if Robert Kiyosaki's newest, and perhaps deepest "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" book seems to interest you, please sign on and let's see how far it will take us. No more worrying about surviving, but putting our attention onto thriving. That's the "opportunity" half of the "danger/opportunity" ying and yang of the word "crisis".

Two Things About The Devil

Since Obama (I've decided to go along with a practice I've heard others suggest, to NOT call him "President" and frankly, it's an image that doesn't compute in my mind anyway) never ever impressed me for even one second, while all around me people were tearfully prostrating themselves before his image as "the new coming", I can't really say that he ever struck me as the least bit "beautiful". But as so MANY people seem so fully drawn in by the "good-looking, well-spoken black man" (a concept that ought to insult every other black man and maybe they're soon enough starting to figure that out), whereas I, in contrast, see him as having proven himself to be the worst president in U.S. history before he even took his oath of office just by virtue of the cabinet he assembled (I mean REALLY, making a MONSANTO man the Secretary of Agriculture, suggesting a tax evader as Secretary of the Treasury? Why didn't he assign a wolf as Secretary of the Henhouse?), I began to muse over that concept of "he looks so good, so he's got to be wonderful".

As I thought, somewhere in the back of my head, I could hear my wise and thoughtful father warning us when we were children, "Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Devil would be scary and ugly. Something scary and ugly you would obviously reject. The Devil is the master of LIES and part of that is that he could assume any pleasing shape he would think would be a temptation to you. The truth is, the Devil would beautiful beyond belief. After all, he was before the fall the highest angel in Heaven, and second in command to God. As his name of Lucifer suggests, the light-filled sight of him would make you fall down on your knees. Also, the Devil does not consider himself to be an enemy to God (that would be impossible, anyway). The Devil is an enemy to JESUS, the Son, whom Satan thought had usurped HIS position in Heaven and whose very existence diminished the purity of the One God. The Devil did not want to be second fiddle to Jesus, so he rebelled. Watch out for those temptations...they will not be obviously repulsive."

As a child I used to try to imagine what a beautiful Devil would look like and wondered how I could possibly be saved from him due to that pleasing appearance. I gather from Christian theology that you basically are helpless against the Devil, that you need Jesus's help to feel the contrast between the two and to pull away.

But I think what people in our present-day society have pulled away from is that kind of understanding, which they would think of as only being rabidly "Christian" (and therefore "backward') anyway. But I don't think you have to be a Christian in order to understand that concept and I am sure other religions have concepts similar to that, if dressed in the stories of a different mythology with different animating characters illustrating the basic concepts. That which is "evil" or which can really hurt you may not be so obvious, but instead would be so very pleasing, and that is what makes it all so very tough.

But gee we are so all appearance-oriented, now. It seems that our society really doesn't care about genuine substance at all; the only thing that matters is how things look, and are they fashionable and cool, and anything else is thrown by the wayside. And the way it seems to be in this society, now, the Devil could even appear hideous and frightening, and THAT would tempt some people. A truly beautiful appearance might not even work any more; that would be considered too "prissy and good".

Now I am not saying that Obama is the Devil. After all, I started this piece by saying that he never for a second tempted ME. But for sure he does tempt so very many others and it is those others who need to be warned. Because it is so clear to me that the substance of the man is harmful, yet there are so very many, too many, who wouldn't even begin to consider that, let alone clearly see it. And that is because, to them, he "looks and sounds good" (but LISTEN to what he is saying!). But looking good when one is not exists in which realm, now?

The second thing about the Devil that I was recently reminded of was that "you have to invite the Devil in." Now, that is amazing when you think about it; that this ultimate power of evil is nevertheless helplessly blocked from forcing his way into you. Is that really true, and if so, how can that be? I can only think that that comes from the idea that the Devil is not against God, the Father, he is only against Jesus, the Son. The poet John Milton, in his amazing and powerful work, Paradise Lost, went so far as to say that the main suffering of Satan from the fall is that he is no longer able to look upon God's face. God still holds the upper hand, here, and if people were given the power from God to have freedom of CHOICE, then even the Devil does not have enough power to violate that. So YOU can keep the Devil out, just as Jesus did during his three temptations (and, as Buddha did, during HIS three).

Back to Obama...times are tough and are likely to get much, much tougher and I think the time will be ripe for MUCH confusion and suffering and this offers a great opportunity for evil to expand across the land (the road to serfdom, economic collapse, homelessness, starvation, civil unrest, martial law, race war, nuclear war, totalitarianism...). For sure many will succumb to evil, will join it and carry it; many already have. But for those who would like to avoid that, it might help to remember these two things, which you can take as actualities, or you can take as symbols and metaphors:

1. The Devil would be amazingly beautiful and appealing (and therefore hugely tempting), but

2. You have to invite the Devil in; otherwise, he is powerless against you.

For those who don't like that kind of thing, sorry to get all "Christian" on you, but hard times require something strong, and I don't know anything stronger than God (or however you conceive that force). Now might be a good time to reconnect.

Living It

(KayPro II Portable Computer from the 80s)


Something that bugs me, that I am hearing much too often, is how “Generation Y” (just now coming en masse into the workplace) knows so much more about computers than “we” do (“we” apparently referring to anyone over, say, 40), usually parroted by somebody who actually doesn’t know all that much about computers. I even heard a lecturer at a workshop in a room filled with several hundred successful business managers say, “They even know more than every one of you in this room combined.” Wow, what a big slap in the face, and shocking in its actual inaccuracy.

These aren’t Generation Y people saying this, though (of course, they may be thinking it), but fading out Baby Boomers, or people advising fading out Baby Boomers (either hoping to facilitate that fading out, or else attempting to help them forestall it). Usually they back up that contention by saying that there wasn’t ever a moment in the lives of Generation Y when there weren’t computers around; “They grew up with them”, and also (which I think is so funny) the fact that Generation Y text messages so much. “E-mails are passé,” said our school’s board chair, who, himself, probably just recently got into e-mailing, so must watch his kids with jaw-dropping amazement as they dance across their Blackberries with their thumbs.

Well, sure…I think there must be a point in everyone’s life in a rapidly technological-developing world where individuals choose to stop and get off. There actually are several of my close friends who drew the line at getting a personal computer at all. As far as they were concerned, they could balance their checkbooks on the back of the bank statement, and they could sort their recipes in card files—checkbook balancing and recipe organizing were usually the arguments for getting a home computer back in the 80s when that technology exploded out onto the scene. Oh, that and games, which I know for a couple of decades was the main reason families bought computers for the home.

My father was one, who, although he did buy a computer and actually used it to COMPUTE things (very complicated polynomial equations and the like to solve load bearing problems or predict rocket trajectories or determine the solar power requirements of satellites), refused to ever go on-line, having somewhat of an irrational fear of the Internet, like it was a pipeline into a potentially indiscriminate demonic realm. Instead, he retained his trust in books and libraries (and well, I would never contemplate buying a Kindle). While he was hugely technological himself, he was almost “Amish” when it came to the Internet. (My mother, on the other hand, LOVED it.)

One friend of mine lost his career due to the advancement of computers into the workplace; he never could even learn how to master a mouse, unable to still his tendency to pick it up in the air and click it at the monitor as if it were a television remote control. Another friend, a sales representative, was forced to receive instructions from her vendors and her sales organization via e-mail and finally allowed into the house something I have never seen, “an e-mail server”, which is, apparently, a device for sending and receiving e-mail ONLY, and I have been instructed to NEVER e-mail her, its use is ONLY for business purposes, an instruction I’ve been able to follow due to the fact that she has refused to give me her e-mail address.

I, myself, drew the line at the above-mentioned text messaging. Just as I am still aghast at how many Generation Yers I see out in the world who are always, constantly, and forevermore talking on a cell phone wherever they are and whatever they are doing, I, generationally or personally, do NOT have the psychological need to be “connected” every single second of my day. An extrovert like me, who can make strangers on an elevator laugh with a sly comment or two, seems like a true introvert when compared to those constant cell phone users whom I feel are downright co-dependent. And ramp that one up a notch by the need to remain symbiotic via text messaging in class or during business meetings. Unbelievable. I do not view “want 2 c u after work” as a sign of superiority that should make me quake and worry about my future employability.

But maybe that’s because I know computers. While members of Generation Y were born and there were computers there, I evolved up with them. When I was born, computers were there, too, but they were immense room-filling machines that you communicated with via punch cards. I learned Fortran when I was in college at Berkeley and our programs to do things such as make the computer play tic-tac-toe or chess filled up several two-foot-long boxes of punch cards. You didn’t simply click on icons or select functions from a menu, you organized explicit instructions line by line and tested relentlessly to untangle the various endless loops you had inattentively programmed in. Data was transferred to reel-to-reel tapes and it was a great joy for me to go into a computer room and watch those reels with their long slack loops of tape click progressively forward, or suddenly fast forward or rewind (it was to prevent the tapes from snapping apart during these sudden fast forwards or rewinds that the tapes were mounted with these long slack loops)…but then later disc packs were invented (looking like stacks of brown 33 1/3 rpm records) and data was now accessible without the need to fast forward or rewind through reels of tape. [For those who want to get some sense of the enjoyment of this, I highly recommend renting the 1967 movie, “Billion Dollar Brain” (the “billion dollar brain” is a computer) starring Michael Caine and Karl Malden, and watching the title sequence with theme music by Richard Rodney Bennett. It’s a great movie, anyway, but I particularly love it for that title sequence alone—it shows what a computer was like for me when I was 19 years old.]

Later I worked as an analyst for a market research company in Los Angeles that had a unique real-time audience-reaction computer system used for testing movies, television pilots, commercials, and other things, developed and invented by an engineer who was one of the founding officers of the company. Audiences would watch a television pilot, for example, and turn dials that indicated their emotions throughout the program—turn up if they liked or were engaged by what was going on, turn down if they didn’t. (Most recently I saw that technology in use with audiences by CBS during the president debates. I was pleased to see that still in use, and personally related to it as I had known the man who had invented it and I had earned my living for a time by analyzing data that it produced.)

There was also music testing for record industry R&D, but instead of using the conscious dial method of input, members of the audience were hooked up to galvanic skin monitors and their unconscious reactions were recorded that way. The computer could receive and compute the data by any parameters the analysts wanted, characterizing individuals in the audience by gender, age, education, income, various tastes and purchasing habits, and so on.

A guy who was my roommate at the time worked as an assistant for that engineer who developed those systems and that engineer was also the “technological genius” working as a consultant for the fledgling Apple computer company, and others like it, so my roommate would bring home exciting tales of these small, DESKTOP computers that were being developed right in front of his eyes, and mine, too, as he often got permission to bring a prototype Apple or a Commodore, or some other mini computer, home for us to play with. The engineer wanted to see what we would do with them. I programmed the Commodore to write Dada poetry. [Interestingly, the dada artist Man Ray had lived in that very apartment, so maybe I was feeling some of his influence!] Remember, this was before most people even knew there was such an idea as personal computers, whereas my roommate and I were writing programs on personal computer prototypes sitting on my dining room table.

The famous Hollywood writer’s strike around 1978, 1979, occurred then (since, then, last year or so, we’ve had another one) and that stopped all scripts and other written production, so we all were laid off from that research company. Needing to find some other employment, I had been hearing about the new concept of word processing, and I jumped into that with both feet. I was hired by the Los Angeles (entertainment industry) branch of the sixth largest law firm in the United States as a word processor, in those days a relatively high-paying field, because it was so new and specialized. Again, this wasn’t clicking on an icon or selecting functions from a menu…we didn’t even have CRT monitors, then. You’d learn word processing star codes (these varied depending upon which company’s system you were using, but a typical example might be “*LM” and a number to set the left margin on a document, “*RM” and another number to set the right margin) which you would enter into the computer via an inputting keyboard that was like a typewriter in that it also typed out on long attached sheets of paper everything you had entered in. The typewriter was also an output device that printed out selected samples of the document you were preparing, and then, once your document was finished, completed copies for circulation, editing, and possible revision.

Many years after that, I was hired by the surgical department of the Stanford University Medical Center to be their resident “computer genius” (as some of the staff called me). Desktop computers were now entering the market and the business manager bought several of them for his administrative offices, but nobody knew yet what to do with them. He had the dream of having all the administrative functions programmed and he hired me to figure out what we could do with those computers and to use them to bring into fruition his ideas. I really cut my teeth on those PCs back then and I made them do things that IBM hadn’t even imagined they could do. The software for those computers were still tabulas rasa, blank canvases available for the individual imagination to put into use. By then we had CRT monitors (black and white, of course) and used floppy discs instead of solid disc packs; these floppy disks were about the size of 45 rpm records and you needed to load into your computer at least two of them, one for the software and the other for the data.

One of my favorite accomplishments during that era was creating and executing the idea of what I called “The Automatic Audiology Examination Report Generator.” The ENT (ear, nose, and throat) department was having trouble getting all their hearing exam reports prepared; they were overflowing with completed tests and were getting further behind in getting the reports typed up (word processed). I realized that most of what they reported was standard, with some individual variations, so I created a system in which all the clerk had to do was enter X’s on a database grid that corresponded to whatever standardized tests had been taken and the test results, and then enter in where appropriate specific data that was unique to that individual (such as name, address, unusual test results, and certain “ad hoc” comments), then merge that individual database with a shell document that automatically printed out the complete verbiage of the audiology report: “Now presents Susan Smith complaining of chronic tintinitus of the left ear; examination reveals a profound hearing loss in the 8,000 to 9,000 frequency range…” etc. Instead of fifteen or twenty minutes per report, the clerk could do each one in about three to five minutes; she put the X’s in the particular places and the COMPUTER wrote the report. It was a hit.

Again, just recently, all the companies across the U.S. that have 403(b) retirement funds [that’s the non-profit version of a 401(k)] were being made by the IRS to have new plan documents prepared that reflect the various changes in the law that had been made recently. It’s a huge extra load of work for human resource and business managers everywhere; fortunately in our case, TIAA-CREF, our retirement fund, would have plan documents made for us if we presented to them all the features of our particular plan. This was done via a series of questionnaires that reported all the features, essentially check boxes and filled-in blanks, and then a report-preparing company would turn that information into the verbiage of a written plan. Once I saw the completed process, I realized that this was EXACTLY the same concept as my “Automatic Audiology Examination Report Generator”. The company was able to prepare plan documents in virtually no time at all, because the system of box checks and numbers or words filling in blanks led to the automatic selection of appropriate sentences or paragraphs, equivalent to the system I created for Stanford’s ENT department.

Again, not only something that I witnessed, but something that I actually developed myself (whether others unknown to me also developed something similar, or not, I do not know, but with Stanford University being the nucleus of Silicon Valley, I’m just sayin’…) is still being productively used today.

Despite there being stability, there is also change, and so my boss and benefactor, the business manager, got a higher job at a different university, in Florida, and took with him his administrative vision, which his replacement at Stanford did not share, or even understand. At his new job, he was high up enough that he answered only to the Board, and he invited me to go with him to Florida to run that university’s entire IT department. Damn…one of those cross-roads in life in which I probably took the WRONG turn. I turned this opportunity down, thinking that IT management was not really the career I wanted for myself. How different my life would be now, though….

Instead, I had a business idea of my own I wanted to run, so I left Stanford and attempted self-employment. I needed a computer, but PCs, even the most rudimentary ones, were way too expensive for me at the time, so I rented one, a Kaypro. Does anybody remember those? The Kaypro was “portable”; it was a metal box, like a small suitcase, with a handle on the top lid for carrying around. You snapped the lid off and inside it was the keyboard; the rest of the box was the computer itself, with slots for the required two floppy discs and a CRT monitor about five inches in diagonal. Even though it looked like somebody’s Heathkit oscilloscope, I loved the thing.

I actually did have a few customers for my business and I believe I created some marvelous things for them. But the money coming in was far too little and too slow. What all happened then is not relative to this particular tale, but basically the business did not work out; whether the idea was good or not, I can’t quite say, but the timing was definitely wrong. I saw no solution other than to go back to work for somebody else.

I ended up working for Seagate Technology, maker of hard drives. My job was mostly word processing, using the exact same type of computers I had used at Stanford, but in a more mundane, less creative way (using the word processing function, but not the database and programming functions). One interesting part of the job, however, was talking to the company’s engineers from India and translating their verbal instructions for assembly and testing of hard drives into understandable English for the factory. So, for all practical purposes, I was now “writing hard drive assembly instructions”. When I next actually bought (instead of rented) my own computer, I made sure that it had the latest technology, a hard drive by Seagate.

In 1986, I finally bought my first home computer. I was going through some old files yesterday and came across the sales contract for it, which was a Hewlett-Packard Vectra PC, with an IBM COLOR monitor (latest technology) and a Canon LASER printer (brand new printing technology). That whole system cost me in the neighborhood of $10,000. Why, just to have a second font on the Canon laser printer cost me $250 for an additional font cartridge.

Not many today would pay $10,000 for home a computer system, yet this was in 1986, when $10,000 had the present-day buying-power of a little under $20,000. So, by today’s standards, I was willing to pay $20,000 for a home computer? Yeah, maybe not very many people of my generation did that; that having a PC at home was not as usual or expected as I might have thought.

By now the floppy discs were half the diameter of the ones I had used at Stanford, and, as everyone knows, they evolved into the smaller plastic-cased ones, used on the Dell computer I got after the HP was obsolete, which now have all but disappeared, themselves. (That Dell also had a CD-ROM, and a CD burner, two new technologies at the time.)

But with that HP in 1986, I was also on-line with a dial-up modem. This wasn’t the “Wild World Web”, I don’t think that term was in use at the time. It was CompuServ and now I was shopping on line, buying airline tickets on line, and conversing with people on bulletin boards. E-mail, as such, wasn’t quite so common, since so few of the people I knew even had computers. But otherwise, I was conversing all over the world with those who DID have computers and were likewise on CompuServ.

Naturally, I continued to evolve from there until today I have an Apple laptop and a gorgeous biggest-screen-possible aluminum iMac desktop, and an HP color all-in-one printer/copier/scanner/fax, all DSL networked wirelessly. I can take my lapdown down to the pool and do work and go on-line, or, of course, go on-line anywhere in the world where there is free wireless Internet connection. No, I do not have an iPhone with dozens of apps, although my T-Mobile cell phone does have a (cumbersome) Internet connection of sorts that I use mostly to check out movie times when I am out and about. So far, I still draw the line at text messaging, as a technology I don’t want or need.

When I first started working where I work now, Y2K was the big feared danger (and I had to be on a committee that had a plan regarding what we were going to do about it). I’m not going to say that it WASN’T a danger, although all the computer-controlled systems did not shut down and our society did not collapse on midnight of January 1, 2000. What I will say was that any danger there was, was fixed by…whom? By people who KNEW all the old computer systems, the Fortran and the COBOL and so on, all the old programming languages that I and fellow students in college in the late 60s were learning, that’s what’s UNDERNEATH all the beautiful, convenient, accessible user interface that everybody enjoys these days. What if those people weren’t around to go back into the Gordian Knot of those complicated systems to uncover and reprogram all the dating code?

The point is that while we see rapid change happening on the outside of technology, and the ever-expansion of its amazing use, deep down inside are the footprints, the vision, the blood sweat and tears, the wisdom, and the heart and soul, of OLD GUYS (men and women). “Old guys” who were there and contributed to it, or just old guys who just “were there” and understand it.

Sure, some high school kid can (and does) “text message”, just as he will utilize whatever comes next, and whatever comes next after that, and then whatever comes next after that. And my little 11-year-old nephew never seems to be without his laptop.

But don’t, I repeat don’t, ever say that the new user “knows more” than the previous generation or two just because they “have” the technology and they frequently use it in its latest form…in fact, can’t imagine being without it. Those previous generations are the developers and observers and the users from way way back who are INSIDE the very technology that the latest users are enjoying. Let’s remember that, and have some respect.

Even Newton in his science was not willing to accept a singular glory, despite all his genius, saying, as he did, that he knew he was what he was due to his standing on some very broad shoulders. We should all be at least as humble as Newton was.

Thanksgiving Trip, Part 1

This Thanksgiving, I’m making more of a trip of it than I did last year. Since it seemed like too much driving packed into such a short time, plus I can’t say that that long trip up I-5 is really all that interesting to me currently (I’ve done it quite enough in the past few years!), I decided to fly up to San Francisco early Wednesday morning, spend Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday enjoying San Francisco, and then driving to my sister’s Clear Lake house for the family Thanksgiving on Saturday, and then driving back down to San Francisco to fly back on Sunday in time for going back to work on Monday.

I actually started the celebration a little early by taking my friend Kate out to dinner Tuesday after work, going to one Rosti’s, a Tuscan restaurant that is one of our hang-outs. Every time we have gone to Rosti’s, we have eaten outside. In fact, I have actually eaten inside at Rosti’s only once (and that was with somebody else, not Kate), but I found it to be way too noisy to enjoy. However, since the weather has gotten rainy and cold, I was sure that Kate and I would be eating inside this time despite my not really liking it inside. However, Kate saw that Rosti’s had the outdoor warming torches burning, so we ate outside this time, too! I don’t think the restaurant actually expected anybody to actually eat outside, but they were happy enough to have us do it and even though at first we were the only ones outside, after a while, some other people came out there, too.

Normally Kate and I will end up closing a place, but as I had to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning, we didn’t push it this time. Our timing was, in fact, impeccable, because just about the very second we decided that it was time to leave, we felt one raindrop fall. By the time I had walked Kate to her car, we felt a few more drops, and when I got inside my own, the rain really began to pour. While we could keep warm eating outside thanks to the torches, there was no way that we could have kept dry in the rain.

The rain was really heavy and I got completely soaked at home as I walked in from the parking lot.

Way way way too early, I had to get up, shower and dress, and drive to Johnny Park near the airport, the discount parking garage that I use whenever I fly. That early in the morning, traffic was very light and I got there quite quickly. However, there were several people at Johnny Park and we all filled up every seat on the shuttle that took us to the terminals.

I was flying Virgin America, which was a new airline for me. I already had my boarding pass that I had printed off at home, and was supposed to be able to check my suitcase on the curb. However, it ends up that Virgin doesn’t have curbside baggage checking at LAX, but they do have a special line inside for those who had printed their own boarding pass, so it was no problem and pretty quick anyway.

Security was quite quick, too. TSA always seems to get a bad rap, described as “thugs,” but I have always found them to be quite nice, jolly, even, and these were no exception. In fact, they were really quite friendly and they made the experience rather fun.

At the first security station, you show your photo ID and your boarding pass, and a Homeland Security official checks those out and them stamps your boarding pass with a seal and then signs the seal. He was wishing everybody a great Thanksgiving.

Then you ride the escalator up to where the metal detectors are. You are instructed to take off your shoes (I also took off my belt and watch, because those things always ring the alarm) and put them in a bin along with your liquids, if you are carrying any (my grooming stuff was in my checked baggage, so I was carrying no liquids). Liquids are limited to three-ounce containers that will fit into a quart-size baggie. Laptop computers are supposed to be taken out of their case for security inspection, but mine was in my checked baggage, as well. I had my heart medications with me, but they are pills, not liquids, so require no special security preparations. The only special thing I had had to do was put my camcorder batteries in a baggie inside my backpack, as they do not want them in your checked baggage (could be a fire hazard, apparently).

There was a friendly man at security roaming around announcing that we could put our photo IDs away since we had already passed that particular security checkpoint.

I breezed through the metal detector and then an official showed me where there were some seats so that I could my shoes back on. It was all very friendly and efficient.

I made my way a bathroom, and then the gate. I was really quite early, so decided to eat breakfast at Ruby’s diner, which was up there near my gate. While I ate, there was a woman talking on her cell phone about having had to evacuate her house due to, I don’t know, but it sounded like a fire. I guess we are still having brush fires. It seemed from her conversation that she was flying somewhere for Thanksgiving anyway, which was why she was at the airport, but due to the evacuation, she and her husband had to be there much earlier, like maybe their flight wasn’t until later that afternoon. Seems like if you have to evacuate your house, you might not enjoy flying somewhere for Thanksgiving, but then again, since you can’t be at home, you may as well already have plans to be somewhere else.

I felt like talking with the woman about her evacuation, except for the fact that I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t “eavesdropped” on her conversation. Instead, I wondered whether there might be a new etiquette based on cell phone usage, that now it might be perfectly permissible to discuss with a stranger something that they were talking about on a public cell phone conversation. After all, when they are talking loudly in public, whatever they are talking about is no longer private, but has become public knowledge.

This same issue came up again today when I was riding a cable car in San Francisco. A woman on the cable car was talking to somebody about her plans in San Francisco, saying, “We had the memorial service for my mother yesterday, and today I will be meeting with my brother for lunch.” I felt like commiserating with her over her mother’s recent death, yet my “new rules of etiquette” aren’t definite in my mind, yet.

After breakfast, I sat and read in the waiting room until it was boarding time. While I was waiting, I was somewhat surprised to watch a woman change her toddler’s diapers right there on the carpeted floor of the waiting room in full view of hundreds of other waiting passengers. I realized that the time for boarding was coming up pretty soon and the woman might not want to miss the announcement, but bathrooms with diaper changing stations were quite near.

I attempted to give the woman and her toddler some “privacy” by not really watching this scene, although ignoring it was like attempting to ignore a television; you can’t really, because your eyes are continually drawn to the action.

The woman was really quite deft with the operation (obviously having done it hundreds of times before), whereas in my case, seeing diapers changed is something I have seen only once before. Fortunately in this case it wasn’t as messy as it could have been, yet it was messy enough that I felt that it was something that really did need to be done in a bathroom where there was a water supply.

The woman took the dirty “Pampers” off, folded them up, and put them down on the floor. I hoped that she wasn’t going to them leave them there. The minute the little boy was naked down there, he began to make complaining noises and kind of wiggle and fight her, which I think is typical, but whether this is from an inborn feeling of insecurity, modesty, or something else, I just don’t know.

The woman grabbed both feet with one hand, lifted them up, and then cleaned his thoroughly exposed bottom with a cloth in the other hand. While this was going on, another little boy who was in the area, also waiting to board the plane, pointedly went right over to watch this whole thing closely. I half expected the mother to admonish him, “Do you mind, give my son some privacy,” but in reality, this was something she really didn’t have much of a right to say (plus it probably didn’t enter her mind).

Once her boy was cleaned, the mother taped on his new diapers, pulled his pants back on, slipped on his shoes, and the boy was done. Fortunately, she then threw the dirty diaper away and then waited to board the airplane. I felt that she really needed to wash her hands and if it were me, I wouldn’t be comfortable until I had washed them. But it didn’t seem to concern her.

When it was time for my section to board the plane, I got in line and boarded the plane. It’s been a while since I have flown and I was surprised how tight the seat was. While that might be due to my being overweight, I honestly felt that it was my pelvis bones, not my butt, that banged against the two arm rests as I squeezed into the seat. But yes, this is coach, so a lot of comfort is not to be expected.

The interior of the plane was quite pretty with its lavender ambient lighting on the ceiling and hot pink ambient lighting surrounding the windows. I wondered what kind of focus group marketing study had gone into that particular design. That, along with the touch-screen entertainment center embedded in the seat back in front of you were the two design claims of fame for this airline. However, I very soon got very irritated by the sight of seat-fulls of people poking at their screens. I can’t quite explain why this was irritating (and I, too, was poking at mine from time to time), but it was irritating in the same vein as audiences crinkling open their candy and snack packages in a movie theater.

The entertainment center had dozens of menu choices, but most of them were “empty” with “please pardon us, we are still in development” error messages. So no on-board shopping, text message chatting with other seats on the plane, checking e-mail, and so on, nor did the airflight map work either; however, they did seem to have dozens of computer games, music videos, television, and movie channels (the movies all cost $7.00). Since this was only an hour flight, I saw no reason to involve myself with renting a movie or doing any other thing that required buying a headset. I had brought a book along to read.

Food, when they offer it, is also a “cost” item, ordered on the screen with a credit card, and I presume they had alcoholic drinks for sale, too, but I stuck with the complementary cup of coffee.

Quite soon, we arrived in San Francisco, where we were told it was raining (I had expected that).

I followed the crowd down to the baggage claim, and then searched for a San Francisco Information booth where I understood that I could buy a 1, 3, or 7-day Muni Pass that would get me unlimited rides on the cable cars, street cars, and Muni busses. However, that proved to be problematic; the first booth said that they didn’t sell them, but they told me where there was one that would. However, that one wasn’t manned, but had a sign, instead, directing tourists to yet another one, “at the end” of the concourse. As this concourse seemed infinite, I couldn’t see where the “end” of it was (it actually was as wide as the entire airport, itself), I began to get irritated. I found a security guard to ask and he explained where I should go to find the end of the concourse. I told him that I was also looking for the AirTrain that takes passengers to the car rental section, which he said was quite near where the Information Booth was and, in fact, my walking down to the end of the concourse took me closer to the car rental area.

Fortunately, this third and final booth was manned and he did, indeed, sell the passes, plus he had all sorts of maps, magazines, and brochures that I have made productive use of. I bought a three-day pass and then rode the elevator up to the fourth floor where I could catch the AirTrain.

The AirTrain was like a Disneyland people mover and quite fun to ride, actually. It had two different lines, the red line that travelled all around the airport, and the blue line that diverted off of the airport concourses and out into the hinterlands where all the car rental places are in a separate building complex.

The San Francisco Airport far outdoes the Los Angeles Airport in appearance, modernism, and convenience. One can even take BART, the San Francisco Bay Area’s “subway” or light rail system from the airport into the city itself; very European. Los Angeles has light rail, too, but it requires catching a shuttle bus to get to from the airport. SFO, like San Francisco, is more about electrified mass transit, whereas LAX, like Los Angeles, is more about gasoline-run vehicles.

It was interesting to see the long line of car rental places. I found the counter for Dollar Car Rental, with whom I had confirmed reservations. However, despite my printed confirmation, Dollar’s computer had no record of my reservation. “That happens sometimes,” the man at the counter said. I had never used Dollar before, but I thought that this was not a good sign. However, he duplicated my reservation and sent me down to pick up my car.

I found the Dollar car pick up section, but the woman working that booth said that the man had sent me to the wrong place. I asked her where I should go, instead, but she said that it wasn’t my fault, it was “That man upstairs,” whom she then called to tease. “He always does that,” she said, and then told me to wait there while she went to go get the car from where it was, elsewhere. I have no idea what “that man upstairs” had done wrong, but when the woman brought me the car, she said something about how Thrifty and Dollar had merged, so I assume the man had used a Thrifty code on the Dollar rental, or something, which might explain why he couldn’t find my reservation. But no matter, I now had my rental car, a silver Dodge Caliber, into the back of which I put my suitcase and then I proceeded out of the car rental area and out into the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

To be continued….

Ridiculous Contentions

Those people who say that Sarah Palin should not be Vice-President because the job would take her away from her responsibilities as a mother, "She should stay at home with those five kids, especially the baby with Down's Syndrome," let's be a little less insane in our outlook. For one thing, we could say that about any mother. If what you really want is for all mothers to stay at home and take care of their children, say that, don't somehow make this some kind of unique requirement for Sarah Palin who just happens to be running for office for a party that you are against. And anyway, she is already a Governor and she seems to function there just fine. Is Vice-President that much worse, or would take up that much more time? It might even be easier. Some Vice-Presidents have felt that they have very little to do. Honestly, I really wouldn't think that she would be any more over-worked than any of the rest of us (that is to say, those of us who ARE overworked).

And besides, other women in powerful positions have raised children. Margaret Thatcher, for example, had children. And Lady Di. Few women on Earth have had busier schedules than the much-beloved British Princess. Jackie Kennedy was a pretty busy First Lady (the way she handled being First Lady was like it was a very busy public office), yet everyone remembers how little John John was during President Kennedy's presidency, and Caroline wasn't that much older. Those are just a few names that pop into my head right now.

Anyway, isn't it up to Sarah Palin to decide for herself? One should judge her fitness for office on her character, background, and her stand on the issues, not whether someone thinks she should have a career at all, or not.

Next, regarding John McCain and some subtle hints I have been reading about concerning a potential "Swift Boating" of him concerning his POW years. The argument against him goes that since he was the son of a Naval Admiral whom they would have freed, yet he would not leave while others of his company remained prisoners, the Viet Cong went easy on in him and, in fact, he made a deal with them and betrayed his country by recording anti-American propaganda spots for the enemy and also shared so many American military secrets regarding bombing targets that the U.S. had to give up their bombing plans which had therefore been rendered ineffective.

They agreed to go easy on him? Have those who make this claim ever watched him give a speech? He can only with difficulty move his arms and it seems that he is unable to reach them up to even shoulder-level. This seems to indicate that rather than having had an easy time of it as a POW, his body was actually permanently damaged from the experience.

The Viet Cong's offer to set the son of an Admiral free...I wonder if he had accepted their offer, would they have actually gone through with it, or were they just messing with him? I think they figured he was probably their most valuable prisoner and they would go to any lengths to torture as much information out of him as they could. If he sometimes broke and actually revealed secrets, if he DID, who among us might have done better? Obama? Biden?

McCain seems to have the admiration of those other prisoners who were there with him. Surely if he had betrayed his country or his fellow prisoners, or in some other way dishonored himself, somebody by now would have stepped forward and revealed it, or have I somehow missed that? Instead what we hear is that McCain kept the prisoners' morale up and helped them get through to another day. That's what could be called "hope in action", which goes beyond hope in words.

Lao-tzu On Leaving The People Alone

The other day I was doing what I sometimes do when I feel I need an extra "oomph" or some hope and inspiration, picking a page at random from some important book or other in my library to see what it has to tell me. This time the book I chose was the Tao Te Ching, the Stephen Mitchell translation. Stephen Mitchell is a poet and a foreign language genius whom I have had the privilege of meeting. The Tao Te Ching, although rather short, is a book I have only taken piecemeal, perhaps because each selection in it requires a very great deal of contemplation in order to appreciate, so I an unable to run right through it like I might a light novel.

The selection that I opened to was number 57:

"If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.

The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.

Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become honest.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes as common as grass."

Wow, that was written 2,500 years ago by one of the top four or five wisest men ever, and yet we STILL have to battle Marxism/Leninism and Fascism (which people still think are "new, enlightened" ideas), right here in the United States of America.

The Leader?

I really dislike the improper phrase, “the leader of the free world” when applied to the President of the United States and wish people would stop using it (as people often do when referring to McCain and Obama as potentially being), unless their agenda is to manipulate people into either assuming that we have a dictatorship or thinking that we ought to have a one-world government. This phrase indicates a failure to understand the United States Constitution, in which our federal government was designed with THREE EQUAL BRANCHES that provide checks and balances to each other, the Executive Branch (the President and his cabinet), the Legislative Branch (the two houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate), and the Judicial Branch (the Supreme Court). No one branch is superior to the others, and therefore no one individual within one of the branches is superior to the others, and certainly not the President. The President is merely the lead administrator of the laws that Congress passes, and he also is supposed to serve as a sort of federal “host” to visiting foreign officials and serve as Commander and Chief of the military. The enumerated powers of the President are actually very few. (Americans really should carefully reread the Constitution). A person like President Bush expanded his powers WAY beyond what is constitutional, and therefore nothing of what he did along these lines is valid and actually may be legally ignored. Nothing unconstitutional is a valid law in the United States.

Also, in the United States the state is the sovereign, not the federal government, which means that as citizens of the United States, we are citizens of our individual state FIRST, and then the United States as a whole. The people of today, being generally weak and not self-reliant like the early Americans, tend to think in terms of monarchies or dictatorships (they’re always looking to somebody to rule them, which is why they trend toward centrally planned economies), do not fully understand the concept of the state being sovereign, but the point of the federation was to ease interstate trade and make more efficient our relationships with foreign countries, not to create a new country that overtook the power of the individual states. Not one state would have ratified the Constitution if by their doing so they had relinquished their sovereignty.

If any government executive should be more important to the individual citizen, it would be the governor of their state, not the President of the United States, but actually the governor is really not too different at the state level than the president is at the federal level.

In the United States, the PEOPLE are the true government, not those elected as our representatives. So if there are “leaders,” they are each one of us individually, and we really ought to take that role very seriously.

And what’s this idea of “the free world” that the President is supposedly the leader of? He certainly isn’t the leader of the United Kingdom or Australia or Germany or Japan, or any other “democratic” or similar country, many of which, by the way, are actually currently more free than the United States. They have their own leaders, chosen by them.

Among all the very serious problems that this country has, I would say that at the very bottom of it is people accepting, and using, this concept of the President as being the Leader of the Free World. Not only is that wrong, we better hope it never becomes true.