The Banks! The Governments! ...The Farmers?

In 2008 banking got a makeover, at least we are told that. In 2011 governments are getting a makeover. It started in Egypt and Madison, Wisconsin before turning to budget issues in Greece, Italy, and the United States. We have not seen the end of this. In fact, when it comes to government budget recovery, we are at the very beginning of this cycle. It will possibly involve a decade or more of limited growth.

The question just popped in my head while I was eating dinner, 'who will fail next?' while I have no idea I am afraid that food will become the next crisis. There is already an official famine in Ethopia and Somolia. As China, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia continue to expand they will want more food and more energy intensive foods, like meat. Add that to an El Niño cycle and add some insect in the mix and before you know it food costs twice as much (wholesale) and all of the sudden 3/4 of the world is unsure of their next meal.

Obviously, I hope that there are no major failures for the next 70 years of my life, but given two big ones in three years, something else will probably come up.

Not to sounds paranoid, although I do consider myself paranoid about unemployment, I spend time running and reading thinking about the future and crazy scenarios such as massive famines. That amount of preperation helps me run races and climb mountains because I have already thought through most of the scenarios and all I have to do it react according to one of my scenarios instead of panic.

So I'm not hoarding canned food and weapons and gold, but I do have a garden... I guess I was brainwashed as a young kid. They said 'Be Prepared' and I listened. For the most part it is all mental. The key is not to panic I suppose. Those that sit down on the mountain sometimes never get up. Those that get dropped in a race during a surge either work their way back up, or go backwards. What you do on the rebound after the fall really does matter. Will you try again with your new knowledge or end the pursuit? Some pursuits are too valuable to me to stop regardless of the number of failures.

Ask How Not Why

In high school, after I decided life was an anthropology experiment, I set out to understand how people react. Answering the question why they react a certain way is far harder, so for the most part I don't even try. Understanding how a person (or anything really) will react to a given stimuli is important in the future so that we can build effective relationships and not make the miskates of our past. By observing what actions obtain positive and negative reactions we can learn what to do and what not to do.

Extending this concept to economics, when S&P downgrade the US credit, the stock market takes a hit. Going down for a few days is how the stock market reacted. The why is that investors felt that trouble was eminent and there were safer place to put their money than stocks. Downgrading of a country's debt rating implies that that country is not totally stable enough to pay their bills. In other words, the country has a combination of weak economy and not absolutely effective government. Which means that a recession is possible. Even in that simple example the why is more complicated.

One more example is failure of a structure. Why it failed has to do with design inefficiencies or an unplanned load case. How it failed is the physical phenomena of material failure analysis.

Another example, perhaps someone yells at you after you forgot to do the dishes. That is how the person reacted to your dish doing failure, but chances are there is something else going on with that person that caused him or her to yell. Understand why a person yells or acts a certain way is far more complex. Although, in anoint term committed relationship the why is probably helpful to understand as well.

I Live in Iowa: Week 16

Another week living, and I suppose that means another week closer to my death. I've never really thought of it that way. It was a busy week. One of the busiest I have had working yet.

I officially worked 51 hours. That's the most I have ever worked professionally. While it is a lot, it still is far easier than WPI was. I spent the first three days learning the fundamentals of product for John Deere Construction and Forestry Equipment. I basically got paid to drive around articulated dump trucks, bulldozers, motor graders, and four wheel loaders. While it is fun, it is tiring and those guys have hard jobs.

I came down with a sore throat the last half of the week due to running/biking more, lack of sleep because I was waking up at 5AM to go to Moline, IL, and dehydration. When I sit at my desk I drink water continuously, but at the training I was only getting like 80-90% of normal or perhaps I was sweating more in the heat.

I ran 61 miles and took two days off, although I biked about 38 miles over those two off days. I had a nice 1k hard 1k moderate workout. I struggle with the harder recovery running so it is something I intend to work on more in this cycle. I also had a nice 8.5 mile progression run on the track and that went well. I again struggle with steadily increasing the pace so I was hurting toward the end even though it was not terribly fast. Basically I worked on things this week that I am not good at, which means improvement will come.

Friday night I drove up to Mikwaukee to celebrate my sister's 21st birthday and I had a nice time.  We even went to a club and had VIP service. It felt like I was on Entourage or the Hills. Definitely not my normal Friday night.

It's late, I'm tired, I'm going to bed. Also, I'll say it on the blog so that I'm committed in public, I'm going to write an article about Work, Life and Retirement. I feel that the current stock market crash and debt crisis is making Generation Y even more doubtful of retirement and a better standard of living than our parents. Anyway, I'll elaborate later.

One last thing, I bought stock on Friday because it was at a good price. Well, it's at an even better price today but I don't have any cash. I live and I learn.

Distractions

It is frustrating how often distractions get in the way of our goals. Admittedly, sometimes we need "distractions" to remind us what is really important or what our more important goals are, so not all distractions are bad. I had the opportunity to witness a distraction progress recently and it was educating. To be honest I am not sure what I learned as it happened within the last 24 hours, but I know that I learned something.

One of the nice things about moving is that you start at the new location as a new person. I am very fortunate to have moved to Dubuque at a time when my life is going as well as it ever has. What I mean is that I hit the ground running, figuratively (and actually). I have noticed that with time distractions tend to build in any location. When I am new in town I have no requests of myself from others, which allows me to be very focused and thus effective in the things that I do.

I was thinking about high school, college, and post-collegiate life on one of my runs recently and the difference between focus and distractions. In high school, I did everything. Not actually everything, but I was involved in so many different groups that for my grade I had the most pictures in the year book twice and I was second in my class once. As I get older I realize the difference focusing on a specific goal makes versus floating between a number of different activities. For example, I guarantee that you will not find one person that is a professional athlete, concert quality orchestra musician, and CFO of a company with 100+ million in sales annually all at the same time. Each one of those requires so much work to get to that point of capability that along the way other pursuits are typically sacrificed.

In the world of literature no narrative about running has influenced my own training as much as Chris Lear's Running with the Buffaloes. The book follows the Colorado University cross country team as it tries to win the national championship. As far as seasons to follow this has to be one of the most eventful seasons that any team of any sport has ever had. Of course along the way there is a fair amount of talk about training, but the emotional human aspect is very strong due to the events and mainly the one event that occurs part of the way through the season. One of the take away ideas from the book for me what that universities are not looking for well rounded people, they are looking for people that are really good at something. In terms of running, universities want the fastest runner, not the 700th fastest who does other things moderately well too.

I read that book when I was about 20, which was a big year for me in terms of maturing. I realized I was not a kid and I had to get serious about my life. It was time to avoid distractions. Attempting to avoid distractions is a significant aspect of my life. It's part of the reason I've been single so long. It is part of the reason my mountaineering and climbing career has occurred with a number of leaps of commitment. I was (and in many respects still am) too inexperienced to be in Pakistan climbing 8000 meter mountains, but as part of the process toward a goal of mine I feel the need to avoid distractions and give myself the opportunity to excel. One way to do that is put myself out there and cut the distractions also known as camp on a glacier in Pakistan for a month.

Sometimes distractions can build over time. For example, last year about this time I was bumming around summer camp after the season was over doing some interesting things in my routine, but not much. I felt that I needed to do something "big" to progress. While I failed at climbing just about everything, I ended up running the Wonderland Trail, which was a fantastic experience. I also met and reconnected with a number of my friends, which by itself made the trip worth it.

What I am trying to say, if you did not get it yet, is that you have to keep your eyes on the prize, the important goals of your life. There are many distractions in life. I think that trying just about everything is a great idea, but I feel succeeding at even one long term goal is worth more than dozens, perhaps hundreds of distraction experiences.

Writers note: Just so that you know where my head is at, I've been "struggling" since my marathon. I've done so many of the things that I want to that the thought of attacking running again is giving me some apprehension. I've been bicycling (a distraction), working more hours (a distraction from running although an interesting and fulfilling one that pays well, 50 hours a week versus 40 really cuts into my running time), and spending more time reading and consuming media. The excitement to do 100+ (I'm hoping for some consistent 120 mile weeks this fall) mile weeks is coming back but I can't just go out and do it, it takes a few weeks to get there pushing myself every day. Long term motivation for me has never been a problem, but short term I can be super lazy and apathetic. Hence, I feel I've been distracted.

I will Coach!

I am one of the two new cross country and track assistant coaches at the University of Dubuque. This is an incredible opportunity. The coaching staff is being refreshed with some new people so we have the chance to start some good habits. Additionally, UD has great facilities for track and field. The only thing we lack is a perfect javelin area. On the other hand, we do have a 200 meter indoor track.

The three member cross country staff had a three hour meeting Thursday to discuss all sorts of details. If you imagine that running is simple, define easy and hard for me. Part of the excitement for us is that we are building a system. None of us are established college coaches so we have the opportunity to start from scratch, which would be difficult for more experienced people to do.

One of my goals since high school was to coach. I did not expect the opportunity to appear while I am so young and this is a rare opportunity indeed.

How will this affect my engineering job? I will not stay at work late as often as I do now. Other than that it should not affect my job at all. Personally, I will probably wake up early to double more consistently so that I can do the workout with the team and still do my workout. I am excited to see where this leads. I feel that many people will benefit from this collaboration.

Here come More Layoffs

With the new legislation to cut spending rest assured that the government will be laying more people off. Many in the media (NPR) are saying that this most recent bill does not go far enough to pay off debt and reduce the future deficit. In fact, I read on NPR's iPhone app that one of China's major credit rating agency recently down graded the US to A from A+. That sounds good but it is a number of steps down from the AAA rating that all of the US rating agencies are giving the US. What is significant is that China owns something like 1.2 trillion of the US debt, so we might care what their rating agencies think if we care what our rating agencies think. Also, remember that US rating agencies gave subprime CDOs Investment grade ratings (A or higher) even after the bottom fell out. In other words, they screwed up in 2008, they could be doing it again.

Being unemployed was terrible. I felt as though no one would give me a chance. With the government set to cut more spending more people will be out of jobs. This means the government will not collect as much income tax or sales tax because unemployed people do not spend as much money.

It is so sad for me to read about this and listen to it. I don't understand why we cannot raise taxes. It seems to me that with 100 millions workers at an average salary of $50,000 a 1% tax increase across the board could fund 1 million jobs. I will take a 10% tax increase if it means 10 million people will be gainfully employed by the government clearing beetle kill or repairing roads or getting kids involved in positive programs.

I still think we need to cut spending but I don't think congress should be the ones to determine how it gets done. They don't know how any of the money gets spent. Perhaps we should ask the various departments to cut spending by a target amount without layoffs and see what they come up with. It worked in one medium size California city that was featured on NPR.

There are tens of millions of households with larger incomes than me, and I understand they have kids and other expenses I do not have, but they are getting so much money it makes sense to tax them (and me) more. I am in favor of some sort of equality among people because inequality breeds violence, and the thought of that terrifies me. I have been reading about the Rwanda genocide. What makes Rwanda so different than the United States? Sure there was a decades long process that led to those weeks of violence and there is a slew of cultural differences specifically relating to growing up in poverty, but they are humans just like us.

I learned last week that 1 million high school students drop out every year. They will surely be the first to be unemployed. It is all so sad. I am not sure why I read the news or study history. I feel like we (congress included) are just going to make similar mistakes to those made by others in the past and we expect different results. Perhaps there is a dumb.

Those Who Can't Teach, Do

There is a semi famous saying, "those who can't do, teach." It is not true overall, but there are some teachers who end up teachers because they are not good at other occupations, thus the saying. It dawned on me recently after I asked a second question of an instructor and received an unsatisfactory response that this particular person was skilled at an operation, but not a particularly good teacher. This is not the first time that I have been the student to an unskilled teacher who is a skilled operator.

I have a number of relatives in the teaching industry and I know that it is very competitive, and budget cuts are only making it more competitive. One possible solution is to hire teachers in an industry setting to work with engineers, factory workers, salespeople, and other "regular" employees to keep everyone's skills and communication up to date.

Perhaps I am ignorant, but it seems teachers learn a skill, and teach it using their superior communication skills. I know that many teachers are passionate about a particular subject or age group, but it seems there is quite a bit of opportunity in industry to teach. Of course, it would take a company to take the initiative and teachers willing to get out of the school system.

Please take this open source idea and help employ more people.