Stick Shift or Automatic: Software Deployment by the Numbers

No.  I'm not trying to promote sales of any books/ebooks, not even my own (cough-cough).  I am about to dive into a murky subject that many Windows-environment Systems Administrators and Systems Engineers have a very tough time understanding.  And, as if that wasn't enough, I would venture to bet that very, very, veerrrrrrrry few Business Analysts, Project Managers and executive management folks have even a basic grasp of this subject.

The irony of this is that this is about as fundamental to any medium-to-large scale IT environment as bricks are to building a big house.  But even a small business can benefit from this, so don't scoff and walk away just yet.

What am I talking about?...

Manual versus Automated Software Product installation, and Repackaging.

Two things which fit together like peas and carrots.  Or hookers and politicians.  Or Florida and hurricanes.

Yes.  It's 2014, and from what I can tell there is a frightening number of so-called "technology professionals" that sincerely believe that there is little or no difference in terms of cost or quality between these to approaches.  These two diametrically-opposed approaches, that is.  In fact, many think that manual installations are cheaper, even when dozens of installations are involved per product.  I am not joking, nor am I exaggerating.  Please read on.

Most of them, if fed enough beer, or Xanax, would bet their retirement interest on the assumption that the differences between these two are as close as driving a vehicle with stick-shift versus an automatic transmission.  That this is a monolithic, linear-scale, pound-for-pound comparison.

It's a good thing for them that the retirement interest on their fortunes is almost invisible to their overall balance sheet.  A few zeros can get lost in all that green I'm sure.  When you dig into the real numbers, the comparison is about as close as a boxing match between Mike Tyson on his "best day ever" and Richard Simmons after getting a root canal.

All kidding aside, let's do some math. mmkay?

Quasi-Scientific Analysis

Let's say product "Fubar 2014", from a well-known vendor, is required by 500 of your employees in order to "do their assigned job duties".  You have a minimum wage minion whip out a stopwatch and begin timing the installation on the first five computers.  The minion tallies up the results and hands it to you. It goes something like this:

1. Technician walks over to computer "123" in building 42, up on the 3rd floor, in room 112 and sits down. Time spent getting there by foot/bicycle/car/private jet/yacht or teleporter is, on average, 5 minutes.
2. Technician then logs on and opens Windows Explorer. 2 minutes (waits for initial profile setup)
3. Navigates to central file server share on the network (Active Directory domain environment) to locate the folder containing Fubar 2014 setup files and related files.  1 minute.
4. Navigates to "prereqs" subfolder to install individual products which are required before installing Fubar 2014:  Java  Runtime 1.5 (vendor says it can't work with 1.6 or later), then Apple Quicktime 7.1, Adobe Flash Player 11.5 (Fubar 2014 won't work with version 12), and a few other items.  10 minutes.
5. Double-clicks on Fubar 2014 "setup.exe" file to launch main setup. Clicks Next on the Welcome page.
6. Accepts default for installation target folder path, clicks Next
7. Checks the EULA terms and enters a license product key.  Clicks Next.
8. Waits for installation to complete. 8 minutes.
9. Goes back into Windows Explorer and right-clicks on a folder under C:\Program Files\Fubar to open the Properties form.  Modifies the NTFS permissions to allow members of the local "Users" group to have Modify/Change permissions on that folder and all sub-folders.  This is required since the users do not have local Administrator rights, so UAC has been a problem.  This has been known to resolve the problem, so your tech goes ahead with the routine modification.  5 minutes.
10. Tech goes into Windows Services and disables a service that Fubar 2014 uses to check for periodic updates, which users cannot install without elevated permissions, so this is a standard practice at your shop to disable it.  2 minutes
11. Tech opens REGEDIT, navigates down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Fubar\Fubar 2014\Settings\ and changes the value of "autoupdate" from 1 to 0.  1 minute.
12. Tech reboots computer, and waits for login screen to log back on.  2 minutes.
13. Tech logs back on (1 minute or less) and launches Fubar 2014 to confirm it works.  While still opened, Tech navigates into settings to change the option (Tools / Options / Data) to set the "Default library location" to a central UNC server path where all the users share templates and common items to maintain standards.  2 minutes.
14. Tech closes Fubar 2014 and logs off.
15. Tech goes on to next location and repeats this process.

Paying the Bill

If you kept track of the time spent above, that's 5+2+1+10+8+5+2+1+2+2 or 38 minutes.  That's without ANY interruptions or unexpected problems.  And that's assuming the computers are relatively new and performing well.

In reality, from tests I have witnessed over the past 5 years alone, in various enterprise environments from 5,000 to 50,000 computers, the average time to perform an installation of this magnitude is roughly between 35 and 50 minutes.  

When performed during business hours with people around in close proximity, the times averaged 45 minutes to 1 hour.

When additional problems had to be resolved, such as missing updates, recovering disk space, removing conflicting components, that range increased to around 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 50 minutes.  

I haven't even mentioned:

• Time spent deactivating old licenses
• Time spent activating new licenses
• Time spent dealing with device drivers
• Time spent dealing with custom network interface settings
• Time spent on the phone dealing with vendor support:
• Large vendor: waiting on line, listening to 70's pop music, interlaced with endless repeats of ads for their other products, like their "new cloud services".  awesome.
• Small vendor: waiting for guy (company owner/programmer/tester/web admin/support rep) to move his cat off the desk so he can flip through his paper stack to find your purchase order.
• Impact on end-users while they wait for the tech to do their work
• Impact on production from unexpected conflicts with other line-of-business products which are only discovered after the installation because there was no lead-time testing afforded.

In situations where a previous version had to first be uninstalled before performing a new install of the later version (usually because the vendor didn't want to take the time to handle this within their new installation package) the time ranges increase to around 2 hours to 2 hours 30 minutes.

Simple:  35 - 50 minutes

Complex:  120 - 150 minutes

In beancounter English: that's a range of roughly 1 hour to 2-1/2 hours.

Repeat this times 500 and you get anywhere from 316 hours (simple) to 1125 hours (pain in the ass).

Multiply that times the technician labor of say, $9/hour (you're a cheap bastard, after all), and that equates to roughly $2,850 to $10,120 of labor.  For ONE software installation.

I'd guess you probably have more than a few products that would be handled this same way across your organization.

Are you starting to see where this is going yet?

Sanity Check Time

Now, let's crank this puppy through ONE cycle of repackaging effort and see how this spews out the other end of the meat grinder.

1. Software Package Engineer (hereinafter SPE) opens a CMD console within a guest virtual machine (VM) running inside of VMware Workstation or Microsoft Hyper-V (take your pick).
2. Navigates to folder where Fubar files are stored.
3. Launches setup.exe -r and completes a normal setup process.
4. SPE grabs the resulting setup.iss file from C:\Windows and copies it into new folder along with the original setup files.  5 minutes total by now.
5. SPE opens a text/code editor and loads a template script to enter some lines to handle checks for prerequisites like JRE, Silverlight, Quicktime and so forth.
6. SPE enters code to invoke the setup.exe with setup.iss and redirect the output to a new log file.  Total of 15 minutes by now.
7. SPE saves script and puts all the files into the new deployment source folder.  SPE launches a separate VM, which is configured to match the configuration of the computers in use by employees who will be getting the installation.  SPE runs the install using a command shell to ensure it runs "silent" and requires no user interaction whatsoever.  Total runtime, including launching the VM and logging on is now around 30 minutes.
8. SPE emails or IM's the designated customer SME (that's subject-matter-expert) who was nominated to be the "test user" and asks them to log into the VM using Remote Desktop and kick the tires.  Time spent contacting the customer about 1 minute.
9. SPE moves on to work on other packages or tasks while waiting for customer to respond and attempt the testing (parlance: User Acceptance Testing, or "UAT")  No time expended by SPE during this period by the way.
10. Customer gives the package "two thumbs-up!" and the SPE moves it into staging for production deployment.  SPE creates a new "Application" in System Center Configuration Manager 2012, creates a resource Collection with the computers to be targeted, and assigns the Application to the Collection using an Advertisement.  10 minutes (he's drinking decaf this morning)
11. Advertisement is scheduled to run after hours, avoiding impact on production time against the customer staff who will receive the new installation.  SPE does not have to wait for the installation because it is scheduled to run on its own, so he/she checks on it the next morning.

Total time spent:  5+15+30+1+10 = 61 minutes.

I realize I said "he" a lot, but "she" could do just as well obviously, so that's irrelevant.

Things I didn't include:

• UAT problems resulting in having to go back and make adjustments and retesting
• Pre-flight deployments to verify conflicts in production on a limited subset of computers.
• Next-day support calls for incidental one-offs like machines being offline or a service was stopped or an application was open and had a lock on a file that prevented the Advertisement from completing successfully.
• Cats walking across keyboards and causing a BSOD.
• Who knows what else.

Taking those things into account, the ranges can jump from 60-80 minutes for a simple scenario to 2 hours, for just a simple repackaging effort like the one Fubar 2014 involves.  

In the "real world" some products can be much more difficult to repackage and may consume days or weeks of development and testing in order to get a rock-solid package into production.  Those are rare, but even then, EVEN THEN, the savings when calculated across hundreds or thousands of computers, spread across multiple locations, states or continents, can be well worth the effort.  

Think of "mission critical" applications, where the time window to get them into production, with 99.999% success rate, is only an hour or two, end to end, over 20,000 or 30,000 computers.  That's not fiction.  There are industries where this is not uncommon, and they rely heavily on this methodology to ensure:

• Highest probability of success
• Consistent and predictable results
• Minimized impact on production operations
• Optimum transparency of all moving parts (think reporting and monitoring)

Steak Dinner Anyone?

So, this SPE makes $75,000 a year in USD, roughly $36/hour, and spent an hour building this simple package.  That's $36 to deploy one product to 500 computers over one evening without asking any users to step away from their computers during work hours.  

The cheapest scenario in the first example was $2,850.

The most expensive scenario in the latter example was $1,442.

Even if the SPE had to devote an entire week to one product, or roughly 40 x $36 = $1,442, that's a LOT CHEAPER than a $9/hour tech running around to 500 computers, or 10 x $9/hour techs running around to 50 computers each.

That's Not All

Billy Mays homage:  Now, if you go with the repackaging and automated deployment scenario, you have a mechanism in place that does the following for you without ANY additional cost:

• Provides automatic self-healing of deployments, to cover situations where a targeted computer is replaced or reimaged with a fresh Windows configuration.
• Provides simple, effortless scalability for future growth.
• Provides a robust auditing and reporting trail for accountability and compliance.
• Provides fault tolerance
• Provides coverage during non-production hours.

Still think that thumb drive is the way to go?  Hmmmm?

What $14 Billion Could Buy Today

Obviously, these are rounded numbers, but the scale is roughly accurate, even with regards to adjustments by fiscal year, geography, and so on.  Since very little is ever said about this sort of comparison and contrast, it likely indicates that most humans are comfortable with these priorities.  Enjoy.

• 1 new Nimitz class aircraft carrier (USS Gerald R. Ford)
• 39 F-22 Raptor jets (note 1)
• 65 completed MAX light rail systems (Portland, Oregon) (note 2)
• 9,333 miles of water supply pipe x 1m dia. (note 3)
• 280,000 artificial legs/limbs (note 4)
• 1,400,000 months of cancer treatment / chemotherapy (note 5)
• 13,725,490,196 miles of "standard" Internet cable (land-route, rural area) (note 6)

Notes

1. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-advanced-fighter-woes-20130616-dto,0,7588480.htmlstory#axzz2stBhSgaU
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAX_Light_Rail
3. http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2012/finalwebsite/solution/glaciers.shtml
4. http://www.disabled-world.com/assistivedevices/prostheses/prosthetics-costs.php
5. http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/09/cost-of-chemotherapy
6. http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Rural-life-carries-2-647-cost-for-cable-2227166.php (based on $2647 cost for 2583 feet estimation)

What do these things have in common?

• Curing Cancer
• Building a Bridge
• Building a Company
• Invading a Country
• Sending Humans to the Moon (or other Planets)
• Diving to the Deepest Places under the Ocean
• Climbing the Highest Mountains
• Breaking Speed records
• Graduating College
• Operating to Fix a child's Cleft Pallet
• Feeding a Thousand Homeless people
• Capturing a Terrorist in a remote mountainous region

Give up?  Scroll down...

They cannot happen without a BUDGET

When 1 + 1 = 0

Once upon a time (uh oh, here goes another fairy-ish tale beginning?), there was a state government who, in their quest to cut expenses, decided it was time to outsource their IT operations to a commerical contractor.  Everything about it made sense to the financial folks, who, after all are the brains behind most corporate/government braintrusts.  The reduced benefits structuring costs, the eliminated pensions, the laisse faire employment tenants, all combined with an existing "work-at-will" legal framework, made it a no-brainer.  So the wheels were set in motion.

But there were two major problems this created, which led to yet more problems.

First, the financial golf-player suit guys didn't think it was necessary to involve the IT management folks in their decision-making process.  Technical folks obviously do not possess any useful wisdom for making decisions that impact technical operations.  That domain belongs to the MBA/CPA folks.  So they marched onward and when the plan was catalyzed into full momentum, they generously informed their propellor-capped brethren of their wonderous idea.  The net result of this was a mass exodus of those that were either ready to retired, or possessed the skills and experience to land another job quickly.  The life rafts were left with the lesser skilled and unlucky.  Floating adrift in a void economy as they watched their ship of achievements slowly sink below the rough seas.

Second, with the turmoil of the markets of the time (2007-2008), the chosen contractor was dealing with their own contractions in the Washington D.C. metro area.  Contracts were drying up faster than Joan Rivers' vagina in the desert, and jobs were being cut at a dizzying pace.  Ok, maybe that wasn't nice to say about Joan, but she's not known for being nice to anyone, is she?  And besides: they have medication for that now I'm told.  Ok, moving along…   So, when the last bastion of workforce in the DC area was staring into the abyss, they were calmly told to consider jumping onto the impending state IT contract, or close their eyes and jump, hoping for the best.  Again, those that had the skills and experience to market themselves were off to greener pastures.  The rest were left to consider relocation or sucking on the end of a double-barrel vacation.

The vortex this spun created a combination of the left-behind and the left-behind.  Those motivated by fear with those motivated by fear.  You get the picture.  What sort of "quality" meal might anyone with even an eighth of a functional brain expect to see from such ingredients?  Well, you get this.

To be fair, it's incorrect, inaccurate and illogical to extend the blame of this on other parts of either of these institutions.  The storm is relatively focused and distinct.  It resides in Richmond.  Unfortunately, the ship captains have not yet realized the detrimental impacts this boondoggle has had on their respective marketing efforts.  Their credibility is being picked apart by their competitors, the media, and to some extent the public.  For example, even today (January 2, 1011) the Virginia Dept of Motor Vehicles (DMV) web site is out of commission, as it has been for quite some time.  The reduction in DMV brick-and-mortar locations was pushed by the demand for cost reductions and increased leverage of online services.  Now that these online services are offline, and there are fewer physical locations across the state, the net result is an ugly day at work for many DMV workers.

So, I ask that - whether you are yourself a financial MBA/CPA golfer suit wearing person, or if you know one, that you print out several copies of this article, roll them up into a tight bundled tube, encase it with several turns of duct tape, grip it tightly and beat the living shit out of anyone who says the word "outsource" in a positive tone.  Be sure to follow that up with "and a Happy New Year to you!"

Basic Math is Dead

It amazes how many people pull a "decision" from their ass without taking a few seconds to do the math.  Here's a simple case in point:

A former co-worker was lambasting the Keurig K-cup coffee/tea brewing machine as being a waste of money.  Now, excluding individual/personal vices and virtues, I'm not going to pick on him for smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, or buying camoflage clothing (when he rarely goes into the "woods"), but regardless, he insisted that the Keurig machine was indefinitely more expensive and could not "pay for itself" by comparison to walking over to the nearby 7-11 for an 8oz cup.

Here's the math:

• Price of Keurig machine at Sam's Club: $110
• Price per box of 80 count k-cups at Sam's Club: $30
• Price per k-cup: $0.38
• Cups per day: 2
• Price per 8oz cup at 7-11: $1.00
• Savings per day with k-cups: $1.25
• Savings per 80 weeks: $112.50

So, after 80 weeks, the savings from lower supply costs will have paid for the machine itself.  Of course, this is skewed logic, but it still illustrates that nobody in the room had any idea if the k-cups were even cheaper until one person whipped out a notepad and pen and did the math on the $30 80-count box.  Frustrated with the number, the co-worker then turned to the coffee pot and said "well, that's only 50 cents per cup!" 

Be Right Back

Fighting a Cold while working insane hours on a big project.  Need sleep.  Need to recover.  I’ll be right back.

Meanwhile, I watched “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”.  It boils down to this, at least from the perspective of how this impacted ME personally…

• Government was strong-armed by lobbyists (Ken Lay, Abrahmson, etc.) to relax Federal oversight (aka “de-regulate”) over energy markets.
• Enron and companies like Worldcom, Tyco and others drank their own Kool-Aid and grew into the Hulk, pushing stock prices higher and higher, artificially.
• They in-turn gave hand-jobs to accounting firms like Arthur Anderson and others to help them inflate market prices and in-turn share in the artificial margins of trading on them.
• Californians got raped like nobody’s business
• The market turned out to be a house of cards and imploded
• People at all levels of the market, the auxiliary markets, and their families and communities were pulled down in a spiral of 401-k meltdown.  Some even killed themselves.
• The government finally stepped in and realized the car was spinning off the road and nobody was behind the wheel.  Investigations ensued and eventually it was “discovered” that oversight isn’t such a bad thing.  Gee. (Personal note: If you have teenage kids, and they want to throw a party at your house, and they say to you “hey, go see a movie, you guys can trust us”, what would you do?  Ok, now imagine those teenagers are drunk on the lust for outrageous profits, insane CRAZY-ASS profits, and they want to party inside your bank account)
• The fallout yields a determination to lay down some new rules on behalf of the two folks Mr. Sarbanes and Mr. Oxley.
• IT folks are left holding the bag to implement and enforce a tangled mess of who can do what and see what between various segments of their financial departments.
• IT folks suffer with SOX compliance and no sleep.  The financial department managers go to Vegas, Orlando, or Honolulu to attend conferences, but tell the IT department there isn’t enough budget to attend MMS or TechEd, sorry.

What a sad story.  Remember to have my part played by Brad Pitt.

Now, think about this: Think that’s all behind us now?  Think again.

I was Finally Reimbursed for my College Tuition

It's taken almost exactly ten (10) years to happen, but my former employer finally mailed me a check to cover the tuition and book costs they negelected to pay in full when I went to college from 1996 to 1999.  Based on my approximations, with an average tuition of $1,100.00 per semester (full time with labs), and $300-$400 in books, and using the grade scale they used back then where an A earned 100%, B earned 90% and C earned 80%, I averaged an A- (or GPA 3.46), and having skipped one Summer (1998), that would come to somewhere around 7 full semesters and 2 half-time Summer semesters (at roughly $600 each).  That would equate roughly to (7 x ($1,100+300)) + (2 x ($600 + $150)) or around $11,300 for the whole joy ride.  In actuality, they paid me roughly $600 to $800 per full semester, citing a justification that most of my CS/IS degree "required" courses weren't related to my job in IT.

Here's my check…

Ok, so it's not really for tuition reimbursement.  It is actually not related to anything prior to 2008 at all.  It's just the balance of adjusted withholdings for insurance benefits from my final paycheck when I left the company this past July.  Oh well.  I'm going to pretend it's tuitition reimbursement.

Kicked in the Nuts: Many Borrowers Getting it from Both Sides

I must apologize in advance for this one.  I promised my next post would be positive, uplifting, maybe even jovial. But a “man in the street” segment on one of the lame-ass cable news channels ticked me off and I have to vent.  Next one will be more jovialistic.

Begin:

I've had it with the narrow-minded bullshit talk from economic “gurus” about homeowners defaulting because they either "overborrowed" or "couldn't afford" their house in the first place.

Hello?  Anyone out there still actually reading the news?

There is this thing called UNEMPLOYMENT.  That's right.  It's basically a tally of those folks who WERE working a steady job, but are now NOT working.  The VAST majority of that tally consists of persons who were laid off.  A HUGE portion of them were from downsizing.

So, using the rationale I hear from the suit-wearing pundits on Fox, MSNBC, CNBC and CNN, they are saying that those people should have known they were going to get axed and shouldn't have bought a house at all, or should have bought a $50,000 shack when they were pulling down a $100,000 income.  Yeah.  That makes sense.  We’re all just a bunch of idiots.  I mean after all, YOU obviously know when you're going to be downsized, right?  So, why did YOU buy that nice house or condo then?

In fact, I've actually seen this entire concept debunktified (my own word, you like it? ha ha) on CNBC and MSNBC and Fox.  Whenever they have a "panel of experts" on to blabber about how the economy tanked, and what needs to happen to "fix it", they invite the most flaky person to represent the homeowners.  Then they use them as the entertainment punching bag.  That person will TRY to suggest that maybe a lot of the borrowers didn't buy too much of a house for their income, or that they weren't late on their payments, but were just caught off-guard by a sudden lay-off.  And that a lot of those unlucky folks happen to live in places where there is NO other employment (think Michigan, Arizona, Tennessee) and so on. That person might as well walk into a redneck bar and ask if anyone wants to buy a Toyota pick-up and a CD of Kanye West to go with it.  They commence to mocking and verbal beating and all the brainwashed viewers cheer them on like it’s a football championship game.

I know quite a few people in this boat.  They were fine and doing well until they got downsized.  Now as they struggle to keep up on their mortgage, support their families, and pay their other bills, they get to enjoy the constant bombardment with insults, mockery, blame and harrassment, all focused on THEM being the cause of the problem.  "Yeah, Mr. Homeowner!  It's YOUR fault!  You should've known you were going to be axed, and you shoulda bought a cheaper house ahead of it!"

So, to all those "pundits" like Larry Kudlow, Squawk Box goons, and all you conservative financial gurus that smirk at the thought of someone NOT having a country club membership: F-OFF.

The Never-Ending Reminder of Being Screwed

Once upon a time, in a land not long ago, there lived a company named SAIC.  And within it’s enormous grasp it held a tiny little company constructed of smoke and mirrors named AMSEC.  In this land where AMSEC once stood were seemingly noble men who wore suits of the finest quality and spoke of the highest esteem about ethics and integrity and the meaning of individual sacrifice and the “good of the team”.  They rewarded those that benefited the bottom line with bonuses, vested and unvested stock shares, and stock options.  And it was good.

Then the king of this little AMSEC kingdom decided it was time to cash in his royal chips and bend his employees over a bench and give them a sound fisting.

It went something like this…

In the months that followed his decision to divest of his own doings, it was decided to make a slight, but noticable shift from mostly cash to mostly unvested shares and options as the vehicle for rewarding employees for their performance.  Not long after, the dissolution of the company (to be split amongst the two parent companies) was announced.  Near the time of the actual disjoining, it was also announced that all unvested shares and options would be null and void.  In other words: “Thank you for your outstanding sacrifices for the good of our ability to live above average means, but now you may kindly go and fuck yourselves.”

In the same breath of this announcement, was included a release form we were “asked” (demanded) to sign, which agreed to the conditions and forfeited our rights to arbitrate or file legal or financial claims after the fact.  It was a classic double-or-nothing offer: Hold out and attempt to sue, but give up all claims on immediate pay-outs of vested shares, or bend over and take it like a sissy.

Most everyone bent over.  Only a small handful fought it, and while it was an admirable feat, it was unsuccessful in the end.  A symbolic win is still a win for them I suppose, but the dragon was unscathed and moved on.

So, I rounded up my scraps, licked my wounds and moved on.  I sold my vested shares and those which were partially vested above a minimum percentage were sold soon after they vested.  I asked again and again if this would empty and close my account and each time the fine Mellon folks said “Yes!”  Alas, it has not.

Every year, I get a sweet tax form for 1.0x shares and a letter asking me to vote by proxy on shareholder issues pending with the board of directors.  And every year I kindly ask them to take the pretty little voting form, roll it up in to a tight tube, dip it in hot tar, roll it in thumb tacks and shove in their ass a hundred times.  They don’t seem to get the message however.

So today I called and asked how to put a nail in the coffin of what was once my retirement plan.  SAIC called me and guided me to Mellon again.  Mellon asked 100 questions, told me the share I have is worth $17.0476 and that the sale fee is $20.00 USD.  Lovely.  Then they passed me back to SAIC where I was greeted with a recorded message saying they’re closed and to call back tomorrow.

Dear SAIC:  GO FUCK YOURSELVES.

“That’s all I have to say about that” – Forest Gump

2008, 2009, 2010…

I felt like reflecting on the past year, if only for a minute.  Thinking back, it was a truly mixed bag of fortunes.

2008 was probably the worst year since my parents passed away in the 90’s.  I lost my job early in the year, and began a long a struggle back from financial chaos that ensued.  It was early in the Recession, so things were declining pretty quick.  It all started to turn around for me in June of that year, when I was hired back at a former employer, and so far has continued to be a very positive experience.  I was lucky indeed.

2009 was going pretty well, until mid/late Summer, when I lost two friends without any warning.  One died of a sudden heart attack, the other from suicide by cop (seriously).  Neither of them ever showed signs that would have indicated their fates were even remotely possible.  I still think about them often.  It’s a hole in my life that will take some time to heal.

During 2009, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to take some courses towards an MCSA and an MCITP certification, which I achieved.  My oldest daughter graduated high school.  We still have a house and electricity.  We still have a family.

I’m not sure what to expect from 2010.  The past two years have been rocky, but with bright spots as well.  If that means 2010 will be bad but will offer up more bright spots, then I suppose that’s not entirely bad.  Stay tuned…

I'm Just Sayin...

When it comes to economics, there's already a shitload of so-called "pundits" shilling for their share of the sponsor buck (don't think those commercials on CNBC are just for your enjoyment). But when it comes to consumer behavior, man, these "pundits" are as bad and wrong as a 3rd-string weatherman doing a 7-day forecast. I believe that the term for TV pundits working for salaries funded by the markets for which they report is called: "whore". But that's semantic I suppose.

First off, the biggest factor of personal spending habits is debt. Period. Consumers don't adjust their spending on how the Dow-Jones' is doing. Sorry. And they don't go on a shopping spree when they hear pork belly futures or light sweet crude goes up or down. Sorry again. Consumers look at their ever-growing stacks of bills, then their checking account, savings account (if they even have one) and then the credit card statement. That's it. Then they prioritize any leftovers by medical, house repair, transportation, and then "discretionary" stuff like food, clothing, kids needs and maybe a pinch of entertainment (a six-pack of Bud and a carton of Marlboros). It's human nature.

But there's a hidden candle burning at both ends: gasoline.

Yep. Petrol. The stuff that not only feeds the lifeblood of our industrial AND consumer economies, it controls it. When gas prices go up, everything you buy costs more. Quantities per package are reduced to shore up bottom lines. You pay more to receive even less. And you base personal travel decisions on it too. When gas is near $4/gallon, you probably cancel that road trip across the states. You also defer air travel as fares increase to absorb the fuel costs.  It costs you more to drive to places which will charge you even more when you get there.

But even when gas is "reasonable" (whatever that is), you fall back to basing decisions on personal debt. Priorities get compressed or decompressed as debt rises or falls, since income is rarely as variable as debt.

The catch here is that the two industries which ultimately control these two economic forces (petroleum and personal credit) are relatively treated laisse faire by our government. Sure, they get called in front of a congressional hearing, rarely, but nothing ever happens from that. When was the last time a government hearing caused a reduction in gasoline prices or APR terms?

Here, let me answer that for you….: Never.

Here we have two major, no, wait… GINORMOUS forces directly and indirectly controlling our economy with little or no direct oversight. They work on a broken leash essentially. Which means they are really in control, not the Fed or Treasury. The Fed says that they "influence" (their words, not mine) the U.S. economy, even though the Fed is not a government agency. And the Treasury is now simply an extension of Goldman-Sachs. There was another government that long ago followed this very same path: Rome.

If Exxon-Mobil, RD Shell, Chevron and Texaco decided gas should be $5/gallon, it would be $5/gallon. We'd bitch a lot, maybe even carry cardboard signs around in front of news cameras, and the whores in Congress and the Senate would postulate and act as if bringing on the heat, but that’s about it.  It is a "free market" system, after all, and those companies are well within their legal right to pursue profits within the law, even if it causes consumers a little pain. Where else would you go? What could you really do?  To another gas station?  And why would they keep their prices low?  If Exxon posted $5.00/gallon, WaWa would just rise up to $4.95 and the lines would be around the block.  Oldest game in the book.

The same goes for credit card services and jacking up interest rates. Oh wait, they already are.

Sure, the credit services are facing a looming change in legal guidelines, but the new laws really don't eliminate the gouging, they simply require them to tell you before they gouge you. Read it yourself. But most (all but a few actually) have preemptively raised interest rates to hedge their coffers before the new law goes into effect.  Not one government shill has raised voice over this obvious gang rape of the American working class. Not one.  A few PR statements, that’s it.  Nothing official has been put into action to challenge this behavior, because they just don’t care.

So, these two industries control your spending behavior, whether you want to believe it or not, and directly (and indirectly) exert control over the U.S. and global economies yet almost nothing has been done to put a leash on them.  Nothing beyond lip service and PR stunts.  Think about this:  Our government directly regulates air traffic, drugs, food, transportation, banking (sort of), communications, product safety, marriages, defense and intelligence, even prices your utilities can charge.  But they don’t bother placing any such controls on gasoline or credit cards.

Still don't believe our government is not really in control? Hmmm.

A Bad Economy Appears to be a Recurring American Theme

It's interesting sometimes to read up on slices out of American history - in the actual words of those who played a key role in some aspect of our past. For example, this State of The Union speech by president Lyndon Johnson, from January 8, 1964. Two months before I was born actually. If you read it thoroughly, you will very likely walk away thinking it was spoken in the past few weeks, rather than 45 years ago.

The residual malaise that followed the 1929 crash lasted throughout the 1930's and into WWII. This Annual Message to Congress speech by Herbert Hoover highlights the conditions of 1932. Only after the war ended, and forces returned home to start families, buy houses and cars, and relocate to find better career prospects, did things begin to turn around for the better.

The 1950's also saw a period of sagging economic conditions. This repeated again in the 1960's and the 1970's and 1980's. The 1990's saw a boom from technology sectors and a resurgence in manufacturing, until the .com bubble bust. We began yet another recovery in 2000, but 9-11 pushed our economic "reset" button and we had to rebuild the markets again. Only until 2007 when the bottom fell out with the beginnings of the current housing market bust, and the credit swap default problems.

I'm not a financial or economic expert by any stretch. I studied this stuff in college like millions of other students. It does make you wonder though, just how credible the "free market economy" really is though. Because, we have never really had a "free market economy", ever. The closest we came to it was the wild west period of the 1920's, which led up to the big crash. That brought government oversight and regulation into the game, which capped off the "free" part immediately. We actually have a quasi- socialist / capitalist system. Many public services are entirely controlled by the government. Many more are regulated by them, such as utilities, communications, and so on. The the recent asertions made under the conditions of the TARP, have now placed our banking system under a blended oversight+control condition. We are inching closer to a Socialist system than a Democratic system (which we have never been).

So this current hole we've dug ourselves into is timed about right. It falls pretty much in line with cyclical falls in the market since the 1920's at least. But it seems this time around, it's been exascerbated by artificial forces from credit excess to uncontrolled housing markets to unrestricted lending and rating systems and good old-fashioned stupid human greedy behavior.

As I said, I'm no expert. But I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express before.

Ponzi Shmonzi - We're So Hosed

Wall Street execs are still flying around in their private jets while we're getting sodomized with help from MC Hanky Paulson and the Treasure Posse.  Bernie Madoff (the name sounds so cute and cuddly) gets to ride around in his limo under "tighter surveillance", yet Martha Stewart was sent to prison.  Say what?  Huh?!

Tell me how Martha Stewart harmed anyone from what she supposedly did?  Tell me how she was more harmful, no, strike that, tell me how she was AS harmful as Madoff?   Does her list of victims look anything like Madoff's list?

How did Chrysler get included in the bail-out when their owner/investors refused to pony up any more cash?  Cerebus is loaded folks, don't let anyone kid you.  They "had to" because failing to approve this bullshit bail-out presented a "danger to the national economy".  Nevermind that (a) this bail-out is short-term because sales are not getting better, so they'll be back for another hand-out in a few months, and (b) Cerebus and Chrysler are privately owned, we the American public are getting a Federal Handjob and an executive order to smile about it.

It looks like efforts to keep us dumber than dumb are working.  Nobody seems to care about getting ripped off anymore.

Madoff Should be Tortured at Gitmo

It seems we're wasting the virtues of Guantanamo Bay's amenities. Rather than close it down, we should put it to use as a "corrections facility". Some great tenants for the opening season would be Bernie Madoff, all of the SEC fk-ups that gave him a top-score and left him alone, the Moodies a-holes that over-rated all the chump firms that failed (read: Lehman, Bear-Stearns, Citi, etc) and guys like Skillings. That's a pretty good starter list I think. Waterboarding might not produce any useful information, but the entertainment value alone is worth something. Imagine the ticket sales and PPV revenue!

Bail-Out to Nowhere

I'm listening to Bush speak about the executive ordered bail-out for the U.S. auto makers.  The plans sounds like they gave it a lot of thought and speculation on contingencies.  But every word of it sounds like it's focused on the supply end.  NOBODY IS BUYING.   I can't find ANYONE who can explain how this will help sales.

Exterminating Future Minds One Loan at a Time

Our present system for funding college tuition is lame.  It's horrible.  I'm still surprised that in 2008 we can't come up with a better solution.  On one hand we have people saying we'll need more engineers, nurses, teachers, scientists, etc.  On the other we're reading about how jobs are shifting overseas for lower labor rates.  In the middle we have a government that doesn't give a frigging crap about education beyond lip service to put smiles on the faces of NEA and teachers.  

The student loan system is like something drafted in Russia during the Cold War days.  It's dumb.  It's out of date.  It punishes kids for getting an education if they can't make a decent living when they graduate.  This has never been more relevant than NOW, when the economy is swirling down the toilet with no clear bottom in sight.  I know because I'm stuck with a crappy loan that I will never be able to repay in full.  I will die with a balance.  Once I consolidated my loans I was (*and still am*) stuck.  You cannot refinance a consolidated student loan.  Ever.  It's a racket.  My plan was to merge it into my home mortgage as the equity rose enough to absorb it, and at a far lower rate than what I locked into in 2000.  That won't happen for a lot longer at this point.

Staring into the Abyss?

Boy, the economic forecasts are mixed.  Some are really dire, while others are at least hinting at hope.  Nouriel Roubini is someone I like to listen to (and read), even though he tends to give more dire predictions.  It seems all of the other pundits shut up when he speaks, so that tells me he's respected (which they all admit to) and that they at least marginally agree with the bulk of his views.  This one in particular I watched on CNBC today and was a little frightening.  Rick Santelli cracks me up.  A good mix of people on this show.  In any case, it seems that most of the experts are bracing for looming "corporate defaults" which will begin a slip-slide into a deeper recession, driving up unemployment and slowing the credit swap improvements of late.  I'm no expert, but it makes sense enough to little old me that it should make sense to you as well.