Rate this one of those days that never quits. Early this morning I left on a standard service call. Nine hours later, I drew back and said, “Enough”. It was a complicated wireless network problem. It is okay if you draw back and say, “Enough”. The bright side is I met some of the most sophisticated troubleshooters at AT&T, named George and Isaac.It is enough to say that these guys were able to zero in on the problem, but it still took hours to solve. George, for instance, used to program Trident submarine missiles. There are some who might say between us it should have been easy, but they are not appreciating the situation. It was an incredible ordeal and nobody involved was going to give up. It was complicated enough that several times along the way, we tested past the answer.
There were more arduous cases when I worked as a tech, but there was always somebody to ask. This was a good old-fashioned “what on Earth”? I used to think my days of such intensity were gone. I got done and then took a long walk in the dark, around two more hours. Sometimes it is impossible to understand the people who design these components.
Peggy called, it will be Xmas Eve dinner as long as I’m in town. Wallace emailed, he’s missing the weather. I’m wondering how to pay the January bills, but who isn’t? I’ll get to economics in a moment. First let me tell you how I saw people spend themselves into poverty. They get a credit card. Then everything becomes a necessity. Because of the credit card, they don’t have to hold back a reserve from each paycheck. Blow the whole paycheck on payday and use the credit card to tide things over till the next one. Using a credit card in this way is a nearly impossible habit to break.
Over time, this operational balance on the credit card becomes enormous. To some people, such behavior is natural. Yet, talking with these people shows that they regard themselves wise and thrifty money managers. They know of no other lifestyle and consider those who don’t live that way to be “maladjusted”. Recall the incident with my Hawaiian friends at Ala Moana? “They wouldn’t give you a credit card if they didn’t know you couldn’t pay it back, so let’s go spend it all.”
Of all the idiotic things the government could do, the most ridiculous is to release pent-up inflation. I read an article today that to “save” homeowners, the Feds are going to fire up the printing presses and issue more money. Where is my picture of that 2 trillion mark German banknote from the 1930s? Here it is, from October 31, this year. (A European billion is an American trillion. Made you look!) Isn’t printing money what destroyed every Chinese empire in history? Well, inflation will wipe out the middle class just as effectively as foreclosures. In case nobody’s noticed. The theory is that if there is more money available, people will borrow it to buy over-priced houses. Which is precisely what got them into hot water in the first place. They’ll be sitting in their half-million dollar condo unable to afford that $20 loaf of bread. I say let supply and demand take its course. If you over-borrowed to keep up with the Joneses, you can sink with them, too. Seriously, inflation is one of the few things I’m afraid of. And where I’m afraid, others should be terrified.
To wrap up, here is a word from our “Retarded Ideas Department”. This should be good. Okay, imagine yourself at the supermarket, at the meat counter. You pick up a package of bacon. You turn it over to where it says, “Lift flap to view representative slice”. The retarded part is not that everybody knows the slice would not be representative, but that you would instantly notice if somebody had already lifted that flap. Right. You’d know there was something wrong and that package had been picked over. It wasn’t up to snuff. That’s why you don’t marry women with liftable flaps, Oggie my son.
