One year ago today: April 29, 2016, nothing since Auserlitz.
Five years ago today: April 29, 2012, twenty-minute intense focus.
Nine years ago today: April 29, 2008, Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z.
Random years ago today: April 29, 2006, Patagonian glacier.
Please don’t rain today, I have exposed lumber in the back yard until at least mid-afternoon. How are we doing this morning? My sunflowers would say not so good. The stalks grew too spindly in the half-sun of the front yard and they toppled as soon as the sunflower part bloomed. Possibly that was when some animal tried to eat the seeds and the extra weight was too much. I bought a third had booklet on how to build low rock walls. One day that front yard will be beautiful. Compared to Miami, this is very windy territory, meaning everything else I’ve planted this year was flattened.
According to JimmyR, there is a 1912 version of the fable about the Tortoise and the Hare. The Tortoise, having been deemed the fastest by winning, is given the job of warning everyone about forest fires. And they all die. Now, as I was saying about government employees and the horrible condition of the Peace River . . . .
Here’s a video of taking the cat for a ride, also compliments of JimmyR.
Leisure-wise, I’m still reading “Rainbow Six”, the bad guy training manual. One thing it accurately portrays is the ease of getting private information once you know a few passwords and pretend you belong. The portrayal of terrorists as bumbling half-wits is a Clancy trademark. They never seem to learn about snipers, helicopters, building blueprints, robot cameras, and are always surprised by exploding doors.
An unusual movie, this time “The Informant”, intended as light comedy based on corporate whistleblowers. It’s based on a true story of price-fixing with the Japanese. that’s not, however, what I got from the plot. No sir, what I saw was a guy who reported a crime as a good citizen. From that point he was progressively forced deeper into crime. He wanted out, but they threatened him with obstruction charges if he didn’t wear wires, make phone calls, and do their dirty work. They lied about protecting him, his job, or his family. They did not compensate for his loses.
They wrecked his marriage, his career, and continually used the law to threaten him when he tried to back out. The message I got is don’t say a word to the government until you get at least $10 million up front, complete job-loss compensation for life, and a new identity, all in writing, and immunity from being charged with any follow-on threats resulting from the investigation. Like I say, he wanted out but they kept piling charge after charge on him if he didn’t “cooperate”. This is justice?
Here’s two things to figure out. One is why glass cutters have those three little notched teeth cut into the cutting part. And why now that I’m retired, why aren’t my blogs getting shorter?
Clydesdales.
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This is the rafter that took two hours to install. If you recognize the shed interior, I’ve abandoned the plans to put the 60” door on the south unless I have a better reason than access. If you look along the beam, it is mostly hollow, but it certainly flattens the roof as shown here. If I’d had a little help, this would be a half hour job, maybe. I had to bolt one end in and jack the whole assembly up very carefully to get it straight and level. But there, aren’t you proud of me? This is not light work for a guy in my condition.
New country music is just when you think all the inane love songs have been written. The shed radio is stuck on the Tampa station with that token female DJ. She yaks between songs, usually on the same theme. How so-and-so doesn’t drink before the show, or how the other guy’s friends say he’s the same old guy as before he got famous. It’s the same old blather served up as 1970 and I can’t say abstinence or humility has ever improved their music any.
Country music lyrics these days are escapism. All afternoon I listened to big stars I’ve never heard of sing fantasies about swimming holes they’ve never seen, corn liquor they’ve never tasted, and computer-generated pickup lines that wouldn’t work in a whore house. It is just impossible to attach any sincerity to the way this music is mass-produced. They are churning the stuff out working the theory that historically a tiny percentage will actually become hits to a few people. Hey, it worked for Grateful Dead.
“Some people will stop at nothing
to avoid negative numbers.”
Feeling up to the task, I cut nine sets of plates from one plank. These were ten-footers, not the twelve-footers planned, so this production run will be 18 units at most. Why at most? Because ruined units are a normal expectation. Don’t chuck them out, though, they are always good for something. While I’m doing the hands-on assembly, I should dummy up on an old accounting concept I’ve never actually used. It’s called equivalent units. It doesn’t really apply to such a tiny batch but I always admired the arithmetic.
The usefulness of the equivalent unit concept is to prevent managers inflating or deflating the production on their shift. When I leave my office, I want credit for the number of equivalent units produced, and when I get back next day, I don’t want to be charged for anything the last guy didn’t complete. If you say to yourself, hey, this is not what I thought accountants did, you are right. Most people are only familiar with tax accounting (CPAs), not production accounting, also called cost management accountants.
So don’t pull any fast ones, or I’ll catch you. Have you ever heard of the new guy who takes over and performs miracles? Not on my shift, I catch these guys right away. They inflate assets and use the standard bookkeeping methods to disguise costs. It is called producing for inventory, an old trick that still works surprisingly well. Since costs are matched against sales, not production, the new manager can ramp up the assembly line during a recession. The product shows as an asset, but the expenses are deferred until after he grabs his fat bonus and leaves. Leaving the mess for his replacement to deal with.
ADDENDUM
I also do pricing. You can think through this logic yourself. While I cut the nine plates in 10 minutes, and maybe another 15 to route them, even when up to speed I’ll be lucky to assemble two per hour. This is where you begin to ask the classic question about what time is worth. How about you estimate my value per hour.? Not what the job pays, because that wouuld not allow for opportunity costs, that is, the amount of money I could make if I was doing something else, like cost accounting. (In case you are wondering, I’m worth about $60 per hour to start, twice that when I learn your system or fix it so it works right.)
Under the circumstances, I’m too old to be hired for such a position. So, let’s set my opportunity cost at $20 per hour because yes, I would go back to work for that if the duties were light enough. How many lanterns do I have to produce per hour to be paid $20? Don’t forget my Obamacare and FICA and sick days, which I expect you to pay for. The lantern still has to sell at a competitive price. So, how many should I produce per hour.
I’ll help you out. I would have to produce six per hour resulting in a cost markup of $6 per lantern. This is entirely possible if they are produced in batches and I streamline the system. On a contractual basis, I would want cost plus rather than an hourly arrangement. The cost of production (materials, labor, overhead), which I can supply to the third decimal point, plus $6 per lantern. This is all hypothetical as we may not manage to sell a thing until February 2018. Which gives me time to halve my productions costs and produce ten per hour while still retaining the full cost-plus pact.
This is where you begin to ask another question. Is this cheating? In principle, no, because the entire competitive capitalist system is based on the profit motive. You are surrounded by businesses who never pass their cost savings on to you, the consumer. Prime example, your electric bill doubled when oil was $120 a barrel—did your bill go down when oil dropped to today’s price? On top of that, most technological advances were often those that replaced an older or less efficient system, so we all benefit from new inventions. Or do we?
Beginning around 1980, except for the cell phone, there have been very few real inventions. Sure, a few dot-coms succeeded wildly by having one thing in common: they shifted the traditional costs of shipping, repair, and advertising away business and dumped it on the end user. Before 1980, if it didn’t work, you returned it for free repair or replacement—they often came out and picked up the dud with their own crew and truck. There were product warrantees, not service contracts. Customer service was not needed because the customer was always right. Sears was famous for giving a customer his money back on snow tires when Sears didn’t even sell snow tires.
Then, something happened. The pace of invention slowed and it was replaced by innovation. That is, tinkering with the existing system instead of improving it. I blame the education system, but nobody wants to work hard any more. Rather than invent the replacement for the cell phone, today’s innovators want to cook up ever more elaborate and deceptive cellular contracts for you to sign. Everybody wants a bigger slice of the pie without making the pie bigger. Read Adam Smith. That’s the real point America began to decline.
There are countless examples. Before Starbucks, you could afford eight coffees a day, my typical consumption back in university. Refills were free. Today, that would cost $720 per month. Outfits like Starbucks don’t want to sell 3 million coffees at $1, they want to sell 1 million at $3. It’s a lot less work, see. The county no longer puts up road signs, instead they pass the cost on to you via GPS. Tourists who make wrong turns don’t cost them a cent. It costs the system because the tourists never come back, but, hey, that’s not their department. The worst innovation was unbundling. Taking the price structure apart and advertising the cheapest component as a package deal.
Every one of us has been the victim of an unbundling scam. I remember the first one I saw was in 1984, where Radio Shack advertised the then top-notch magnetic oxide cassette tapes for “less than $5 each”. When I got there, you had to buy a package of six for $29.99, a price never mentioned in the ads. The unbundling scam we’ve all been suckered is the breakfast special. The concept of the special was that the restaurant threw in the toast and coffee for free before 9:00AM. Yes, Brandon, there was once a real meaning to the term “breakfast special”. Now, there is nothing special about the special, you pay for everything. It works because the restaurant is now smarter than the average customer, which is a borderline evil thing to say about a customer.
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