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It's My Fault

Two weeks ago I was working in Manhattan when AIG, Lehman, and (nearly) Merrill imploded.

This past week I was working in DC when the Bailout blew up.

Coincidence?

My brain should not be left un-chaperoned

My brain got bored last night and started in on thinking about airlines. I tried to distract it using various methods but it insisted on thinking about airlines. Fuckin' brain.

Airlines are facing some pretty heavy problems here in the era of expensive oil. Some of these problems are self-inflicted. Southwest and Continental were smart enough a couple years back to start aggressively hedging the price of oil. As a result, they aren't (presently) getting killed like pretty much everyone else. Doing this was such a no-brainer it isn't altogether surprising that the airlines missed it ('cause they're pretty good at missing no-brainers). It's like they believed their bullshit spin on how they were dying due to the cost of labor and unions are evil, etc. that they forgot to look at what actually could kill the business model. Which turned out to be, duh, oil. It's hard to fathom that the price oil was something only a very small number of airlines realized was the critical input for them and, as such, they should engage in some serious risk management to protect themselves as best they can from shocks to the price of said input.

As with some of the supply chain stuff I was prattling about the other day, the spike and ongoing upward trend in the oil price is, in fact, slamming airlines but some bright kids are gonna figure out that, as with any business shock, there are opportunities to kick the tar out of your competitors.

Festivals and travels and other random bullets...

• I'm in the Fringe this summer. New show...broken/boxed/whole - the return from Iraq. There's three ways you come back from a war: wounded (broken); dead (boxed); alive and well (whole). I've encountered all three over the last few years. And I thought they were worth sharing in the medium I choose to use...theatre. Different kind of show for me 'cause it ain't just me. There are, like, other people in it. And they're allowed to speak...hell, they're required to. And, if it all works out, there'll be a whole damn band on stage in this one.
• 5 degrees in Minneapolis. Wisconsin, where I'm spending most of my time working these days, is clocking in at -6. Today I happen to be in Florida where it's 72. It's spitting rain all day. But it's seventy-damn-two. This is better than 5. And way betterer than -6.
• Fidel Castro announced his retirement. It's an interesting day to be in Southeast Florida. It's not like anyone's dancing in the streets but everybody, I mean absolutely everybody, is talking about it.
• Is it weird to anyone else but me that Castro retired? Wasn't he either supposed to die in office as a senile and utterly decrepit old bat, get assassinated, overthrown in a coup, or something like that. I didn't know despots retired. Like, retire to what?
• I took a long, fast walk along the ocean this morning. I've put on 15, count 'em, 15 pounds since going back to being consulto-boy. The expense account diet is like that. Time to get better 'bout eating less and exercising more. It was a beautiful, windy morning, the kind that promises you a storm (though it didn't materialize).
• I desperately miss the ocean.
• The more I work with large companies the more the "efficiency of the private sector" seems like Pegasus...nice story but I'll believe it when I see it.

Comment Spam Sucks

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I'm getting comment spammed to death. I don't know why it's pissing me off so much. I've been getting daily multiple comment spams. They're all on the same post and it's one that I put up over a year ago...so it's not like y'all are having to screw with wading through them.

Inevitably they go a li'l somethin'-somethin' like this...

"You're cite is ver nise an helpful. Please for to see also my sight."

Which is then followed by a link of multiple links to porn sites.

It ain't the links to the porn that's pissing me off. It's the fucked up spelling and tortured syntax. I mean, could you people proof your damn spam, por favor?

And the fact that now I'd really like to see someone else's sight.

Stupid Day on the road

Yesterday, in case you didn't get the memo, was stupid day on the roads here in Minneapolis. It is a day that takes place, on no set schedule, on which the virulently stupid are set free from their cages to wreak havoc on the roads.

It unfolded as follows...

In downtown Minneapolis blasting down 1st street. I have a green light. A young man steps into the crosswalk, staring down the traffic as he saunters across the street. Of course, we all stop, despite the green light in our favor. He sees himself as making a statement on his bravery and toughness. I see someone who was very bad at math and science in high school. Mass*Velocity=Force. I have a car. You have some minor muscle groups. I have 35 mph. You have 1.5mph. If not for the confluence of attentiveness to the road and not wanting your death or maiming on my conscience, I'll win every time. He sees, "I'm a bad ass". I see a future in which he ends up on the wrong end of the above equation and there's more food left for the rest of us.

I am traveling east on 34th street and encounter a stop sign at Bryant. I stop. A bus is approaching. It stops. My turn. I pull into the intersection and in front of the bus. A woman on a bicycle, what had been perfectly masked by the bus, shoots out into my path. Not only had her presence been obscured by the bus but from her POV so had mine. Yet she smoked into an intersection, blind. I don't know how I missed her. She flipped me off. Darlin', I know that motorists are often unaware of cyclists and they forget when you do and do not have the right-of-way. This was not one of those times.

Driving south on Blaisdell. At 32nd street a young man in a late 70's Cutlass glides through his stop sign directly into my path. He's talking on the phone. I yank the wheel to the right and jump the curb. The car in the lane next to me locks it up and spins out. He continues gliding down 32nd street talking on the phone like nothing happened.

I don't think I'll do much driving today.

I'm A Little Obsessed With Cold

So...I'm looking at The Weather Channel's Minneapolis page. It tells me that today's high will be 13 and the low will be -5. Bear in mind that these do not include windchill. This same page tells me that, before calculating wind chill, the current temperature is -11 (with windchill the temperature is -24). While on the same page they have PROMISED me that the low will be a balmy -5. When you go below zero you begin to get really bitchy about any additional degrees below zero.

The Weather Channel owes me some fuckin' warmth.

Things I Have Learned From Being In A Cold Place

Today, for the first time in five days, the Outside Temp display in my very unhappy car hit zero. Never thought I'd be happy about zero. Let me be clear to all of you Californians out there...there are places in this country where zero represents a warming trend. A safety note to all you Californians out there...do not go to any places where zero represents a warming trend.

Random notes, observations, and philosophical changes due to cold...

• Pray For the Toes: When it is this cold your toes are never really warm. You can sit 'em right on the heat vent. Doesn't matter. When you go out, they are always cold and you get kinda happy when you realize they've stopped hurting from the cold and have gone comfortably numb. Then you remember this is a sign of incipient frost bite.
• Heater Dependence: If my heater stopped functioning or my gas went out I would die. I love my heater. I have built a shrine to it. I pray for it, to it, and with it hourly. It is the most important appliance on the face of the earth. It's kinda cute. It winks at me and talks dirty. I may have sex with it. Whatever will make it happy.
• God Bless Regulation: Having worked with them repeatedly I've always had contempt for regulated utilities and their regulators. I love them all now. Were it not for regulated pricing the gas and electric companies could simply name whatever outlandish price they wanted. This would probably be good for the economy at large and for their shareholders. I would think that Minnesota would empty out in about 20 minutes.
• Automotive Foreplay: I'm getting about 3 miles to the gallon. Because even if I'm driving three blocks up the road (and I'm sure as hell not walking it in -26) I have to warm my car up for ten minutes. And leave it running when I get three blocks up the road to the store. Because it will stay warm for no more than 8 seconds once I turn it off and I'll have to warm it up for another 10 45 seconds later when I emerge from the store.
• Voluntary Exile: I have many friends here I cherish. But there ain't a chance in hell I'm meeting 'em anywhere 'cause I don't want to open the front door.
• Voluntary Hermitness:  I have many friends here I cherish. But there ain't a chance in hell I'm inviting 'em over 'cause all the heat will flee my house when I open the door for them.
• Global Warming Now, Global Warming Tomorrow, Global Warming Forever: Today was absolutely the wrong day for me to read the UN's new report on global warming. At any time in the last 13 years I would have embraced it and the changes it calls for. Today it strikes me as an idea whose time has come and it must be implemented immediately. Please...go buy an SUV that gets 2 miles to the gallon and remove all its emission controls devices. Move at least 100 miles from your place of work so your commute will be very long. Change your fireplace to accomodate the burning of coal. Write Congress on behalf of every big coal burning utility in the world and ask them to pass legislation requiring the burning of the dirtiest, least efficient coal possible. Do it now. I need the Greenhouse Effect. I need the polar ice caps to melt. I would be thrilled to hear glaciers trickling with water.
  
• Pictures Are Better: Someone here told me once that he thought the frozen lakes in winter were beautiful. They are. In pictures. This freak liked to go stand on them. I think he's a spawn of Satan. To steal an idea from the Great Czyz - winter should be something you experience in an exhibit at the zoo. Outside of that, it's just stupid.
• Now I Get The Whole Drinking Thing: People up here drink like nowhere I've ever been before. They don't drink Texas...abstain, abstain, abstain and then drink all the alcohol in the bar really fast. They drink Minnesota...drink a reasonable amount, drink it all day long, drink such that once you're in the bar you don't intend to leave until closing and when closing comes start bribing the bartender to stay open awhile longer so you don't have to leave. These people appear to be far warmer than I am. Up here they like to talk about hardy Minnesota stock. Hardy my ass. They're bombed.

I Thought I Was Screwin' Around

So...I thought with the whole degree drive thing.

This weekend the cold water pipe in the kitchen partially froze. So...the weekend has been all about keeping it from entirely freezing. Then, the drain from the kitchen sink clogged. Bad thing when you need to keep a trickle of water coming out of the faucet so the pipe won't freeze. One tablespoon of drano cleared the clog. Cleared it so effectively it also ate a small hole in the drain pipe. Which now has a large pot underneath it. The upstairs bathroom sink hasn't been draining properly for awhile. I've been ultra lazy about getting the landlord out to clear that for me (my fault...not his...landlord dude is an amazingly cool guy and responsive to such problems...I just hadn't notified him to send someone out). Apparently, my bad plumbing Karma is shared by many in town. So, getting someone out to figure out what the hell is up with this partially frozen pipe and fix the drains is taking awhile.

In addition to that I was supposed to do a quick consulting thing out in San Diego this week. Perfect given the temperature. The client decided they'd be better prepared (step one in a blowoff) in March. I don't need them in March. I need them right now when it's 2 goddamn degrees.

Sigh.

Minnesota's Temperature Earmark Scandal

This is so embarrasing.

In late 2005 we held here a degree drive for the Twin Cities when we woke up one morning and found we had frivolously over spent all our degrees and were in deficit. Y'all very kindly donated 25 degrees so we could warm up. Behind the scenes we set up a Degree Exchange program with the city of San Antonio where they'd ship us 20 or so degrees per day in August for us to bank for use in the winter, allowing the good people of San Antonio to cool off in the hideous heat of summer and us to keep from freezing to death in winter.

It seemed like such a great idea. But...you know how these things go.

Ultimately, it's my fault. I left on my Christmas 2005 roadtrip as the Exchange was being set up. Blissfully unaware, I learned later that the Minnesota side was represented by a committee of state and local legislators and some well-known civic leaders. I should have seen it coming. We're big on committees here in Minnesota and it's like a rule or something that the committees function poorly. I'm pretty sure it's in the state Constitution (recently there's been general shock and dismay that the agreement between Wisconsin and Minnesota in which residents of one state can pay in-state tuition at schools in the other has not been honored consistently in Wisconsin universities...while it has been in MInnesota...it is beginning to look like Wisconsin has the right to do this...it is unclear whether Minnesota does but it is clear that Minnesota will continue to be aghast and it hasn't occurred to the folks with oversight on the Minnesota side to simply respond in-kind. This is how committees in Minnesota work).

Apparently, during the campaigns leading up to the 2006 election one of the terribly under-reported scandals was state and local level earmarks in which we spent our San Antonio surplus. It has been far warmer than usual here this winter. Now we know why. Various jurisdictions throughout Minnesota were given surplus degrees to take the edge off winter. The problem is, since earmarks are inserted and not debated, various state elected officials spent like drunken sailors...thus our 40 degree days in December and January. The problem is that now not only is the surplus gone it turns out we are in deficit. We now owe San Antonio degrees.

In the bylaws that established the Degree Exchange San Antonio stipulated that whenever their temperature dropped below 50 they were entitled to withdraw from the Exchange the degrees needed to get up to that level. Minnesotans thought it was a joke. Surely, no one freaks out at 46. That's sweatshirt weather. Minnesota did not put in any kind of reciprocal clause mandating that when the summer time temp here broke 90 they could send extra degrees to San Antonio. NOTE TO THOSE OF YOU LIVING IN CLIMATES THAT SUPPORT HUMAN LIFE: 90 degrees is considered unbearably hot here in Minnesota. The Minnesotans were at a disadvantage during these meetings because it was dead winter and 2 degrees outside and they couldn't imagine that it could ever be too hot. And Texans are a wiley people. And they got the Minnesotans drunk. And Minnesotans are trusting by nature. And the Texans brought to the big potluck dinner some smokin' fajitas and other killer Tex-Mex munchies. The Minnesotans, not understanding that they have deplorable cuisine, brought lutefisk and fucking hot-dish. Which, understandably, pissed off the Texans. They took it as an insult. Which it was but not an intentional one. See...people up here actually think of lutefisk as food. Not as the anti-terror, illegal torture implement that it is. And they think hot-dish...which is built on a base of cream of motherfucking mushroom soup, is enjoyed world wide. They do not grasp that it is tasteless stomach turning glop that dogs in 48 states (here and South Dakota being the exceptions) won't eat.

San Antonio has been dropping into the 40's and even the 30's overnight and they've been making margin calls. Even with this we should still be a couple hundred degrees up but, what with the degree earmarks from this last legislative session and local pols buying votes with warmer temperatures...we're fresh out.

So...instead of a balmy 10 degrees right now, with windchill, it's warmed up to -11. And it's gonna stay that way for another four or five days. I promise that any degrees donated by you will be used only within the boundaries of my property. I will even share the proceeds of the auction I will hold amongst my Minnesota friends for the right to come hang out in the relative warmth of my front yard (really...y'all will cross the sidewalk and it'll be like 0 sweltering degrees).  Over the next five days we need 44 degrees that we can allot in varying increments each day to get us back up to zero each day.

Please, look at your expected highs for the next five days and determine what you can give. Do it for the children.

And...if y'all don't come across...I mean, I don't want to be hostile or nothin'...but if you don't come across with a little somethin'-somethin' for the frozen north (or just li'l ol' me) I will show up at your front door and I will be bearing lutefisk and hot dish. Trust me...you don't want that.

I'm sorry to be heavy-handed here but...HOLY SHIT IT'S COLD.

D'ya Ever...

...just. Wanna. Get. Gone?

Yeah. Like that.