I found more posts on an old drive. They are from the 1st quarter of 2009. These may be the last of the old posts as I started using Facebook around this time and posted there instead of on my homemade blog page.
A couple of notes that might help make more sense of these posts: The primary audience was my mother. She was living in Arizona and this was before she was on Facebook. My sister Deb or Mom’s neighbors would print the posts for her to read.
Also, note that none of the links from the original posts are active.
2009 (1ST QUARTER) BLOG ARCHIVES
02Jan2009 On New Year’s Day we went to Mike and Linda’s and had a potluck with two other couples: Mike and Carol Burdette and Sam and Judy Pugh. Chris was back from Florida and he helped make some of the food. David called us to pick him an offer we can’t refuse. So we took David to Culver’s for a grilled cheese sandwich, fries and a Coke and then to Menard’s.
New Year’s Eve we went with Mike and Linda to the Marriot Courtyard in Ankeny for dinner and a dance. The meal was great and so was the band, Flipside.
Sad news that our friend Harry Cunningham lost his battle with cancer on New Years’ Day. The funeral is next Friday.
06Jan2009 I attended the first official board meeting of Hope Village. This is a big dream to establish a large self-contained ICF/MR village in Des Moines for an adult MR/DD population. The board is made up of very impressive members. The process of defining our mission and vision statement was a case study in how to collaborate. It was respectful and purposeful discourse with a result that reflected each person’s input.
07Jan2009 On the evening of the 7th we went to a visitation in Johnston. Our friend Marilyn Paul’s father died at the nursing home. He was 93, afflicted with Alzheimer’s, blind and lost his wife (Marilyn’s mother) in the previous year so his passing was not much of a surprise. We ran into an old friend, Howard Scott at the visitation. Howard once worked at GuideOne in auto underwriting and as a marketing rep. When he left to run his agency I took over his territory (IA and MO) in 1980.
Debbie and I went to see a presentation by Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple and the technical genius who created their very first products. It was held at a Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) campus not far from my house. The speech was a retelling of his story, how he was drawn to this new technology, and the forces that came together to create Apple.
After the speech, he sat at a table to sign autographs. He was willing to sign anything and most had their tickets or their programs signed. He was robo-signing without looking up – not to be rude but just to move the line along.
I had on one of my vests from ScotteVest. The company name “SCOTTEVEST” is a contraction of “SCOTT’s Electronics VEST,” and the product line is used by world travelers, adventurers, undercover law enforcement, celebrities, and gadget lovers as loyal fans and customers. The company’s founder, Scott Jordan, is a friend of the Woz. The Woz did some cute YouTube ads for the company.
Now back to the robo-signing. As the Woz was signing my ticket I mentioned I was wearing my ScotteVest. He looked up with a big smile and said he meant to wear a ScotteVest shirt that day but forgot. I said I enjoyed the YouTube videos he did for the company. The Woz said he didn’t think they were that great but that he did them as a favor for his friend. I got to go behind the table to get a picture with the Woz.
Thanks for the great experience Woz!
Student loans have become a hot political issue. That is too bad because the true solution to the issue will be delayed. There are a few simple principles in play here.
- First Issue: Supply and Demand. With the massive government subsidization of higher education, it is no wonder that college tuition is out of control. This subsidy has created an increasing demand curve against a relatively fixed supply so of course the cost of tuition has outstripped inflation for many years.
- Second Issue: Return on Investment. The conventional “wisdom” that “everyone should be able to get a college degree” has left us with millions of new graduates with thousands in debt because their schools misled them into thinking that getting a job with a unique degree would be an easy path to success.
- Third Issue: Caveat Emptor. Parents are not teaching their children fiscal responsibility! Their children are targeted by predatory financial institutions for credit cards and assume debts for material things before starting a career. Without a strong sense of reality and good math skills, these children become indentured servants to these institutions for their entire life. Sadly, most parents are incapable of teaching their children about fiscal responsibility as too many families are living paycheck to paycheck and have little or no net worth.
I believe a classic market correction is in the works. Increasing competition from on-line learning venues will lower the cost of getting a higher education soon (over the next ten years). Costs will plummet as the “bricks and mortar” college experience is replaced by a predominately on-line experience. Think of it as disintermediation of the “bricks and mortar” experience. Then the predatory financial institutions (and the alcohol cartel) will need to find new ways to exploit our children.
Here is a great “rant’ by Dave Ramsey the creator of Financial Peace University on this issue. He nails it. http://www.daveramsey.com/radio/home/loadclip/studentloans-20120426?ictid=text
Debbie and I had a long delayed getaway weekend starting the day after Thanksgiving. We went to Minneapolis and stayed at a nice hotel across the street from the Mall of America (MOA). A recent story in the news reminded me that I wanted to share our MOA experiences. Here is the excerpt from the news item: “Authorities arrested at least nine people after a “series of fights” at the nation’s biggest shopping mall sent chairs flying and caused after-Christmas shoppers to flee, officials in Minnesota said Tuesday….Witnesses described a chaotic scene.” Reports stated that up to 200 were involved in the fighting.
(…Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs / Of every head he’s had the pleasure to have known …)
I was digging through some files stored on a file server at home. After writing that last sentence it occurs to me that not everybody has an 8 terabyte Network Attached Server (NAS) at home. Today that seems like a lot of storage, in a few years not so much, and of course, the preferred storage method will be in the cloud.
(…And all the people that come and go / Stop and say hello..)
Anyway, I found bit and pieces of blog posts from 2005-2008. I cleaned up the formatting as well as I could and posted them by year. I did not try to fix any hyperlinks. Most of the links were to pictures on the old site that no longer exists. The lack of links does not materially affect the context of the blogs – at least it did not for me.
(…On the corner is a banker with a motorcar / The little children laugh at him behind his back / And the banker never wears a mac in the pouring rain / Very strange…)
Jackson Paul Lane holding Hunter Dean Johnson
And what a busy time in my family’s life! Concerts from Herman’s Hermits (Peter Noone liked my Beatles tie and said he would mention it to Sir Paul), Paul Revere, Rockapella, Tom Petty, John Prine, Billy Joel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Garrison Keillor, Lucinda Williams, and Sir Paul McCartney, visits and visitors, trips to dozens of states and a few countries, a birth (Hunter), deaths (Jean, Louise, Norbert, and Toni’s mother), numerous graduations, my flying lessons and the varied but glorious trials and tribulations of everyday life. I hope we pass the test!
(…Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes / Wet beneath the blue suburban skies / I sit and meanwhile back in…)
I will post more oldies as I find them.
