Court of Courts ?

The real world is not efficient. There’s a discrepancy of information between parties, there are mistakes and delays, unexpected responses, and many emotions. As a result, when two pirates are going for the same bottle of Captain Morgan, they rock the boat sometimes jeopardizing their lives and everyone else. For example, I read on newser.com that a mother gave her eight year old daughter Botox so she can become a superstar. I’ve heard of online universities that hand students an empty degree and fully-loaded loan. As humans, someone has to sit and imagine a perfect world, and somehow inspire people to move in that direction. They are the ology’s: psychology, sociology, and even zoology.

Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), an economist and political scientist, talked a lot about “creative destruction”. It’s very simple. You got too comfortable with your business process and daily routine. Stop accepting the status-quo, and tell yourself there’s something better out there. Before you even buy the iPhone, know that someone else is developing the next iPhone, and it’s either in design or manufacturing. That’s why I keep to my 2001 Samsung.  Creative destruction is the secret to innovation and progress. The best motivation for creative destruction is competition. That’s why sometime’s I’d like to just wake up and say f u. There’s no equilibrium. The “only constant is change”.

I’m really interested in predicting the future just a little bit. Look. Someone had to design a bridge, and someone has to build it, before we can all cross it. I know for sure, that someone is developing something, for next year that would be awesome! Where they are? What they do? What’s its impact I don’t know. A Russian Investor just has handed 40 start-ups some serious cash. What are those companies going to do? How does it affect us? Some will fail, and some will work. There is not court of courts! There are no text books for entrepreneur about companies they’re yet to build. Even winners, in hind-sight are always correct. There has to be a continuous self-questioning and self-correcting mechanism. Otherwise, you fall to what they call in probability type II error: failing to reject a hypothesis when we should have rejected it.

Starting Point

Out there, in a library, is a series of 1950’s science fiction/mystery books on robots and computers that fairly predicts today and the future. I skimmed the first of seven books, and I plan on reading the next six within a week. It’s called The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov.

In the “Prelude to Foundation”, a scientist is obliged to help an emperor survive and thrive by predicting future events from historical ones using mathematical formulas. It’s a very complex equation in the beginning; because there are way too many worlds, and millions of people, and billions of daily interactions for the model to be solved within our lifetime. Theoretically possible and practically impossible! The scientist explains it: even if I wanted to, it’s impossible for me to shake the hand of every person on the planet, because many would have died before I reach them.

After 470 pages, the scientist realizes that there is a starting point world that he should study, and everything else including other worlds and human interactions can be considered second degree effects to be explained later. If he studies the starting point of humanity, he’ll need less mathematical power to handle the rest. That’s what a model is - Business models. It’s ignoring the fact that a red round apple is falling on the ground and simplifying it to a model that explains gravitational energy effect on all masses.

Isaac Asimov, wrote this in 1950’s and died in 1992.  Would you not want to talk to this man today? Especially, with the social networks server farms and data! He’s dead, and Natalie Portman is – for the most part - not going to have my babies.  More importantly, the “future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed”. Whether you own a bank, or an online-application, or data on customers; you can study the leaders in behavior, or what some like to call the early adapters, and with some confidence explain their pattern, how that might affect the second wave of reactions, and predict the future of the group.

Let’s do some wild guessing. The biggest shifts have been caused by technology. Technology gets better, and makes itself cheaper, and the application become wider. Do you think unemployment rates would be even higher? If that’s true, how will the unemployed feed themselves and stay busy? Would the government just give them food, homes and cars? Does that substitute for the role of money in the economy? What kind of entertainment do they need? Just look for pockets of people who sample future situations to predict the future. Tell me, what do you read? What's your starting point?

The visible hand

A cube is a block of data that tells different stories based on the audience - stories for accounting, sales managers, operations and even product innovators. Let’s take this cube approach to study our lives from the government’s perspective. Assume you own a barber-shop in Chicago South Side or a pizza palace on the Jersey shore. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you work for the government because you pay your taxes and play by the rules of law. You probably don’t see this, but the government is the best business man. If the government were to write you a job description: it would read: hiring for a managerial position, to work passionately 24/7, to serve his community. All the sudden, you realize how smart this is! Because if they salaried you for that job you would have probably never done it! If they took that job today, and slapped on it that job description, people would quit.

Given that the government has set-up the market, now can it intervene?  In other words, the government has built the soccer field, and put the lights, security guards, seats, and bathrooms? Now what role can the government play in the match? There are three schools of thoughts: Keynesian economics, classical economics, Monetarism. John Keynesian says use government money and projects to increase employment. Adam Smith of classical economics, says reduce government intervention and let the markets sort themselves out. Milton Friedman of Monetarism says that the government plays a vital role in controlling the money supply to affect the state of the economy. In response to government intervention you have lobbying. Chicken and the egg; which came first?  

The government just hired you the same way a sales manager would hire a sales rep on commission basis. You signed an invisible contract to work like hell. Do you want to restructure the contract and work less? Nations have figured it out; it’s the distinction between Kings and Elected Governments. The way a democratic government work is like a stage, the president comes to the podium, does their thing for four years and steps down.  Again, what a smart process! It applies to business, for how have you – or have you not - structured your business processes so that it is clear and transferable for another person to pick up your job? If the break-even calculation is to your advantage: Income minus training a new person minus salary of new person vs. then live your life.

AMERICA

You can live in America a life that is as easy and as difficult as you choose. A couple of months ago, I turned right on a red light without stopping. I got a ticket to an address that I relocated from, and the ticket penalty compounded as I didn’t address the ticket. This isn’t the first ticket I get, nor the last, at least do I think that now.  Like a sick fool I revisit my puke and repeat my mistakes. This make me realize the serious design work involved in governmental systems that lets you impose on yourself all the difficulties possible, if and only if, you ever think ,it’s tolerable to impose difficulties on the system or the lives of other civilians.

At the same time, this system has provided degrees of freedom not matched in any other country. Degree of freedom is a concept I learned in 9^th grade chemistry: liquid can move in many more directions than solid, and that explains why liquid has a much higher degree of freedom. There is one tool I need to achieve higher degrees of freedom, and that’s the bliss and bless of small talk. Small talk is the key to conversation that can lead to good relationships. You can’t unwelcome small talk or people to your life, for how do you know whether your wife will be introduced to you at a dinner party? And how do you know what void your children will fill in your heart when you don’t have them? As romantic as that sounds, right now, at my age and generation, the absent love in our heart is the dollar. For the dollar will provide degrees of freedom I’m unaware of today.

Just to keep the conversation rolling, let’s bring up the problem with unemployment and recruitment. There seems to be a serious problem with 9% unemployment in America. At the same time, I’ve been constantly targeted to recommend university graduates to neighboring companies. I see there’s a mismatch mainly caused by the Job seeker. Many, and many, Job seekers chose not to grow and educate themselves in an adequate manner to fit the job. This is the system of the market place, and from the prospective of the business owner, they’re not interested in partners that will make their lives more difficult. At the end of the day, the job seekers make their life more difficult with unlearning. Northwestern taught me everything I know, and ironically, sometimes I think I know better.

The best of writing and the best of technological applications is it to create the platform that allows the reader or user to finish the story in accordance with their degrees of freedom. I say: “I had my morning coffee”. For you, it could be Starfucks, or drunken donuts. It could be the one off of the kitchen table, or it could be Turkish coffee. Anyway, I’m off for coffee. Thank you America.

BOZO

Did you ever get stuck in a situation? I'm talking about small talk. Fuck small talk! At a club, if a girl won't shut-up, I grab her left tit with my right hand. She slaps me and we're done. What can I do in the office when small talk kicks in? One morning, a colleague was early to work because all the traffic lights were green. Ya, I guess the city traffic department is celebrating St. Patricks Day. Lucky me! Bowie is 10 minutes early for his 9 0' clock, and I'm yet to entertain. Entertain myself I say. I fucken farted. I released a silent smooky green gas and watched his eyes turn red. It was amazing how quickly the conversation ended. Other times, people are more subtle about it. After the 12 o'clock sandwich, when blood stops carrying caffeine and starts working the carbohydrates, I get what I'd like to call a paper plane. That's a professional email camouflaged with the intent to start unprofessional conversations under either-or's territory. Click. Delete. Then reach under my desk for my tea pot and pour my self some herbs. I Tea time. Others take their IT break to go outside and blow smoke. That's where some real business gets done. The cheeks squeezing in and the lips squaring forming the fish-kiss and there we go... blow OOOOO OOOO OOOOOh's. Seriously. There isn't much room at the top. That's why we're going to be partners in success and I'm jumping off your boat when you run the project to the ground. Bonuses and wrist slaps aren't measured with the same ruler. Count, one two three.The middle finger has a bump on it. Right here. See it. Bowie. Come on. Take it easy. My pinky is killing me from all the under_scores. Does this need HR intervention? No net really. At least not until you try to straighten things out. Don't even dare. That's why we're going to bring in Natalie Portman. I'd be curious to see what kind of babies me and her can have together. I guess that's just one of those things you die not knowing. Like alot of other stuff. For what you learn today is free as long as you give me your trust. Then I really can't make money off of this imaginary world. Where on hunter drive strippers dance when your numbers meet goals. There's no racing on hunter drive. There's no rat race. It's just about "kicking the ball in front of you and pacing yourself after it, then kick, and walk". Fucken endless projects. You want barbecue wings. Find a chicken and chop off her right wing. NO! At least give it a graceful death. Project management. Application Development. Anything. Strike once. Do it once. Just do it. Get it done. The taste of coffee comes back to my buds, and when I read my articles on the weekends when I'm chillaxed I realize how bad it is. It's not creative, it's just therapy.  A consultant once told me that if you become too strict then a black market emerges. In search for help in working within an eyetea* group, I found this book.http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Geeks-Manage-Deliver-Technology/dp/0787961485 

The End

I'm deep into the electric blue highways of data, carrying integers and characters from one system to another. Then beating and molding the data so that it can tell a story. Inside me there's another story I want to tell. With every field I carry to match it with the appropriate field, a new stream of ideas come to mind. Stephen King, the royal monster of writing, says there's always a fossil out there. All you have to do is find the fossil, and dig around it, slowly unveiling a story. He never really knows how it's going to end. I have discovered a fossil. It's my cubicle. Sitting in a cubicle is like the sound of tik-tok by the old clock on the wall at 3am with wind and cars blowing past your window. You don't like the tic-toc sound and the same applies to the cubicle. The worst thing is walking into work conscious of the cubicle. Then time goes by slowly. Really slowly. It gets aggravating too. Because it ruins you flow of streaming data from one server to the other. Now, that my fossil is the cubicle, I need to extract it. My style is through questioning. I'm at a state right now that I'll have to do is ask a couple of questions about before I can transition into another state. I'm good as asking questions.

Biology is life. Yesterday, I was studying the difference between parasites and predators. Predators feed on you after they kill you. Parasite, on the other hand weaken you only to feed on you until they commit suicide by killing you. I feel like disgusting saying this but sometimes there's a parasitic phenomena going on in the corporate world.  We email people work, and they respond by nit-picking the worst sentence out of a whitepaper or technical document. It does unveil some nasty intentions with so much clarity it reminds of kindergarten when kids played skip the box on a chalked floor. Sister, I never played skip the box and never found tic tac toe too interesting. Let's not play this game. I know you own a blackberry and got your Starbucks fix, but I've seen your work. I've read your documents. I've got lost trying to follow your analysis and logic. People want to feel and think in a certain way. They want a sense of importance, and they really want to feel like there's also a sense of authority. The stronger the presence of authority, the more serious the job, the more important one's work. It is branding. People want to hear and think in a certain way, and you really have to feed it to them. What do people want to hear one asks?

I'm a data analyst in 21st century because it's hot.  Everyone around me wants to build applications because it's hot. I'm not sure if people do want to hear the tick-tock of reality because "criticism is something people are good at giving themselves". Maybe I'll help you ask some yourself some self-branding questions. If you were the last man to the moon, would you drive a ferrari? Would it make a difference to you whether you used a 2001 Nokia or 2011 iPhone to make the call? Maybe it's unrealistic to think about being the last man to the moon. However, I've seen many do imaginary jail time. You know that phase very well. When you're studying for finals, it's jail time. When work season kicks in, it's jail time. Other can elaborate more on Jail time. I recently read a book by a King who considered his training in the desert Jail time. This is still not relevant. How do we corporate citizens or Chinese on a random high rise spend our Jail time?

I like to think about it in terms of Job Streams. Job streams are things I do with programs to automatically run in the morning to update data. Some of my personal job streams include working out, filling my car with gas, outsourcing my laundry, feeding myself, reading 1000 pages a week, studying new stocks everyday, writing 500 words a day. Job Streams. They are the kind of Rules for what I want to do. But I've started to realize that I was more on the exception side of rules. As if I truly write rules just to break them. Where else can I break the law? I hope by writing fictional stories that I don't. Because my cubicle is my fossil, and I'm finding some really cool shit to write about every day. It's really like a horror, scientific, modern and militaristic novel. I swear every time I send an email, I'm curious whether someone will send back a grenade for some ridiculous sentence. Seriously woman. I like my grammar mistakes. They make people pay attention and think twice. Did he mean this or that? I even ask myself what I meant!

Third Law

Don't reinvent the wheel. Just make it wider, with rims and green. NO! NO! Connect the circles together and make a chain. NO! NO! Why don't you grab a piece of cloth and create three circles in it; one for the neck, and two for the arms. Then, I want you to throw on it the word Versace and sell it for $250 dollars. Then, next season, make it a little more brownish with patterns and sell it for $350. It's the Circle my friend. It's always going to be the circle. How many different ways can you cook a chicken? That's when they ask you to redesign the circle. Sometimes, those circles are for pizza's and sometimes their for fashion. Sometimes it's the circle for the camera on the iPhone ONE TWO THREE FOUR. It's still the same circle. Seriously! Sometimes it's the circle for a microscope. Sometimes it's Direct Electric Circuits, and sometimes it's Alternating Circuits. But It's the same circle. If you know the difference between the circle you shit from vs. the one you eat from, maybe, you can move on to circles of higher responsibility. No matter what. It's always going to be the circle. So don't reinvent it, just get good at the OOOOOOOOOOOOh's