Leeloo

Korben Dallas: "Yeah, this is my wife, Leeloo"

Me: "Bartender! Give me a double of whatever that red-haired woman is snorting"

Scalability

The failure from excessive mortgage fraud began two years now. Few people anticipated it (or perhaps they didn't care) but it seemed inevitable to me. As inevitable as the eventual failure of our paper money, as foreign interests seem to be grasping.

Back in November of 2007, I wrote about interface failures while I was eating at a McDonald's in La Grande, Oregon. Interfaces are a method of standardization. Theoretically, scalable systems are more efficient. Is our mortgage industry efficient, do you think?

We achieve scalability through standardization, delegation and design patterns. The nature of delegation is to hide detail. By definition, an interface obeys the letter of the law but how can we ensure that it obeys the spirit? From a cultural perspective, control is exercised through common moral ground and expectations. So high cultural variability produces high failure rates, which lowers scalability, which raises inefficiency.

But if you believe E. F. Schumacher, inefficiency is a natural consequence of modern economics...

"The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed."

Unnoticed by most but not by all.

"No system or machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man's basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose"

"It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character"

What, then, cannot be sliced and diced into the tidy, predictable interfaces of modern capitalism? Holistic products and environments. Knowledge domains which are less than the size of one average mind. Systems of such complexity that they can only function holistically, beyond the human capacity to fully understand them. Knowledge domains which fall under the auspices of alternative belief systems. And domains suffering from recent impact of systemic failure, Bear Sterns comes immediately to mind. Time & trust are an essential ingredient in the foundation of successful interfaces.

It took a great deal of time and effort to reach this point, the point where I actually know what I'm talking about. Our current "capitalist" system has bypassed holistic hot spots in the upper ranges of many items, commoditizing the lower ranges for the masses. Those upper ranges are often differentiated by location, time, personal bias, political whimsey. The Federal Reserve's flood of money flows mostly into inelastic markets, creating the appearance of stability in the mainstream, elastic markets.

As I strolled through the Seattle Art Museum, I realized that, in one sense, the The Gates Of Heaven were a product of political whimsey. Their creation required delegation but not standardization. A high-level vision distributed and coordinated across many knowledge domains to create a single, unique work. What is today's counterpart to "The Gates Of Heaven"? Who are the artisans that reap that opportunity? Is it me, creating unique and somewhat eccentric software systems for specialty, small-scale projects? There was a flood of money in the exploration and commoditization of mainstream software, Microsoft and the personal computer, Apple, iPods, Motorola and cell phones. But that wave peaked years ago, locked up by oligopolies.

There's money in the Next Wave.

The odds are good that current Credit Cycle is entering a new period, what I termed "the pivot point" almost two years ago. I can't quite see it yet, I can't see what it looks like. That the metals (gold, silver, uranium) would skyrocket was fairly predictable. I suspect that the products of the next wave are holistic, resistant to "economic" slicing and dicing. They may be associated with a change in belief paradigms.

I can't see it yet.

I'm peripherially involved in a forerunner to James Martin's Alien Intelligence, I can see the value of it, it's the antithesis to the exponential growth rate of information. It is probably holistic in most cases, a unique entity for each installation. But I believe its flaw is that its marginal value rises slower than its cost, past a certain, tactical level. It needs a property of self-discovery and self-integration.

Redmond

Today I dropped my old clothes off at Goodwill.
My new rimless glasses should arrive towards the end of the week.

I would probably be dead right now without my parents.
And most likely without my brother, too.
Today I feel like I might be able to recover from the past few years.

I own a cellphone, a laptop, 20 sets of clothes and a car that's seven years old.
Too much of my life was stolen by other people, by liars and deceivers.

I still have several things to resolve in the next few months.

Toast II

"5th largest investment bank in the United States just vanished into thin air, its stock price from $70 to $2 in 6 days" - Comment from Prudent Bear

"Fed Announces New Initiatives" - Calculated Risk

Another new initiative immediately after the largest broker bailout in U.S. History, not to mention the two emergency "auction" initiatives?

Kiss Lehman Brothers good-bye.
Maybe Citibank, too.

Gold at $1033, up almost $30 in the past two hours.

"Flame on" - Johnny Torch.

But nobody suspected he was referring to the US Dollar.

San Francisco

My last trip to San Francisco.
I never noticed how baggy my clothes had become.
I'm currently at 190lbs, 30lbs lighter than my peak marriage weight.
As of this month, those clothes and glasses are gone.

I trudged through the Presidio for a few hours, across the Golden Gate and back, then ate dinner in Fisherman's Wharf, flirted with a waitress for an hour, walked through Ghiradelli square. Lots of sea otters at the end of one of the piers.

I suppose I'll do a speed-dating event tonight, over to the Karma Martini to redeem a gift certificate then perhaps I'll test out Christy's ideas - The Triple Door, El Goucho and the Whiskey Bar, although it's a close toss-up between women and pool these days.

Ability, Intent And Action

"It's important to differentiate between ability, intent and action" - Me.

If you don't know why it's important, read it again.
And again.
Until you do know.

Our justice system is based on a subset of this concept.

Rocky & Bullwinkle

"Looks like BB tried to pull a rabbit out of his hat and got a grisley bear instead" - comment from CalculatedRisk

A Grizzly Bear, all right.
A grizzly Bear Sterns.

And Carlyle Capital gone away in a flash of light, just like Hiroshima.

Wow.
Awesome.
Tomorrow may be an historic day.

Prediction - OpenSocial API Beats Facebook

On Oct, 27, 2007, I predicted that Facebook's rapid growth would peak before Summer, 2008. In reality, Facebook's rate of growth topped out less than two months later.

To date, I haven't seen Facebook convert its tactical advantage of a developer community into a strategic advantage that can win against Google. Based on how rapidly their growth peaked, and lack of strategic action on Facebook's part, I predict that Google's OpenSocial API will be the final winner and that Facebook's fortunes will soon start to fade.

The Scene

Such intensive purpose to keep each journal entry private, yet now she publicly broadcasts her physical location each week. I know her traffic. Roughly. Why make location public? Why not keep it amongst your friends?

How many of me can there be?

Anonymous stalkers who check daily?

You swarmed my site with anonymous IPs.
I'm fairly sure it was purposeful behavior to attract attention.
In prior years you fretted over Valentine's day,
An intentionally lonely woman in emotional pain,
Unloved but in a public forum.

Now you're more mobile than I
sometimes you drive, sometimes you fly
NASA, New York, Mexico
Is it a contest between us?
To see who can go
the greatest distance?

Now Flagstaff via Joshua Tree
Does she know so much
Yet so little about herself?
Or do I imagine
My gnome and her elf
As they play the Game between she and me?

The house is so quiet. Deathly quiet. I never lived in a place so silent, so free of kids and dogs and cars passing by. No gunshots, no airplanes. I heard a single chirp; the house alarm startled me and I wondered who could it be?

A stealthy realtor stopping by to pee?
Or perhaps an insurance scheme to collect on me,
an unknown agent of my wife or former enemy?

I glanced out the window into the night, caught a brief glance of a bird in flight. Another chirp, then two. I smiled at my paranoia and then off he flew, again. What bird sings at night? A nightinggale, is that right? I never knew much about birds, one of the topics that doesn't interest me. Much.

Why did you tout your MySpace return?
Another taunt to make me burn?

And what of your reference to Rapunzel? I read the story, I figured it out. I always do, that is, when you hint about... some topic which might give me a clue, of how you work inside, your mind, why you do the things you do. Why won't you call? Is it a game, D? I can't see, what else it could be, except wishful thinking on my part. I saw your reference to social anxiety and it seemed to be...

another part
Of this charade.

You are the greatest mystery that I've ever stumbled across.
You have talent yet you push too hard, expect too much
But still you're X-girl lost.

I'm a fairly good troubleshooter.
Perhaps I could find you.
If you let me.

For some reason I'm at peace this week.
It's late and this week is busy for me.
A singles mixer, a date in Kirkland, and more wrenching changes to self-imagery.

Marri says I'm lucky.
Perhaps she's right in a way that's hard to see.

The House

I've spent perhaps seven weeks in The House so far. I didn't intend to rent it but the opportunity appeared, it helped out others and it was easy and low-risk. The House is quiet, safe and secluded. The hot tub is awesome and tonight I discovered subtle qualities about the water jets so that fizzy warm water flowed like champagne over my skin. A 10 square-foot skylight hangs over the tub and sometimes I sit in the dark as moonlight streams down, sometimes raindrops patter against the glass, and the water swirls around quietly. The House reminds me of better times, of my previous expectations, when the future seemed bright.

I keep the master suite warm but leave off heating and lights for everything else.

I wash clothes here.
I keep some cranberry juice in the rerigerator and sometimes a microwave pizza.

These pictures don't do it justice. I suspect I won't be here much longer but it's been a good place to rest and recover from stress of the past few years.

Success & Failure

For the most part, I was a failure up until my early thirties, an unmemorable nobody through high school and subsequent drifter. The ASPEN project was my first success in life. I thought my first ASPEN grant was a ridiculous concept but an interesting careerbuilder and I felt obligated to a good-faith effort. Then the grants got bigger, the technology more interesting and I was off on a four-year adrenalin rush. But ASPEN also led to my greatest failure - the ill-fated IT director's position at Boise State University - and subsequent successes and failures have been relatively small.

I never cared about skydiving or sailing, scuba diving or flying, hobbies or gardening, motorcycles or even playing pool. My dreams revolved around respect and sex. ASPEN produced respect for the first time in my life. Even now, at fifty, I'm still focused on respect and sex except the rules and reality changed. I expended enormous energy on work, surpassing my original goals but now I face declining marginal gains. More energy into work buys less and less.

I'd like to make up for my failure at sex and women but I'm stonewalled there, too. I never could make it work. I understand now why but it doesn't help me. The myths are true, it's mostly about money and projecting image and perception of security. That's not me. It's not going to be me, especially in my current state of life.

Work - mined out into low marginal gains
Women - my foundation is flawed
Other - I never cared much. Clearly, I'm not the retirement type.

Wow. This, then, is the source of my malaise. I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go. I stumble upon other guys like me... sometimes at Starbucks. Sometimes they're wearing new motorcycle jackets, riding new bikes. Sometimes they're at the Wilde Rover on a Sunday afternoon, talking quietly, watching sports.

I'm tried so many things in the past eighteen months.
I have no idea of what to do next.
For most part, I've scaled back on money and energy for girl-chasing.

I'm achieving little and as I've developed a better understanding of women and myself, I see that my expectations were too high. You'd think that would be an unusual condition for me. So I'm upgrading my clothes; upgrading my cell phone for work, upgrading my glasses. Small, relatively inexpensive changes over the next two or three weeks. I was naive for so long and I'd probably still be asleep except for Dominique. I could never spend much time reflecting in the mirror over how I looked. My clothes are ill-fitting. My glasses look ancient. My teeth aren't white enough.

This is much harder for me than it sounds.

Rules

There are three types of people. People without much will or perception who obey most rules without much thought, which is the vast majority. The second type obeys rules because they're forced to, but break them egocentrically whenever possible. The third type are people who make the rules, and they understand why rules exist, and why exceptions exist. Theoretically, this last type are court judges, arbitrators, some politicians.

I was in the first group for a very long time.
I was briefly in the second group as I passed onto the third.

I never cared much about projecting image. It seemed wasteful and egotistical but perhaps being in the third group means obeying foolish rules because the vast majority don't understand much else. I started revamping my wardrobe this week.

Fly Me To The Moon

Fill My Heart With Song
And Let Me Sing Forever More

You Are All I Long For
All I Worship
And Adore

Election

"whomever wins the presidential election may well demand a recount" - comment from CalculatedRisk.blogspot.com

"Folks are going to need dental records to identify their 401(k)s this summer" - comment from CalculatedRisk.blogspot.com

Great

It looks like I have some internal bleeding from my colonoscopy and associated polyp removal. It would be nice if I don't keel over dead during the night. OTOH, it wouldn't require much work on my part so there's an upside.

It doesn't look like much blood and I had serious bloating this weekend so maybe it's just the scabbing / healing of the polyp scar. I was okay from Tuesday night to Friday night.

Gold at 982 and rising.