Archives for October, 2008
New Pepsi logos
I just saw the new Pepsi logo and I was thinking how many times they have come out with a new logo or new cans since I have been alive versus how many times Coke has changed their logo. I think it comes from the fact that they seem to be perpetually in second place.
If I was the CEO of Pepsi, I would go back to their old logo, it looks better than the new one which will look dated by tomorrow afternoon. While I was at it, I may try to improve my companies operational difficulties in several major markets and then find out why Diet Coke tastes so much better than Pepsi.
Recently on Twitter
- @miketodd07 First WS in years I haven’t followed in reply to miketodd07 #
- Guarding my Jared Diamond tickets. #
- How about those Edmonton Eskimos? #
Jared Diamond
Wendy, myself and about 1500 people went and saw Jared Diamond at TCU Place tonight. He was what I expected. Witty, gracious, concise, and profound. He talked mostly of his work in Collapse but offered up some thoughts on the global economic collapse and global warming. Sadly for a lot of defeated Liberal candidates, he offered up the best apologetic of the Green Shift that I have heard. Too bad it came out now instead of prior to election day as it would have contributed greatly to the election debate.
I have some more thoughts on his talk and his book Collapse but that is for another night. Tonight I need some sleep.
Jared Diamond is speaking tonight
October 27th at TCU Place. Wendy and I are going to it and I am quite excited about it. She got tickets to the reception and the talk for some reason but I may drag along a copy of his books and him sign them.
Recently on Twitter
- @RobertPooley - Incredibly bizarre sideline incidents and a “Dennis Green” type press conference. in reply to RobertPooley #
- After today I wonder if Mike Singletary would be better suited to coach the other Bay Area team. He seemed out of control today. #
- @randallfriesen - Are you missing us all yet? in reply to randallfriesen #
- Wendy and I headed to a Nashi fundraiser today - http://tinyurl.com/6z8445 #
- @onehouse - I had a sweater vest on today. Initially people liked me but then when I took some candy from a baby, people were upset again. in reply to onehouse #
- best photo we have ever taken of Maggi - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jordoncooper/2973020567/ #
- Heading to a Nashi fundraiser with @wendycooper & Ollie #
- Twitterific is acting weird lately #
Saskatchewan beats the Eskimos in a close game
55-9.
Saskatchewan scored seven touchdowns, including a 54-yard fumble return by linebacker Kitwana Jones, to move into second place in the Canadian Football League’s West Division ahead of B.C., which hosted Toronto later on Saturday.
It wasn’t all good news
But Saskatchewan isn’t without its problems. First and foremost, head coach Ken Miller is probably no closer to deciding on a starting quarterback for the post-season.
Steven Jyles, who relieved a struggling Darian Durant in last week’s 30-29 win over Hamilton, got the nod against Edmonton — the Riders’ third starting pivot in as many weeks.
But he gave way to Michael Bishop after completing seven of 13 passes for 99 yards and throwing two interceptions. Bishop connected on nine of 10 passes for 148 yards with two completions for majors.
Despite the big win, I am not liking Saskatchewan’s chances going into the post-season with Michael Bishop as our quarterback. He was mediocre in Toronto and he has been mediocre here.
The inner Maggi
If there is one photo that shows what life is like with Maggi, this is it.
Sarah Palin’s gone “rogue”
According to CNN, she isn’t playing by the campaign’s script. Now McCain’s people are tossing her under the bus. These things tend to happen when you recruit a VP candidate on looks and folksy language rather than experience.
Recently on Twitter
- Back at home. Chilling and helping Wendy make supper. in reply to dealingwith #
The last weekend at the lake
Wendy, Mark, Ollie, the dogs and I just got back from a freezing weekend at the lake. We went up on Thursday and got back not that long ago. Despite the incredible wind, we had a pretty good time and managed to close up the cabin as well.
It was most definitely our last weekend of 2008. We got up to the lake and Mark and I took Maggi for her traditional swim in the lake. I was tossing a stick to her and wouldn’t toss it into the water in case she didn’t want to go in. After the second toss near the water, she grabbed her stick and just jumped in. Once she goes into the water for the first time, she turns into a different dog. She is relaxed, laid back, and sleeps for hours. Every morning I try to take her down to the water. If you don’t she is constantly on alert in case one of us may try to sneak a swim in.
Arlington Beach was incredibly quiet on Thursday. For a long time the only thing I heard was the crunching of leaves under Mark, Maggi, and my feet. Mark and I always do a couple of things when we are at the cabin. We take Maggi for long walks where we can talk and him and I will play some games on my PSP. This weekend we managed to do both. The game of choice was SOCOM. Through both of our combined efforts, democracy is safer all over the world.
After supper on Thursday the wind picked up and it got quite cold. That night I almost froze to death. Despite three space heaters, it was COLD up there and the temperature dipped down below freezing with an intense wind. It was awfully cold in our uninsulated cabin. While Mark and Oliver had lots of quilts and blankets and slept fine, Wendy and I underestimated what we would need. On top of that both dogs decided they were cold and crawled into bed which shoved me up against a series of 2×4 studs only some plywood keeping me from the elements. It’s a 3/4 bed which isn’t big enough for Wendy and I let alone a large dog who likes to stretch out. It definitely isn’t large enough for Wendy, myself, Maggi and then Hutch. On top of that Wendy decided to move the heaters around so we had three space heaters on one breaker all night which kept tossing the breaker. I was too out of it to know what was going on but it meant all night we were listening to the breaker go off and with it the heat.
On Friday we drove from Arlington Beach to Regina which is about an hour and it takes you through part of the stunningly beautiful Qu’Appelle Valley. As we were driving through the town of Bulyea, Wendy yelled out Boo Yeah and that sadly was yelled by her or Mark every time we saw the sign to the town. We took in Cornwall Centre and Chapters. We did some Christmas shopping and picked up some books. Mark picked out a book of 1001 unbelievable facts and was determined to read each and every one of them to us. I picked up Fiasco by Thomas Ricks and also Big Russ & Me by Tim Russert. Wendy surprised all of us by seemingly surrendering to the household of guys by picking up a book on World War II.
Friday night I pulled out every blanket that we owned (we have quite a few quilts up there for this very reason). There was so many quilts and heavy blankets on the bed, I could feel them pushing me into the mattress. After waking up and feeling like I was sleeping on the surface of the sun, I scaled back the mound of blankets on the bed and was okay. A re-arrangement of the heaters made the cabin a lot more tolerable as well. The dogs were given a choice between sleeping in front of the heaters comfortably or sleeping in a crowded bed with Wendy and I. They chose the bed. We even tried to get them to sleep with Mark but they would get out and sleep with us.
Today the wind was just incredible. We heard it was around 100 km/h. It was a battle just getting the garbage out to the dump. I did manage to brave the wind to take some measurements of our cabin and some decks of cabins around us. The plan is to build a 8×10 deck on the back of the cabin and a small 10×4 front step on the front. Neither will be very expensive as we plan to use simple post and pier construction on concrete blocks. The end result is that we should have 120 square feet or 25% more usable space next year. I think I posted this before but the decks are inspired by these buildings.
With some sadness we cleaned the cabin up, secured the barbecue cover around the grill, locked the place up and said goodbye until next spring. The winter will be spent pricing out insulation and our new decks. Mark is trying to get me to spring for a flat screen television but his chances of that happening are about the same as the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup this year.
The loss of the dream
As unemployment rises across America, so do garage sales.
On Mission Ridge Drive and other avenues, lanes and ways in this formerly booming community, even birthday celebrations must go. “It was no money, no birthday,” said Ms. Duarte, who lost her job as a floral designer two months ago. The family commemorated Marita’s third birthday without presents last week, the occasion marked by a small cake with Cinderella on the vanilla frosting. They will move into a rental apartment next month.
An eternity ago, people in this city in northern San Joaquin County braved four-hour round-trip commutes to the San Francisco Bay Area for a toehold on the dream. Today, Manteca’s lawns and driveways are storefronts of the new garage-sale economy — the telltale yellow signs plastered in the rear windows of parked cars Friday through Sunday directing traffic to yet another sale, yet another family.
“You can get great deals,” said Sharrell Johnson, 32, who was scouting for toys in the Indian summer heat last Friday amid boxes of tools and DVDs and forests of little skirts and shirts dangling from plastic hangers on suspended rope. “Sad to say, you’re finding really good things. Because everybody’s losing their homes.”
It’s not isolated either.
This is McCain-Palin placard country, where signs for the anti-gay-marriage state ballot measure, “Yes on 8,” pepper the landscape and billboards advertising “Buy Now/Low Rates" seem like grim fossils of a bygone age. Manteca lies at an epicenter of the foreclosure crisis, with median home values having fallen by nearly half since 2006, from $440,000 to the current $225,000. In San Joaquin County, Moody’s has estimated that more than 1 in 10 houses with mortgages have a payment that is more than 30 days late. Unemployment rates have increased by a third, from 7.6 percent in September 2007 to 10.2 percent this fall, said Hans Johnson, a demographer at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Before the downturn, Manteca, population 67,700, and other towns in the northern San Joaquin Valley were on the leading edge of growth, with stucco subdivisions carved out of almond orchards. Today some 1,500 to 2,000 homes in Manteca, which is 32.7 percent Hispanic, are in various stages of foreclosure.
Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks
While in Chapters in Regina, I picked up a copy of Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks. It is a mesmerizing read if for just the amount of incompetence within the White House, the Pentagon, and the provisional government in Iraq (Paul Bremer comes across as an incompetent idiot). Basically it tells the story of intelligence that was discredited within the CIA even before Colin Powell tried to sell it at the United Nations and about how despite a chorus of concerned experts both inside and outside the Pentagon that the occupation could go very bad, very quickly, the office of the Secretary of Defense ignored it.
Those warnings existed in the war plans since 1991 and were made not only by senior military leadership but from a wide variety of partisan and non-partisan think tanks. Republicans and Democrats saw that the invasion of Iraq could go bad without enough troops and the office of the Secretary of Defense just ignored them. Senior military leaders were told to expect a plan on the occupation of Iraq but then in one instance were told to produce one themselves in just 24 hours. It would read like a comedy of errors if not so many lives were being lost.
While Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks were right that you could win a military battle with speed and airpower, winning a war and keeping order takes a lot of troops. On top of that the early plans all relied on the Iraqi military to help rebuild until Bremer surprised everyone by dissolving the Iraqi military which made 400,000 skilled troops suddenly unemployed and gave them an axe to grind. He followed that up by dissolving the Ministry of the Interior which put all of the police out of work. "De-Ba’thification" worked just about as well. While the military was relying on the Iraqi’s themselves to do this (they would kill the partisan Ba’th member themselves), Bremer put most of Iraq’s skilled workforce out of jobs on the basis that they may be Ba’th members despite strong reservations from the military and his own advisors.
The book does leave one question unanswered. Why senior military and political leaders refused to listen to those around them? Leaders become isolated but in this case a lot of people were able to make their case to them. It almost seems as if they were overwhelmed by the task at hand and chose to ignore it which forced them into defaulting back to their original assumptions as if they couldn’t handle the complexity on hand. This happens in many organizations but generally near the top, you have people who can focus both on the task at hand and on the larger picture. Within the Pentagon and the White House, they seemed to be focused on too small of a picture (winning the war) and too large of a picture (transforming the middle east in to a pro-American democracy) which was the wrong thing to be focusing on.
As the U.S. Army War College study pointed out, the war “was not integral” to the global war on terrorism but was a costly “detour from it.”
For me the question that the book kept bringing back to me was how do leaders who rise to senior leadership positions in politics and the military manage to ignore their advisors at such a key time. This isn’t just a military question either. I have seen church leaders tune everyone else out and Wall Street is littered with companies that made moves everyone else saw as a probable train wreck (Corel going into competition against Microsoft and Adobe at the same time comes to mind). Just recently Stephane Dion campaigned on a Green Shift even those closest to him thought was a horrible idea. Ignoring those around you isn’t new but what amazes me is that those that can’t or won’t are weeded out more effectively by complex systems like the Pentagon. As for how it happened in the White House, that’s Bob Woodward’s specialty.
The book is a good one and is a required read at the Army War College. You can find it in hardcover, paperback or Google Books. The New York Times has a good review of the book here.
2 to 1 advantage for Barack Obama
According to Editor and Publisher, Barack Obama leads John McCain in newspaper endorsements, including most of the major American papers: LA Times, NY Times, Sacramento Bee, SF Chronicle, SJ Mercury, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Boston Globe, NY Daily News, The Houston Chronicle. McCain: San Diego Union-Tribune, Tampa Tribune, Boston Herald, New York Post, Dallas Morning News, The Detroit News.
The big surprise for for me in this list is the Houston Chronicle and the number of papers who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004 but are endorsing Barack Obama this time around. via
Recently on Twitter
- Enjoying a cold Saskatchewan night at the lake #
- Being talked into driving to Regina by Wendy & Mark. #
- Hanging out at the lake & wishing I had insulated during the summer. I am FREEZING. #
- Here I am: http://tinyurl.com/5f633d #
- @kinnon we are doing the exact same thing in reply to kinnon #
Recently on Twitter
- @cartermason I hate to say this but I also suggested he pick whatever QB is going to play KC that week. in reply to cartermason #
- @onehouse - I can’t reply to you know because my Mark and Oliver are flying with me on Alaska related government business. in reply to onehouse #
- Giving our accountant tips for his Fantasy Football pool - David Gerrard or Matt Schwab for week nine. #
- Giving our accountant tips for his Fantasy Football pool - David Gerrard or Matt Schwab for week nine? #
- @urbanplanter - the good news is if the NHL expands into Toronto, the city will finally have a NHL franchise
in reply to urbanplanter # - @DashHouse - My poster of Emerill is coming down one of you is going up! in reply to DashHouse #
Our Cabin Weblog- Recently listened to music
- David Gray – Be Mine October 19, 2008
- David Gray – December October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Knowhere October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Real Love October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Last Boat To America October 19, 2008
- Recently additions to my library
- Rediscovering Church: The Story and Vision of Willow Creek Community Church by Lynne Hybels October 26, 2008
- The Teeth of the Tiger, A Novel by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
- The Agenda Inside the Clinton White House by Woodward Bob October 26, 2008
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell October 26, 2008
- The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
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