A Prioritization Ramble

 

lanpdt.com

   This is a follow-up to my last bloggy bit: Overwhelming Perspective
     I really should be working on task A but instead I choose to do task B. Task A has the higher external priority. Furthermore, Task A is late and not doing Task A will be visible to others. Task B, however, is my priority and no one else will really care if it gets done or not. Which should I do?
     There are many possibilities. The first and easiest choice is not to choose. Basically, do nothing. But, that would have a zen-like sage, wisdom laden, and somewhat aloof choice with a certain air of coolness about it. Did I say it was the easiest choice? It is easy to do nothing, lots of people do this each and every day. The hard part is the zen, aloof, cool part.
     When I choose to do neither task, there is nothing cool about the way I do nothing. There is instead lots of fretting. There is guilt. There is angst. Sure, overeating helps. Naturally, watching TV helps. In this decision space where 1 + 1 = 3 or more, watching TV and overeating is the bomb. If this is not enough, I could layer another totally unproductive activity on top of this by playing a Yahtzee on my phone (this particular game may be a family tradition). So, I suppose there is an app for this… whatever this is.

Sidebar: It should be noted that if one chooses to watch TV instead of doing what you should be doing, you should watch old movies or old sitcoms preferably ones you have watched a thousand times before. Do not, and I cannot emphasize this enough, DO NOT Supreme Court nominee confirmation hearings.

     This morning, however, I am feeling ambitious. I want to do something. I have to do many somethings. I am choosing Task B. This means, I am really doing what I want. I am first addressing my priority not anyone else’s. This is good (unless the anyone else is the IRS or a court order). I am officially a senior citizen. This means I really don’t have to care what the heck (insert the f word here if works better for you) others think. Yes, I know, this is just rationalization for doing whatever I want to do… so there is no need to point this out in a text or comment.
     You may have guessed it already, but this blog post is the Task B I have been talking about. Oddly, Task A along with Tasks C, D, E, F, and G are all writing tasks all of which have external priorities linked to others. So, this five-hundred ramble is a just a first cup of coffee limbering-up, get the juices flowing, in preparation for the other tasks.
     I may be a world-class rationalizer. I wonder if I can turn this into a lucrative consulting business? You know, it could be like being an executive coach for underachievers.
     Oh my, did I just create a Task F that I could spend the rest of the day contemplating and thus avoiding the other more important Tasks? I told you I was good at this.

Overwhelming Perspective

https://hopeafterbetrayal.com/perspectives/

     Note:  As North Park University is the University of the Evangelical Covenant Church, we naturally begin all meetings with a prayer or short homily and a prayer. In our School of Business and Faculty Senate, that honor rotates amongst the professors. At our Faculty Senate Meeting on Monday, September 24, 2018, it was my turn.
     Most times, the theme of the devotion is clear to me. This time it was not. So, I started with what was bothering me and it led to the following, which I thought was #blogworthy.

Overwhelming Perspective

     Just five short weeks ago, we were excited to greet our students and colleagues and begin this school. Like our students, we… well at least I, were excited and enthusiastic with the start of another school year.
     Now, it is just week 4, and again speaking for myself and a few others I have polled, I am wondering where that excitement and enthusiasm went. It feels like the 25th week of a 16 week semester. Heck, I will admit it, I am feeling overwhelmed. In our school, we are down two full time professors as a result, a few of us, including me are about to have three quads of double overloads. One is a course that needs some surgery and I only have taught it once, like three years ago. Another is a brand-new course that we need, and I am best suited to develop and pilot. It is not clear if I volunteered or was conscripted for this workload.
     I looked up Bible verses on being overwhelmed. There were plenty of them. Here are two, representative passages from Psalms (NLT):

When I am overwhelmed,you alone know the way I should turn.
Wherever I go,my enemies have set traps for me. (Psalm 142:3) 

From the ends of the earth,I cry to you for help
when my heart is overwhelmed.Lead me to the towering rock of safety, (Psalm 61:2)

     I simultaneously felt better and suddenly foolish. Needless to say, things are not nearly this bad. There are no enemies, that I know of, setting traps for me. I am not anywhere near the ends of the earth crying to God for help. I am not this kind of overwhelmed. But, I am some kind of overwhelmed.
     Clearly, this is a matter of perspective. So… yes, I did seek out bible passages on Perspective. These kinds of searches never really pan out in my humble opinion unless I am searching on words like Salvation, Sin, Love, or Forgiveness. Perspective? Forget about it.
     So, I have written my own prayer on Feeling Overwhelmed and Seeking Perspective.

Dear Heavenly Father. 

I am feeling overwhelmed. I have more tasks than I can accomplish. I have more responsibilities than I believe there is time or mental capacity to achieve. I am feeling lonely and helpless in this regard.
Please, lead me to that towering rock but not for safety. Take me to the towering rock where I can have perspective, where I can clearly see priorities, and I can realize how blessed I really am.

Lead me to that towering rock to see and understand that I am blessed to work in this wonderful school, with great colleagues, teaching amazing young people. Let me see and understand those around who are truly overwhelmed with illness, family issues, hunger, in true physical or mental jeopardy. Help me to realize what I so easily forget, that in my humble case, I need to take some deep breathes, to stop being paralyzed by the seeming mountain range of tasks, and instead organize and prioritize them so I may begin chipping away at them. Lead me to the towering rock where I can see that the mountain range is but a small hill. 

Help me to keep the old German Proverb with me at all times: Start to sew and God will provide the thread. It is a truth I too easily forget. 

Lastly, Father, forgive me for exaggerating my pressures. Please provide comfort and safe passage to those who are truly overwhelmed with their lives, dealing with serious illnesses, or otherwise in desperate need. 

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen.

Newsy?

     I stumbled across a cable news network that I had not heard of before: Newsy. It was tucked in a part of the channel guide I rarely frequent. It is surrounded, oddly, by Christian ministry channels just below the series of movie channels I frequently peruse.
     I thought it was a kind of an odd name for a cable channel, and as I was feeling kind of newsy, I decided to watch it for a bit. I did not know what to expect. If anything, my expectations were on the low side because the name of the network did not sound serious.
     My first reaction, after a few minutes of watching, was that Newsy seemed to be unbiased. Believe me, this assessment did not involve any serious analysis. It is was a quick judgement relative to my other news sources. I listen to Morning Edition from NPR on my morning drive to work and whatever is on NPR when I drive back home. When I am home in the mornings, I tend to watch MSNBC’s Morning Joe. I read the Wall Street Journal six days a week and The New York Times on Sunday. The only magazine I read is The New Yorker. So, I have a mix of conservative, centrist, and liberal news sources.
     I am watching Newsy while I am typing this. This is only the second time I am watching it. Their evening news magazine, called The Why, is airing now. At this moment, they are doing an in-depth piece on Venezuela. It seems their President Nicolas Madura is in Istanbul. He is shown smoking cigars and eating steak and Newsy is reporting that this is not sitting well with his people who are, literally, starving. They contrasted Venezuela to Cuba as they are both Caribbean socialist countries. It was a fascinating comparison that again seemed amazingly unbiased. They then provided the history of how Venezuela went from an oil rich democracy to poverty ridden socialist dictatorship that has the country past the brink of collapse. The coverage was, maybe, fifteen minutes long and was very well done. The Why airs for two hours every evening.
     I did a google search on Newsy and learned the following:

• Newsy was founded in 2008
• Bought for $35M in 2014 by E. W. Scripps Company, a media company based in Cincinnati with $865M in sales in 2017
• The slogan is: Be informed, not influenced
• Newsy is not even mentioned in websites and articles that track cable news ratings. 
• In 2017, Scripps bought Retirement Living Television and rebranded it as Newsy making it available in 26 Million homes
• Website: www.newsy.com

     Per Wikipedia:

Newsy was founded in 2008 on the premise of creating quality video journalism that was easily digestible on mobile devices and the web.[2] In its early years, Newsy operated primarily as a syndication business, selling news and original content to major digital journalism brands that included AOL/Huffington Post, Microsoft and Mashable. Since being acquired by E.W. Scripps, Newsy has become the national news brand focused on delivering news to millennials and Gen X consumers.

     Per Tubefilter.com

“Newsy has already made a name for itself among millennial news consumers who rely on over-the- top television. Now we’ll be reaching Americans with cable and satellite service who are looking for a fresh approach to news coverage,” said Adam Symson, president and CEO of Scripps, in a press release. “This expanded reach for our advertising business alongside carriage fees furthers our strategy to develop Newsy as a prominent multi-platform news network with dual revenue streams.”

     I am thinking, seriously, of making Newsy my TV news source. My go-to source had been MSNBC’s Morning Joe with my morning joe. But, frankly, the liberal perspective has just become a Trump bashing platform. I found Newsy kind of refreshing. Are they truly unbiased? Compared to MSNBC and Fox News, I would have to say yes.

     While I think they are unbiased, a poll I found considers them "slightly" left of center.  But, the polling site is "slightly" right of center.  So, if "Least Biased" is number 2 on this least, I stand by my view.

The Impact of the Great Recession

     I am not a great prognosticator. I am certainly not a futurist. But, this does not stop me from prognosticating or pretending to be a futurist. As with most people who dabble in trying to figure out what might and might not happen in the future, I am not all that accurate. When we cover forecasting in my classes at North Park University, I always tell my students if I were better at predicting the future I would be much richer. But, as I love it so, I would continue to teach. The difference is we be in much plusher classrooms with catered gourmet meals.
     I am sorry about one thing I did predict ten years ago. It has come true, at least in part. When the Great Recession was unfolding, I was afraid that the economic turmoil the US was going through was going fundamentally change our country. I predicted in a few different blog posts, e.g. November 2009: It’s the Stupid Economy, that:

First, with the number of manufacturing jobs that have simply gone off shore, we wondered if we could maintain any economic prowess as a service based economy. Second, will we come out of this recession a different country then we were before this recession? Would we come out of this downturn permanently altered looking more like a European country, say UK, Italy, or Greece, than the United States at the turn of the century? These are excellent questions that have been on my mind for some time.

In other blog posts, I referred to the change using a phrase, new normal, lots of others were using (November 2010: Mid-Term Elections). My prediction did not change much. Just to be clear, I was not the only person making such predications.
     I do believe that this has happened especially when I consider my own case. While I have redefined myself and have an encore career as a college professor, I am lesser economically than I was. I am making less than a quarter of my peak salary.
     Today’s, September 16th, New York Times had me revisiting my predictions. As it has been ten years since Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15, 2008, the business section and a few Op Ed were dedicated to a retrospective. There was a fascinating essay in the Magazine on poverty which was rooted in part in the Great Recession. The picture painted is that this new normal may be even worse than I predicted.
     Sure, we hear that the economy is booming. Well, the stock market is certainly booming. People that can and have invested such have profited from this. I indeed have but that is a vestige of my old pre-Great Recession life thankfully. Now, I would be on the sidelines like millions of others watching the rich get richer across the abyss that is the wealth gap these days. I am not against people getting richer. I am against the poor getting poorer however.
     There is a graph in an article by David Leonhardt, We are Measuring the Economy All Wrong, that summed it up for me. We have talked about a jobless recovery until recently

We are Measuring the Economy All Wrong

when unemployment reached record lows. Yet, it seems large numbers of people have lesser paying jobs in this recovery. The numbers of people working in minimum wage jobs, where it is impossible to live without government assistance, has grown as has the median age of that class of workers. This is not a good trend.
     In an article by Matthew Desomond,Americans Want to Believe that Jobs are the Solutions to Poverty – They’re Not, in the Times Sunday magazine rooted the issue well before the great recession:

In recent decades, the nation’s tremendous economic growth has not led to broad social uplift. Economists call it the “productivity-pay gap” — the fact that over the last 40 years, the economy has expanded and corporate profits have risen, but real wages have remained flat for workers without a college education. Since 1973, American productivity has increased by 77 percent, while hourly pay has grown by only 12 percent. If the federal minimum wage tracked productivity, it would be more than $20 an hour, not today’s poverty wage of $7.25.

      One might question that these articles are from the somewhat left-of-center New York Times. Consider another article from the Wall Street Journal on another impact of the Great Recession. In an article by Janet Adamy, Gen Z is Coming to Your Office – Get Ready to Adapt, argues that the generation now entering the workforce was shaped by the Great Recession just as my parents generation was shaped by the Great Depression. This generation is more serious about school and not wanting debt to get the education. They want better jobs, homes, and cars. They want the American Dream but are sober enough to know it won’t be handed to them… they have to and want to go out and get it.
     I will have to process all this before revising my earlier prognostication or making a new one.  Stay tuned.

Natural Gas Leaks? Homes Exploding?

masslive.com

     If one buys a classic old house, it might require extensive renovations. Of course, most tend to focus renovations that show and make the house have the amenities we want in this day and age. These might include upgrading the bathrooms, modernizing the kitchen, replacing the windows, pulling up the wall-to-wall carpets and refinishing the hardwood, and even adding central air-conditioning. There are also things that may have to be done simply for one’s safety and well-being. These repairs are invisible and include changing all the wiring and piping in the house. Sometimes this just has to be done to keep water or gas pipes from leaking and faulty wiring from starting fires.
     The same applies to our municipalities. We have heard about the state of bridges and roadways for many years. President Trump even made it a campaign issue promising to fix the infrastructure. But, there is another danger that is very much like the wiring and pipes in the old house. It is the million miles of aging water and gas lines. Certainly, the water catastrophe in Flint, MI is an example of what can go wrong with aging pipes and poor management choices.
     What happened in Andover and Lawrence in the Merrimack Valley of MA yesterday, September 13th, is yet another precursor of what could happen if we don’t start taking this seriously. The natural gas pipelines in that area are antiquated and need replacement. Columbia Gas, the provider, has been working on that. Some reports speculate that a rise in gas pressure caused gas to leak into homes resulting in the explosions. I am suspecting that the rise in pressure might have been due to turning parts of the gas lines on and off for the repair activities.
     These kinds of leaks and explosions are not new. The Merrimack Valley incidents really got my attention simply because we have close friends and family that live there and were affected by the evacuations. Thankfully they are all safe and their homes all intact. Until I started reading about this, I simply forgot that there are numerous examples of leaks caused by aging gas pipelines. There was one in March 2014 in New York City that killed three people and brought down two apartment buildings. I remember that event now after reading about it again. Like most others, I stopped thinking about it like a day later and buried as deep as the decaying pipe infrastructure.
     The problem is that many of the natural gas pipelines are made from wrought or cast iron and are decades old. Remember that gaslight pre-dated electric lighting. So, in some cities these pipelines are ninety and even over one hundred years old. Cast iron piping is particularly prone to leaking. There are over six thousand miles of such piping in New York city and there two thousand plus miles of the same in Chicago. It is a seriously hard and expensive task to replace piping in suburban regions where there are more open spaces to dig and work. Just imagine the added cost to do the same in New York City and parts of Chicago. The task itself is herculean and the expenses astronomical.
     Since the 2014 explosion, the natural gas provider in NYC, Con Ed, has a fleet of trucks that are out detecting leaks. Each address in the city will have one of these trucks pass by twice a month. This is an expensive venture in itself but only a stop gap activity at best.
      Consider the Chicago example. Peoples Gas is in the midst of a project to replace the aging piping in the city. The project is slated to last until 2030 and they have already been working on it for several years. In true Chicago fashion, the cost of the project has risen over the years and the latest estimate I saw was $7 Billion. I recall reading they have already set and blown past three cost estimates. These costs are slowly being passed along to the consumers who are seeing the natural gas utility bills double if not more. Is this the price we will face to solve this issue?

chicagobusiness.com

     The offices for the School of Business and Nonprofit Management are in a two-story house on Spaulding in Northeast Chicago. In the summer of 2017, Peoples Gas came to our street to redo the natural gas pipes. They were there like two months and ripped up the street and the sidewalks as you would expect they would have to replace the pipes. As an operations guy, I was not exactly impressed with their process but there was not a lot of options available. They had to repave parts of our street twice. Seeing it first hand on just one block, I got a sense for the long-time line and huge costs for this project.
     I fear will see more incidents like we saw this week in the North Andover and Lawrence moving forward before we decide to act on this problem.