NFTs?!?

 

Yesterday, Melania Trump jumped into the NFT marketplace.

NFT?  What the heck is an NFT?

It is an acronym that stands for Non-Fungible Token?  Gee, that doesn’t really make things any more clear.

Per Wikipedia:

In economics, fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are essentially interchangeable and each of whose parts is indistinguishable from another part.

 

For example, gold is fungible since a specified amount of pure gold is equivalent to that same amount of pure gold, whether in the form of coins, ingots, or in other states. Other fungible commodities include sweet crude oil, company shares, bonds, other precious metals, and currencies.

An item is not fungible, if it cannot be substituted with something identical or like kind.  A work of art, that is not mass produced is considered nonfungible e.g. the Mona Lisa. 

So, what is a Non-Fungible Token?  Per ArtNews.com:

 

An NFT, which stands for non-fungible token, is a unique unit of data employing technology that allows digital content—from videos to songs to images—to become logged and authenticated on cryptocurrency blockchains, primarily Ethereum. Once content is logged onto the blockchain, every transaction from transfers to sales is recorded on-chain, creating an easily accessible ledger of provenance and price history. The main impact of NFTs is making it easy to own and sell digital content.

Cryptocurrency is fungible.  They are fungible tokens.

So, digital art.  In the world of NFTs, the transactions are done via blockchain using cryptocurrencies.  Ownership can be tracked.  Artists or creators collect royalties each time a work of art, and NFT, changes hands.  It is cool.  It is different.  And thus, there is a market for it in spite of the fact that… anything digital could be copied.

It seems the market was created by collectors.  I imagine that is true of all such markets.  People have to want and be willing to pay for things for there to be a market.  People are willing to pay thousands of dollars for, essentially, a purse or hundreds of thousands for a car.  The demand for sports and film entertainment result in athletes and movie stars being paid incredible sums for being the best at what they do. 

My sister Laura was an early promoter of Techno Music.  She would complain about musicians who catered to the masses made millions while others creating music with higher levels of artistry, composition, and meaningful lyrics were struggling.  Is that not always the case?  The writers that make the most money sell the most books which is not necessarily the best literature. 

Then there are the luxury markets which these NFTs might fall into.  I luxury markets exclusivity is a key factor.  “I can afford this, and you can’t” plays a large role in these markets.  People who want that exclusivity and are willing to pay three to ten times or more what the masses pay will do exactly that when buying cars, watches, homes, meals, or whatever.  To boot, it is all relative.  One person’s extravagance is another person’s norm.

The art world is another whole thing.  People are willing to pay crazy amounts of money original pieces   I recall growing up and hearing folks express astonishment at how abstract art, “that looked like scribbles,” could sell for millions of dollars.  I can hear my family and friends from my childhood saying, “anyone can draw that.”  Well, it is not as easy it might appear.  Try to be Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollack, or Jaspar Johns.  Good luck with that. 

People get into a variety of different interests and hobbies.  I am not about to get into and buy NFTs, but I do have a collection of ouds that I have made a large investment in… relatively speaking.  So, if folks like NFTs and want to invest… let them.  More power to them.  It is not for me, though I do have a favorite collection of what I think are amazing photos.  They’re digital.  I admire them now and then.  And, as I did not pay a cent for them and have no blockchain certification and proof of ownership, I guess the aren’t NFTs.  I can live with that quite easily.

First 5,000 Days

Here is an example, the NFT that sold for the most money to date.  A graphic designer, Michael Winkelman also known as Beeple, produced a graphic piece every day for 5,000 days.  He then took all 5,000 and created a digital collage:  the First 5,000 Days.  It sold for $69.3 million!  Not a bad pay day for a 13-year effort.  Until then, the most he had sold a piece for was $100.  I imagine that in the actual NFT piece, unlike the digital copy here, the owner could click on and blow-up each of the 5,000 images. 

Back to Melania Trump’s NFT.  It is a watercolor of her eyes.  Per Rolling Stone, “The approximately $150 piece of digital artwork — a watercolor of Melania Trump’s eyes — reeks of a cash grab by someone who is just ‘trying to look busy,’ this person told CNN on condition of anonymity.”  In this case, they are planning to sell them like mass produced Farrah Fawcett posters back in 1976.  That sound more fungible than not.

 

 

A First Snowfall

When I went to bed last night and was turning the Christmas lights off, I noticed that we had a snowfall of a couple of inches.  I had not really paid attention to the news or the weather, so, it was a surprise to me.  It was a quiet snowfall as there was no wind.  It was a nice early winter surprise.  From the way it was melting on the paved areas and was sticking to the trees, it was clearly a wet but your yet fluffy covering.

I love a good snowfall especially a beautiful first snowfall of the season like this one.  It makes everything look clean.  It dampens the noise and makes everything quieter and most peaceful.  For me, it creates a most tranquil ambiance for introspection and contemplation of, well, everything starting with whatever is on my mind.

As I often do, I went out and took photos. Usually, I do that for crazy blizzardy large snowfalls.  This one was just really nothing special, but the timing.  Amid the Omicron surge at the end of the year, many people I know are hunkering down and taking this all very seriously while others are more cavalier about not letting any of this interfere with their personal plans for the holidays.  It is the end of the year, a new one about to dawn.  For me, it has provided a mix of hope that this will end

soon and trepidation that it will get worse before that happens.  At a time like this, taking a few minutes to appreciate the beauty of nature is most welcome.  Being outside and admiring the snow was a simple thing and a most peaceful moment.

It was a dream, a desire of mine, early in the pandemic, that this scare might be the inflection point where mankind takes the next step of evolution.   A time where we would trade-off some of that self-interest that has driven us to progress this far for a better mix of self and collective interest that we may need to thrive in these times of high population and global scarcity.  Utopian as that might be, I dared to dream.  That dream has faded in large measure in the polarization that has a much higher infection rate than the actual Covid variants.  The dream has faded but I still have to be hopeful.

Beyond all of what I have written about this little snowfall.  I did something else

that I always do.  I took a video and shared it with my grandchildren.  I like to send them videos now and again.  Recently, I gave them a tour of the house and all the Christmas decorations as the pandemic has kept us apart for a second year.  Most of the videos I send tend to be school or weather related.  I love to send them videos of snowstorms or the Chicago River as it rages through our campus after torrential rainstorms. 

Wishing you all a most pleasant end to this year and hoping that 2022 is not 2020 II but a year of health, happiness, and prosperity for everyone.

Christmas 2021

 

Our Home on Christmas Eve

It is Christmas morning.

I am up as early as I have ever been on Christmas Day.  For some reason, I couldn’t sleep. 

It is dark out, but as it is Christmas, we left our outside Christmas lights on.  So, there is a festive view as I sip on some coffee while collecting and sharing my thoughts with you this morning.

For me, writing this post each year is a time for reflection.  Heck, the entire blog may be about reflection, but more so at this time of the year.  In the next week, I will write about the start of a new year and the resolutions I may or may not keep.  These two postings are my most reflective and amongst my favorites to write.

This is the second Covid Christmas.  More people have travelled this year due to the vaccine, but Omicron has taken the edge off gatherings at least in our circle of family and friends.  We were a grand total six on Christmas Eve.  We will be five on Christmas Day. This is a far cry for 20, 30, and sometimes 40 people that we have hosted on Christmas Eve BC (before Covid).

With only six people in the house, it was quieter and more relaxed.  We talked and could have longer and deeper conversations.  Part of me missed the joyful chaos and holiday cheers of the Fezzywig like gatherings we used to have.  Not a drop of alcohol was consumed last night, and the clean-up was way less epic.  I might get used to this new norm, if Covid becomes a way of life (which I hope it does not).

Christmas last year, was tougher.  It was the first year of being with way less family and Covid cast a darker shadow.  This year, we kind of know and are used to the drill.  We will use FaceTime to the fullest to connect with those that we wish were here with us.  We are anticipating a call any moment from the East Coast Gavoors so we can watch our grandchildren open their gifts.  We are going with the flow.

Per usual, I have taken the opportunity to chat with friends that I have not spoken to since last Christmas or even longer.  It is always good to reach out, to reconnect, to catch-up.  I have talked or texted with folks from Madrid and Florida.  Of course, talking to my friend Andres in Uruguay is an absolute must.  Mostly, the folks I talk with are doing well and doing the best they can in these pandemic times.  One friend, however, is suffering from a cancer that has severely affected his speech.  He was so hard to understand, they we decided to simply text.  Another told me his wife was battling cancer.  I suppose health issues like this will only increase as we age.

In catching up, my old friends ask if I am fully retired yet.  I gladly tell them no and that I am still teaching full-time.  The students keep me young, young at heart and young in spirit, for sure.  People wonder why I am still working.  My answer is simple.  As a labor of love, it is not really like working.  I also say, “you know those guys that talked about playing golf everyday when they retire?  Well, this is my golf.”  Indeed, it is.

We were supposed to fly to LA to see the West Coast grandsons.  Omicron, however, thwarted those plans.  We will join them on FaceTime in a few hours.

Wishing all my family and friends a very merry Christmas.  Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.

Series, TV shows, or Telenovelas

IMDb

 

I believe the last TV show I really watched, religiously followed, was Seinfeld.  It ran from 1989 to 1998 on NBC.  When it ended, I basically watched sports, movies, news, and Seinfeld reruns on the television.  Before Seinfeld, I was obsessed with MASH and Hill Street Blues.  I would also watch Friends and the Simpsons but not with the same fervor or dedication.

After Seinfeld, the three major networks suddenly no longer became the place to watch TV shows.  I have certainly heard others talk enthusiastically about shows on HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other networks, and streaming services.  These have ranged from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad to Downton Abbey.  People have told me to watch Mrs. Maisel, Cobra Kai, and The Queen’s Gambit.  I have watched an episode or two or parts of episodes of these shows and really never took a fancy to them.

In the midst of the Pandemic Summer of 2020, we binged watched a Turkish telenovela, Winter Sun (Kış Güneşi), on Amazon Prime that someone recommended.  It was a good story that took us a good week to get through the three or four seasons.  The most memorable parts of watching that series was seeing salt of the earth mother character interact with her comic relief husband and astonishingly roll a yalanchi sarma with one hand. 

I tried to watch another series the debuted in 2014, The Flash.  The Flash was one of my favorite comic book superheroes.  I loved his super speed superpower as that superspeed was the antithesis of my running skills which were closer to that of a slug than the track stars in my family.  I watched a few episodes of The Flash with great anticipation.  Alas, I was disappointingly bored.

Recently, a few close friends were talking about an HBO series, Succession.  They were very excited about the third season that was about to launch.  They asked if I was a fan.  I had to confess that until that moment, I had never heard of the series.  They were a bit surprised at how uniformed I was and that I was not watching it.  Both thought that it was a series I would probably like.  As I value their opinion, I put it on my reading/watch list.

Finishing up my grading for the Fall semester, I decided to watch the first few episodes of Succession during my breaks.  It did engage me enough to commit to the full series which is 29 episodes at the time of this writing.

Succession is about the uber rich and powerful Roy family.  The patriarch, Logan, immigrated from Scotland to Canada and then to New York where he founded and grew media, theme park, and cruise line conglomerate on the scale and scope of the Murdoch and Disney empires.  Logan Roy is a savvy, focused, political, and ruthless leader obsessed with ruling his empire and having his business thrive.  This obsession takes precedence over his own family when they get in the way or threaten him. 

Logan, played superbly by Brian Cox, is aging. In fact, the first episode begins with him having a stroke like health issue, and the theme of the series is set:  who will succeed Logan?  He fully recovers in a few episodes and becomes again the lion he always was.  He has four children Kendall, Siobhan (Shiv), Roman, and Connor.  For sure, Kendall, Shiv, and Roman are vying to run the company with Kendall being the most ambitious about it. 

The appeal of Succession for me is that it mostly takes place in Manhattan and gives a presumable insight to the highest levels of corporate/family intrigue as well as the lifestyles of the rich and famous.  The problem is the problem with all these telenovelas.  They simply move too slowly.  I get weary of watching. 

One of the objectives of such series is to hook the viewers up front and keep them watching for the duration.  At least, that is how I see it.  Succession would have been superb in a third or the sixth of time… maybe a three-hour movie. 

I imagine that I am in the minority on this.

Contagion: Music in Pandemic Times

 

As 2021 winds down, we will see retrospectives of this year in the press, on TV, and on the radio.  There was such a retrospective in the New York Times this past Sunday.  It was a full section of 2021 in photos.  It was very well done. 

Just this evening, Facebook informed me that my friend Ara Topouzian just published his latest bloggy bit that was retrospective:  When Did That Happen?  Yes, that Ara Topouzian.  I have dedicated some serious and humorous posts about him in this blog. (A linked list will be provided at the end of this piece).

Ara’s blog is called HYE Times:  A journey to preserve the past.  HYE means Armenian in Armenian.  So, it is Armenian Times.  The past he is trying to preserve is the music we play and it’s migration to and evolution in the United States.  He will make connections and general observations within the context of his focus on Armenian music. 

Case in point, is his latest offering. Ara begins by noting that our memories are AC and BC.  That is Before Covid and After Covid.  Time seems to have moved slower since the pandemic became parts of our lives.  This has blurred our recollection if something we did was BC or AC.  Ara put it more succinctly. “When did that happen? COVID has fogged my memory as to when certain events happened!” Indeed, I have experienced exactly that phenomenon.  I am certain many of us can relate to this.

For musicians, who make their living performing for live audiences, the pandemic has been very disruptive.  I am not talking about the top names and acts in the most popular genres of music.  I am talking about really talented musicians that play in the orchestra pits and those that play at festivals, weddings, parties, bars, and so many other venues.  These musicians had decent livings and had, from my perspective, pretty cool lifestyles.  For this class of musicians, the pandemic seriously hampered this cash flow, performances, and strained their cool.

Ara and I are not full-time musicians.  We are part-time.  We are avocational.  But, in that part of our time, we love to perform for live audiences.  We enjoy having people enjoy listening or dancing to our music.  The listeners and dancers feed off the energy generated by the musicians and the musicians do the same off the energy of those enjoying the music.  It is just not the same when performing virtually.

I play in the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble (MEME) of the University of Chicago.  Traditionally, we do three live concerts a year:  Turkish, Persian, and Arab.  We practiced 10 times for each concert.  The practices were a lot of fun.  The concerts were awesome.  Our last concert BC was in February 2020.  It was a Persian Concert.  With the start of the Covid shutdown, we met virtually over Zoom but could not play or practice that way due Zoom not really allowing two people to speak at the same time and something called latency (two TVs on in the same house and not quite in sync with one lagging a microsecond or ten behind the other).  We did record four videos in the 2020 - 2021 academic year.  Our director, Wanees Zarour, did an awesome job with the scores and editing of our individually recorded contributions.

We returned to live practices and a live Turkish Concert on November 18, 2020.  Here is a video on Facebook of Aşık Veysel's classic Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım in which I had the honor of playing the prelude taksim.  It was wonderful to perform for a
live audience with my dear colleagues in the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble.  

The next day I drove to Detroit to play in a concert that Ara just wrote about in his blog at Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor.  We were a trio that included Jerry Gerjekian on dumbeg.  We had a wonderful time and I look forward to the next with Ara and Jerry and MEME… depending on what the Pandemic allows for.

We shall see what 2022 brings.

 

------- My Bloggy Bits on Ara Topouzian ----

• The Wily Ara Topouzian

• A Documentary on Armenian Music In Detroit

• The 'Incredible' Ara Topouzian

• Congratulations to Ara Topouzian

• Bloggy Bit about Nothing

 

      ------- MEME Chicago YouTubes ----

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been Reading… or Will be Soon

 

It is the end of a busy semester in which I had my usual over the top teaching load.  I seem to not be able to say no.  Truthfully, I really enjoy the classroom and strive to be a team player.  I know I should probably trim back, but it won’t be this academic year.  Perhaps, I will do it in the Fall of 2022.  We shall see.

Because of the overload schedule, I did not have a lot of free time for blogging and reading for enjoyment.  I have been looking forward to this time between semesters to do more of both.  I have a stack of books that I have wanted to read.  I assembled it during the pandemic and have slowly been getting through it.  The problem is that the stack is growing faster than I can read them.  For safety reasons, it is now actually two stacks.

First on my list is to finish the classic novel, The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck.  It was life in rural China.  It was a time when people who lived off the land had no safety net.  The success or failure of their livelihoods, welfare, and wellbeing of their families was entirely in their hands and the backs of their labor.  The book takes place in Anhui Province where I actually taught for two summers at the Anhui University of Finance and Economics.

I also want to read another Saroyan’s Rock Wagram.  My friend and colleague Paul Hawkinson was my secret Santa in the School of Business.  He bought me two of his favorite books.  One is The Code Book:  The Science of Secret from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography.  The second is The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret.

One of my interests has always been retail.  It is a bit of an obsession since I took over teaching Marketing Challenges and Supply Chain at North Park.  The focus of the course was not clear.  I made it all about the constantly changing landscape of retail.  The change has been fueled by what has been called the Amazon Effect. I am also interested in the history of retail.  To that end, there is a must read in my stack of books, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America.  It was such an important retailer when I was a kid… and then it just went away.  My guess is the innovative, entrepreneurial, founders of the company turned it over to corporate wonks who couldn’t keep up with the changing times.  I will have to read the book to find out for sure. 

One book I will not be reading is the latest by John F. Kennedy, Jr.  It is called The Real Anthony Fauci:  Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (Children’s Health Defense).  It came out in November and like, most things in America these days, people either love it or hate it.  I just saw an ad for it in the New York Times Review of Books.  It is a current best seller on Amazon.com.  Science?  Reality?  Conspiracy fodder?  Who knows?  I am just plain old weary of the politicization of the pandemic right now.

I would rather read a few novels and business books right now.

Contagion: Now… Omicron

 

This thing, this Covid, this Corona Virus, will not go away.  We are into the second year of this pandemic and there is no end in sight at this time.  It was two years ago when we first started hearing about it in China.  In those early days, I remember learning that we were dealing with a SARS variant.  I remembered then that the original SARS scare that suspended international travel for like a minute or so in the early 2000s, really did not amount to much.  I remember thinking that this latest manifestation was going to be another false start… basically a big nothing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.  We all couldn’t have been more wrong.

By March and April of 2020, we were all thinking that it would be over by the summer when the warm weather would kill or somehow diminish the virus.  That didn’t happen. 

We thought the initial supply issues, like toilet paper and soda cans, would go away.   Those issues stabilized and the supply chain concerns morphed and gravitated to other areas that became the shipping issues of this fall and the on-going labor shortage. 

By the fall, the incidence rates were on the way up again.  Soon, almost everyone knew at least one person who had contracted the virus and passed away.

At the beginning of this year, the first vaccines were approved and in record order.  People were being vaccinated and the numbers started going down.  There was a general feeling that we were coming out of it.  People were returning to work, travelling, going to restaurants, and enjoying the summer.  For a minute, it seemed like the pandemic might be coming to an end. 

Then Delta hit.  The term “breakthrough infection” became a real thing.  Thankfully, the vaccine, including a third dose of both Pfizer and Moderna, have made these cases akin to a cold.  The unpopulated population was feeling the brunt.

Now, we have Omicron.  The combination of Delta and Omicron seems to moving quickly and in the wrong direction.  Broadway shows are closing to mitigate the spread.  College and professional sport teams have cancelled or postponed games because of too many players testing positive. 

People are weary.  No one wants to go backward.  No one wants a move anywhere near a lockdown.  The trend however is scary.  Per Reuters,

Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, the United States is confronting another dark winter, with the red-hot Omicron variant threatening to worsen an already dangerous surge of cases.

 

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have jumped 45% over the last month, and confirmed cases have increased 40% to a weeklong average of 123,000 new U.S. infections a day, according to a Reuters tally.

A McKinsey report provided further gloom by saying “In the base-case scenario, US COVID-19-related hospitalizations could peak significantly higher in the next six months than in the past six months.”  The Reuters article went on to note that Pfizer is predicting that the pandemic will probably last until 2024. 

These are, of course, all predictions.  Predicting the future is always an iffy venture.  People want definitive answers from scientists.  The problem is that scientists are still learning about this virus, which keeps mutating.  Thus, the changing science is changing our outlooks and policies.  It is no surprise, that a segment of the population has turned away from the science and don’t want to be told what to do.  That is bothersome.  President Biden is addressing the nation on Tuesday in this regard to presumably lay out a strategy to mitigate both the fear and the impact.  I truly hope we can all come together on this.

They Open… and Close

North Park University in located on the south side of Foster Ave between Kedzie and Kimball in the north side of Chicago.  We are bordered on the south by the north branch of the Chicago River and Von Steuben High School. 

There are a lot of restaurants around campus.  Along Foster east of Kedzie, we have a McDonalds and Charcoal Delights, a long time North Park favorite gyros, hot dog, and hamburger joint.  On Kimball just North of Foster is a wonderful Filipino restaurant, Merla’s, named for the matronly owner and amazing cook.  They have the best empanadas... maybe in all of Chicago.  On Foster across from campus, there is a Subway, a Jimmy John’s, and a Starbucks.  2 Asian Brothers is probably the most popular with our students because the reasonable pricing and ample portions of their rice bowls and banh mi sandwiches. 

Of course, the is the iconic Tre Kroner.  The serve up the best Swedish cuisine that I have ever had.  North Park is a neighborhood that was predominantly Swedish and Tre Kroner is across the street from our university which was founded by the Swedish Covenant Church.  It has a cozy décor that I would call a pleasing mixture of rustic and elegant with Swedish overtones.  The quiches are to die for.

Then there are three other restaurant storefronts that have started and failed several times.  One was a pizza place that became another pizza place that became a third pizza place that is now a taco place.  Another was a middle eastern place, that became a taco place, that became a better taco place.  Next to it was a Mexican Ice Cream place that was short lived due to the worst customer service in the history of eating establishments perhaps anywhere on the planet.  When it closed the aforementioned better taco place expanded into that space and became a better taco place with more tables.

Lastly, there was a place next to 2 Asian brothers, Papa Philly’s, that seemed to be popular.  I only went to Papa Philly’s once.  A smaller number of students liked, well, actually loved and were devoted this place which I never really understood.  I went there only once and had a gyro sandwich.  It was OK and the owner, perhaps Papa Phil, was blandly indifferent.  There were much better gyro places within a few miles. The most charming part of the place was that they had one of those rotary display stands that keeps slices of pizza warm.  The one in Papa Phil’s was full of… fried chicken.  Papa Phil’s closed sometime in 2020 due to the pandemic.

As the Fall term began back in late August, I noticed that the Papa Phil’s location was a new restaurant.  It looked like another taco joint which seem to open and close with increasing frequency in the surrounding neighborhoods.  I walked by the place several times before I stopped and read the menu on the front window.  It was not a taco place at all.  Amongst their offerings were empanadas and arepas.  My guess is that the new owners were Venezuelan or Colombian.  I couldn’t stop in that day as my schedule was full.

A few days later, I stopped in and found that the owners were Venezuelan.  The two ladies were very nice, energetic, in their late thirties or early forties, and delighted I came in.  I ordered an empanada, a chicken arepa, yucca, and some coffee.   The empanada was so-so and did not measure to Merla’s.  The arepa, yucca, and coffee were really good and took me back to my days when I travelled to Venezuela and Colombia.  I stopped in there once a week and took others.  We all liked the food. 

After Thanksgiving, I went there for lunch and the place was closed.  The windows were covered with plastic happy birthday table clothes.  I was a bit sad but not expected.  While the food was really good, the owners did not invest at all in the décor.  The Papa Philly’s hand me down grunge décor did nothing for the restaurant.  They did no marketing.  I took a former student there who was working for a marketing firm that specialized in online advertising for Latino restaurants.  I introduced her to the ladies who ran the place.  They were pleased to meet her but showed little interest in learning more. 

The place was called Ghynaro’s Grill.  I am not sure which lady was Ghynaro.  I assumed it was a last name of one of or both the ladies.  Sadly, the restaurant was not open long enough for me to be a frequent enough patron to actually get to know the names of the owners.  Their sign noted “Since 2021.”  It struck me as odd, with a foreboding overtone, when I first saw it.  It was still 2021.  Maybe they should have put on “Since July.”  The “Since 2021,” made me wonder if they would be open in 2030 or 2050 when the phrase would have been more meaningful. 

In retrospect, not showing interest in marketing and not upgrading the décor were indications that the owners did not have the capital to open properly.  They also clearly did not have enough funds to sustain themselves for whatever time it took for their business to survive as it ramped up. Lack of funds and business acumen is probably the reason so many small businesses close so quickly.

I suppose, except for the aforementioned ice cream joint, these restaurants around campus all opened with great hope.  Most likely, as in the case of Ghynaro’s, most of these entrepreneurs are really good cooks.  Their family and friends have raved about their culinary skills for years.  They were probably told, on numerous occasions, something akin to, “this is so awesome, you should open a restaurant!”  So, some of these folks take a chance.  But, without the right business plan and funding, there is a huge risk of failure.  The fellow that owns the better taco place understands this and is as good a marketer as he is a cook.  His place seems to be doing better.  The Venezuelan ladies worked hard in the restaurant.  Their food was good.  But, it wasn’t enough.  Sadly.

Within a month, a new place has just opened in the storefront.  It is called Sissy’s.  Others have told me it is good.  I heard that Sissy has food service experience.  I will check it out in January when the Spring Term starts.  Though the sign does not say but I will be thinking, “Since 2021.”

e-Commerce Frustrations

Retail Technology

Shopping has become, sadly, a Thanksgiving tradition.  I used to ask at every Thanksgiving gathering, “Who wants to eat quickly and go to the Walmart Doorbuster Sale with me.”  Thankfully know one ever took me up on it.  I believe everyone knew I wasn’t at all serious.

This year Target made an announcement that they would not be open on Thanksgiving Day.  It might have been an altruistic move on their part.  My guess it was that less and less people have been showing up preferring to stay home and shop online.  Perhaps it was this along with a combination of giving their employees a day off in this tight labor market.

We had a Thanksgiving Day with a lot more free time than usual this year.  After a beautiful and bountiful Thanksgiving feast in the early afternoon, some football, and a short nap, we got online to make a few purchases for the holidays.  I went to the American Airlines site, AA.com,  to book some flights and my wife went to Talbots.com shop and buy some gifts.  My time on AA.com was moderately efficient and I was done with what I had to do in short order. 

My wife did not nearly fare as well.  She made several selections of sales items.  Upon proceeding to the checkout, she was informed that one or more of the items she selected were no longer available.  The website, however, spectacularly did not tell her which items.  Also, making matters all the more frustrating, the website noted under each of the four items that she had selected:  “In Stock.”  Refreshing the page did not help matters at all.  So, she started all over again and got… exactly the same result.  It was most frustrating.

She asked for my assistance.  As I came to understand the issue, I was a dumbfounded but only a bit. Many smaller e-commerce websites have similar issues in my experience.  I deleted one of the items and button to continue lit up again as active.  I clicked it and it brought me back to the same page with the same annoying message and everything showing “In Stock.”  What a horrible website.

Any e-commerce website that makes it hard or impossible for people to buy goods or services is by definition horrible in my book. 

Over the past few years, I have come to compare every other retail or e-commerce website to Amazon.   My conclusion?  Amazon is better than everyone else by a long shot.  Amazon is so intuitive and easy to use, it is incredibly easy and very reliable when it comes to e-shopping.  They rarely make an error which in my case is twice over the past 25 years. 

Even when I was on the American Airlines site, I tried to use a travel voucher.  The voucher was stored on their site mind you, but I could not apply it to my reservation.  I had to call the 800 number and have an agent help me, which she did quite effectively.

I buy Cross pens to pass out as gifts.  Up until this past year, I could never get an order to go through.  I would get to the checkout and then, kind of like my wife’s experience with Talbot’s, I would get into an endless loop of me entering my credit card, the site asking for it again, and me wondering if I was accumulating hundreds of dollars of duplicate charges.  I would call their 800 number, often the next day during business hours, and always get the same nice lady.  She could see me order just sitting there in limbo.  I would give her my credit card and the goods were headed my way.  I asked her if other people experience this same frustrating issue.  She said, “Now and then.”  I suspected most simply quit and shopped elsewhere. 

I had a very similar experience with Jos A Banks as well.  Their website was so obtuse that I rarely use it anymore.  Every time I used them, I would have to call the 800 number and finish my order with the help of a customer service agent.

Recently, I went to buy some oud strings from a well-known string manufacturer.  I had the same endless loop frustration at check-out.  I called their number and got one of the owners of the company.  He took my feedback to heart and was unaware of this problem.  They sent me the strings gratis which I appreciated.

I have never had to call Amazon for any reason.

I believe every executive team of companies with e-commerce websites should try to buy goods on their websites.  They should use a private email account and experience what the general public experiences.  I imagine these problems would get fixed very quickly.  Who would want customers, at the point of payment, not be able to complete the transaction?  I am guessing the executives at these smaller retailers are not taking e-commerce seriously enough.  I wonder if they would be shocked by the number and dollar amount of missed sales.

There is a reason Amazon is #1.

Michigan Beats Ohio State

Anyone who reads this blog knows I am a huge Michigan fan.  I haven’t written about football all season.  In fact, the last time I wrote about football was on January 11^th, Watching the Natty, when I reveled in seeing Alabama trounce Ohio State.

Today, I am on top of the world.  We beat Ohio State.  We beat them 42 – 27.  We led almost the whole game and physically beat them on both sides of the ball.  We were ran it down their throats and looked like the more dominant team.  Wow.  Awesome.

After Ohio State slapped Michigan State silly last week beating them 56 – 7, I was worried that Ohio State was peaking.  They had 655 yards of offense of which 449 were passing and 206 rushing.  While I was hopeful and thought this was a grittier Michigan team then we have seen for years, I harbored an inner fear programmed by eight years of losses that Ohio State might come in humiliate us again like they did in 2018 (62 – 39) and 2019 (56 – 27).  It wasn’t just me.  All the Michigan fans I talked to were cautiously optimistic.

We came out took the kick-off and scored in a nine-play drive.  We looked good.  It looked like we could run on them.  We held Ohio State to a three and out.  We were on our way to a second touchdown when Cade McNamara threw a rare interception.  Ohio State started to move the ball but we held them to a field goal in a thirteen-play drive.  It was 7 – 3.

Our next possession resulted in a punt.  Ohio State returned the favor on their next drive.  Our fourth drive was three and out.  Had their defense made adjustments?  Ohio State started on their own 46 and in six plays scored a touchdown to take a 10 – 7 lead.  Garret Wilson made a spectacular catch on the touchdown throw from the freshman phenom C. J. Stroud.  I was thinking, “Oh man, here we go again.” 

But no, on our next drive we scored a touchdown on an 82 yard thirteen play drive.  Cade McNamara connected on a 39 yard pass play to Cornelius Johnson.  Hassan Haskins scored with a leaping dive over the Ohio State line.  It was 14 – 10.  I was starting to think, “Hmmm… we are pushing these guys around.”  Ohio State came back but, again, we held them to a field goal and the half ended with Michigan in the lead 14 – 13.

After their 10 – 7 lead, Ohio State never took the lead again.

Ohio State took the second half kick-off and went three and out.  I was afraid they would make adjustments during half-time.  Our defense would have none of it.  We took the ball on our own 19 yard line.  We scored in three running plays!  Corum for 13 and 55 yards.  Haskins scored on a 13 yard run.  Just like that we were up 21 – 13.

We held them to another three and out.  We got the ball on the 22 yard line.  J.J. McCarthy threw a 31 yard pass to Roman Wilson for 31 yards.  McNamara came back in the drilled one to Mike Sanistril for 34.  Haskins scored on a run and voila it 28 – 13.  Did I dare think it was a comfortable lead?  Was our offense looking more potent than the vaunted Buckeyes?

It was not that comfortable.  Ohio State took the ball on their own 18 yard like and put together a seventeen-play drive.  The scored at the beginning of the Fourth Quarter making the score 28 – 20.  They were moving the ball but nothing like the big plays the throttled Michigan State with a week earlier.  We were able to put pressure on Stroud.  The talented receivers certainly made catches but not for big game breaking plays.

They punted to us and A.J. Henning returned the punt 22 yards.  We drove again with Haskins punching it in for another touchdown. The score was 35 – 20.  We were up two touchdowns again.  Ohio State came back on a 13 play 75 yard drive that involved two fourth down conversions include the play they scored on to make it 35 – 27. 

You have to know but this point in the game.  I was no longer sitting.  I have been pacing to and fro in front of the TV.  I was texting my son and a few friends any combination of ugh, awesome, OMG, stop them, they can’t stop our running game, etc.  We expressed that we were all nervous wrecks… optimistic nervous wrecks because we were not letting Ohio State dominate us on either side of the ball.  In fact, it looked like we wanted it more than them.  No, it didn’t look like that, we did want it more than them.

There was 4:45 left in the game.  We needed to get some first downs and win this game.  A.J. Henning took the kick-off  and returned it 26 yards to our 37.  Then, Hassan Haskins and the offensive line took over.  They ran the ball five consecutive times for gains of 15, 6, 11, 27 and 4 yards to score another touchdown making the score 42 – 27.

Now it was the defenses turn to show Ohio State how much we wanted the win.  Ohio State started from their own 25.  Stroud connect on a 16 yard pass to Wilson.  Another pass to Wilson got the ball their 46.  It was third down and five and David Ojabo sacked Stroud for a 13 yard loss.  On fourth down, Stroud’s pass to Chris Olave was incomplete.  Michigan took over with :54 left on the clock.  McNamara took a knee twice in the victory formation and the game was over:  Michigan 42 – Ohio State 27.

The fans were loud the entire game.  The number of offside penalties on their offense was due to that crowd noise.  Ohio State were rarely in a position to hear such.  When we took over on downs at the end of the game, the crazy loud stadium became frenzied with cheering and celebration.  At the end of the game, I have never seen so many jubilant fans stream onto the field.  It was a magical moment at Michigan Stadium.  The entire Michigan fan base exhaled and realized that we had just beat a pretty darn good Buckeye team.

It was a cold, sleety and snowy, the whole game.  It was Big 10 kind of November Football weather.  It was Michigan – Ohio State kind of football weather.  Did that slow down the Ohio State?  Maybe.  One of the Fox talking heads thought the weather played to Michigan to Michigan’s favor.  When Ohio State coach Ryan Day was asked that same question in his post-game press conference he said “Both teams had to play in the same conditions” to his credit.

This was a great win for Michigan.  After years of dominance by Ohio State, it really felt like a 1969 kind of win and hopefully a turning point for our program.  I love the grit and desire of this team.

This was a great game.  I have give credit to Ohio State.  They did not give up.  From about halfway through the Third Quarter, there were touchdowns scored on five possessions in a row.  Michigan scored three of them.

This is the first time Michigan has won the Big Ten East Championship and it is the first time they will be playing in the Big Ten Championship Game next week.  They will be playing Iowa.  If they win that… Well, one game at a time.

It has been a great day.  Go Blue!

 

Here is the Box score of the game.  The statistics are relatively close with Michigan having many more rushing yards than Ohio State and vice-versa when it comes to passing.  

 

 

Here are some interesting facts about this game.