Thanks Steve, for everything

Real genius comes once or twice a century and we've been lucky enough to witness a little bit of it. Most of us wish we could accomplish with our lives what he had done in one year or even less...Anyway Steve, see ya down the road.

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Of Any Given Age

As the old saw goes, if there is any constant, it is change. So it goes with another year gone by and it becomes self-evident that I have more years behind me than in front of me. So what has changed?

That realization reports a transition from the ignorance of youth, where like an heir to a seemingly endless fortune spends wildly, to the place of knowing, possibly wisdom, where the account is more singularly defined and whose limits are not only have become clearer, but known.

Reflecting on the age I have lived so far, and we all live in an age, a common age for people born at a particular time and those experiences mark a greater transition of society as well as with ourselves, I see that things have changed quite a bit. Not as much for me as for my paternal grandfather, who was born before the advent of the automobile yet lived to see men go to the moon, even if he didn't believe it. In my age, I was born before the age of the Internet, personal computer, cell phone, iPods, GPS, satellite radio/TV, cable TV and widespread use of the microwave oven.

In spite of all the advancements, it seems that while it has freed us to do more, we seem to think less. Some might posit that we are now free to think about more important things instead of using our mental capacities for controlling processes that are now self-evident. I have to wonder. A lot of the technology today has lead a lot of people to be believers in FM or F@#$ing Magic. It is the black box, the mystery that somehow performs a task and somehow we are better off not knowing how it happens. From my perspective, may be this dulls critical thought.

Take automobiles and motorcycles. They still use the internal combustion engine, but ask kid today how it works and you are as likely to get a blank stare as a plausible explanation. I bet though the kid will know how to buy a computer programmer to get more horsepower out of it even if he or she isn't sure exactly why or how it works. Astounding. Suck, squish, bang, blow, the 4 cycles of a 4 stroke motor. Fuel, compression and spark must exist for such a device to work. Today, add a fourth: The computer. In a new vehicle, it manages almost everything. Even in it's simplest form, the computer controls the amount of fuel that get burned by an engine. It does this by measuring multiple variables in the engine and combustion process such as oxygen content in exhaust gases, coolant temperatures, atmospheric pressure, internal vacuum pressures in the intake manifold, measuring the mass of air taken in by the engine by measuring the change in resistance in a wire by shunting current through the wire as air passes over it, RPM, and throttle position, to name a few. Given all these inputs, matrices in memory are consulted by a computer and for the given parameters, the fuel injectors are pulsed at a specific frequency as to create the proper fuel/air mixture. This is constantly being adjusted by the computer to match any operating conditions. In other words, it's FM to most people.

When I was a kid, I learned how a carburetor worked (Venturi Principle), spark (induction coil), and the effects of timing, both static and cam have on compression. These principles hold true today in a sense, but the black box makes in unimportant even to the Friday night drag race impresario. If there is a problem with the car, just use you cell phone to call the mechanic. Oops, I mean automotive technician. With the advent of electric power vehicles, it's only going to get worse, be less fun and less challenging.

On the other hand, they were the bad old days too. Cars did not stop well, steer well, got poor fuel mileage and if you wanted to have a lot of power, you needed to do a lot of modifications to the engine or use a bigger one. Cars also did not stay in proper state of tune for as long as they do now and engines certainly did not last as long on average either. You had to know how stuff worked, even to the uninitiated, as a matter of functionality and I am sure it was an improvement from the previous generation of automobiles.

In spite of the advances in engineering and FM, I have to say there are times I miss the bad old days at times when I am troubleshooting one of my cars or trying to modify something on them or my motorcycle. A lot of the technology today requires special equipment and doesn't tolerate tampering so much. Take my BMW motorcycle. You have to buy a special computer tool just to reset the service reminder that blinks on the computer display on the dash. Either that or take it to the dealer. Talk about discouraging the shade tree mechanic. I mean motorcycle technician. The entry fee for that is a cool $299 for your own computer scanner. It's really just a interface adapter that has the proprietary connector on one side and USB on the other. The software is what does the work. Forget about getting the tool BMW uses, it's not for sale. BMW stands for Bring Money Wilhelm. All I can say is the cheapest thing on a BMW motorcycle is the rider.

So where does this this bring us? Back to the beginning I guess. Change is constant and we are defined by not only our age, but the age in which we live. As this year draws to a close I realize how fast time has flown, how little I have accomplished and how little time I really have left. Steve Jobs said "I want to put a ding in the universe." I used to feel that way and sometimes I still do. Sometimes though, I would rather just kick back with a highball glass of 18 year old Macallan, an Arturo Fuente Churchill Natural and just be content that everything is going to be alright, no matter what. Is that silly?

Thank you for reading this blog.

This was also published at My Motorrad and What's Under the hood.

Meetings, Fairytales, Cheerleading and a Total Waste of Time

Have you ever gone to a meeting at work where it was an exercise in self-congratulatory mutual masturbation? Have you ever been to a family gathering where it's an incestuous version of speed dating where people talk about themselves in an effort to convince themselves they have a life? Or have you been in any kind of encounter where only positive thoughts are allowed? No negative waves, because it's more comfortable with our heads in the sand or is it up our asses?

All of this is really group narcissism. It's a tribe trying to reinforce not only why it should exist but why it's better than any other tribe. Think of it as an exercise in group-think conditioning.

You might belong to a family as above where when people gather, the exercise is to talk about oneself and how successful he or she is. Lots of families are like this. Generally though, there's an elephant in the room. May be uncle Ernie is a molester, may be half or more of the family are afflicted with alcoholism, or may be dad likes to smack people around. Doesn't matter. There's a narrative to paste over the dog shit like the vinyl façade of that cheap woodgrain plastic film on a 1972 Chevrolet Kingswood Estate Wagon. The fairytale in this particular case is that we're all successful, therefore we're all alright.

This doesn't end at home though. With the same pooper scooper, we bring the same piece of dog shit from home into work or other organizations like church, synagogue or some other social endeavors like sports (lets not forget political parties too. Let's not leave them out of this fun.). So goes the perpetuation of the fairytale. Lots of fairytales. No one wants to be on the losing team. Come on in for the big win. Got your pom-poms?

This time the elephant isn't in the living room, but in all sorts of places. While uncle Ernie's penchant for little people isn't the problem, other things things can be like nepotism, cronyism, harassment, perfidy, parsimony, back stabbing, and all sorts of cultural penury. Some people like to call this politics. What's the narrative? What's the fairytale? What's the self-talk that no matter what the bullshit, the outside world is faced with a smile of confidence that we are all ok? It takes really strong leadership to keep the dog shit float moving. What most successful leaders have is a good case of narcissism. Even Jesus was a narcissist. Wouldn't you call someone a narcissist if they said they were the son of god? What do Jesus, Obama, Steve Jobs and Reagan have in common (and a bunch of others, go to the link below.)? All have the same basic Myers Briggs personality type, ENFJ. Basically, the charismatic bullshit artist. I am getting away from my narrative here a bit, but you need someone really good with a shovel to keep the dog shit merry go round turning. They turn that white and purple polka dot elephant into a loving little Chihuahua. They may make it disappear altogether.

Of course all of their hard work will go down the tubes if it weren't for the cheerleaders. Another term for them are groupies. Gotta love Steve Deace for that one. The cheerleaders make the fairytales, the narratives possible. Without their hard work and supplicance, none of it would be possible. Remember, every tribe has a leader, and every leader has their henchmen. Just the way it is.

Groupies of course are much more dangerous than any narcissistic leader. These are the same assholes that make everything that is bad happen. Behind every despot is a peon looking for affirmation, approbation and validation. Beware of these creeps, they will ruin your day if not your life.

So where's the poop? There's plenty of poop to go around, as anyone who has lived long enough on this planet can attest, and it's usually handed out in disproportionate servings. Your serving size is inversely proportional to your status. Not only that, but the job of those above you, particularly those in leadership (remember the narcissists), is to ensure that. In fact, repeatability and reliability of business processes are paramount in any successful business and this extends to other enterprises as well, even back to our fictitious family. Reinforcement of the narrative, the fairytale is how the family will ensure if not reflect success. If not that, then at least be in a comfortable state of denial.

Basically, the poop is everywhere you look. We are human and therefore are capable of great scatological enterprises. It almost goes without saying. The biggest mistake is to bring attention to the narrative, the fairytales, the consequences of the tribe. God forbid you not only find the poop, but point it out. The tribe does not suffer well those who fall outside the ring of believers. This is because not only must the stink of the poop not be found, it must be worshipped as well. That's right, worship the poop. Those that create the poop must be continually comfortable in their scatological enterprise. If you do point out the poop, you will be burned at the stake.

So where does this leave us in this particular narrative? Beware of poop, narcissists, groupies, and tribes? Unfortunately, we will always have to beware of these. It's human nature to want to be right, to want to be on the winning team, to want to enforce will. That's not going away anytime soon. What does this mean? One, there's a place where the poop is tolerable for each of us. There's a pile of poop meant just for you. Really. And it won't be so bad. Two, choose your fights well. Getting burned at the stake over something that one,  isn't going to change and two, something that if it did, at what price, isn't worth it. Family, friends and country, in that order. That's what you fall on your sword for. Your family really is the only tribe that matters. Ultimately, work, your favorite sports team and not even a political party matter in the sense of application of tribal bullshit. Does the GOP go to work with me everyday and fix that pile of poop? Do any of the Yankees half to leave work early to pick up my kid from band practice? Will anyone outside of my own family really give a rats ass when I take the dirt nap? No and not really to any of it.

Most shit in life is a total waste of time and fairytales, meetings and cheerleaders are no exception. They serve to enforce the will of the tribe, sometimes through delusion, sometimes through perfidy, sometimes by accident. Most of the time by shear repetition. The object is to see through the dog shit and see it for what it is. It's dog shit. Let the world go its wanton way and do what you can when you should. Don't confuse your loyalties outside your family with family. And to the diversity and why don't we all hold hands and get along crowd, the smallest minority in the universe is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. Also, real change doesn't start with the tribe or the village, it always starts with one person who thinks differently. That's what Steve says, anyway.



Thank you for reading this blog.