Saying Goodbye

I went to the memorial service for a 49 year old colleague this afternoon. The first of what I'm sure will be many during my career - not that it's ever going to get easier. Having known her for about a year, our time together was much shorter than many others there. But, I'll miss her just the same. A year ago, when we met, she picked my teammate and I up from the Metro to head off to a meeting we were a few minutes late for. I'm not convinced the car came to a complete stop before we were driving off while introducing ourselves. After that meeting we kept in touch since we were working on similar projects (but in different departments). We kept each other in the loop as far as what we'd found to work and not work and in the current BuCorps political climate. When I spent 8 weeks in training near her office we met up for lunch and caught up. A month ago she visited my office and spent her lunch break (two days in a row) talking with me about my (new) job and keeping me updated with what she was working on. Each time we saw each other she was more excited than the last often exclaiming "Can you believe they pay us to do this? How cool is that!". That phrase embodies her spirit and her work ethic. It was nothing for her to crank out work e-mails at 10:30 on a Friday night. Today I learned that in addition to a very full work life she volunteered with the Civil Air Patrol, was a volunteer fire fighter, and a potter. I'm sad I won't be able to continue to work with her but I hope to use this experience to double my efforts to keep up on the human side of employment and to live each day as though it is my last.

Government Contracting

With over 2 million civilian employees globally, the US Federal Government is the largest employer in the United States. Despite this, there are a lot of things the government doesn't do. When the government doesn't want to do something, it is able to outsource the work to private companies. Usually, this comes by way of requesting bids for the good or service. Once the bids are received and evaluated one company will be awarded a contract for that task.
Initially, this sounds pretty good. Contracting some duties to outsiders saves the government money. If a special skill is needed for a limited amount of time, contracting allows the government to get someone with the required skills into position quickly. Money gets saved when a person with those skills isn't need for long periods. Once the job is complete, the government releases the contract and life goes on. After the life of the contract, no additional funds are required. This is in contrast to a government employee who gets a pension and other benefits all the way into retirement. Contractors can also be brought on board to transfer their knowledge to government employees. In addition to people, contracts can also be awarded for tasks or services. For example, if a federal building in Oklahoma floods, the government can hire firms to clean up the mess and restore the building.
Contracting has been around for a long time. One of the easiest examples to think of is NASA. NASA didn't build the space shuttle. The Army doesn't build the helicopters it uses. The Navy doesn't build it's ships. These are all great examples of the benefits of contracting. The government doesn't have to maintain the construction facilities for these different tools. Instead, they get to take advantage of existing private infrastructure and corporate efficiency. This makes sense. If it wasn't done, the government would have to build and maintain construction facilities and engineers capable of designing everything it required. Through contracting, the government is able to say "I need a ship capable of x, y, and z." and then sit back and wait until it arrives.
Contracting comes with several downsides. One is the reliance it creates on outside companies and the lack of control over those companies. Depending on the way a contract is written, the government can have very little control over the implementation. One common contracting method is called "cost plus". In a "cost plus" contract, all expenses incurred by the contractor are reimbursed by the government plus some set profit margin. These types of contracts don't encourage cost savings because the government agrees to pick up the bill. That can result in tremendous waste. That lack of control can manifest itself in other ways, too. Often, contracts for professional services (like information technology) don't come with supervisory rights. That is, people working on those contracts aren't supervised by the government employees needing the service. Instead, they work for their company. If problems with the work develop, the government has to go to the company to fix the problem rather than the individual. In a fast paced environment, this can take entirely too long.
Other risks of contracting include the associated costs. When the government pays for a contractor, they are paying for a finite period of time. Then that finite period of time is extended over multiple years, the cost savings associated with contracting dissolve. For example, if an IT contract costs $250,000 a year it might be a good deal. The government has a critical need for that (specialized) skill for only a short period of time. However, if that contract is extended for 5 years, that contract has now cost $1,250,000. Had the government hired or trained someone for that job during the first year and canceled or reduced the contract for the subsequent years, a cost savings would have been realized. Government employees cost money too, but their costs can be spread over their entire period of employment. Retirement may seem expensive, but if calculated across all years of service it becomes cheaper. When a workforce which is flexible and trainable is developed, employees can be retrained as different requirements develop. In the long term, those "floating" employees can be used to reduce the number of long term contractors and costs associated with them.

Planning for retirement as a 25 year old

Without a doubt, I'm the oldest 25 year old I know.
I'm really excited about retirement! Not just because I want to sit around on my ass all day and do nothing. I'm excited because I get to plan for it. I'm excited because when I turn 57, if I'm still with my current employer, I can retire. At that point, I'd have more than 30 years of service under my belt. As creepy and intimidating as that sounds, 30 years isn't all that uncommon at BuCorps.
What does retirement mean though? When I turn 57, I can check out of work and still get paid. At 57, I will qualify to get 30% of my "high 3" salary. That means that if, assuming my average income works out to $120,000 a year (my "high 3"), I would bring in $36,000 a year for doing nothing. In addition to my annuity, when I turn 59 and a half, I can withdraw from BuCorps' IRA. BuCorps' IRA has a 5% dollar-for-dollar match for IRA contributions. If I were to make $80,000 a year for the rest of my 30 years of service and contribute the full 5% I'm on the hook for, that account would have $240,000 in it, without investment gain. Historically, the funds the IRA invests in earn about 10% interest a year. If those formulas hold, the IRA would have over $2,400,000 in it when I was ready to retire. At that point, if I were to cash out of the account I would earn $48,000 a year for the next 50 years before I depleted the balance.
In addition to those benefits, I'd also qualify for social security at some point. Based on a salary of $80,000 a year until I'm ready to retire at 57, I would pull in $1,100 a month.
So, where does all that put me? From those three programs alone, my retirement income from ages 57-62 would come out to about $36,000 a year. After age 62, when I can withdraw from my IRA without a tax hit, I would pull in $84,000 a year. That's all independent of whatever else I might have setup.
This is AMAZING! How are people not pumped about that? And, really, how much would you miss that 5%?

All it Takes is One

I'm amazed at how true the saying "One bad apple spoils the whole bunch" is when applied to a work environment. I love my job. I find it challenging, interesting, and can see the impact it has on others. Everyday I learn something new or have a new experience. I also love working for BuCorps. My work group is pretty amazing, too. We've got a great mix of energetic young go-getters and more experienced experts. Our customers are great and consistently push us towards excellence.
Nearly a year and a half into my job, I'm getting to the point where I am useful in a technical sense. No longer do I constantly wander around trying to understand things. Now, I get what it is that we do. The basics no longer befuddle me and I've had the opportunity to get my hands deep into some technical problems and help find solutions independently. Understanding how everything works and being able to think about it intelligently is a great feeling and comfort. I am thankful to have had great mentors help me get up to speed so quickly.
This technical knowledge has come with a price. My technical knowledge is great enough that I understand what my teammates are doing and can talk with them about it. I'm also at the point where I can tell when someone is bullshitting their way through a day. Everyone, I think, has those days where they want to go through the motions of the day without thinking. Lack of sleep or an inability to focus on work hits everyone at some point. It is part of being human. But, I work with one guy who is like that every day. This guy has been with BuCorps for 6 years and came in with technical experience. But, I can count the accomplishments this guy has had for the past 6 months on one hand. And, the accomplishments aren't big. They're things I did 6 months into the job. The guys work output isn't due to a lack of technical work to be done. He's even been assigned to lead two efforts. Three months after the assignment, no gains have been made on either project.
The lack of progress, or willingness to work towards progress, is incredibly frustrating to me as a junior employee. I work for less than half of what this individual makes and achieve more results and work harder than I have ever seen him. Several occasions have cropped up where he has asked me to fix a problem he created.
It blows my mind that this guy has been allowed to operate like he does. The rest of the team is busting their ass to get work done while this individual sits at his desk, checks Yahoo mail, and sometimes types on the keys. All without getting anything done. I'm not sure if my boss realizes what the game is. We submit monthly status reports. I don't know what his could possibly contain. That, for me, is the most frustrating part. Everyone else on the team has to work harder because this guy does nothing and I'm not sure if our boss is technical enough to understand. How do I manage this? Should I ignore it and let this guy keep sliding through life? Do I call the boss out on the lack of results the guy generates? One would think that eventually he'd get busted but despite several screw ups all still seems well. His lack of performance and desire to work are killing my morale.

Times are a changing...

This week I had several conversations with various co-workers about the cultural differences between our generations. In my immediate work area there are two of us under 30 and the rest are all over 40. Sometimes it is clear that we grew up in different times and under different social norms.
Last weekend, BuCorps employees had a day out at the ballpark. My boss was sitting a row or two in front of me with his wife while I was text messaging co-workers who were tardy trying to see where they were at. The bosses wife, Susan, (who had met my tardy co-worker John and is in her early 30s) wanted to call him and yank his chain about being late. Since I had my phone out, I dialed John's number and handed it over. They had a brief conversation and it was the end of things. Back at work, I got into a conversation with my supervisor about the call. She thought it was weird that her boss' wife called one of her employees. It just left a bad taste in her mouth. I questioned that and mentioned that I didn't think it was that weird. They knew each other and had previously interacted in a non-work setting. After some discussion, we settled on cultural differences. Part of the reason I don't think it is a huge deal is because John and Susan are close to the same age. She's a few years older than he is, but not enough to make any real difference. The conversation was interesting though. And, I guess there's some merit to it.
This is my first job where I'm interacting primarily with people who are of a different generation. I need to keep in mind that they were brought up under different norms. Sometimes, I need to step back and better inventory my audience. That might mean that in some settings I'll change the way I act or what I say. One such occasion is in meetings. People get taken back when I speak up in meetings with high level executives. People seem to get really shy and reserved around the older managers. I have no shame in talking to them and asking them questions. I want to learn. I want to gain knowledge and understanding. I want to interact with the decision makers. This is what I'm a fan of. We all put our pants on the same way and are here to do a job. I want them to help me do my job better, by teaching me. That, I assume, is why they're in management. They must know something I don't. If I want to move through the ranks, I need to figure out what that is.

Bored? Lonely? Too much work?

Hold a meeting! It's a quick way to get nothing done and make new friends!

That's the joke anyway. Today, I participated in a great meeting. Here's what made it great:
The facilitator/leader knew what was up. She effectively managed the participants ensuring that no one ran away with the meeting. She started on time and made no apologies for those who came late nor made any effort to re-hash for them.
The participants were ready for war. Everyone knew what they brought to the table and shared that. Topics needing discussion and debate got them. Opinions were supported with logic and reason and presented in constructive ways. New ideas bubbled to the surface and were hashed out. Action items were created and defined at the end of the meeting for those in attendance.
It's a great feeling to walk out a good meeting. While not getting anything done, it is empowering to come out of something full of ideas and with a fire to make it happen. Sadly, these good meetings are few and far between. Maybe one day people will change it? What traits do you see in effective meetings?

Proofreading

I always found the most difficult part of the writing process to be going back to proofread a paper once it was done. Admittedly, I rarely did it while I was in school. Now that I'm a big boy in the working world, I'm much more cautious before I submit something for someone else to read. I'll read an e-mail two or three times to make sure it is grammatically correct and conveys the ideas I intend before I click send.
Not everyone checks what they do as cautiously as I do. I'm getting a new boss at BuCorps next week. The things I know about him I can count on one hand, but I've already got a bad taste in my mouth. My front line supervisor sent him an e-mail welcoming him to the job. He replied that he was excited for the position and yadda yadda. His response also included a grammatical error. I don't purport myself as having excellent grammar, I'm a computer scientist. It's not what I do. So, when I notice a grammatical problem, it's there. For me, the problem is bigger than a grammatical error. This guy either didn't proofread the e-mail he wrote or proofread it and didn't recognize the error (his subject/verb agreement was off). Either way, I'm nervous:
1) It was a simple e-mail; a middle school student could have written it. If he didn't recognize the problem, there are several universities which need their degrees back.
2) If he didn't proof read it, I'm going to be working for a man who doesn't care enough about the first impression his employees will have about him to proofread a 3 sentence e-mail.
Yes, it's shallow for me to think like this. But, is it to much to ask of someone making over $120,000 to proofread something? I hope not.

Asking the right questions

My dad is an attorney. Maybe that helps me more than I thought as far as figuring things out.

A great example is from today at work. BuCorps is being audited. From my standpoint, that means applications and servers I host are getting scanned for security vulnerabilities. I fully support this effort and want to ensure that our servers are as robust as they need to be to thwart attacks. Today were several meetings with the group doing the audit. I've never been involved in an audit of this nature before, so I was pretty interested in how it would progress. I prepared for all the questions I envisioned would be asked so I didn't come across as unqualified.
The first meeting was about backup and recovery. Notebook in hand full of information about our backup, disaster recovery, and continuity of operations plans I was prepared. Imagine my disappointment when all I was asked was for a screen shot that demonstrated that the databases were scheduled to be backed up nightly. I was in shock. I wasn't asked about the percentage of the time the backups were successful. I wasn't asked if the backups were moved to another location. I wasn't asked about restoring from backup. I wasn't asked about what happens if the building is blown up and we lose servers. All the auditors wanted to see was that the backups were scheduled. Had they asked the right questions, they possibly could have gotten some pretty juicy information for their audit. But, alas, all they wanted to know about were the scheduled jobs.
My second meeting was about security patches. The auditors wanted to see what operating system security patches had been installed in the last 6 months. I asked them what I needed to show them to satisfy their requirements. They didn't know. I asked them what servers they were interested in. Again, they had no specifics. They ended up getting screen shots of the add/remove program wizard. I hope it works.
My third meeting was about security scanning. The first thing that irked me was when the auditors showed up late. Everyone else made it on time, they were late. But, I'll forgive that. It gave everyone else an opportunity to prepare for their arrival. Having heard stories of past audits crippling hardware because an improper button was selected, I had several topics to discuss. The most hilarious was trying to get the idea across that running security scans on a production server in the middle of the day was not a good idea. They just didn't understand the repercussions. In fact, the importance of the servers seemed to slip their mind. The servers they wanted to scan are used by more than 40,000 employees every day. The servers interact with terabytes of data each day. It just didn't click.
The audits will continue next week so I'm sure the hilarity will continue. I guess today just reinforced the importance of understanding what you're working on. A finance major will have difficulty doing a GOOD audit of a computer infrastructure because they don't know what everything is, the same way a computer expert couldn't do a home inspection. When eliciting information, leading questions certainly have their place, but so do open ended questions. Good open ended questions allow much more knowledge to be gained than a simple leading question. Most importantly, to quote the movie Finding Forrester, "You gotta know the rules if you wanna play the game."

Let's all hate IT

The IT department of BuCorps has a bad wrap. I am discovering this the hard way. This week I had the opportunity to travel and visit one of our off site locations. The point of the trip was to meet with some people who were having performance issues with their system. Management decided that it would be good for us to work with this customer even though we don't directly support their system. It was a day out of the office so, whatever, I was happy to along.
When I got involved with the meeting I was pretty amazed at how quickly things turned into "It's the IT department, screwing us again." It was only the second time I'd interacted with a customer not from within IT and this idea was a shock. I never really considered that people didn't like the IT department. I know the stigma associated with them, I just thought that BuCorps was different.
Once I got back in the office I talked to my boss about the perception of the department from the outside and why people don't like us. He said that most peoples' perceptions of the department are from the help desk. This is an interesting problem for BuCorps especially. Most people that work in the Help Desk aren't employees coming in for life. They use the job to get their foot in the door then move on. Turn over at the help desk is high which means that it's difficult to get people with real knowledge in there. Since they are the face of IT to the field, having less than knowledgeable people answering the phones isn't helpful. It's also not good if they answer the phone and you can just hear that they hate their jobs. But, this is the case a BuCorps.
I don't know how to rectify this except through a vigorous marketing campaign. The IT department should focus more on interacting with the customers we serve and ensuring that we are meeting their needs. That involves a huge change from the past methods of doing things. The separation of the IT department from the field has been crippling. It results in inefficiency through usage of manpower and wasted money by purchasing equipment and software that isn't fully utilized. Making the changes will be an incredibly hard process. It needs to start with communication and end with creating tools which meet the needs of the people who use them.

Corporate E-Mail

E-Mail has revolutionized the work environment. From scheduling meetings, sharing files, and regular communication E-Mail facilitates every aspect of work. And, while E-Mail can help streamline business decisions it also comes with the worst design idea ever: the reply all button.
I've never been a huge fan of that little button that looks so inviting. It seems like a great idea: allow e-mail to facilitate a discussion among multiple people by keeping everyone on the same page. This is a great and powerful tool. Like anything powerful, it's just waiting to be misused. And I'd call it the most frequently abused aspect of e-mail communication.
My first exposure to this abuse came from being on several listserves in college. It wasn't uncommon for people to hold private discussions via an entire listserve thanks to that dreadful little button. They, of course, wouldn't figure out the error of their ways until I knew far too much about their weekend plans or relationships.
However, the abuse isn't limited to college students. This week at work I was bombarded with my first corporate cluster-fudge E-Mail storm. I arrived at work and opened Outlook expecting nothing new. While BuCorp is an international company, I'm not typically subjected to the whims of the international facet of the operation. So, imagine my surprise when I had over 100 new messages... all with the same subject line. Not able to resist the urge, I had to read through them. Starting off innocently enough with an e-mail to the corporate policy office things quickly spun out of control. Interspersed with the typical "STOP HITTING REPLY ALL" and "OMG, why am I getting this e-mail?!?!" were a few winners. Personally, I really liked a reply from a sales rep that invited users to e-mail another sales rep to be removed from the e-mail chain. (Technical note: most people should have realized that there was no way this person could remove someone from the list.) About 45 minutes after that e-mail the sender sent out another informing everyone that his prior e-mail was joke. My hypothesis is that the subject of the joke suddenly became inundated with E-Mails asking to be removed from a list he had no knowledge of. I got a real kick out of this and thought the exchange was hilarious. Since the E-Mail administrators work in my area, I took a walk over to get their fix on the situation. They were irate. There were 8,000 employees on the distribution list accidentally included in the list. Most of the 8,000 employees work in BuCorp headquarters, and included in the list was the company CEO. After a rather strong e-mail about "reply all" E-Mails from the E-Mail administration group, the fun for the day ended and it was back to work for everyone. It was a great start to the day.

Information Sharing

The thing about work which continues to constantly impress me is middle management. I went to work for BuCorp not really knowing what to expect. Prior to this job, my largest employer was Residential Life at Loyola. That wasn’t a real job and even then, there were fewer than 100 employees. BuCorp employs over 34,000 people around the globe. After having seen all the TV shows with office settings I was a little apprehensive about getting into such a large organization.
My first example of this came about when I met with the director of my branch’s HR department. I had been at work less than a month and was given a project which required I meet with various levels of management. I didn’t know what to expect going into that first meeting but was pleasantly surprised by how friendly and knowledgeable he was. His willingness to talk to me exceeded that which was required for my project and he came across as genuinely excited to have me on board with the company and excited to work with me. The conversation extended well beyond my project and he provided me lots of stories about his time with the company.
Another interaction I recently had is even more remarkable to me. I recently had the opportunity to travel to another office location to meet with one of my team’s remote employees. While there, my supervisor arranged for me to take a tour of another division that was located nearby. The other division wasn’t reportable in any way to my team yet they were very willing to show me around. I showed up expecting to be given a nickel tour by whoever was free. I was shocked when I was introduced to an assistant director of the division for an introduction to the division. He welcomed me into his office and we spent about an hour talking about the division and his time in BuCorp. It was a great opportunity for me to pick his brain for all sorts of information. He told me all about his career and offered plenty of relevant advice for navigating the BuCorp system. He also led me on a tour of his whole division and carefully explained everything they did. The tour was amazing and I could tell that he had a great handle on the divisions operations, challenges and opportunities. He is the type of person that people want to work for: on top of his game and with a strategy to win.
These interactions have reassured me that I made a good choice in working fro BuCorp. While it’s not a flawless company, the right people are on the bus to make the company great. These people, recognizing that they are only 5 or 10 years from retirement, seem genuinely excited to share their knowledge with the newcomers so we can carry the torch as high as they do after they leave. They each have a passion with what they do and are capable of explaining what they do in an articulate manner that makes you want to get involved. I’m amazed that management is willing to take time out of their schedules to talk to someone not reportable to them and who is so low on the totem pole. Rather than working in a basement for a major company, work feels much more like an extended family reunion.

Recent Adventures

Since graduating I've been less than busy, but have still managed to have a few moments of excitement. I'm primarily using my time in Savannah to clean out my house but also been recruited back into stage management for BC and SVA's production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It runs in mid April as part of the Johnny Mercer centennial at the Trustees theater, downtown. No matter how the play turns out, I'm excited to get to work in such a great space - it's a far cry from the BC cafeteria used for so long. The play has started to consume most of my evenings though and it's already one of those love/hate relationships. How much longer till it's over?

In other news, on the job front, all is well. I went to Atlanta Tuesday for my "personnel security interview" on Wednesday. It was my first solo "business trip" and I had a good time. Tuesday night I got to see some Savannah folks which makes any trip to Atlanta infinitely better. This morning I had an 8:30 appointment to get my application rolling again. After a fingerprinting (which was a funny situation - ask me about it sometime) and an interview I got to take my first ever polygraph test. To say it was nerve wracking would be an understatement. Don't breathe too slow. Don't breathe too fast. Don't breathe too deeply. Or too shallow. And don't move. Not even a little bit. But, after questioning if my name really was what I thought it was, it ended pretty well. I might be called back up to Atlanta if they need me to repeat a part of it but otherwise I've been told that "no news is good news." So, here's hoping for no news - and a job!

Things Fall Apart?

As this semester has progressed the prospect of work for December graduates continued to erode.

At Richmond's career fair in August the booths were bustling with students looking to be hired and professionals, looking to hire. As one of those wide-eyed students, I was pretty excited and felt good about my prospects. As the semester moved on and the Wall Street Journal's economic outlook got darker and darker, the light on my prospects also began to weaken. I came out of the career fair with two solid interviews. However, after an interview I was informed by the companies that they were no longer able to hire new employees due to the economy or that they were revising the roles of the employees they would hire. This was disappointing but if nothing else, I took away plenty of knowledge from the interviews I had - they were somewhat entertaining as well.

Thankfully, I'm not in a position where once I graduate if I don't have a job I don't eat. This knowledge also hasn't helped my job searching as I've been a little less intense than I could have. But, I still worry about those who don't have a buffer they can work from until the economy switches back to hiring mode. More than one person has told me "it's a great time to go to graduate school" and that is what others graduating with me are looking to do. I just don't feel like I would be able to get the most out of grad school yet. I want to experience more before I spend more time in a class room. I want to solve real world problems, I want to work with people. I want to work from 8-5 (or whatever) regularly and see how well I adjust. I've done the academic learning thing for a while - I want to see what else is out there.

Don't fear though, all is not lost for me. Despite my lackadaisical job search I've found and interviewed for a position which I think would be both fascinating, fun, and a great experience and with a company that isn't as subject to the whims of the market as others. Here's hoping that works out!

Life During Hurricane Season

Life in the southeastern US during hurricane season isn't ever a whole lot of fun. With each season comes new worries about the fate of your property and your well being. Who's to say that this year won't be the one that ends life as it is known in your city.

A perfect example of this is with hurricane Katrina in my sophomore year of college. As a freshman, campus was closed for hurricane Ivan the year before and the city only got a little windy. This allowed people to get lulled into a false sense of security. When the next year's devastation came through it was a wake-up call for the entire city. New Orleans is an interesting case though. As it is known today, most of the city is built on swamp. A map from 1901 of the city shows much of Uptown and the French Quarter but the rest of the city is listed as swamp land. The recovery of this swampland into livable areas is partly why the city has to pay so dearly each time a hurricane approaches.

New Orleans desperately needs help if it is to survive. It's not feasible for a city which is a major center of commerce to have a season where nothing is definite. Eventually, business leaders will tire of their constant evacuations and move their companies elsewhere. This will be catastrophic for the city and state economy. This means that the power company for the region (Entergy) needs to get their ducks in a row. Five days following hurricane Gustav customers in Metro New Orleans still don't have power, and the local paper tells them they might have to wait until the end of next week to see it. This is unacceptable. How are businesses expected to operate and be successful when the basic infrastructure can't keep up with their needs?

To remain successful, New Orleans needs reliable hurricane protection and companies managing the infrastructure that know what they're doing or it will sink into it's reputation of being a great party city and nothing else. And that would be tragic.

Housing? What housing?

The more I hear through the media about the “housing bubble” the more frustrated I get. For me, the whole thing seems pretty easy. People bought what they couldn’t afford and now have to pay the consequence. Someone paid too much for a home which is now worth less than they still owe for it.

What’s the deal with this though? I blame two groups. The first and most responsible are the people who bought what was out of their league. I’ve always been taught that something that sounds too good to be true probably is. What makes people think anything different when it comes to getting a home mortgage? If you make $50,000 a year you can’t buy that $300,000 house. I’m sorry but it just doesn’t make sense. Yet, this is part of what puts us in our current predicament. Had these people read and understood what they were signing and thought about it we wouldn’t be in as deep as we are currently. Sure, there’s a lot of fine print and things like “interest only” loans sound like great things. But, failure to understand or ask questions about what you read creates huge problems. Of course, I also blame the American mentality of “Well, we’ll worry about that problem when we get to it” for interest only loans.

The second group responsible for a large part of the problem is the lenders. The same “too good to be true” policy still applies. What good does it do the company to lend to someone who can barely afford the mortgage? Sure, it is great to put someone in a home they “own” but if they can’t afford it the payments this puts a heavier burden on the family than the benefit from owning a home. Greed is a bad thing. That’s my personal motto. These companies gambled and lost due to their desire for more money.

But, now what do we do? While it would be GREAT to be able to say “Well , you shouldn’t have loaned out money to these people” it isn’t something we can do. The problem here is that these companies are so firmly ingrained in our financial system that a collapse of one would create substantially greater problems for the economy. Trading and selling mortgages between companies doesn’t help this predicament as they get bundled into securities which make their way into the stock market. There, some people don’t know what they are signing up for and get screwed. Instead of letting these companies who made poor decisions lay in the bed they made, the government has to come bail them out with huge sums of money. This puts the burden on the government for bad corporate decisions.

All the while, the people at these lending companies are still making their salaries despite the trouble they have caused. The vice-presidents and CEOs of these companies have lost little compared with the people they targeted for lending and will probably get severance packages as they are fired for ruining not only the company but contributing to the downfall of an economy.

Meanwhile, people trying to retire are being hit hard. As the stock market dives investment portfolios tank in value. This is due in part due to a lack of diversification but also due to the general downfall of the US and global markets. I haven’t looked at a statement from my broker since December and I’m glad – I’d probably cry if I saw it. This problem needs a solution, and we need it soon. It’s time for corporate America to step up to the plate and get us out of this quagmire they helped create.

Residence Hall Access Security

There is an article in this week’s Maroon about dorm security. The article supplements a video made by the paper’s staff as they get in to the dorms at Loyola without the required identification and show that it’s not a difficult process. This wasn’t any real surprise of mine but it does expose a pretty important security issue.

What can schools do to increase the safety of their dorms from an entry control stand point? I think the most important thing schools can do is create a single point of entry and exit to all their residence halls. This allows much more control from a physical point of view and also makes the dorms more social since people are forced to interact while approaching that central access point. This is one aspect of student housing that Loyola does an excellent job at. Richmond makes no attempt for its dorms and allows all doors to be used for entry (with student id) and exit.

After the buildings have a single way in and out the next important step is to staff that entrance with a well trained person all the time. Training should include proper procedure as well as the reasoning behind the procedures. Many problems encountered during my stint as an RA resulted from poorly trained work study students not doing their jobs properly. While at the desk a person’s responsibility becomes checking that each individual trying to enter the dorm is allowed to do so. This also involves monitoring visitor check-in and check-out as well as any other responsibilities (Tulane rents movies, Loyola checks out vacuums). As a part of this, residents of the dorms should each have something on their identification which makes it easy to detect whether they are in the right dorm or not at a glance. Loyola used “building stickers” for this purpose with each sticker being a different color. This allowed desk staff to glance at the ID and ensure the student was in the proper dorm.

Another side benefit of having the dorms staffed is that it provides a simple mechanism for problems. If someone crazy does enter the desk assistant can push the panic button. If something breaks the desk assistant can write up the work order. If a roommate is passed out in the hallway the desk assistant should be able to call for assistance. This requires the desk assistant to be given some level of control over their dorm. My biggest complaint while an RA at Loyola was that the dorms failed to empower the desk assistant.

For desk assistants to be able to perform their duties, they need to be able to control the entryway and lobby of the dorm. This means that beyond a certain point in the building, residents should have to walk around the desk through a single choke point that allows each person to be identified. Elevators and stairs to other parts of the building should be located only behind that point. This ensures that everyone going to the rooms has at least walked past the desk. Desks off to the side of a lobby allow ample room for people to sneak around the desk. When well placed desks are given good visibility of the lobby and entryway the likelihood that intruders could be easily detected greatly increases. Well placed desks also thwart potential intruders as they see a more difficult obstacle to gaining entry.

"Free" Software

A week ago a man named Richard Stallman came to University of Richmond's campus and gave a talk about his work with the Free Software Foundation. The "Free" in free software isn't about cost, it's about rights associated with the software. Stallman and his foundation believe that all software users should have:
- The right to run the program for any purpose
- The right to examine and/or change the source code for the program. (So, this requires access to the source code)
- The freedom to redistribute copies as desired.
- The freedom to modify the program and distribute that modification
Stallman is against any software that is not "open source" or, in his word, free.

This sounds pretty cool. We would have access to everything on our computers so that we could learn how everything works, add any features we desired or remove features we didn't like. We could then provide our changes to other people who might want a similar setup.
But, this would mean the end of companies which rely on proprietary software development for revenues. Because, if you want to sell someone software that you've written, but after the sale the code for the program ends up online no one else will buy it, they'll just get it off the Internet.
Despite this, "free" software seems like a pretty neat idea and it could change the way people use their computers. I don't think this is an economically do-able system though.
Some applications require proprietary software to be of any use. For example, if the government has software that can accurately track and shoot down missiles, that's not something we want China to have the code for. With the code, they could learn the software's limitations and exploit those problems before anyone else had discovered them (there is no such thing as an error free program). In a more applicable situation, imagine that you run a medium sized company in a highly competitive market. You are consistently trying to better manage your business to lower your costs and under price the competition. If in house programmers create an integrated management system for your company that you then use to run aspects of your business, it isn't something you'd want to publish the source code for. Publishing the source code would remove any competitive advantage you would have over your competitors that the software provided. Or, if your competitors wanted to they could examine the code and look for vulnerabilities. Finding even one problem with the code could be enough for them to access your system and ruin your business. These are two fundamental problems with open source software on a wide scale from a security stand point.
Another problem with Stallman's point of view is the money problem. In his talk, he spoke of a world where anyone could change the code and redistribute it, fixing problems with it, changing functionality, or whatever. Since all the software is open source, anyone could make these changes. To use an example of his, a high school student that was into coding could learn how to implement the changes in software and make them. The immediate problem I see with this would be the development of a price war. Much like the outsourcing of physical jobs, coding jobs would get delegated to the lowest bidder on a global scale. This would hurt countries with high cost of living as programmers need to make more money to sustain themselves. In another possibility, if a company needed some changes made to their software, what's to stop them from reaching an agreement with a local college to have a class rewrite the code for academic credit? As a company, wouldn't this be a good thing to do? You still get the software, it's probably going to be good since students are being graded on it and it's free.
The free software movement isn't all bad though. I think there are certain applications where open sourced software can be of great use. Open source software is great for basic applications that are common needs for everyone. These include e-mail, document creation, and internet browsers. However, as the software becomes more specialized than the generic variety it becomes more important to keep it in house to protect your business security and investments.

Right to Carry on Campus

In recent weeks, Richmond's student newspaper, The Collegian, has printed many editorials about students' right to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. The Red and Black at UGA has had similar editorials so I guess this is a pretty hot topic right now. With that said, here are my two cents.
I understand the desire to feel safe on a college campus. I can see how people feel that carrying a weapon would provide them with that safety. I don't think the argument follows that carrying a weapon creates (or even fosters) a safer environment. My reasoning behind this is that while the person holding the weapon may feel like they have some tangible defense against something bad happening, a gun really won't do them any good. In fact, I'd argue that it would harm them.
Assuming that the person with the gun is not the person responsible for the shooting, the do-gooders responding to the threat don't help the situation. Their lack of formal "active shooter" training could allow their nerves to take control of their bodies. Without training it would be natural to react to someone running down the hall way trying to get into rooms as the person doing the shooting. This isn't necessarily the case as it might be another student trying to escape the carnage. Or, instinct might tell you that anyone with a gun is the bad guy. But, what if other students also carry weapons and are in a similar hunt for the real shooter? How would you distinguish them from the real shooter? And, once you've made the distinction, do you trust your fellow gun carriers to be able to make the same distinction so you aren't shot in confusion? Even if you only shoot people dressed a certain way (say, wearing black and body armor) that could fail as police begin to enter the building.
Once the decision is made by the police to enter the building, armed students then pose an additional threat. Police now have to (quickly) sort out the law abiding students wanting to do good from the shooter. If the shooter is still moving around the building this identification could waste valuable time.
Armed students (or others) also pose a communication problem. As 911 calls begin to arrive about the situation people may mistakenly view the students responding to the situation as additional shooters. This could yield a situation where police are expecting a team of 5 individuals to be roaming around the building when only 1 exists.
Ignoring the rare possibility that students would be on a campus with a shooting, guns still pose risks. What would occur if one were to misfire during class? Or, if someone were to fall down a flight of stairs? These risks must also be accounted for in any plan that allows people to carry weapons on campus. The security of the weapons when not being carried would also pose a potential problem. If a person licensed to carry a weapon fails to properly secure it all sorts of problems could develop. Their nut job of a roommate could decide to take revenge on a cheating significant others' object of affection. Their drunk roommate could come in late one night and decide to play Russian roulette with the gun. No way exists to stop these from happening as roommates could learn the combination to a safe or the location of keys.
Debating the costs and benefits of carrying concealed weapons on campuses will no doubt be around for a long time and will always have its supporters. Until these supporters can fix the fundamental problems with having a concentrated number of weapons in one place controlled by (mostly) untrained people, the debate won't end. Even if these problems are surmounted it ignores that we already pay people to take care of this sort of thing for us. We even provide these people with highly specialized training so that they can do a really good job when the time comes. We call these people police officers.

First Post

I thought I'd go ahead and create a more serious blog than the one I currently use. The current one is fine for life's stories and thoughts but I thought that as my global view became broader that this might be a better way to express myself. It will also hopefully maintain the separation between public and personal.