Funeral Museum at Death’s Door

A Funeral Museum at Death’s Door

Excerpts:

A stone’s throw from Lincoln’s tomb, this unusual cultural repository is an unmistakable reminder that everyone’s days are numbered. Now it seems the same might be true of the museum itself.

Unable to attract enough visitors — the Iowa woman is apparently not the only one who gets the creeps about this place — the museum is struggling to stay alive. The curator position has been eliminated, and the museum’s hours have been cut to appointments only.

These have been difficult days in Springfield, the Illinois capital, as the economy has nose-dived and many people have lost their jobs. Not even funeral parlors are immune, Mr. Marsh said, as survivors sometimes choose thriftier ways to pay respects.

...

Since its founding in 1999, [the museum] has failed to become a destination. In recent years, the museum has attracted about 8,000 customers annually; tickets for adults are $4 and those for children are $2. It has not been nearly enough to cover expenses.

“The original idea was that we’d get enough spillover from people visiting the Lincoln sites,” Mr. Marsh said. “But for whatever reason, that just hasn’t happened. When a business isn’t paying its way, as everyone knows, you have trouble.”

Comment: We visited last year on our Springfield IL Lincoln trip (Lincoln museum, Lincoln tomb, etc). Not a destination museum but it was interesting. I think I did a 30 min walk through. Looks like their website is down today: Funeral Museum.

Salon takes on "Little Master Conservative"

Bateman: Rush Limbaugh and the littlest Republican


Comment: Fair and balanced reporting ... I show both sides! :)

A Classical School Conservative

Little Mr. Conservative

Excerpt:

He’s an unusual kid with an unusual background. Jonathan’s parents, Doug, a computer systems integrator, and Marla, a sales representative and former actress who teaches drama and speech to middle-school students, have been home-schooling their bright, curious son since the sixth grade. On Fridays, Jonathan joins 10 middle-school students at the Classical School in Woodstock, where classes are taught from a Christian perspective, for five hours of study, including Latin. They have two 10-minute recesses for tag, said Jonathan’s teacher, Stephen P. Gilchrist. Lunch is eaten at their desks while they work.

“Other children his age are not quite sure how to take him,” Mr. Gilchrist said. “Jonathan is so intense, so verbal and a strong personality. But as they get to know him, they respect him for what he is. And he is tons of fun.”

Jonathan’s father oversees his math; he studies Arabic with a tutor.

“Before I got into politics,” Jonathan said as he sat with his parents in the study of their home, “I wanted to be a missionary to people in the Middle East. I thought it would be better to speak with them in their own language.” The family are active members of Peachtree Corners Baptist Church in Norcross, Ga.

Comment: Note he attends a "Classical School" ... where real education takes place!

"born to do the dirty work"

Kathee and I watched To Kill a Mockingbird last night. It's a great book and a good movie. Here's a favorite quote (about Atticus):

"There are people born to do the dirty work for us, and, your father, Scout, is one of those men." (Miss Maudy)

Another:

"If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." (Atticus)

How long will the recession last? My view

1. As long as there is unidentified "toxic debt" we won't reach the bottom
   
2. As long there are pending ARM resets (and they go out more than a year) we won't reach the bottom
   
3. The "stimulus" package is like throwing wet green wood on a dwindling fire. Tax cuts would have better a better (faster) stimulus.
   
4. If we are faced with a terrorist act on the scale of 911, it would be a serious test of a very weak economy (aside from the horrendous human toll). We need to pray that President Obama has wisdom to protect our homeland.
   
5. The expected unemployment rate was 7.9% and it was 8.1% (Friday's announcement). Unemployment is likely to increase and probably will exceed 10%.
   
6. This is more serious than the 1982 recession. I doubt it gets as bad as "the Depression" but it will get worse
   
7. People financially stressed with debt will face greater hardship
   
8. The amount of "wealth" lost in the stock market will probably not recover in less than 5 years. Probably more than 10.
   
9. People will end up deferring retirement
   
10. Housing is very affordable and may get more so. But don't buy a house unless you intend to stay in it for at least 7 years.
    
11. There will be migration of people from unemployment "hot spots" to areas that are hiring. Bad for Michigan!
    
12. GM will file for bankruptcy. Fed $$ to GM a waste of time. Chrysler is not likely to survive.
    
13. The stock market is near bottom and probably a good time to start investing in conservative stocks. Don't look for short term gains.
    
14. This would be a terrible time for non-profits to borrow - even if they could
    
15. Larger non-profits (churches included) will need to restrict hiring / probably have layoffs.
    
16. The Pillsbury closure is a harbinger of the destiny of other schools with low enrollment / and debt. Stronger schools (BJU) will survive largely unscathed. Smaller seminaries and schools should preemptively look for merger opportunities for the good of their faculty and students.
    
17. If your car is a clunker and you can afford it, a great time to buy a new one.
    
18. A good time to avoid school loans. Parents may make more conservative financial decisions pertaining to schools and this could impact enrollment at private schools (see In a Shifting Era of Admissions, Colleges Are Sweating - "it’s like the dot-com bubble burst for higher ed")
    

Unemployment rates: Interactive map

Geography of a Recession


Comment: From the NYTimes. Companion article: Job Losses Show Breadth of Recession

Unlike the last two recessions — earlier this decade and in the early 1990s — this one is causing much more job loss among the less educated than among college graduates. Those earlier recessions introduced the country to the concept of mass white-collar layoffs. The brunt of the layoffs in this recession is falling on construction workers, hotel workers, retail workers and others without a four-year degree.

The Great Recession of 2008 (and beyond) is hurting men more than women. It is hurting homeowners and investors more than renters or retirees who rely on Social Security checks. It is hurting Latinos more than any other ethnic group. A year ago, a greater share of Latinos held jobs than whites. Today, the two have switched places.

Obama answers the call!

CSI: Minneapolis

Body encased in ice found on Ham Lake golf course

Excerpt:

The face of a man's body encased in ice startled groundskeepers working near the 16th hole of a north metro golf course Friday.

While checking conditions of the Majestic Oaks Golf Course in Ham Lake at about 1:15 p.m., they discovered what appeared to be a face sticking out of the ice covering a pond, said Lt. Paul Sommer of the Anoka County Sheriff's Office.

Initial reports indicated that the head had been severed, but the body appears to be intact, Sommer said Friday night. Because the body was contorted, with its head partially above the ice and body below, along with the apparent toll animals had taken, authorities were initially misled. Most of the face and head appeared to have been eaten at, exposing the throat, Sommer said. It is too early to determine an age of the victim or cause of death, although authorities suspect foul play. Other than damage to the face, the cold appears to have preserved the remainder of the body, Sommer said.

Only a portion of the body was exposed when the workers found it. The remainder was trapped in 2 feet of ice. Authorities used a steamer from the Anoka County Highway Department to remove the body from the ice so as not to damage it.

Comment: I'm thinking of Ducky from N.C.I.S.

Miscellaneous Friday stuff

It really feels like Spring in Minneapolis. It is gloriously mild. I was outside without a jacket today.

Happenings:

1. Finally received the last check for the hail damage project. It was monies in a "restricted escrow" with US Bank. I can't figure out the logic of not ACHing the monies. I had to wait for a check to arrive. All the paperwork (the faxes back and forth from our contractor to USBank, contractor to us, USBank to us, us to USBank) was finalized 2/25 ... why did I have to wait 7 business days to have a check mailed. For $ 9 they would have FEDEX'd it after processing (which was Monday) but I would haved had to have been home to sign for it. I didn't have to be home for the same check to put in my mailbox. Which doesn't make sense to me. I was worried about making the 3:00 p.m. deposit window to have it cleared overnight but I drove home at 12:30 and picked up the check and made the deposit.
   
2. We recently replaced our furnace and hot water heater. Kathee stayed home to let the City of Plymouth building inspectors in this morning. One said to Kathee, "this is the cleanest furnace room I've ever seen". Probably an exaggeration but Kathee does keep is swept and tidy back there. We upgraded from an old 78% efficient furnace to new 92% efficient furnace. After just one month (our March bill) the gas bill was $ 100 less than the year before. The exhaust gases are cool enough that they can exhaust though a PVC pipe. A wall in our dinning room (like a large square post) has the furnace flue inside of it. That used to be warm to the touch (wasted heat) ... now no furnace exhaust goes that way!
   
3. I had lunch with Jason Stamper our Youth Pastor today. Jason is the quintessential Youth Pastor in my mind. As the director of our young adult ministries report to Jason. Lunch at Chili's - how great is that!
   
4. Wells dropped the dividend today from .34 cents to .05 cents. Saw it coming. Not a big deal.
   
5. Our next level of organization (post merger) was announced today and my boss's boss retains her position over desktop computing. I hope this bodes well for my boss and for me!
   
6. I drove back down to the office after lunch. Non-handicapped people probably don't understand this but there is a special bond among handicapped people. I was in an elevator with a blind man - just him and me. He struggled to find the button (which of course is easy for me), but he walks straight - or straight enough with his red tipped white cane to guide him. I told him (in case he could not heard my crutch tip accentuated walking - that probably goes something like thud (from my right foot) clump (from my 2 crutch tips) hitting the floor at approximately the same time) drag (my left foot)) that there was a guy with crutches in the elevator with him. He said "imagine that ... a crippled guy and a blind guy"). We both kind of chuckled and then went our separate ways. Almost sounds like a joke - "there was a blind guy and a cripple in the elevator together .... (not sure what would come next?)"
   
7. Other projects. We have a moisture leak in the master bedroom shower. We had a tile man by Monday night and tomorrow will go to pick out tile. The entire shower needs to be redone. I guess that isn't too bad after 13 years of use.
   

Update ... organization names and levels (all this is new to me with the org announcement):

Levels ... I am in the:

1. T.O.G. (Technology Operations Group)
   
2. T.I.S. (Technology Infrastructure Services)
   
3. E.T.S. (Enterprise Technology Services)
   
4. E.U.C. (End User Computing)
   
5. EUC PO (End User Computing - Program Office)
   

People need to lighten up a bit. I said our official uniform was the TOGA (think T.O.G.). And our department name is pronounced UCK POO! I still think both are funny but I guess my sense of humor doesn't fit well with everyone's taste!

The Obama Bear Market and my 201K

Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow

Excerpt:

The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown.

Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

Comment: Joke: "My 401K became a 201K!" (But who's laughing!?). They are calling this "the Obama Bear Market".

Job cuts in Charlotte

More job cuts at Wells Fargo

Excerpt:

Job cuts at Wells Fargo in Charlotte are underway. We don't know how many people have been told they’re out of a job, but our news partners at the Charlotte Observer say layoffs are already happening quietly but steadily.

“The layoffs are always going to be deeper in the headquarters city of the acquired bank,” said banking expert and UNCC professor Tony Plath.

We just don't know how deep but Plath puts the estimate at 3000 or 4000.

Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory hasn't heard a number.

"I don't think they know at this point in time. I think they are still going through that process of decision making,” he said.

The Charlotte Observer says the cuts are starting in risk management and corporate investment.

"Wells is kind of known for going it slow and kind of taking its time, which could be a good thing for Charlotte but leaves people kind of wondering what's going to happen," said reporter Rick Rothacker of the Charlotte Observer.

"The jobs that are reasonably safe are on the retail banking side, the platform people, the tellers, the branch managers and so forth," according to Plath.

Comment: Doesn't surprise me.

Cramer won't "drink the Kool Aid"

Now some, including Rush Limbaugh, would say I am on another enemies list: that of the White House. Limbaugh says there are only a handful of us on it, and if I am on it for defending all of the shareholders out there, then I am in good company.

His response:

My Response To The White House

Excerpt:

I am a fight-not-flight guy, so I was on my hackles when I heard White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' answer to a question about my pointed criticism of the president on multiple venues, including the Today Show.

"I'm not entirely sure what he's pointing to to make some of the statements," Gibbs said about my point that President Obama's budget may be one of the great wealth destroyers of all time. "And you can go back and look at any number of statements he's made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too."

Huh? Backup? Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: Raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when U.S. house price depreciation is behind much of the world's morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people.

The market's the effect; much of what the president is fighting for is the cause. The market's signal can't be ignored. It's too palpable, too predictive to be ignored, despite the prattle that the market's predicted far more recessions than we have.

Gibbs went on to say, "If you turn on a certain program, it's geared to a very small audience. No offense to my good friends or friend at CNBC, but the president has to look out for the broader economy and the broader population."

How much I wish it were true right now that stocks played less of a role in peoples' lives. But stocks, along with housing, are our principal forms of wealth in this country. Only the people who have lifetime tenure, insured solid pensions and rent homes but own no stocks personally are unaffected. Sure that's a lot of people, but believe me, they aspire to have homes and portfolios. If we only want to help those who have no wealth to destroy, we are not helping the majority of Americans; we are not helping the broader population.

Comment: "drink the Kool Aid"

On ridiculous project dates

A Dilbert cartoon should go right here!

Because it is copyrighted I link to it: Dilbert on Project Management.

Project dates need to be honest and they should be set from the bottom up not the top down. I received a project date of 7/1 today for something that I know will be approx 80% completed by 12/15. Asked if I could commit to a 7/1 date (that I was set by people way above me that don't have a clue what needs to be done to complete it), I said "no way".

Waking the Dead

You’re Dead? That Won’t Stop the Debt Collector

Excerpt:

Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.

The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.

“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.

Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.

Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.

New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like...”

“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.

Comment: DCM Services is a Minneapolis company.

Brief thoughts on Bill Gates

Microsoft boss Bill Gates bans his children from using Apple products

Excerpt:

Microsoft founder head Bill Gates has banned the use of products made by arch-rival Apple from his house, his wife has revealed.

But the blockade could backfire on Gates, 53, after Melinda admitted there are times she feels envious of her friends' iPhones.

She told Vogue magazine that the couple's three children Jennifer, 13, Rory, 10 and Phoebe, seven, are not allowed Apple products.

Brief Thoughts:

1. Wow Bill Gates is the head of his home! That's a nice Biblical pattern.
   
2. Melinda Gates respects the authority of her husband and while she would love to have an Apple IPhone she eschews (she probably has a credit card or two with a $ 10,000 limit or so (do ya think!)) buying an IPhone or an IPod when she is out and about shopping without her husband! That's nice too!
   
3. The Gates children are young enough that they probably can't get away with having an IPod, IPhone, or Mac. But wait until they have their rebellious teen years or worse yet, go away to college. I suspect their may be an Apple product or two tucked away in their dorm room!
   
4. It might help Bill if he loosened up a little bit. Buy a MacBook Pro Lite. Enjoy Mac OS X. See how much fun you can have with that cool graphical user interface.
   
5. Build a little lab in one of the rooms of your 100,000 square foot mansion. Let the kids play there with Macs, and Linux. Their "toying around" will be like your rebellious years when you goofed off with a PDP-10*
   
6. How Bill handles his family is his business, but my advice is - Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
   
7. I get the idea that if Bill were a monopolistic titan of business (oh never mind) that he would limit peoples' computer choices.
   
8. Well Sic semper tyrannis (I mean this in a non-violent, non-threatening way!) to computing choice dictators! I'm for the free market. I will by the best devices possible. Even if they have the Apple logo affixed to them!
   

Note, "After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time." (Oh those rebellious years!)

America's Worst Intersections

The bottlenecks in these 100 cities will slow you down the most

Since I never am down this way (169 at Hwy 494) it was a surprise to me. I do know that 494 through Bloomington is a madhouse most the day.

IBM System 32

Comment: Speaking of old computers, the IBM System 32 was one that I sold back in a 1975 time frame. The computer looked like a large office desk with a very small 6 line by 40 character display. The machine had a built-in printer that directly faced the operator when seated. It had 16 kB or 32 kB of memory, a single hard drive that was available in 5 MB, 9 MB, or 13 MB sizes, and an eight-inch floppy drive. As I recollect these sold for about $ 45,000.

More information below:

IBM Archives: BM System/32

Corestore Collection - IBM System/32 5320

These were designed for basic accounting software: We called it "BICARSA" (BIlling, Inventory Control, Accounts Receivable, and Sales Analysis)

My first computer sale was to replace and IBM 1130 with an IBM System 3.

Below is a pic of the console of the IBM 1130

Harvard gets and "F"

Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary

Excerpt:

In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.

Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.

“I felt really violated,” Mr. Zerden, now a fourth-year student, recently recalled. “Here we have 160 open minds trying to learn the basics in a protected space, and the information he was giving wasn’t as pure as I think it should be.”

Mr. Zerden’s minor stir four years ago has lately grown into a full-blown movement by more than 200 Harvard Medical School students and sympathetic faculty, intent on exposing and curtailing the industry influence in their classrooms and laboratories, as well as in Harvard’s 17 affiliated teaching hospitals and institutes.

They say they are concerned that the same money that helped build the school’s world-class status may in fact be hurting its reputation and affecting its teaching.

Comment: Full disclosure is the key. Anymore on the financial programs on TV, the analyst will disclose whether they have stock in the same company whose stock they are promoting. Park Nicollet (health care clinics in Minnesota) recently instituted a policy requiring clinic doctors to disclose their financial relationships with drug and medical device companies: Park Nicollet doctors will disclose ties to vendors

Excerpt:

Park Nicollet Health Services has become the first health care system in Minnesota, and one of an elite group nationally, to require doctors to publicly disclose their financial relationships with drug and medical device companies.

This week's move by Park Nicollet is designed to allay concerns that these relationships -- often forged with thousands of dollars in free meals and travel, speakers' fees, royalties for inventions and professional consultation payments -- pose a conflict of interest by influencing doctors' treatment decisions. Drug and device companies defend the payments, saying doctors' expertise is needed to make their products better.

Typically, the relationships are invisible to patients, but now those treated at Park Nicollet can begin viewing the details at tinyurl.com/cy5frs.

Obama: Running out of people to blame!

The Obama Economy

Excerpt:

As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem.

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence -- and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

The Democrats who now run Washington don't want to hear this, because they benefit from blaming all bad economic news on President Bush.

Reminds me of a joke:

Incoming Soviet Premier sits at this desk for the first time. Opening the top drawer he sees two envelopes prepared by his predecessor.

One envelope says on the outside - at the first crisis open this envelope. Written on the outside of the second envelope is the message, "At your second crisis open this envelope".

In time as will happen with government, the first crisis arose; and the Soviet premier carefully opened the first envelope. Inside was the message from his predecessor, "Blame me!".

Heartened by this wise advise, the Soviet premier railed on the errors and foibles of the previous premier.

Time passed and another major crisis arose. It was time to open the second envelope.

Inside was again the sage advice of the long deceased previous premier. The message was ....

"Prepare two envelopes"!

I heard this story probably about 15 years ago. When I left South Holly Baptist Church I told my successor this story.

Here it is in a slightly different flavor: http://toperjokes.blogspot.com/2007/05/two-envelopes.html

Wells Fargo ... most admired list

Full list

More comments on my 15 year anniversary:

1. When I was reentered the secular workforce, there were several that wondered if I left the ministry because I committed adultery (think Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker) (Someone actually asked me about this to my face! Really.) Answer: NO!
   
2. I had my review today and I did OK. But it was a tough year. It's not getting any easier.
   
3. I took a Fortran IV programming class as an elective in college. We used an IBM 360/65. Our keying device was an IBM 029 keypunch. That class probably was the key to getting hired by IBM