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Prompt Service

August 5, 2011 21:00:04.000

I was reading an article by Jeff Jarvis, in which he posits the "jobless future" due to automation. This passage, for instance:

Take retail. Borders. Circuit City. Sharper Image. KB Toys. CompUSA. Dead. Every main street and every mall has empty stores that are not going to be filled. Buying things locally for immediate gratification will be a premium service because it is far more efficient — in terms of inventory cost, real estate, staffing — to consolidate and fulfill merchandise at a distance. Wal-Mart isn’t killing retailing. Amazon is. Transparent pricing online will reduce prices and profitability yet more. Retail will be more efficient.

That came to mind because the USB hub I ordered on Amazon - a replacement for the one that up and died yesterday - arrived a few minutes ago. Making do with an ancient 4 port hub for less than 24 hours was a lot simpler than heading out to Best Buy, which is what Jeff is partly on about.

His larger point is just wrong though - consider agriculture. Over the last 200 years, that's gone from a field employing nearly all people to one that employs very few, while also growing more. Did that lead to a huge problem of idle hands? The problem is simpler: the current crop of elites we have in this country (and, I think all over the world, really), is simply not ready for the future. They are desperately trying to regulate the status quo back into existence, and all they are accomplishing is stagnation. Back when the revolution of automation hit agriculture, governments mostly stood aside, and it all worked out (yes, with many bumps and problems along the way).

What we face now isn't a jobless future; it's a complete lack of useful governing elites, right across the political spectrum. They really, really don't know what they don't know.

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posted by James Robertson

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Suburban Adventures

July 1, 2011 18:17:45.567

What you don't want to see your garage door doing:

Better now:

posted by James Robertson

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Just What I Needed For the Holiday Weekend

June 30, 2011 21:26:21.117

This afternoon saw an expensive home related problem - our garage door developed a problem that demands an immediate replacement. The good news? We have someone coming first thing tomorrow. The bad news? Insulated garage doors aren't cheap :/

Now Listening to: The Great Gig In The Sky by Pink Floyd from: Dark Side Of The Moon

posted by James Robertson

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Too Much Government

June 8, 2011 15:00:00.000

Reasonable people can have completely honest debates about the appropriate size of government, and about the proper roles and responsibilities of that government. However - when you have an education department breaking down doors, can't we all agree that there's something very wrong here?

Update: Looks like the link above is broken (did someone lean on the news outlet?).  You can get the "defense" from the Education department here, but my question remains - why on earth is the education department sending para-military units out to execute warrants? 

posted by James Robertson

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Graduation Day

June 1, 2011 1:09:51.547

My daughter is out of high school - off to college in the fall:

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An Exciting Day at Work

May 23, 2011 22:04:51.544

Nothing gets your attention like a midday trip to the emergency room. I've had a slight bit of chest pain (left side) for a few days now, and this morning it started to really hurt - my boss took me down to the nearest emergency room, and then waited the process out with me. They strapped me in, took some blood, ran a few tests - and apparently, I managed (no clue how) to strain a muscle in that spot (exacerbated last night, it looks like, when I helped a woman with a back problem put her bag in the overhead bin).

Alls well that ends well - my ekg, blood pressure, and pulse checked out fine, and the blood work didn't show anything ominous.

There was one upside - I managed to miss a meeting that would almost certainly have been dull :)

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Conversations You Never Want to Have

May 9, 2011 0:21:59.549

All I can say is - Doh!

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The Past is a Foreign Country

April 3, 2011 8:02:34.176

That phrase really hit home with me in a personal way this weekend. I'm taking my daughter to visit colleges she's gotten accepted into (this is SUNY weekend - we hit Binghamton and Albany). I graduated from Albany back in 1984, so I was interested in seeing how the place has changed.

The biggest change I've seen thus far is how the move of the drinking age from 18 to 21 has impacted the place. There's no Rathskeller at the campus center anymore; it's a food court now. The "Across the Street Pub" is still here, but instead of an open floor plan, they now have booths and a restaurant - we ate dinner there last night.

Then there's the building boom. The Albany campus used to be pretty compact, with everything in the center, surrounded by the 4 quads. Now there's a ton of stuff on the periphery, with new buildings still going up (that last part is kind of ironic, given the wave of budget cuts that have hit SUNY over the last couple of years).

The "culture" of the place has probably shifted as well, although that would be harder for me to see. The drinking age change alone will have seen to that, never mind anything else that's happened since I left here.

All in all, it's a bit strange coming back after so much time. I haven't been on campus since 1985 or so - I visited once after I graduated. The past really is a different country - we did things differently there :)

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So Long Unlimited Data

March 21, 2011 8:17:33.425

I finally pulled the plug on my unlimited iPhone data plan - I needed to travel to NYC this morning, and I needed network access. The Acela has WiFi, but when it's your own nickel, it's a bit pricey (which is really something that the HSR backers need to consider).

Anyway - a quick phone call to AT&T and I was sharing a hotspot with my Mac, my work laptop, and my daughter's Mac. I can work, as the VPN connection worked out as well. A bit slower than what I'm used to at home, but hey - it works. I'll have to watch the b/w usage; I already explained to my daughter that streaming video is not something we want to use on this :)

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Too Many Profiles

March 7, 2011 10:24:27.251

I only just realized that my Google profile was out of date. This is the one big downside to the plethora of social sites and systems that are out there now - if you maintain a profile on each of them, then any serious change in status (like, say, your job), requires an update to all of them. It's easy to miss one or two - I left Cincom back in October, and only just realized that my Google profile was dated. No wonder my old (now dormant) blog at Cincom kept popping up in my vanity searches :)

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