Being a guest

It’s the holiday season so a friendly reminder about the rules of being a guest at someone’s party

I’ve never run out of booze at my parties.

Pretend they're not yours

Perhaps the best advice I can offer anyone that was ever offered to me (via a magazine I think) is that if you want to get along with your parents better all you have to do is pretend they’re someone else’s parents. 

If you do that, all those annoying habits they’ve had all their lives that drive you crazy appear less bothersome or perhaps even amusing or cute. All the unsolicited advice they provide is little different than the same advice that an aunt or the drunk uncle wants to provide at family parties. 

In truth, there are few things your parents do that you find incredibly annoying that other people’s parents don’t also do. All parents are roughly the same (except for the really bad ones) and yet it’s your own that seem to annoy you the most while everyone else’s seem to be normal or adorable. 

You’d never get into a yelling match with your best friend’s parents right?

The other alternative to your parent problem is wine.

Check your tire pressure

It’s winter meaning it’s cold meaning your tire pressures are going to drop at least a few pounds. You should probably be checking your pressures once a month but now is an even more important time to check your pressures.

I’ve been lazy lately and I haven’t been keeping up with my tire pressures thus the car has been a bit sluggish. I popped them up to F38/R34 and things are MUCH better. The car is far pointier, if anything, it’s too pointy at 38/34 (I ran them at 37/33 in the summer) but the car is lots more fun now.

Charity

I’ve decided to reorganize my efforts at giving next year and, at the same time, I want to try to expand my giving. I don’t really give anywhere near enough to charity and I make plenty enough to do give something that’s meaningful.

Right now I have monthly payments to Doctors without Borders and to a SFU student grants program. I also gave a little money to the BC Cancer Foundation via Tina’s bike ride. The amounts add up to very little for the most part – I think this year I’ve given about $400CDN, a week effort at best although I suspect I’ve above the median contribution by most individuals. (I’m going to try to make an additional contribution to someone by the end of year to raise this figure)

Going forward I want to at least double my contribution and possibly quadruple my contributions to charity. I want to stick to 2-3 charities and spread the giving between a local organization and an international one. My preferred causes, in order, are poverty, education and health and I’m a progressive with these causes (for example I won’t support an organization who teaches health alongside a policy that hides a woman’s choice) but I’m not political with them – the work being done should be politically agnostic.

I think I’ll stick with Doctors without Borders for now unless someone has a good suggestion. I’m considering the International Red Cross as a potential replacement. Locally, I’m leaning towards the Vancouver Food Bank although I haven’t really looked at local options.

Thoughts? Where do you give money? What are good organizations that you’ve noticed?

More Buy GM

More thoughts:

- The Big Three are facing the same liquidity crisis everyone is facing and declaring bankruptcy isn’t going to help. No one wants to loan them money so they’d head straight to liquidation unless the government stepped in. 

- Restructuring. What’s left to restructure? The union agreements have been redone such that the Big Three auto plants are as cost effective and efficient as the Japanese and a lot better than the Europeans. The white collar gang has been stripped bare as well. If the government is going to attach conditions related to restructuring then the answer is that the two things left are: 1. Cut retiree benefits and 2. Reduce the dealer network by 50-70%. Neither of these are things politicians are willing to let happen (they’d have to change state laws to allow mass closure of car dealerships).

- The automakers aren’t asking for enough money, I think they need about $100 billion to get through the economic crisis since they’re losing about $25 billion per quarter and the economy isn’t going to turn around in 3 months nor are the benefits of restructuring going to happen before 2010. They aren’t asking for more for obvious reasons: they’d get laughed out of the building.

Be cool

I had previously mentioned one of my life rule of staying cool and today during my annual review there were those comments saying, “Never gets flustered” and “Always keeps his cool”. 

It’s nice to know that what I’ve invested a lot into doing is what people are actually noticing. It’s also good to see that my co-workers appreciate me – I often think I’m barely competent.

Panic in Detroit

Panic in Detroit

One of the better explanations of why GM et al. should be bailed out by the government. My disagreements with him:

1. Cleaning the corporate offices out. Bob Lutz may be a skeptic of global warming but he’s not a skeptic of what buyers want and he’s the one pushing GM to make more fuel efficient cars. The Volt is something he’s pushed as is the Cruze. The relationship between the quality of GM’s cars and Bob’s arrival are direct. As for other executives, the 3 carmakers have already brought in a lot of fresh blood over the past few years to clean up this mess.

2. Making fuel efficiency a condition of the bailout. If gas is expensive the Big 3 will make more fuel efficient cars. The market should be driven by natural demand and modified with incentives (rebates for hybrids, higher gas taxes), it should not be driven by supply contstraints. Also, moving to a more fuel efficient car isn’t a 1 year process like Thomas Friedman thinks, it’s a 10 year process. The cars that are being released now were locked in 4-6 years ago. You think the new Dodge Ram would have come out if that wasn’t the case?

NDP widens lead over ruling Liberals

NDP widens lead over ruling Liberals

Seriously BC, are you nuts? If Sarah Palin is a zero and Barack Obama is a ten in terms of competence then Carole James rates maybe a 3 while Gordon Campbell rates a 6, maybe a 7.

I don’t necessarily like everything Campbell does but he’s done a pretty good job overall. The launch of the carbon tax was a brave and thoughtful decision that will push BC in the right direction and his administration has been largely scandal free.

James, on the other hand, is just screechy and has yet to demonstrate any plan that isn’t about disagreeing with Gordon Campbell. Her opposition to the carbon tax was pure pandering to voters and I have no confidence in her ability to manage the finances of the province in a prudent manner that keeps us afloat during the global meltdown.

BC is one of the best run provinces in Canada and the steady hand that Gordon Campbell has provided has been a big part of that.

Buy GM – Part 2

A few more items

- My suggestion that GM could tear up the union contracts was misguided as the current contracts are reasonable and competitive with what other car makers are paying their employees. The real problem are the old benefits of retired employees for which GM has already made a deal with the union to deal with – the union is pretty much taking over the bulk of the debt although GM has agreed to make several billion dollar payments into this pension/health fund. However, the handover doesn’t start till 2010 by which point GM will be out of money thus their begging for money.

- Ford is technically in better financial health than GM right now but they’re a lousy car company that is stocked with lousy cars thus they deserve to die before GM. There’s not a single Ford car in North America that can claim to be a class leader and only a couple that are class competitive. Their engine technology is 2nd to last (Chrysler is the worst) and they have a product list that is an absolute mess.

- I take, as a basic assumption, that all businesses have a very narrow self-interest being “what profit can I make today and this quarter?”. Any acts of corporate citizenship that appear to be of no measurable benefit to them and acts that appear to be long-term planning are merely fronts to help pad the short-term bottom line. That being the case I assume that businesses are inherently stupid in that they can’t do for themselves things that sustain them or keep them from doing hugely stupid things.

Now I don’t think it’s in government’s interest to protect these companies from doing stupid thing to themselves but I do think it is the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens. Any business that gets big can potentially harm a countries’ citizens and it is for that reason that the government should put into place regulations that temper the self-interest of business. It means telling banks that they have a responsibility to ensure that they vet anyone who takes out a mortgage.

Yes, a citizen should have the good sense to not take out a loan he can’t afford but how are they supposed to react when the bank tells them that they can afford it and that it’s well within their means? The bank is the expert in this case and unless you have highly educated the bank will hold the upper hand, you are paying them for their expertise in managing your money so you’d expect them to help you but that’s not what they’re there for.

Bankers exist to make money off you and they will loan money to you in any way they can so they can own you. The same applies to real estate agents, they’re not trying to sell your house for everything it’s worth, they are trying to collect as large a commission as possible in a short a period of time as possible.

So it is that which is why a government must regulate markets; not to keep businesses afloat but to protect its citizens from harm. The rules are the cost of doing business with the side effect that it prevents companies from doing terribly stupid things to itself.

I’ve sorted veered off from my case for GM and into another topic that I hold pretty dear which is health care which I discuss in the near future. I’ll explain how the American health care system is the way it is and why, today, it puts American business at a significant competitive disadvantage.

Lightroom v. Aperture

Word on the street says that Adobe’s Lightroom is the better overall professional photo management application but after time in both Lightroom and Aperture I have to say that I LOVE Aperture. It lacks the presets that Lightroom has but the shortcuts are hugely intuitive (like a Mac app should be) and everything is where it feels like it should be. It’s great!