The very funny comic-blog Hyperbole and a Half recently did a post where the author observes that being an adult is hard. The realization strikes that it’s not enough to clean the house thoroughly once; you have to clean all the things, all the time.
And this is slightly analogous to how I feel every morning now. Because the alarm clock goes off on all the days.
Four years ago, I accepted a job offer where I was the sole Texas employee in a company where most of my co-workers were on Greenwich Mean Time. I set up a home office, and although I traveled quite a bit, my daily office hours were extremely flexible. The process of work was something that I could do at any hour of the day, any day of the week. “Weekends” lost their meaning; if something needed doing, any day or time was fair game. Read more…
*but were afraid to ask.
Last Saturday, I was at Grand Lake in northeast Oklahoma with my family. There was an incident on a boat, which can be blamed neither on alcohol nor weather nor some reckless yahoo on a Ski-doo. Sadly, there is no one to blame but me… but I stepped down off the dock crookedly, and I twisted my right ankle. It just rolled outward and popped, and I went down like a sack of concrete.
I’ve had ankle sprains before, but nothing ever like this. Within minutes, it was swollen to the size of a softball. I was able to climb to a sitting position, but just barely; mostly, I spent the day lolling on the aft seat while people brought me Advil and cold beverages and ice packs wrapped in towels. I didn’t swim, I didn’t go on the Waverunners, I couldn’t go up and down to the docks like everyone else.
Soon, the swelling got colorful. It’s been a fine rainbow of bruises, from aqua and blue to purplish-red. I hobbled around the rest of the weekend, doing the PRINCE treatment and trying to stay off it. By the second day, it didn’t seem to be improving, so I made an appointment with my family physician in Dallas. Read more…
Migration into Collin County in 2008
Collin County’s growth trajectory over the last few years has looked less like a pleasantly inclining line, and more like a hockey stick. But have you wondered where everyone is coming from?
Take a look at this interactive infographic from Forbes compiling where Americans are moving, by county. I’ve linked to the map for Collin County.
Black lines show people moving into Collin County and red lines show people moving away. If you mouse over a blue county, you can see how many people moved, and what their median incomes were.
It looks like the majority of the relocators were coming from Texas, Southern California, Southern Florida, and the Northeast. Interestingly, those few who were leaving Collin ended up in other Texas metroplexes like Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.
By comparison, Detroit's residents are fleeing in droves. We have been fortunate that North Texas fared comparatively well during the recession.
The map application is fascinating to play with for other counties too. For example, check out Wayne County, Michigan, where Detroit is located; what a sad state of affairs.
This is all based on IRS data for 2008, and is a neat picture of how diverse Collin County has become.
It has always seemed like everyone here is from somewhere else, present company included. Now we can see it in black and white (and red).
Just about one year ago, I made the decision to take my sporadic freelance work and turn it into a full-time consulting business.
I joined the local Chamber of Commerce, as well as a couple of networking groups in order to amplify my client outreach.
I also applied to the Leadership Frisco program, was subsequently accepted, and began the class year in August 2009.
My blogging here—which had been heretofore a supporting effort to my public sector business development job hunt—was suddenly less needed, and I had far less time for it. Read more…
The NYT has a story today about just how dire the situation is for the U.S. states. There are many unusual measures being enacted in order to scrape up revenue: releasing prisoners early… closing state parks… Maine is going to tax candy. Kentucky is going to tax cell phone ringtones.
“Legislators have never dealt with a recession as precipitous and rapid as this one,” said Susan K. Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. “They’re faced with some of the toughest decisions legislators ever have to make, for both political and economic reasons, so it’s not surprising that the environment has become very tense.”
The hardest part is that it’s going to take a while. If you believe the analysts who say we have indeed hit the bottom of the market drop, we’ll still have a long while to wait before unemployment turns around and the housing market picks up. And both of those things have to happen before consumers are back to work, and will start spending again — in turn creating the boosts to sales, property and income tax that the states will require in order to see revenues return. So there’s still a very long way to go.
In a March 14, 2009 New York Times article called “Is it Time to Retrain Business Schools?“, author Kelley Holland has a new take on the “where did this all go so wrong?” autopsy that everyone is performing on the current economy.
Read more…
From NCSL.org:
A number of states have proposed, designed and enacted state-level stimulus plans in response to the current economic recession. Public spending on infrastructure projects is perhaps the most common component of state stimulus plans. Other elements include small business development, increased capital in local financial markets, job creation incentives, and investments in green energy and health technology.
The [chart at link above] shows stimulus plan details for 16 states. Investments from these selected states add up to over $10 billion.
This bit from Indiana is especially interesting: “The proposal also clarifies that the legislature, not the governor, is to distribute future federal stimulus funds.” In other words, the Indiana General Assembly has ruled that any money coming to the state from the Congressional stimulus package will get appropriated by the legislature.
And yet, the Indiana General Assembly must adjourn no later than April 30, 2009. I expect the governor will have to call a special session in order for the Assembly to meet to appropriate these funds.
So, in a bit of wonkish irony: the legislature made a rule calling dibs on doling out federal stimulus money… but existing rules will likely mandate that the governor gets to decide the mechanism by which the lege will do the doling.
On Friday, US News & World Report ran a piece that has the internet abuzz.
In “15 Companies That Might Not Survive 2009,” Rick Newman opens with the recent demise of big-box retailers Circuit City and Linens-N-Things. From there, I expected to see the list populated mostly with similar retail operations — companies that sell consumer goods at a time when consumers just aren’t consuming. (It’s not a trick of the crystall ball to speculate that long-troubled BlockBuster likely won’t last the year. They weren’t doing well before the bust, and haven’t significantly changed their product offerings or business model in any meaningful way since. Chrysler was another no-brainer for the list.)
But I wasn’t expecting #15:
BearingPoint. (BGPT; about 16,000 employees; stock down 21%). This Virginia-based consulting firm, spun out of KPMG in 2001, is struggling to solve its own operating problems. The firm has consistently lost money, revenue has been falling, and management stopped issuing earnings guidance in 2008. Stable government contracts generate about 30 percent of the firm’s business, but the firm may sell other divisions to help pay off debt. With a key interest payment due in April, management needs to hustle - or devise its own exit strategy.
What especially surprised me is the idea that if BearingPoint survives, it will be based on their substantial pile of “stable government contracts.” Read more…
I was preparing to travel to Bonita Springs, Florida for a legislative leadership conference. It was wintry and cold in Dallas, so it was difficult to pack light, warm-weather clothes — even though I knew the temps in southwest Florida were in the 70°s.
I had just been interviewed by the New York Times (who made me sound a little ditzy).
I was planning a vacation with my brother and sister-in-law, who figured on having a last hurrah before they started a family.
The US states had just started to get an inkling of the budget trouble that was coming down the pike (PDF).
We were still in the midst of primaries for the US presidential election. Neither party had a nominee yet.
Doesn’t it feel like one hundred years ago?
I recently worked for an Irish company, so I am more interested in American perspectives on Irish business and culture than others might be. This NYT article “The Irish Economy’s Rise Was Steep, and the Fall Was Fast” (Jan 3, 2009) offers a snapshot of the current condition of the Celtic Tiger.
“This place missed out entirely on the moment,” says Stephen Kinsella, an economist at the University of Limerick. “There has been no accumulation of wealth here.”
Walking through the garbage-strewn, empty roads on a cold, misty afternoon, Mr. Kinsella points to the shuttered houses and the mothers still dressed in pajamas taking their children home from school. Social workers in Moyross refer to the “pajama index”: the more men and women one sees who do not take the time and care to dress for the day, the worse the economic situation tends to be.
The “pajama index” is well-articulated — although not just as an Irish phenomenon, because I’m sure that it’s a symptom in other Western cultures as well. Just as England is more than London, Ireland is more than Dublin.
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I make no promises about quantity or quality of posts... when real life gets busy, online goes quiet. All opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone. Don't hold them against anyone else!