Diary of Stolen Moments

Back to business talk.

Many moons ago, I worked for a startup in California that made thin-film diamond coatings. These films were measured in microns, but extremely useful as free-standing heat sinks, low-atomic-weight/high-strength windows, ultra-hard cutting tools, and potentially, as material for computer chips.  We grew the diamond in low-pressure, high-heat reactors by sparking a hydrogen plasma, which would glow like a little violet sun (about 4″ diameter in our reactors, although they could be bigger or smaller), and then bleeding in methane. The carbon in the methane would disassociate and deposit on a silicon or molybdenum substrate.

We made beautiful, high-quality diamond. We stared at in in the SEM and pondered its Raman spectra. We had PhD’s investing crack propagation and boron doping. We were secretive, guarded about trade secrets, convinced of the superiority of our method. We even had a few purchase orders from AT&T.

And you know what? We went out of business.  The technology that won? A fast-growth method using an acetylene torch. No quartz reactors, no exotic plasmas, no high-quality gasses. No kidding. The coatings they made were not even diamond, per se. They were called “diamond-like carbon” because they had a crystal structure frozen somewhere between diamond and graphite.

But it was cheap, and good enough.

In their defense, the founders where I worked could not have known a priori that diamond technology would be slow to develop. And it’s easier to get funding when you pitch “we are developing a new class of integrated circuit material that will blow silicon away (with the gazillion $ market size to match)”, rather than when you pitch “we are developing a novel coating for sunglasses” (yawn).

Especially with novel materials, see if you have a blowtorch you can go to first, to get your revenue flowing.  This lesson is especially germain in the clean-tech arena.

Bummed that same-sex marriage was made unconstitutional in their state. CA already recognizes domestic partners, so why not make them whole? Seems like the anti group brought up the same blah-blah-blah about society collapsing if they do. Ridiculous. There is a nice Christian saying that I grew up with: “we are all God’s children”.  In other words, don’t push your superiority complex on others. We are healthy and happy here in Massachusetts, and we have one of the lowest divorce rates,  both historically and presently.

Before I leave the topic of elections (see yesterday’s post), one quick note on a local ballot initiative here, Question 1. First, let me set the stage by confessing that despite my kashi-eating, Obama-voting, green-energy exterior, I am a fiscal conservative. In my late twenties, I took a sudden interest in economics, did a lot of reading, attended night-school, and actually got accepted to a PhD program. Ultimately I did not go, for I reason I call “third pregnancy” (he was worth it). But then I served for 3 years on my town’s Finance Committee and got a practical look at how government spending goes.

Question 1 proposed elimination of the income tax in Massachusetts.  I have lived in states, such as Washington state, that have no income tax. It was nice. Mass. voters had previously voted to have income tax drop from 5.85% to 5.3% and the state never got there. By the way, they skim from capital gains here, too.  So I was open to the idea of booting the tax. We pay 5% sales tax. The estimate was that state revenue drop by 40%.

I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea, but I was open to it.  It was clear whether the sales tax would be raised (WA has 8% I believe) and whether that was regressive. More discussion was needed — the sponsors would have benefited from taking another year to increase communication.

But then the ads came out! Question 1 was deemed “irresponsible” and “reckless”. Really? Tell that to Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. The opposition was able to collect a lot more support (from state workers, etc.) and outspend the sponsors 10-1.

From Boston.com:
“The Coalition for Our Communities, which led the opposition to Question 1, outspent the question’s sponsors by a roughly 10-to-1 margin. That enabled them to pay for a flurry of TV ads and a sophisticated voter ID effort to identify likely and swing voters. Among other tactics, they sent full-color, personalized mailers that incorporated a voter’s name and community into the images and warned of specific local cuts.”

A lot of my peers became concerned about an end result of raised property taxes, because that’s what COC advertised. It was a brilliant campaign, for people dislike property taxes too. They worried about teacher layoffs, police layoffs — utter community breakdown. But here’s the thing: it was a bit misleading, and it presupposed that property taxes are bad.

Your local (property) taxes are the very best taxes you pay, for they cover schools, police, fire, library, roads, trash collection, town parks — your daily life in community. Moreover, local taxes are under a lot of local scrutiny. There are no Diane Wilkerson’s in our town of 13,500. Honestly. I have served for 9 years and while we don’t always agree, I can assure you we are always honest and law-abiding. We are responsible to our neighbors, who check in with us at meetings, at the bus stop, and the grocery store. There is a lot of intentional and unintentional oversight.

Your state taxes pay for state roads and bridges, state government employees, state parks, some income redistribution around schools, state prisons, and a host of pet projects of dubious value. In our town we don’t get a big kickback from the state, since we don’t qualify for much under their formula. Lowell, Lawrence, Springfield, Boston, and New Bedford get extra money for their school systems.

In conclusion, our property taxes would not go up much, here. Also, we are restricted by Prop 2 1/2 from raising the total tax collection more than 2.5 % year-to-year. And if they did go up? Would that be so bad, if it was mitigated by state taxes going down? It would bring government to more local control, which has more integrity, and is more responsive. What’s wrong with that??

It’s worth discussing, and I was disappointed at how many people quickly dismissed the initiative as “reckless”. Our town government is the least reckless government we have.

I first realized it when driving in my car one day in early summer and listening to NPR. They were playing an Obama speech -the one about race? not sure - and it was really good. Here we were as a nation, bitterly tangled in a police action in Iraq, a small unsteady war in Afghanistan, a disagreement with Russia, a growing mortgage crisis: and it hit me that this guy was going to go all the way. At this time, when race relations were on nobody’s mind because bigger pots were always boiling on the stove, we would take a giant step towards racial togetherness? I was so moved I actually cried.

Isn’t that just the way life is? It’s when we are not screaming for something that it suddenly, magically, gets fixed. The lights go on after your eyes have adjusted to candlelight. Maybe it’s a question of perspective.

Much credit to Obama and his team, and kudos to the black community recognizing the moment and yelling ‘yeah!’ with their votes. But most of all, most stunningly, this election was about getting the right person for the job. Clearly, the whole idealogue thing has not worked. We needed someone thoughtful, smart, and measured. Obama is the best candidate I have seen in my life. He proved he can organize a talented team, stay cool under fire, and execute to plan. Best wishes for a great first term!

Last night my old “analog” book group met at my house to discuss What Shamu Taught Me About Life Love and Marriage by Amy Sutherland. It is quick read, well suited to book groups. Overview: Sutherland, a journalist, researched/shadowed animal trainers for an article, and ends up using some of their techniques on her husband. It’s mostly about ignoring the negative (using LRS or “least reinforcing scenario”), and rewarding the positive.

We had a grand time drinking wine and generally not discussing the book at all. Most of us liked it but did not love it. It does not touch on the fact that some causes of friction (parenting styles?) are much more complicated than laundry piles. And if Sutherland had children, she would have definitely focused her new tricks on her kids. (Of course, if Sutherland had children, she wouldn’t have had time to write the book.) However, we all agreed that accentuating the positive was smart. One friend confessed that within a week, her husband commented “you’re being so nice!”

“I must have been behaving like such a bitch,” she lamented.

Homer Simpson had it right: “Doh!”

My efforts to get feedback about my product have yielded the predictable result: go back to the drawing board. Well, not completely, but it’s going to be a chunk of work to integrate. How could I have missed this??? Am I some kind of flippin’ idiot?? You can invite friends, but I never put in features for forming groups, chatting within groups, posting groups, browsing groups, etc. Whoops. Book salons are after all groups. I know what I need. I can imitate the Yahoo or LinkedIn formats. And I need to have a way to post a lot more content and leave it there, so search engines find Talkphoria.  And I can’t forget genres again.

This week is hopeless as I’m hosting an in-person (!) book group tonight, and tomorrow is Halloween. But next week it’s nose-to-the-grindstone!

When I started my Talkphoria project, my husband suggested slap together some open-source stuff. “Use phpBB,” he said. I looked at it, but it only does one thing: bulletin boards. Apparently there are a host of other widgets for photo-sharing, shopping carts, etc. My hosting company even offers them.  But I wasn’t finding what I wanted. What did I need a shopping cart for? I needed to build certain features like displaying, hosting, and joining book salons. Most pre-packaged things were off the mark.

I wish I had been aware of drupal (there’s no way I was going to pay for Microsoft frontpage). I think it would have offered me the flexibility and speed I needed. Oh well! You have to know php and html pretty well to integrate all this stuff, anyway. Next time.

Yesterday I set up a quickie website on a friend’s suggestion — I’d had him laughing at my misfortune of dropping my new iPhone in the toilet. (It was in a back pocket of my courderoys, and fell out upon undressing. Fortunately, I’d hadn’t peed yet!) This time I used all the prepackaged stuff from my hosting service. Again, they offer phpBB but give no hints about how to integrate it into the website. And the templates were ugly. However, in about 4-5 hours I had something decent up.

My last post was fairly accurate, unfortunately! Despite a most amazing Game 5, and a Beckett-liscious Game 6, the Red Sox fell flat again for game 7. Bully to the Rays for outplaying them. They pitched, fielded, and hit just a little better than the Sox. They deserve to go to the World Series.

Out here in sports-nuts-land, talk radio immediately jumped to asking what lineup changes should be made for next year. They mentioned a player in San Diego, and trading Ellsbury and Buchholz for said person. Boy! Do we have to be such hard-asses? I sure hope the Sox stick with the general lineup. Considering everything, even my previous post’s thoughts, they did great. Obviously, the Varitek situation will require a hard look.  And the bullpen could use more depth. And another strong starter would be a very good thing (Wakefield may have to finally throw in the towel, although I hope he stays on as a reliever.)  But why fix what ain’t broken? Despite injuries and setbacks, they really rocked.  I wore my 2007 World Series Champions shirt today, and I’m looking forward to March!

I’m a bad fan. Once the score got to 5-0, I switched channels. Later, I saw the score was 7-1 and sadly figured, better luck next year. Then the Red Sox battled back, and won, 8 to 7!… Wow!

But I’m still dubious about whether they can pull through this series. It’s not only that Tampa Bay is proving to be an awfully good, very very busy home run factory. It’s that the Sox seem flatter than a 3-day old soda.

Whence the fizz?  I wonder if it evaporated with Manny, Millar, and Damon. Over the years, Theo Epstein has slowly culled the pesonalities from the team, replacing them with the strong-and-silent type: “Where do you want me, coach?” On the surface, I think its a great idea. Colorful types can be a real pain in the tush. They are imperfect people; thistles.

But maybe a little scratching stimulates the skin. Maybe a little fizz makes the tongue tingle. Have the Sox become too bland? It’s interesting that Schilling threw out the ceremonial first pitch. He’s the last rogue standing, albeit from the DL sidelines.  Maybe a bit of his attitude was channeled in the 8th inning.

So at work, or in Town, don’t get too upset with your rabble-rousers. I am all for Buddhism and searching for serenity; but unless you are a yoga teacher, it does not make for a great product. A little questioning and little bitching and little itching stimulates every organization.  Call it creative disruption.

While washing a spaghetti pot and listening to radio news, a bad feeling crept over me. Is this financial mess going to spiral into some horrible depression? Are we going to lose our jobs? Am I going to have to move my family into my parents house and subsist on rice and beans?

The numbers are startling. “Actual losses from subprime mortgages and other exotic instruments were large but absorbable,” according to Steve Forbes in his October 13 column his eponymous magazine. “Packages of subprime mortgages came to about $1.2 trillion. At worst, perhaps half of those –$600 billion– might ultimately go bad. Compare that to $56 trillion of net assets of American households.”

His argument continued that banks should not have to write down the full $1.2t but “just” the $600b.  And that argument has merit, but lets review those numbers:

$1.2 trillion = 35% of the GDP.

Yikes!  How is a disappearance equaling a third of our national commerce “absorbable”? Is he kidding? The losses equal just 2% of net American assets, so maybe this will be a 2% recession –but I think not. See how Iceland has become insolvent.  It has become plain that we are all connected to each others’ stupid financial decisions. Europe at first chortled “the world no longer gets a cold when America sneezes”. Poor dears. They had no idea the kind of nasty viruses we harbor up our collective nose. Our contagion is compounding losses the world over.

Now even my rich friends are holding off shopping. Exports and imports will drop. Oil is down to $86/barrel today. (Funny how in hindsight, high prices look like a fine thing.) And the bailout plan is not working quickly… Better stock up on echinacea tea, folks. It’s going to be a long winter.