and i have copied you on a letter to Alaska Airlines investor relations. I was meaning to write it yesterday, but, on pat's birthday, i devote the day to her needs and wishes.
at computer consoles, i believe we came to understand that companies exist to first provide meaningful work for their employees, then to satisfy customers, and then to return a profit.
while this burdens the waterfall model – priorities too often are viewed as time-sequenced – one does have to have a hierarchy of principles to help the struggle through the compromises.
i think, as best i now recall, that some of my ideas on a company's purpose were also focused by early years at AT&T, where "everyone has to have a customer focus" was a common chant. this, to overcome the "you can have internal customers" awareness. the idea of the "real" customer focus was, of course, to help people see their efforts in terms of the ultimate user of one's own work-product. but my push-back was "surely there are a number of employees – i.e. the sales force – who have a special focus on that real customer?" so i thought that principle (focus on the real customer) couldn't be that high on the general list. so, if not, what then?
if every employee then has meaningful, satisfying work, then the company must, of necessity, have satisfied customers, and therefore a profit. managers, whom we trust, focus the effort of the productive workers, to drive the second objective, and hence the third.
since i'm not an entrepreneur, i can only imagine, but thinking about the few times i've entertained those thoughts, (there are two distinct) the principles fall along the chain of the argument: i've got to like (if not love) what i'm contemplating, someone will find it useful, helpful, if not necessary, and, oh yes, can i earn a living doing this.
now to the news, that was the opinion page.
i'm really into shell functions, now for pat's and my needs, managing our portfolio, bottom line, i fell like i've never learned more about the shell, and how to use it, than at any other period in my life. and i do recall other lessons i've learned from your advice. chief among them, the need to generalize is the first temptation to resist.
as a teaching tool, i've kept a shell diary for going on two years, and will be posting it publicly in the not too distant future. an idea about two months ago, and gaining some attention as the time allows, is to "curate" my work, going over all the entries of progress and ideas put into practice, then harvesting by those surviving practices. so the diary will have two dimensions: the historical trace, and the current practice. Since it will be on-line, the reader may choose either first.
to wrap this up , there are two ideas worth mention here. the first, which helps this curating effort, is an annotation i call FOTD – function of the day. so picking up those threads makes the curating easier. the very latest, picked up last week on "stack overflow", has made my shell programming most productive, the ability to trace to a spot in the code, this code fragment:
$ trap read debug
is the means. It stops code execution : trap … debug until the "…" executes, in this case a "read". which usually means just hitting a C/R at the terminal.
As ever, Bill,
Thanks for the friendship, now Happy Birthday, and "Hi" to Susan, as hers arrives.
Steve,
face it. you're my conduit to those people who like/try to entertain those of us who can't get enough live sports. so, seeing as how you follow the links, here's yet another crazy idea.
I know how the field is trimmed for "the weekend" on the pga tour. how about if we add two (or three, if the other number of qualifiers is odd) to play on the weekend. identify the otherwise non-qualifying player(s) with lowest round on thursday and friday.
e.g. at the barclay's, the two beneficiaries would be
will wilcox: 67 + 76 = 143, +3 and
chris kirk: 76 + 68 = 144, +4
no other players having recorded a 67 on thursday, nor a 68 on friday. this would surely give incentive to those who had horrendous rounds on thursday to play a steady round on friday. also it would likely keep in the field a few players who've had a good round on either day and may be able to show something on the weekend.
golf needs all the shots in the arm it can get these days.
please share this with golf's guardians.
=*+*. marty mcgowan (m) 908 230-3739 64 Diamond Spr Dr, Monroe Twp, NJ 08831
<2016-07-23 Sat>
Professor Gusterson,
Your Veterans and Shootings letter to the NYT on 7/22 in reply to the Phil Klay editorial response to your column on sapiens.org prompts me to share a "Support our Troops" (albeit) quiet campaign.
To effectively support our troops, at least since the Iraq invasion, I've advocated these three points:
You are addressing the 3rd point; the Veterans Administration is warming up to the second. I'd like to think the first point would catch America's attention.
The most notable person I've shared this with is my cousin, Rick Nolan, who represents the MN 8th (Duluth) in the House. One bio note: Rick holds the record for the longest interval between congressional terms – 32 years.
In a recent column – in the last three months – you caught my attention with what seemed a manifesto, a call to action. Searching your columns, these two In Defense of Big Love and One Neighborhood at a Time come close, but don't seem to be the one I'm thinking of. I was impressed to the point of regaining my willingness to follow your written word.
However, with your Friday column, The Death of the Party, I'll take issue and hope that I'm kinder than your PAP (Person Across the Page) has been. I've followed your appearances on The News Hour for the past year with chagrin, as you shed your dis-belief in the possibility of Donald Trump. You should realize he is the logical consequence of Republican history of the last 40+ years. It didn't start with Goldwater, but with Nixon's "Southern Strategy". That success merely imported winning the KKK over to the Republican side to a northern audience.
By the time Trump arrived the whole fabric of a "party united by a consistent belief system", was a quite full of holes. The various wings of the party existed when Nixon identified the "silent majority". The party had 'big money/business as usual', defense hawks, social conservatives, and 'Joe the plumber' wings from that time. That the Republicans didn't accuse we liberals of divide and conquer, class warfare phrases in the days thru Reagan, was those classes hadn't been fully exploited yet.
Whatever common connection shared by the Bernie and Trump movements has been, it's the we-were-duped-by-our-leaders realization. The difference in degree and tone is because the Republican response is from people, the silent majority, Reagan Democrats, who if they'd reflected on it, would never have moved over to the Republican side. When Trump arrived, they finally realized the duplicity (Romney's 47%, etc.), and thinking of themselves Republican, wound up with either Trump, or Cruz.
In my most active political campaign, the 1974 California congressional race to overturn Charles E Wiggins, I led the precinct walkers for Bill Ferris. I read opportunities to obtain endorsements from groups across the spectrum. I observed: "imagine a political speech in front of a barn, some people are going around to the right, others to the left. There's a meeting going on behind the barn. Don't you suppose we should send some scouts out back to see what's happening?" While studying the history of Minnesota's Floyd B Olson, and hometown (Appleton MN) hero, Elmer Benson, my insight wasn't original: "some Democrats (including the DFL) had supported George Wallace, and others Henry Wallace."
Here's a thought you can use without attribution: the one time Trump and Cruz both told the truth was when each accused the other of lying.
My indictment of your contribution of the Republican slide into the gutter was, for example, your suggesting that Paul Ryan had a reasonable plan. Wasn't his budget proposal (mostly tax cuts) so out of line as Bernie Sanders. I didn't count the number of times you chided the Republican House on it's attempt to repeal the ACA. Nor any repudiation of "My objective is to make Obama a one-term president", especially when Obama, after an honest attempt to go up the hill, was told "No Negros need enter" (in essence). His attempt to "play ball" was rebuffed before he tried. Your suggesting Obama didn't schmooze the hill demonstrated your PAP's notice of "false equivalence".
I've not taken this time merely to hector. I encourage you to join a journalistic cadre to develop a "consistent belief system" for a conservative party.