A Thought

 The solution to the NJ Transit incompetence is simple. For each event of inconvenienced passengers, each passenger shall be given a $1,000 gift card or just cash. The money shall come from management. The distribution is as follows:

1. The total per event is the $1,000 times the number of affected passengers. The total is called the Effected Event Cost, EEC.

2. All managers salaries shall be added up.

3. Then on a pro rate basis each manager shall have deducted from their salaries the  EEC costs for eacxh such event. If the cumulative EEC result in zero effective salaries, then they shall be fined accordingly.

This is the only way to motivate people.  

New Jersey Gross Incompetence

 

Let me recount my tale of going into New York today. I now really despise the place. As a descendant of Paulus Van der Voort, who settled in New Amsterdam in 1645, then bought a patch on the east side of the river called Brooklyn, I should have some family pride. But no longer. So why?

Well I had a meeting at Weill Cornell Hospital, and seeking an easy way in I took an Uber. Needless to say the city was tearing up York Avenue meaning it too 1 hour to exit at 61st street. Yep, 1 hour! I then decided to be loyal and take the NJ Transit back. So I got a cab to Penn Station, waited an hour an tried to board the train. Some 800 passengers had to board through only 2 open doors. The morons who run the train could not get the other doors open.

Then off we went, Off to Newark. It then got really bad. The train died at the Newark station. We st there for 30 min while intermittent squawking over the loudspeakers from the train conductor managed to insult everyone. It was incomprehensible and in that classic denigrating New Jersey accent, second to none in this galaxy for being both denigrating and incomprehensible.

Well we managed to get going to Brick Church. The train died again. Deader than a door nail. The NJ conductor just yelled, "Bwaah, Bwaah, Bwaah" and get of the train! That's it, west Newark, in a drug laden parking lot, 800 people had to climb down stains and seek out a plan B! Except one customer who just kept walking along the tracks to his station. After all, there would no train coming along for hours with the dead train in this key spot.

No directions, no alternatives, just malignant grins from the conductors! After all they were still getting paid so who cares. This is quintessential New Jersey, the pride of our new Marxist Governor. New Jersey is becoming a Cuba on the coast.

Thank God for Uber, I managed to get home.  But no thanks to our helicopter Gov!

Experts and Executives

 I have recently seen CEOs, whose profession was as an attorney with no visible technical expertise, espouse the technical competence in their respective companies. Now in my opinion and my experience, attorneys are good at one thing, and generally one thing only, namely defending their clients interest. They are for the most part in my opinion and my experience competent as to the details of their company. My only exception is my late boss and partner, Gus Hauser, who could disembody any technology and repackage it to be infinitely better. But alas that is just one person.

Now my current examples come from the autonomous vehicle craze and the electrical power distribution. In the  vehicle case I would be terrified in such but the lawyers CEO asserts I should have no fear. However facts may contradict that. Second, another lawyer asserts that AI will optimize electrical power distribution networks. Here I know a bit more and engineering them demands two things. First as set of system requirements, most of which are absent from the data sets used by AI. Some data sets are even contradictory. Second, it demands advanced engineering constructs which again may be lacking in past data sets.

Thus can one trust the pontifications of these attorneys? In my opinion and my experience, highly doubtful! 

Beware the Ides of March

As has been noted:

Caesar. Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.

Caesar. What man is that?

Brutus. A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March. 

Caesar. Set him before me; let me see his face.

Cassius. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

Caesar. What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.

Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.

Caesar. He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

 

War Plan Orange

 In the 1930s the US Navy developed a bunch of War Plans. War Plan Orange was for war with Japan. However it assumed an attack on the Philippines not Pearl Harbor. The problem with War Plans is that one rips them up once the war starts! One assumes that the objectives of the current war in Iran are:

1. Neutralize Iran's means and methods of external attack

2. Neutralize Iran's means and methods for nuclear weapons development and delivery

3. Establish an environment for Iran's people to seek an improved non-religious Government

If this is correct, which seems to be the current US Government position, albeit poorly articulated, then one should be able to measure progress.

One can assert for each:

1. External Attack Neutralization: Reasonable success but nor finished

2. Nuclear Abandonment: Uncertain but critical

3. Government Adjustment: Uncertain, but neutralized many of the incumbents

Now the US Government should clearly articulate the goals and objectives and articulate the progress made in each. The Nuclear Abandonment one is the most critical.  

Collapse of Amazon?

 I just noticed that 85% of my orders have been, lost, permanently delayed, sent elsewhere! Clearly in my opinion and my experience the incompetent head of distribution needs a job at Burger King washing toilets! Imagine an 85% failure rate. And these Bozos want to get into health care! That would reflect an 85% mortality rate, better than Mao's Great Leap Forward! Sell Short!