KAI, the Kitchen Appliance Inventory Index
In the late 90s, I read that you could you learn more about the economy, while sitting in a truck stop in the middle of the country, than reading economic papers. One famous investor even regularly called the head waitress at a truck stop every month on the dot to know how business was doing. Coffee consumption and how much diesel is filled up at giant truck stops are a leading indicator of how the economy is doing. As a matter of fact, Professor Ed Leamer of UCLA partnered with Ceridian, who manages payment cards for trucking companies—drivers, to create the Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index, or PCI.
“Trucking represents inventory and finished goods in motion,” said Leamer. “In a normal economy, the trucking activity is proportional to GDP.”
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on the other hand favored the Men’s Underwear Index as an unconventional economic indicator. This measure suggests that declines in the sales of men’s underwear indicate a poor overall state of the economy, while upswings in underwear sales predict an improving economy.
After unsuccessfully looking around on Black Friday, and Small Business Saturday, for a common, yet not inexpensive, large kitchen appliance in stock, I conclude it has to be an economic indicator of some sort. How can they be out of this item already? I am purposefully being coy here on the item, as it is a Christmas gift after all.
I called major kitchen appliance stores and department stores from San Francisco to Gilroy. I checked also their online inventories. I visited the manufacturer’s website. Even Amazon didn’t carry the item anymore, except at hugely inflated prices.
I therefore introduce the KAI, or Kitchen Appliance Inventory Index. I don’t really know how to interpret it yet. Perhaps a low inventory means that the factories in China weren’t running due to the covid pandemic. Or perhaps it means that folks are cooking more at home, have depleted the inventory long before the Christmas shopping season, and therefore many restaurants will be at risk. Or it could mean that home exercise equipment will be in high demand, as folks gained a few too many pounds from delicious home-made cakes. It is strange nevertheless.
I’ll get Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal, Molly Wood, or the undergrad economic student living under my roof on the case.
November 28, 2020
A hectic Thanksgiving kitchen is the best kitchen
A lot is going on in our little kitchen this Thanksgiving. Four chefs are busy creating various dishes. It is a lot of fun to have a family of foodies.
We’re serving up brie and chorizo or proscuito crackers for appetizer.
The smoked hard lemonade came out just ok. I need to smoke them more time. Although, when it is mixed with bourbon, it was perfect.
There are the Brussels sprouts (in bacon fat), my wife’s famous bread-celery-apple-herb-walnut stuffing, fresh cranberries, a beer-can chicken surrounded by carrots, potatoes, garlic and onions, salmon and mashed potatoes with chives and bacon.
Desert will be a traditional Thanksgiving pie, made with Magdalena big cheese squash from my daughter’s garden club’s loot.
There will be enough food for a few days, regardless of the size of the bird. For me the most important part of Thanksgiving is not the food, but the fun that goes on in our kitchen. It gets messy. The music gets a little crazy. There may be some dancing involved. It is always a good time.
November 26, 2020
Thanksgiving Prep
It will be a big grilling/smoking day tomorrow. We are making a lot of food for our Thanksgiving feast.
- Grilled lemons for a hard smoked lemonade
- Beer can chicken - a turkey is just too big for the four of us.
- Smoked salmon - for the pescatarian in the family
- Smoked bacon - to be added to the mashed potatoes or mashed yams.
- Brussels sprouts
And a few potentials for the weekend, including sausages.
November 26, 2020
RIP Maradona, #10
This morning, Argentine newspaper El Clarin shared the sad news that Maradona had died.
Diego Armando Maradona murió este miércoles tras sufrir un paro cardiorrespiratorio en el barrio San Andrés, en el partido bonaerense de Tigre, donde se había instalado días atrás luego de la operación en la cabeza a la que fue sometido por un hematoma subdural. El 30 de octubre había cumplido 60 años.
It is difficult to grasp the influence Maradona had in this world. He loved the fame and to be infamous. Everybody knew of him, in good and in bad times. On the pitch, on the side lines, with Fidel, or with both middle fingers in the air.
When Kobe died in a helicopter accident, mostly the US mourned. It is different with Maradona. All over the world, people mourn Maradona. People are in the streets of Buenos Aires (obviously), as well as in Napoli.
In the Belgian newspapers they refer to him as Pluisje (La Pelusa), although I never heard of him by that name. To me, he was and always will be Maradona. The hand of god. The goal of the century.
I was still young when he dominated with Argentina and Napoli. I also remember his first defeat against the Red Devils in the opening game of the World Cup in Spain. Yet, I somehow blocked out Maradona’s revenge in the half final in Mexico. (The Belgian Red Devils were already on cloud nine, playing the half-final of a World Cup.)
Throughout the years, Maradona never went away. He kept popping up in the news. There are his multiple visits to Cuba, and with Fidel. His daughter, Dalma, lived across the street of a cousin in law in Buenos Aires. There was the reunion with Pele during his television show, La Noche de Diez. He was the Argentine coach in the World Cup in South Africa. Maradona was even the protagonist on a T-shirt my son received from his cousins in Argentina. It was a drawing of the following picture of Maradona against many Red Devils.
We all watched the recent documentary about Maradona on HBO. What Babe Ruth is to baseball (I guess), or Michael Jordan to basketball, Maradona has been to soccer.
When I think of Maradona, I think of three things: (1) the hand of god, (2) genio!, genio!, genio! and (3) life is life.
https://twitter.com/VitaliosM/status/1331870846156206081
https://twitter.com/NicolaiLisberg/status/1331859464413204480
https://twitter.com/robbiestatto/status/1331657814847201280
November 25, 2020
Catching up
Today, Tuesday, I take a mid-week day of vacation. I am stretching this Thanksgiving week longer. As I am grilling some chicken wings for lunch, it is a good moment to catch up on saved TED talk, Youtube videos and podcasts.
The Infinite Game
In the Infinite Game, Simon Sinek discusses some of the principles from his 2019 book.
He makes it sounds so obvious and straight forward that some companies or adversaries work towards a different end goal. The North Vietnamese played to run out the clock. So did Reagan in the cold war against the Russians. The Afghans are the masters of playing the Infinite Game.
In business, it is convenient to trot out Apple or Tesla. They are truly great companies with great products. Though I fear grand theories can be more easily applied to them.
“While Microsoft executives were discussing presentation after presentation how they would beat Apple, their Apple counter parts were focussed on the educational customer and not on their direct competition. They were playing the infinite game.”
And yet, was Steve Jobs avoiding Amazon, the competitor, when Apple strong armed publishers into eBook price fixing?
I would love to read the infinite game plans of some smaller companies, as they transitioned from a small to mid-sized company, and eventually a large company. The struggle will be more real.
Companies that solely focus on competition will die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.” — Edward de Bono
No Rules Rules
What if your company had no rules? is a Freakonomics book report podcast about Netflix’s Reed Hastings book. He talks about how he stumbled into the now famous Netflix culture, where the focus is all about enabling employees, and isn’t so much about policies and rules. A key tenet of Netflix is to get rid of the normal controls you’d come to expect in a corporate environment. Things like expense reports; approvals for big spending decisions; vacation policies. The idea is to entrust every employee to decide for themselves and provide them the flexibility. That, and a policy of not hiring any brilliant jerks.
Netflix is managing on the edge of chaos. - Reed Hastings
In conversation with current and former Netflix-employees, you do learn that their culture is different, counter to the culture at many other companies. There is a lot more chaos. Nevertheless, I hear a lot of positive feedback, as Netflix lets people build what they believe is the right thing to build.
One form of efficiency is coordinating all the tactics so everybody knows what’s going on. And then, the problem is, as you get big, that gets harder to do, you get slower. So, another way to operate is more loosely coupled, where lots of different departments are doing different things. And then the danger is that they’re going in different directions. So, you want them to be aligned, but not tightly coordinated. And to do that, you have to really set a lot of context, use a lot of examples, a lot of storytelling. But remember that all of Netflix is managing on the edge of chaos. Okay? You want to be right up to that edge where it’s dynamic and there’s freedom. It has not fallen into chaos, but it’s kind of right on the edge of it. And again, that’s only appropriate for some types of businesses.
The Netflix podcast reminds me of the time I worked at Sun Microsystems. There was quite a bit of chaos within. Surely things were uncoordinated because we were growing so fast. Yet, I have to believe it was also by design. At Sun, I regularly ran into competing projects which were going after the same goal. I didn’t feel efficient. I’ve since learned that if you are trying to solve challenging projects, you need competing projects to figure out the right approach.
At my current company, I’ve seen myself evolving. I started when we didn’t have any documented development processes. I then created some structure, and we ended up with a voluminous development manual. Over the past 1-2 years, I’ve been on a quest to put our processes on a serious diet. I’ve killed many documents, and shrunk the various process documents. The goal really is to keep the rules to a minimum, and provide a lot of freedom to the engineers.
The No Rules Rules culture is about preserving the small company culture into puberty and adulthood. I wonder if this is truly Netflix’s grow-up secret, or whether their initial financial success allowed them to continue to be like a small and innovative company. In other words, what’s the chicken and what’s the egg. Probably it’s both.
November 24, 2020
Shed Shelves
“The shed shelves which shelve the stuff you store on shed shelves.”, is my made up tongue twister. It is also my recent weekend project. Ever since we got a backyard shed, I wanted to put in some decent shelves. However, I am a total newby at woodworking. I may not even have the right tools for the job.
After spending a great amount of time on Youtube, I came up with a plan. I liked the shelves approach from Two Feet First.
To get started I did need the right tools. I bought a Kreg R3 Pocket Hole Jig System. I also learned how to use a gifted circular saw.
After a few trips to the local home improvement store, and some backyard sawing and drilling, I am pleased with the results. I built some serious shelves for our shed.
I did learn a few things along the way. If I would do it again, I would leverage more the side walls. I would also pay more attention to how straight the 2x4 lumber is.
Nevertheless, generally I worked out perfectly and I am very happy with the results.
November 22, 2020
This weekend I embarked on a woodworking project I have been planning for a while. I know very little about woodworking. Therefore, I spent a great amount of time on Youtube and on DYI websites to learn and figure things out.
Beyond a few basic tools, I lack the right tools for the job. I do know that the right tool makes a world of difference. I figured out my project would be well served if I got myself a Kreg pocket-hole jig. Since I needed to make a bunch of cuts, do I need to use a circular saw, or borrow a table or mitre saw? Shall I use 2x3 or 2x4 lumber? I have so many questions. (There is a business opportunity here somewhere: DYISlack.)
I made more than a few trips to the nearby Lowe’s home improvement store. Sometimes, it was because I just got the wrong item: I didn’t know my circular saw takes 7 1/4 inch blades and not the 10 inch blade I purchased. In other cases, I bought only a few items, to experiment with, before buying more of the same.
The quality and options in home improvement stores has nose dived steeply in recent years. Now that OSH is out of business, within a 10 mile radius, I am limited to Home Depot or Lowe’s. Both are just large warehouses full of material of dwindling quality. For example, few of the 2x4s were anywhere near straight at Lowe’s.
Worse is the customer service, or the training of the staff. Few employees knew where anything was in the store. Forget about any expert advise. I appreciated that at OSH you may run into a retired craftsman providing expert advise on the type of screw or pipe connector.
Home improvement companies have competed hard on price. Now it is time to bring back expertise. If they want to compete on price, offer a contractor discount. For the common folks, hire plenty of retired or laid-off craftsmen: a woodworker, an electrician, a plumber, an expert in concrete, or just Tim the tool man Taylor. I will gladly pay higher prices for guidance on which tool I should get, or which widget is right for the job.
November 21, 2020
Fleets are stories for a social network that isn’t
This week, Twitter launched Fleets.
Fleets are disappearing tweets. Snapchatty-tweets or Instagrammy-story-tweets were the other names which were quickly discarded. But you get they idea. Tweets are forever, Fleets disappear after 24 hours.
One of the hosts of the Reply All podcast uses a service to delete his tweets every two weeks. He will no longer need that service.
Twitter hopes Fleets will bring new users to its service. Twitter’s New ‘Fleets’ Are for People Who Are Afraid to Tweet
On one hand, I love the idea of Fleets. Fleets allow me to just stick to Twitter, and avoid all other social media. I can stay especially away from the Facebook universe. I enjoyed the stories of Instagram, but loathed the socialites or “influencers” and their choreographed pictures.
On the other hand, I have been able to compartmentalize the various services between family/friends (Facebook, Instagram) and discover/curiosity (Twitter). I am too old and not cool enough for Snapchat or TikTok. I enjoy the ideas and the topics from the people I follow on Twitter. However, I don’t know or care much about their personal lives. And surely, the same is true of the few folks who subscribe to my Twitter feed.
And there lies Twitter’s problem. Twitter is not really a social network. It is a social megaphone. It is a debate forum. It is therapy for some and tyranny for others. It ain’t no Instagram or Facebook, where you share with your family and friends what’s on your grill or in your dutch oven.
While Fleets will not compete with Instagram stories, they may have the power to bring some humanity to Twitter. I can put a human face behind so many sharp commenting twitterati. Perhaps it can make the trolls less trolly.
As for my fleets or tweets, check out @waffletchnlgy.
November 20, 2020
Backyard Crafts
I wonder how many people took up old-school crafts during this pandemic. Sure, we are well aware that Sourdough Loafs of San Francisco have their own Instagram account. However, we haven’t seen many botched backyard haircuts.
Nor did we get to admire a lot of experimentations in hair color.
Our son vowed to let his hair grow until he safely can visit a hair dresser. We are entering slowly into 70s style with his tick long hair with luscious large curls.
I am also letting it grow with a few touch ups along the way. My hair is clearly that of an aging new waver or grunge rocker with straight graying hair, just long enough to put behind his ear.
I have looked for a few tutorials on the basics of hair thinning or maintenance. I always end up on YouTube. Where is Coursera-for-Backyard-Crafts? I already have a curriculum lined up: hair cutting, bear trimming, bread making, sausage curing, cheese making, canning and fermenting.
I would make it a mix of videos and simple 1-2-3 instructions. Youtube is not a pleasant form to learn things, nor or long articles. When my hands are in the middle of kneading dough, I want something easy to read.
That’s it for now, as I head to a chair in the backyard for a quick trimming.
November 14, 2020
Unbinged
A recent SFGate.com headline read “HBO’s ‘The Undoing’ is the best show of the year - because you can’t binge it”.
It is true. Recently, I truly enjoyed watching Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, Disney+ The Right Stuff, or Belgian’s VRT Undercover season 2. All demanded 90’s patience for the next episode to be released. The shows even included a short previously-on-section to refresh your mind after a week of fog.
I am conflicted though. I often watch a show while doing house chores. I put on my ironing-man suit and don’t mind a big basket of clothes, as long as I can watch an intriguing show. Having to wait for next week’s episode means a big drop in productivity.
Perhaps there is a way the streaming services can incentivizee us. Help a struggling student or donate to a charity cause, to continue streaming your favorite show. Cash is not accepted, only goodwill. You can accrue “goodwill points” in your Binge-Piggy-Bank.
November 14, 2020