PAgent’s Progress

I was listening to a segment on NPR this morning (because that’s a requirement of being a bleeding-heart liberal) that was discussing the economic bail-out, and how painful it was going to become. No surprise there. What was surprising was the sentiment of one David Beim, a former banker and current professor at the Columbia Business School.

Professor Beim has put together a chart showing the total personal debt of all Americans (mortgages, car payments, credit card debt, everything) compared to the U.S. gross domestic product. The results are interesting:

“From 2000 to 2008, it’s almost a hockey stick. It just goes dramatically upward,” Beim says. “It hits 100 percent of GDP. That is to say, currently, consumers owe $13 trillion when GDP is $13 trillion. That is a ton.”

This has happened before. The chart shows two peaks when consumer debt levels equaled the GDP: One occurred in 2007, the other in 1929. Source

That is, Professor Beim is advancing the heretical notion that the economic collapse isn’t due to greedy and unscrupulous bankers, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, or even sloppy regulators. It’s because the average American has been living way beyond their means.

I know I have complained about living in a small house with no yard, about driving a 9-year-old car, about trying to budget for a trip to the coast when I have friends going to Europe. But you know what? I’m not that upset about that right about now. Thanks mostly to a spouse that is ardently anti-debt, we’re in a better shape than a lot of Americans, and even though the economic crash is going to affect everyone, hopefully we will weather the storm without direct impact, just indirect. Hopefully.

What I think will probably happen, in the end, is that we will raise a new generation of Americans that reuse their tinfoil, eat their leftovers, and pay cash instead of using credit, just like their grandparents did after the Great Depression. And then those Americans will try to teach their grandchildren to be similarly frugal, so that they can better weather the next inevitable economic meltdown. And those grandchildren will probably ignore them.

My first real job was working at a regional bank. It happened to be the bank where my father worked, so I’ll always have the shameful cloud of nepotism hanging over me. Nevertheless, after school and during summers I would function as a “utility clerk” and reorganize records, destroy confidential materials, clean gutters, put up Christmas decorations, and do all the other little nasty jobs that bank employees typically don’t want to do themselves. In addition, I would spend a couple of weeks every summer covering for the regular interbranch courier during her vacation, but that’s another story.

As a utility clerk, I got to know all the dark corners of the bank’s various branches, but in particular I acquired an intimate familiarity with the main branch building. It was fairly new, and had lots of storage space in various nooks and crannies.

Like the crawlspace. Unlike most crawlspaces, this one was dry, clean, fairly deep, and incredibly well-lit. In fact there were bare light bulbs hanging from the low ceiling every couple of feet, each one screwed into a minimalistic light fixture, all connected to the same single light switch located in the closet that opened into the crawl space itself.

It was a large building, with a large crawlspace, but the rows of light bulbs stretching out across the underside of the main floor made the space seem the very opposite of creepy. It almost felt like a performance space; an empty stage.

The first time I was down there, it occurred to me that if someone were to replace a significant number of those light bulbs with bulbs that had been carefully opened and filled with gasoline, when the light was switched on the resulting conflagration would be nearly impossible to put out. Since the light got turned on only about twice a year, the culprit could be, say, off at college when the arson actually took place, providing an excellent alibi. This thought occurred to me every time I was in the crawlspace admiring the lighting, for as long as I worked there. It seemed like such a clever idea.

It was many, many years before I began to realize that most people never have thoughts like that.

My cable modem works.

My d-link router works just fine for the Mac.

The router works fine WIRELESSLY with the Wii.

My laptop connection to the router shows up as perfectly OK.

But when I try to access a web page, the connection times out. For just about every web page anywhere.

It’s not a security issue, because I can turn security off and it doesn’t go away.

It’s not firewall incompatibility, because I can turn off the Vista firewall and the Norton firewall and it doesn’t go away.

I’ve confirmed that the router has the latest firmware.

Router: D-Link Wireless Router model DIR-615
laptop: HP Pavilion dv6500 running Vista.

I hate this. If you have the answer, leave me a comment.

As of right now I can access the Internet via the wired connection to our router, but not via the WIRELESS connection to the same router. I am frustrated and angry. Actually, that’s an understatement.

Finishing the Derby Car

Originally uploaded by PAgent

Today is the Pinewood Derby, and true to form, we’re still finishing the Boy’s car. We’ve put most of the weights on, now we just need to put the decals and wheels on. Wish us luck.
Sent from Blackberry

I’ve been in a slump lately. This is partly due to having been in constant pain for what feels like six months, with an accompanying loss of mobility. The lack of exercise has led to additional weight gain, which makes my knees hurt more.

Then there are the constant demands of dealing with the Girl. We recently received a progress report for her that was stunning. She’s also been misbehaving in class, there have been phone calls, and emails back and forth with teachers. And that’s on top of the constant din and upheaval that exists in our home for most of the hours that I am there.

Our house is loud, you see. My wife is hard of hearing, and she likes to listen to music or audiobooks while she does housework. You can pretty much hear it anywhere in the house. The children are either camped out in front of the TV, or begging to be camped out in front of the TV. When they are forced to entertain themselves, they often turn on audiobooks themselves. Regardless, it isn’t long before intersibling relations break down, followed by screaming, crying, and yelling. And that’s just me.

My son, bless his heart, has been sick with a chest cold and congestion for a couple of weeks. All he wants to do is curl up on my shoulder….and cough into my ear. Even the dog has gotten into the act, retrieving a toy or a tennis ball, staring reproachfully at me, and whining because I am not taking him outside to play fetch.

What I don’t have, is peace and quiet. And that’s one thing I desperately need.

You see, I’m in something of a slump. My motivation has dropped to a low ebb, both at home and at work, and I’m simply not getting things done. I feel like I’m on a treadmill and I can’t get off. I am, in a word, depressed.

I had mentioned to my wife on a couple of occasions that sometimes I just wanted to pack a 2-person tent, and hide out in the woods for a while, and she’d actually been very supportive. As I got more stressed out, I started threatening to run out to the coast and check into a hotel, just to get some peace. Again, she was very supportive. On Friday, when we realized that I had a three-day weekend, she encouraged me to just go. After all, the Girl was having a sleepover on Sunday, and that’s all the incentive I needed. I quickly made a reservation, got a special internet rate, and Sunday I took off.

Which is how I ended up seeing this at sunset:

I ended up at The Inn at Cape Kiwanda in Pacific City. The Inn is a lovely little hotel where every room has a view of Haystack rock. Besides being across the street from the beach, it’s across the street from the Pelican Pub and Brewery, which is one of the really nice brewpubs on the coast.

So I relaxed. And took pictures. And surfed the web. What I didn’t do is listen to the radio or watch TV. Instead I basked in the quiet and relished having absolutely no obligations to anyone for 24 hours.

And I thought about what I was doing with my life right now, and where it was going wrong, and what I should be trying to do to make it run a little more smoothly. I even wrote a list of things I needed to do to try and improve my attitude, from “quit joining social networks” to “write more” to “start carrying a pocketknife again”.

It was peaceful, it was restorative, but I can’t run out to the coast every time I get stressed out. Some things have got to change.