Boulder to London

I guess this makes complete sense when you think about  it, but I’m still totally amazed that the president can not e-mail.  I have honestly never given it any thought, but only assumed that the president would have a blackberry and laptop like every other person that communicates in the modern world.  I guess I was wrong.

NY Times Article:  Lose the BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe

We finally wrapped up our project late last night!  It was a tough road most of the way, but I’m happy with the output.  The client sees it on Monday morning and will hopefully be pleased as well.

Since I haven’t really had any free time lately, I’m behind on what’s going on with the economy and around the world.  My only exercise has been walking to the train station and my web surfing has been limited to research related to the project.  I didn’t even realize that the traditional ‘holiday’ season is coming up fast.  Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated over here, so we really just have Christmas to look forward to.  Melisse and I haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet, but maybe I’ll spend some time this afternoon looking into some vacation options.  I’m sure I’ll need it since it looks like we’re going to be busy over the next 6 weeks.

We are lucky enough to have some of my family traveling over for a few weeks after Christmas.  We’ll definitely enjoy seeing them, but we still have no idea how we’re going to fit everyone into our small apartment.  Maybe we can get some bunk beds between now and then?

Anyway, I’ll get my act together and have something more interesting to say tomorrow.  Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

I finally made it back to London on Friday and have spent the last 40-some hours sleeping in, spending time with Melisse and catching up on the things that don’t get done when one is out of the country (paying bills, laundry, grocery shopping, etc).  The weekend has been great, but it looks like it is back to the office this afternoon to get a jump start on the week.  The project I’m working continues to present challenges, but the nice thing about consulting is that in 1 week, it’s off to something different and I get to try again.

I’ve learned a lot through the course of this project, mostly on how not to do things.  Leadership and management in a consulting setting is quite a bit different than what I experienced in a corporate setting and I definitely will need to adjust my approach and style to be successful.  On the bright side of things, I’ve really come to appreciate the group that I joined.  I’ve had tremendous support, good opportunities to learn, and witnessed a team that is genuinely concerned about each other and willing to step in and help out whenever possible.  I’ve been doing this for almost 4 months and continue to love it.

Last Thursday I got a call from a buddy of mine at GE.  He said he was talking to a guy that had a position open at GE that I’d be good for if I was ready to come back.  I didn’t get a chance to talk to him until later that day, but when I called him back, I was sitting in the back of the stretch limo that Virgin Atlantic had sent to pick me up for my flight.  While it was great to catch up, I realized that there isn’t any job at GE that would be tempting enough to cut short this new chapter of life.

Today marks the start to my third week back in the States.  The project has not gone near as well as I hoped, but many people back in the office in London, feel that it will actually turn out OK and that I’m being a little hard on myself.  Either way, I have a ton to get done this week and will likely be pulling some long days.

On my way back to Chicago from Houston, I decided to spend the weekend in Colorado to see some friends.  The weekend has been great.  I landed Friday night and went to the CU joint MBA and Law School Halloween party.  If there is anyone that has actually been following me for the past year, you may remember my post from a year ago on my troubles finding a costume.  This year was no better, but rather than race around town, I showed up without costume.  This was actually good since many people probably weren’t expecting to see me there, but posed a bit of a problem since I was easily recognizable and it often took me several minutes to figure out who was who.  The costumes were good, the beer was cold, and everyone had a good time.

The rest of my time in Colorado has been spent catching up with friends.  For those that I got to see, thank you so much for taking the time to catch up.  For those that I didn’t get to see, I’m very sorry to have missed you on this trip.  The days seemed to fill up very quickly and I spent most of the weekend going from place to place (usually eating and drinking) to see someone else and catch up for an hour or two.  It was great to see everyone and being back in Colorado brings back a lot of good memories. 

A funny thing happened to me in the Houston airport on Friday.   I had sat down to have something to eat before heading out to the gate.  As I got up to leave, a group of hostesses/waitresses were all standing near the door looking my way.  I didn’t really think anything of it and assumed it was some sort of shift change, training or an impromptu meeting.  As I approached, I noticed that they were all sort of looking at me.  I tried to get by and one of them stopped me and said…”Are you that TV anchor from NBC?”  I replied, “no”, not really knowing who they were talking about since I didn’t watch too much TV when I was in the states, and we don’t get NBC in London.  They went on to say, you look exactly like Matt Lauer.  I honestly didn’t really know who that was, but I’ve since googled him and it seems there may be some resemblance?  What do you think?

I woke up this morning to a pleasant surprise…there was not a cloud in the sky!  What I thought was going to be a cold and wet day sitting inside watching football, was suddenly full of possibility.  Since it was still early, I went down to the gym and got a quick work out in.  It wasn’t that great of a workout, but it made me feel better about the deep dish pizza last night.  I wish I had waited to run until this morning, but oh well. 

From the gym, I hit the hotel Starbucks and returned to my room to search the Internet for things to do.  I came across the river architecture tour and decided that it would be a great way to spend a few hours before the weather decided to change.  According to the website, the first tour departed at 11 which gave me plenty of time.  I did a few things around here, went down to the river and got my ticket for the boat.  I was a little early, but it was a nice day to be outside. 

The tour itself was good, however it was very fast.  As we floated by each building, we were given the year it was built, the architect, what it housed today and maybe a bit or two about the history of the area.  There were so many buildings that this cycle repeated itself about every 15 seconds.  Most of Chicago was rebuilt after the fire in 1871 and many of the new buildings were built in the last 30 years.  While there is still some construction going on in Chicago, my informal real estate vitality index (number of construction cranes that litter a downtown skyline) shows that it lags London by at least a factor of 10.  One interesting aspect of the tour was that over one stretch of the river, you could smell the most intense chocolate smell imaginable.  The tour guide didn’t comment on it, which I thought was strange since the entire audience was somewhat distracted by it.  It turns out that there is a chocolate factory in the area that emits a quite pleasant aroma.  Sure beats the smell of paper factories and feed lots that pollute some of the towns I’ve lived in. 

After the tour, I walked along the river and up Michigan Ave.  I stumbled across this really great sports bar called Mother Hubbard’s. The place was full of TVs, had a local feel, served good wings and offered up a few beers that I hadn’t tried.  I highly recommend it and may get back over there to try out one of their famous burgers over the next few weeks. 

My schedule has changed up a little bit.  I’m going to leave Chicago for Houston later this week, spend next weekend in Colorado, and then head back to Chicago next Sunday.  I look forward to seeing everyone in Colorado and a few days in Houston will give me some temporary reprieve from the cold.

This is an interesting documentary on the current credit card and debt situation in America.  If you saw “Fast Food Nation”, this is a similar sort of view on consumer debt in the US.  I’ve only seen the first half an hour or so, but it looks very informative and educational.

View it here: In Debt We Trust

I got our for a 5 mile run this morning along the lake in Chicago.  I use the Nike+ system with my iPod nano to track my runs.  It works pretty well for a rough idea of speed and distance, however it’s not very accurate with large elevation changes.  This is a very typical profile for one of my runs.  When the green line is higher on the chart, I am running faster, when it drops, I’m slowing down.  I usually come out of the gate pretty fast, fall off on mile 2, and then find a pace somewhere around 8:45 per mile.  The dots on the graph are mile markers for the run. 

The run along the lake was fricken cold.  I don’t really have the right clothes for running over here, or in London for that matter.  I’ve been in Colorado for several years and Nevada before that, so all of my clothes are good for dry and sunny climates.  Even when it is cold in Colorado and Nevada, it is a different sort of cold. 

During my run, I was amazed at how big the lake actually is.  I grew up in the North West and have been around big bodies of water.  I grew up boating on Lake Roosevelt, Coeur d’Alene, Priest Lake, Pend Oreille, and lived near Lake Tahoe for several years.  None of these large bodies of water have anything on Lake Michigan.  It is absolutely huge.  It may as well be the ocean since you can’t see the other side.  I wish I was here in the summer since the beaches look nice.  I guess I’ll have to come back next year!

I made it to Chicago yesterday afternoon to kick off a project that I’ll be working on over the next month or so.  It should be a good piece of work and I’ve always heard really good things about Chicago.  The flight was uneventful and more kudos to Virgin Atlantic for making the trip easy and comfortable.  Since it looks like I’ll be here for several weeks, I’m looking for things to do on the evenings and weekends.  If you’ve lived in Chicago or know the city, please comment and let me know your favorite night spot, tourist attraction, coffee shop, restaurant, etc.  When I traveled for GE, most of my trips were for a day or two so I rarely had the opportunity to be someplace long enough to explore.  It looks like this gig is different (other than my last trip to Miami), so please help me out and send in some recommendations.!

This one is a day old, but a funny store all the same.  This past weekend was pretty great.  On Saturday, Melisse and I went down to the Borough market and Sunday we spent in Richmond.  Both were excellent places to be outside in the beautiful weather.  We also recently got a TV with digital service and a DVR.  I had a DVR in Boulder, but failed to ever use it much.  Before we left on both days, I noticed that there were football (soccer) matches on that I wanted to watch.  The weather was simply too nice to site inside so  I decided to enhance my life with technology and hit the record button on the DVR.  Things worked great and when I returned on Saturday I watched England vs Croatia in a World Cup qualifying match.  On Sunday it was the Netherlands vs Iceland.  I enjoyed watching both matches as well as the convenience of watching them when I wanted to.

I came into the office on Monday and attended our usual 10:00 meeting to discuss the coming week.  Before the meeting started, people were doing their usual greetings…how was your weekend…yeah, good…you?  You know how it goes.  Anyway, I decided to share my incredible weekend and let everyone know that I had been out and about, but that I had also watched England play Croatia.  Someone looked over at me and said…you mean Kazakhstan, you don’t want to get those two confused.  Proudly I said…No, Croatia.  It was a good game, they won 4-2.  Someone else jumped in and said…no, England played Kazakhstan this weekend.  At that point I was really confused.  Someone then jumped in and informed me that I had watched a game that was several weeks old and was simply being replayed on TV.  I guess that explains my other bit of confusion which was how they were fitting commercials into the live broadcast.

Somedays I’m not as smart as I’d like to be….

It’s been a tough couple of days on the stock market and I’m glad I still have a day job so that I don’t have to live off of my battered retirement account.  I thought the 100 and 200 point daily swings were a wild ride, but it now seems like we need 500, 700 and a 900 point swing in the Dow Jones to get people excited.  I am an amateur investor at best, but do take a healthy interest in the economy and understand the fundamentals of business quite well.  I guess what troubles me is that eventually the market will stabilize (I hope) and we’ll return to some form of business as usual.  When we do that, I think we can expect that corporate output and earnings will generally be lower next year based on reduced demand due to lower consumer spending, reduced investment by businesses and general uncertainty in the market.  I think it is also safe to say that tax revenues will be lower due to declining housing prices (property tax), high unemployment (income tax), lower corporate profits (corporate income tax) and reduced consumer spending (sales tax).  This leaves a GDP gap that can only be made up by government spending fueled by debt or exports.  In either case, I think it will be several quarters before we see a healthy and growing economy.

So what does the new economy look like?  I recall during the dot-com craze people said that the new information economy was vastly different than the old brick and mortar industrial economy.  Fundamentals were no longer valid and companies didn’t actually have to make money.  During the credit fueled real estate boom, similar comments were made.  As with previous booms, this one has ended with the inevitable bust and post-party hangover.  What seems troubling this time around is the vast government debt that is being taken on to fuel the recovery.  This is probably required as a short term measure, but it creates a much bigger problem down the road.  Eventually, the USA will be leveraged beyond what is considered reasonable by the rest of the world.  If that doesn’t cause some sort of collapse in our currency, the interest payments alone will consume significant portions of tax revenues for years to come.  This leaves little for healthcare, education, social security, infrastructure and national security.

The saying goes, “Live to fight another day”.  Unfortunately, future generations may be fighting blindfolded with both hands behind their back.