Dane DeValcourt

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My wife has a 2004 Toyota Highlander that was exhibiting some strange issues with the A/C and heat.  In the summer while driving with the A/C on it would randomly just switch to heat and just as randomly switch back later.  Sometimes bumps would trigger it or a sharp turn.  Same would occur in the winter while using the heat.  It would randomly switch to A/C and back.

Problem was pretty annoying but I suspect fearing the possible cost to repair kept her from bringing it in for service.

The issue seemed to get worst over time and with the horrible Louisiana summer heat and humidity quickly approaching she finally brought it in to get inspected and to get a quote.

The shop she brought it to “checked it” and told her it was the “temperature control actuator”.  They told her it would cost about $500 to fix.

After getting this information I went to Autozone and O’Reilly’s trying to find this part and what it costs.  Neither could find this part.  This made me pretty curious and wondered why no one could identify the part.   So I went sit in my car and whipped out the iPhone to Google this part and figure out what was going on.  I didn’t find any mention of a “temperature control actuator” for a Toyota Highlander but I did find lots of information pointing to what appeared to be the same A/C issue with the Highlander by many people.

I found many complaining that they had to replace the A/C control assembly to fix the problem.  The A/C control assembly sells between $700 – $1000, just depends where you get it.  Labor to replace it was between $300-$500.  Many reported paying or getting quotes between $1200 – $1500 to replace it.

This was not looking good.  I went back inside the store and confirmed the part was $700+ but they didn’t have it.  Turns out this was a good thing.  It caused me to go back to the car and start searching for that part.  This time I stumbled across someone who was a mechanic who ran across this problem with a client.  He mentioned that after he took everything apart thinking he was going to have to replace the A/C control assembly he found the real problem.  Apparently the issue is with the temperature control switch (knob) and the three wires connecting it to the control assembly circuit board had broken.  This was especially interesting because it really seemed like it made more sense to me.  The fact that bumps in the road would cause this to work and not work really made me think this was a short or something along those lines.  I didn’t buy the other explanations personally because most of them would have only accounted for it not working entirely and not sporadicly.

So…. I decided this broken wire issue had to be the problem and I would at least check this out before spending any money.  Figured I didn’t have anything to lose by confirming this.

I went home and went straight at it.  Tore the center console apart and got to the control panel.  Tore the control panel apart and got to the circuit board (control assembly).  Sure enough two of the three wires connecting the temperature control to the circuit board had broken off.

Yay!  Got it soldered again and everything reassembled and sure enough it is working like a champ and cost NOTHING to fix it!  Sad that most places wouldn’t attempt to solder it back but rather would just charge people $1500 to replace the whole control assembly.

Anyway… with all that said I thought I would share and detail the process for others in the hopes of saving others a ton of money in the future.

***Couple of New Notes***

I highly recommend doing as others have suggested and replacing the ribbon cable you need to solder back together.  Part of the problem with the current design seems to be that the ribbon cable is too short.  This causes added tension when things are put together and adds to the issue with the wire breaking.

Also, you will or should know how to clean the old solder from the holes on the circuit board in order to correctly solder things back together.  Use a desoldering pump to assist with this.  If you don’t know how to solder you might be able to find a small local computer repair shop or trade school with people willing to do it for very cheap.

I have not been able to fix the spacing between the photos with out risk of messing up the entire post so I am leaving things as they are for now.  Sorry about that.  Appreciate all the great feedback this post has been getting, makes you feel good to hear the positive comments.

***End Notes***

Step 1.  Remove the knobs.  These simply pull right off.

Step 2.  Remove the trim panel from center console.  Start at the bottom on one side and then the other.  Work your way to the top.  This is easily done with no tools and just a little force.

Step 3.  There are six 10mm bolts to remove that are holding the center console in place. (Three on each side of console)

Step 4.  Remove two screws from both side of the assembly.

Step 5.  Pry the bracket away from the control assembly in order to clear the alignment pins.

Step 6.  Unplug the wiring from the control assembly.  There are three things to unplug.

Step 7.  You should now have the control assembly module completely removed from the console.  In order to access the circuit board inside the black plastic housing of the control assembly you will need to remove the screws holding the rear plastic cover on.  Once the screws are removed you can separate the two pieces slowly.  You can only separate it slightly as there is a ribbon cable connecting one circuit board to the other.

I pried one side (where the cable was) apart and then used a butter knife to release the connector for the ribbon cable.  Once the cable is free you can completely separate the two pieces.

Step 8.  Remove the screws and clips holding the circuit board in place.

Step 9.  Remove the nuts that hold the switches in place.

Step 10.  With the circuit boards and switches removed from the assembly I could now see the real problem. Two of the three wires that connect the switch to the circuit board were broken.  Clean away the old solder and wire pieces.  You should have three clean holes on the switch board in which to re-solder the wires to.  I’m no expert on soldering but it wasn’t hard at all.  If your not comfortable soldering something such as this then find someone who is.

Once things are soldered back together you basically need to reverse this entire process to reassemble everything.  It really was pretty quick and easy to do and it can likely save you lots of money.

Good luck!

First its important to make a disclaimer that I am not specifically referring to anything that is or has occured at my current place of employment of course.  I have spent 15 years in IT and in that time I have seen a lot go on in the corporate world particularly as it relates to those around me.  I haven’t spent much time in or around the upper echelon types and for that I am actually very thankful.  Those people kinda scare me as I know I simply can’t relate to the type of person they are and what drives them.  Nope, I prefer to spend my time in the trenches and behind the scenes.  I like working with the technology, particularly the machines.  Things are either working or broke.  No politics, favoritism, emotions and all the other crap that comes along from others self interest.

I have what is apparently a very naive and wonderland like view of what work is suppose to be.  I believe that people should be the best they can be at the job they choose to do.  I believe that if you are great at what you do others will recognize this talent and reward it (not just financially).

There are LOTS of flaws with this basic logic however.

1. “job they choose” – not everyone is in the job they choose to do.  No one stuck a gun to their head but people get forced into jobs they don’t particularly choose and want to do.  Many reasons why this may be, such as being fired and having to take something to make ends meet or management moved someone and well the employee hoped it would only be temporary.
2. “others will recognize” – others should recognize but either don’t for a number of reasons or does but because of politics, favoritism or simply chooses to ignore.
3. “reward” – most will instinctively think money when you see reward, and some would argue that yearly raises are rewards.  In actuality rewards mean many different things to different people.  It’s important to know and recognize how to reward someone if you really feel they deserve it.  Personally I think a good manager is one that can recognize what drives a person and what their idea of a reward is.  They can usually get the most out of an employee by satisfying them through some of the non traditional rewards.  For instance, some may value learning and training or might just like to be taken out to lunch after a job well done.

It’s nuts all the things I am thinking about just in what I have typed so far.  I wish someone could tap into my head and sort all of this stuff out and put it in words for others.  I think way more about even some of the most subtle things then most people do and I really believe others might find some of it interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, nothing I say is new or ground breaking, simply just things I think of from conversations with others.

Some of the things racing around right now:

Managers/VP’s/CXX’s – What happend to earning respect?  Its not bestowed just because of a title right?

IT People / Geeks – There are people in IT and there are those that ARE IT (Geeks).  Understand the differences and reward / promote correctly.

Movers and Shakers – Ughh these people irk the heck out of me!  These are the people who obviously only care about themselves.  Wake up and see this corporate america!  If someone is jumping to a new position every chance they get within a company something is wrong.  This person doesn’t care about the company or the job they are doing or the people working with or beneath them.  How can they if they can’t stay in one place long enough?  They are only after power and money.

Things aren’t always as they appear on the surface.  This is something that has always puzzled me when it comes to management and executives.  Many create an environment where they (the manager) is very out of touch with those working for them and sometimes its the employees that exclude the manager.  Regardless there are so many things that don’t come to the surface that an out of touch manager will not see or hear about for various reasons and thus some bad employees can “float” around for a while.  Sadly many employees will unwillingly protect the bad employees without even knowing it.  In one breath they will talk among themselves with nothing good to say about someone, however in an effort to prevent things from affecting them or the department the good employees will often over compensate and pick up the bad employees slack.

Ah well, just some random thoughts.

It’s been a while since I posted anything here.  Have had a lot going on in life as of late which kept me from posting anything and also is what has now prompted me to post.

As many know I have been studying.  I was anyway.  I took my CCIE Voice written the last week of June in San Francisco while at Cisco Live – Networkers.  I passed and I suppose thats a good thing.  I know it is but I barely made it, and realized just how difficult the test is.  I feel I knew the content well, not perfect but ok.  The real kicker with these tests is just how much trickery and deception they put into them.  Really messes with your mind to the unsuspecting and nervous as hell test taker.  I can barely keep my wits taking tests when its just a normal test trying to gauge if you paid attention and know something.  These tests are on a whole different level.  Bleh.. its done and now I am trying to find it in me to do the lab so that I might finally one day become a CCIE.

I also learned that my neck issues (surgery on 6 vertabrea, fused and full of metal rods) makes studying very difficult and painful.  No pity party, just a personal observation that I have to contend with and consider going forward in my life.

Been in the midst of some major projects at work.  Awesome stuff, technology heaven for me although I am starting to realize the long late nights and being hunched over the computer configuring routers and switches for 36+ hours at a time with little sleep and breaks is also something that my neck isn’t too happy about.  I run on adrenaline and excitement through it all (with high doses of caffine and pain medication) and can still manage but its really not the same.  What sucks is I am 35, and I am becoming one of those people I didn’t care for when I was 25 in this field.

I couldn’t stand those old mainframe farts who couldn’t do the 48 hour, no sleep, bust your butt projects always complaining of needing a break or spending time with family or back aches and blah blah.   Karma is a PITA!   I am now becoming one of these people.  I still manage to do what I need to do but it damn near kills me in the end.  Thinking and worrying about my family the whole time, fighting back the pain and sleepiness.  Sucks getting old.

Work is umm.. well that needs a whole other book to be honest.  Lots of change, and at first glance it doesn’t look like the good kind of change.  But one has to give it time before making rash decisions or judgements.  Hard not to but it’s the only thing I can do now to try and maintain my sanity.  It has led me to make some new observations about life and people and corporate america that I believe I am going to document and share in my next post.

Peace

Don’t have time to write part 2 yet.

These are my own notes for how to continue.

Political Party

Strippers

Predictable

Irrational

Predictably Irrational

Ok so if you read this and you don’t know me personally (actually I suspect even those that do know me) may not know that I am fascinated with understanding what makes us who we are.

I think this is just another aspect of a very core component of me and who I am, which is my unquenchable thirst for knowledge.  Not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge and trying to appear smarter than I really am.  My desire is to understand things.  I love to understand everything I can about something.  It makes no difference what it is, I will want to know everything I can about it.

So why do I say all of this?  It’s not about technology this time.  Nope its about us, the human.

I am not as fascinated with the physical side of what makes us who we are as humans.  My fascination is with the behavioural side of what makes us tick.

When I was younger (teenage years and early twenties) I hated psychology.  Pretty vague statement huh? 

Let me elaborate a bit.  In high school I took a psychology class and well I hated it.  Thought it was stupid.  How could anyone believe the crap they were teaching?  How could anyone think they know what makes us tick and make the decisions we make?  And even worst than that was how could anyone tell me that I am not really my own person, that nearly every decision I make was influenced by someone or something?

Thats not exactly what they were saying in those textbooks, but its how I interpreted it.   It really upset me to hear things that implied that a lot of who I am and who I will be is very closely tied to my parents.

I mean come on, I am a teenager.  I don’t want to be associated with my parents.  I want to be independent, I want to think I am my own person.  I make the decisions that make me who I am.

Boy was I wrong!

To be continued….

Here is my current schedule for Networkers this year.  Subject to change of course.

Monday is CCIE Voice written day.  I take my test Monday afternoon around 4 or 5 I think.

I have a couple of sessions on monday but its going to depend on the test to be honest.

 

Monday: 

1:00 PM-3:00 PM   BRKSAN-2701  Fibre Channel Storage Area Network Design  

7:00 PM-9:00 PM   BRKGENPNL-1003  Panel: Ask the Expert: Unified Communications  

 

Tuesday:  

7:30 AM-9:30 AM   BRKVIR-2985  Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switch  

10:00 AM-11:30 AM GENKEY-5501  Welcome Address with John Chambers  

12:00 PM-2:00 PM  BRKDCT-2951  Deploying Nexus 7000 in Data Center Networks  

4:00 PM-6:00 PM    BRKRST-3471  Cisco NXOS Software – Architecture

 

Wednesday:  

8:00 AM-10:00 AM  BRKRST-2043  Advanced WAN Design: Network Virtualization  

10:30 AM-11:30 AM GENKEY-5564  Keynote with Padmasree Warrior  

12:00 PM-2:00 PM  BRKCOM-2988  Unified Computing – A Unified Data Center Infrastructure

4:00 PM-6:00 PM   BRKVVT-2784  Maximizing Cisco IP Phone benefits  

7:30 PM-11:30 PM  Customer Appreciation Event  

 

Thursday:  

8:00 AM-10:00 AM  BRKRST-3470  Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch Architecture  

10:30 AM-11:30 AM GENKEY-5565  Closing Guest Keynote: Guy Kawasaki  

12:00 PM-2:00 PM  BRKSAN-3921  Troubleshooting the Unified Fabric (FCoE)  

2:30 PM-4:30 PM   BRKCRT-1963  CCVP:Mobility Features in Cisco UCM version 6 and 7

Not sure if others saw this yet, it just got released from what I understand.

Now I know most in the City of Lafayette aren’t going to care much
about this due to LUS fiber slowly becoming available. But some others
around the Lafayette area outside of LUS planned rollout might.

My understanding is that the first plan is $89 a month for 50down/5up.
 I know I know.. 5up, lets just say its better than what Cox has been
offering so thats a good start.  :-)   There is also a $99 charge I
believe for the cable modem, I think you have to buy it outright from
Cox.  The modem in question is a Cisco DPC3000.

I think it is now ok to share that I have been testing it for about a
month now and so far so good.  Consistently get the speeds stated.

I know this isn’t for everyone, and I don’t want to get into the
arguments of what service is better and blah blah.  However, I should
point out if you look at the rest of the cable industry that has
rolled out DOCSIS 3 you will find that the prices are WAY higher than
the $89 that they are charging here in Lafayette.

To me this is a win for the Lafayette area.  And it sort of falls
right into line with what the fiber folk wanted in some ways which was
to push the incumbents to do and offer more to the area.  So I would
think even they should be somewhat happy with this in a way.

Should be particularly good for those ‘work at home’ folk who often
have the service paid for buy the company.  The better upload is
significant when compared to any of the current Cox offerings.

Here is the official press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 1, 2009

COX CONTACTS:
Patricia Parks – Cell: (337) 254-0341 – patricia.parks@cox.com
Ann Ruble – Cell: (225) 317-1807 – ann.ruble@cox.com

GREATER LOUISIANA IS FIRST NATIONAL MARKET TO LAUNCH COX’S ULTIMATE PACKAGE

Cox’s Lafayette Parish residential customers first in Cox’s national
footprint to receive speeds up to 50 Mbps through DOCSIS ® 3.0
Technology

Cox Business customers in Lafayette Parish also see first launch of
Cox Business Internet Ultra tier

LAFAYETTE / BATON ROUGE – Cox Communications today announced that it’s
launching the Ultimate Cox High Speed Internet Package in Lafayette
Parish, Louisiana including the cities of Broussard, Carencro, Duson,
Lafayette, Scott and Youngsville. This is the first market to launch
nationally for Cox. Powered by the strength of the cable industry’s
DOCSIS 3.0 technology, Ultimate Internet offers customers some of the
fastest broadband speeds in the marketplace, with downloads up to 50
Mbps and uploads up to 5 Mbps.

“We’re proud to be the first market where Cox is offering the new
technology of DOCSIS 3.0 to our customers,” stated Jacqui Vines,
senior vice president and regional manager for Cox Greater Louisiana.
“Cox has invested over $500 million regionally in our network
operations to ensure we continue to deliver on our commitment to
meeting customer needs. Our investments – and the talents of our
technical team – positioned us for this first in the nation launch.”

DOCSIS 3.0 is a cable-exclusive technology that allows providers to
combine Internet channels in a new way to offer even faster speeds and
more robust features. While Cox’s Ultimate Internet Package is
designed with the high-end computer user in mind, Cox continues to
offer several other levels of Internet service, for everyone from the
casual e-mail user to the avid music fan who enjoys downloading the
latest hits.

“We know customers are turning to the Internet for more
bandwidth-intensive purposes, such as watching videos online,
downloading music and gaming,” stated Vines.  “Ultimate Internet helps
these customers get more out of what they’re into by doing all these
things in record time.”

Cox Business Internet Ultra, the commercial package powered by DOCSIS
3.0, is also launching to customers in Lafayette Parish. Cox Business
Internet Ultra is the premium package for business customers and
includes download speeds up to 50 Mbps, upload speeds up to 5 Mbps,
five dynamic or static IP addresses, one hosted domain name, and 10
email boxes. While Cox Business has been offering dedicated speeds up
to 100 Mbps through fiber-to-the-premises construction throughout
Greater Louisiana, the Ultra package is the first time customers will
receive speeds of 50 Mbps through Cox’s existing network.

More information about Cox High Speed Internet is available at
www.cox.com/highspeedinternet.

® DOCSIS is a registered trademark of CableLabs. Used with permission.

###

About Cox Communications
Cox is a multi-service broadband communications and entertainment
company with more than 6 million total residential and commercial
customers. The third-largest cable television company in the United
States, Cox offers an array of advanced digital video, high-speed
Internet and telephony services over its own nationwide IP network.
Cox wholly owns and operates the Travel Channel.

Cox’s regional operations in Acadiana and Baton Rouge employ over
1,200 people with an annual payroll of over $45 million. In this
region, Cox serves 311,000 customers with voice, video and data
products in the 13 parishes of Acadia, Ascension, East Baton Rouge,
East Feliciana, Iberia, Iberville, Lafayette, Livingston, St. James,
St. Martin, St. Mary, Vermilion and West Baton Rouge.  Information
about the products and services offered in the combined Louisiana
markets can be found www.cox.com/greaterlouisiana.

Things worth commenting on:

Livescribe Pen – Awesome, really need to do a write up about it.

Foxmarks – Very nice app for syncing/backup’ing ones bookmarks.  (need to figure out how automatically syncing between firefox and IE, currently this is a manual process for me)

FriendFeed – Really starting to like FriendFeed as my all in one aggregator.  Main way I am using it at this point is sort of for notes to myself.  Particularly when there is a website or something I come across that I want to read later.

Skype – I need to revisit this one day, but honestly I have no need.  There isn’t anyone I really communicate with.  I have stopped IM all together and I don’t really have a need to do voice or video with anyone outside of work.  They do have some of the best video quality though, and I love that they encrypt everything (including IM)

I HAVE TO START STUDYING!  How and when I have no idea.  I can’t seem to find the time.  Would like to study in the morning but ughh.. waking up in time to really get some done would be hard.  Studying in the evening would be better it seems but shesh I get so tired from the day, work and the neck / surgery pain usually catches up to me by the end of the day.  I think about studying for lunch every day but that never works out either, usually distracted by something at work and just can’t focus.  I need to sort this out though ASAP. 

..End..

It really sucks but I think I have to stop myself from caring and being curious about the LUS Fiber project out here in Lafayette.  Seems anytime I ask a question or make a comment about anything related to it certain people feel I am doing so in a negative way towards LUS.  I think many believe I am some how trying to defend my employer which hasn’t really been my intent.

It sucks because its only one or two people that do this but man they are vocal.  They are drunk on the LUS fiber koolaid and if you say anything that they may take to be a slight against LUS they will rant about it.

I have said it before I am NOT against fiber.  LUS maybe, not fond of government getting into private enterprise.  I am also NOT a cheerleader for my employer.  Is fiber technically better than a cable provider?  Yes technically it is, I would be lying to deny that.  Is fiber to homes needed?  Thats very questionable and up for debate.  It’s one of those debates though that no one can truly answer.  No one knows what technological advances will be made tomorrow or 10 years from now, so we dont know for certain.

These people can’t let me be a citizen of Lafayette who is interested in the technology or the business.  Nope I am simply an employee of a competitor and thats it.  They can’t look past that.

I look back now and I dont even know why I cared enough to ask questions or comment on things.  Like anything I said mattered or would make a difference to anyone.  And yet I did and I let a couple of people get to me.  They make things personal and I go and get concerned about what they have to say as if they got on the 6′oclock news and said bad things about me.  Stupid me.

The fact is very few people listen to or care about them and what they have to say either.  They think they are talking for a city when in fact they are talking for such a small percentage of people who actually care and keep up with this stuff.

No the LUS fiber system is not perfect, yes I can point out the flaws in either the network design or their marketing.  Yes they are feeding a lot of bull to people and over exaggerate things.  No cable providers are not perfect, have many more network flaws and marketing snafus and over exaggerate way more in my opinion.

So there they all have issues, they all think they are right and the other is wrong.  NONE of them can provide what they advertise all the time, yes they ALL oversubscribe their service its the nature of the business.

Yes I am still worried about how the failure of the project will impact us citizens.  Yes I think that these people are wrong about the way the harshly criticize incumbents about practices and principles which LUS is going to and is doing themselves.  Just because its fiber and the bandwidth is bigger does not exclude LUS from the same criticism if the principles or practices are the same.  Example of what I mean is oversubscription.  Don’t tell me its wrong of a competitor to oversubscribe, but immediately after defend another because they have a bigger pipe?

Its also funny how they criticize the competitors for not offering these higher speeds they claim they need and yet can’t identify one real application that is going to truly take advantage of it.  AND even better is they proceed to tell me that I know no one will ever really use up all that bandwidth they are offering.  If no one is “NEVER, EVER” going to be able to use it all then why have it even?

It’s really funny when you think about what most of these people are ultimately going to use their bandwidth for.  Youtube.  Yep, they need it to watch funny videos of laughing babies or crazy cats.  Maybe some porn, and surely some pirated movies and music.

Another pointless point to make is how I think its so funny that these PRO fiber folk rant about how the citizens passed this whole thing with an “overwhelming” majority.  Seriously?  74,000 registered voters and 12,500 votes for it is some how an overwhelming majority?

Like I said its pointless to make that comment now but if I am being honest it is something that has always bothered me.

And another issue I have is how when its convenient for LUS to say it we are the “owners” of the system.  But ask any question you would think an “owner” should be able to ask and nada.  It sounds good to say I will give them that but don’t actually try to take them up on it.

I guess if anyone reads this rant they are going to say I am surely being biased and siding with my employer.  No way that someone who doesn’t work for a competitor would say all of this stuff.  No amount of me saying that is really not it is going to change how others view this.

So… there I have laid most of my issues out there.  No one cares.  And after this I don’t care either.  I WILL NOT make one more comment or question regarding any of this again.  I am done.  I can’t keep getting frustrated with the fact that others are simply full of spite and hate and need someone or someplace to take it out on.  I can’t care how people feel about me or my employer because well if I did I would constantly be consumed with worrying about it.

To each his own they say right? You can’t please everyone?  There is always going to be someone with nothing else better to do then to berate others to make themselves feel good.  And there is always going to be those who complain just to complain.  Working in IT for almost 15 years now I know its rare to ever hear about the good things you do, you only hear from people when they have an issue or complaint.

The End… time to free myself and my mind and my worries from all of this.

My last post about Cisco’s EnergyWise announcement this week got me thinking about something.  Started to ponder on the economy and wondered if maybe the bad economy is really not such a bad thing after all.

For years I have been disgusted by the amount of spending by both people and businesses.  So many people and businesses living beyond their means.  Main reason is credit of course.  But also this whole disposable, fast paced society we live in.

Credit has given people and businesses a false sense of personal wealth.  It has inflated everything, more money people think they have the more they spend on things they can’t really afford.  The more spending the better ‘business’ is, which in turn gives businesses a sense of doing better then they are.  Businesses living on credit as well. And thus exaggerating the whole mess even more.  And of course we can’t forget about the stock market.

Credit is not all to blame but I think it even plays a part in creating or at least influencing the society we have created.  Everything is disposable, and why not since we have credit to just buy something new.  Very few save anything these days.  I also think its not too far fetch to say that it has also influenced the fast food lifestyle many of us (including myself) have adopted.  We convince ourselves its cheaper to just eat out.  If we go shopping that takes time, time is money, anything we buy to cook at home is going to be too much for one person and in many cases too much for two and even three people.  By the time you buy everything you need and the when you count the time it takes to cook, you end up convincing yourself its cheaper to just eat out.  When you do manage to cook you have lots of leftovers usually, and some of us have good intentions to turn these leftovers into tomorrows lunch at work.  However good the intentions though we don’t usually follow through.  Either we forget them at home or maybe we take them but then someone asks you to go out to eat at the office or maybe we just get so busy and wrapped up in things at the office we forget about them.

When I think back to when I was a child watching my parents manage a family of four I recall how rare it was to ever go out to eat.  I remember how smart they were in splitting up food prior to cooking it and freezing things, and yet cooking enough to have leftovers because they rarely would eat out for lunch at work.  Heck they even reused ziploc bags!  Drove me nuts as a kid having to wash out and dry ziploc bags.  Were we poor or broke?  Nope but when you consider how they came up, particularly my Dad and you realize why they were efficient or cheap or what ever you want to call it.

Anyway, so my thoughts are maybe this country needs another depression.  Maybe a bad economy will cause people to re-evaluate themselves, their spending and so on.  We are already seeing some of this if you take a moment to look around.  People aren’t eating out so much, thinking about the “what if” and starting to save.  People are cutting back on things and being more fiscally conscious and conservative.

You really see this when you look at what businesses are doing.  I have complained before how I hate how many businesses have no incentive to be efficient.  An example is how managers are often judged not by actual work or being efficient but actually the reverse.  See many managers are judged by how many employees they have, headcount.  The more headcount the bigger the manager or department.  The bigger the department the bigger the budget.  The bigger the budget the more pull you have.  And when it comes to budgets there is no incentive to save or be fiscally conservative.  If you don’t use up all your budget then you run the risk of having it cut next year since you obviously didn’t need that much.  So instead you create a situation where there is no incentive for managers to run an efficient department.  In fact the opposite holds true.  Managers want to go over budget if possible as that would imply they need a bigger budget, and well bigger budget the bigger the manager right?

Forgive me, I know I have a tendency to go all over the place when I write things.  Just hang in there.

Ok so this bad economy is causing companies to re-evaluate the way they do things.  All of a sudden being efficient is encouraged finally.  Coming in under budget is now a positive.  Efficiency is now a good thing.

The bad economy is also helping to push the whole going green cause since going green can typically lead to lower expenses.

So as you can see I am starting to think maybe we need this.  I think maybe we got a little too big for our britches in ways.  Comfortable with spending and not being held accountable for things.  Wasting like there is no tomorrow.  Why because things were so good, everyone thinks they are in control of their destiny and life and finances when in fact we have very little control.  Anything can happen to anyone and we can loose it all in heartbeat.

You don’t believe me?  Look at some of the people in the whole Madoff scandal, some of these people were on top of the world, thought they were secure financially for life and yet almost overnight it was all gone.

So what does all this tell us?  What will you learn from all of this?  Many won’t learn anything until they are directly affected.  Some may start to realize what I have now just by looking around them and with a little introspection.

I am hopeful that eventually this whole thing will only make us stronger as individuals, as businesses and as a nation.  Realize just how fragile everything is and how closely interconnected we all are even in the smallest ways.