January 27, 2009

Infrastucture Day 5 Metering

We will need to set up metering so that we can monitor how much water, power and bandwith a given area is using, or adding to the grid. That way we can add infrastructure where needed, can charge for excessive usage or utilize whatever opportunities may arise. This is more for future ideas not necessarily for immediate usages.

January 25, 2009

Infrastructure Project Day 4 Describing "Self Healing"

I was going to talk today about how I figure Google into my equation however, I will digress and discuss the "Self Healing" nature of my infrastructure idea first.

In order for this project to truly be beneficial in our modern society with the many threats we face, weather, natural disasters and terrorism it is important that the project be able to deal with these issues and not compromise the integrity of the entire system. That said with modern day technology, valves, controls, meters etc. we need to design the system that should a break or breach occur along the system valves will divert water away from the break, meters will shunt electrical around the break and meters will refocus lasers or shut off lasers transmitting data through the fiber optics. Much like a spider web where many individual strands can be compromised the web still will stay intact.

So let's go back to our new national grid we would be building, we have a line every 10 miles. Let's say we have a break in San Francisco because of an Earthquake. Hopefully, it won't compromise the 2-4 lines that would be going into San Francisco but let's assume it does. The system would isolate the breaks, allowing for rapid repair while not causing further damage from flood etc. Also, because we are monitoring the entire grid in a real time basis we will know precisely where the breach occurred and can respond accordingly.

An important aspect for the United States and local utility companies will be to tie their existing system into the new grid, both for economies of scale purposes, but to help make the system more robust. The greater and more intricate the web with safeguards in place and "self healing" enabled the more robust the overall system the less likely terrorism, natural disasters or weather can be a factor.

I will need to flesh this out more in the future but this is the general idea.

January 24, 2009

Infrastructure Project Day 3 refinements of Design and information

I met with Cox communication yesterday and talked to them about high speed internet. Some interesting Items. They feel that a bundle of 48 fibers is sufficient for high speed data transmissions. Specifically they told me that 2, 12 fiber bundles handled all of Henderson. I will surmise that if we can lay a 48 fiber bundle (which I think is like a 4 in, still need to check) along with our water line and electrical line we can have it all in a Single trench.

That is it for today, I put the power in at the farm today and am beat. I will comment another day. I need to talk about my plans for Google next and how they will relate to my project.

January 21, 2009

Infrastructure Project Day 2 Organization and Basic Design

Time to talk about Organization. The first thing I do when I'm starting a business is to identify some goals, come up with some really rough guesstimate costs, and figure out what I want out of the deal and how to organize the deal. So here I go.

The goal is to provide Water, power, and internet infrastructure across the United States. Because we are plagued by the threat of Terrorism we should be prudent and technologically wise and spread out the infrastructure, as well as make it "self healing" (more to follow).

Basically the project will consist of a grid laid out every 10 miles running both East, west and North South across the Continental United States. The United States is approximately 2551 miles wide (East West) by 1585 miles long (North South). If we lay out the grid we will need approximately 255 pipes running north south (2551 divided by 10 miles) and 158 pipes running east west (1585 divided by 10 miles).

The Basic Design, in my mind for now, will consist of 8" schedule 80 pvc pipe for water, High voltage electrical line and probably a large bundle of Fiber optic cable for Internet all laid in a trench 14' deep or deeper. Obviously you can't mix water and high voltage cable so we may have to put the cable in sealed concrete pipe for now but that can be worked out at a later date by engineers.

Using the Internet and running some extraordinary rough numbers we are probably looking at 150 billion for water pipe and installation. The list price on the sch 80 is ll.30 a foot (do the math to get your feet, double the price for install and digging and tack on 25 billion for valves and gates and pumps.) For now we will simply assume the price for power is roughly the same as well as internet. So all told we are looking at 150*3 or 450 billion dollars. A lot, I know, but way the hell less than the bank bailout and at least we will be truly employing people, strengthening our national infrastructure, hedging against future disaster, and priming the pump on future economic growth.

That is the basic design idea. They say the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time so we should stew on the design for a day with the associated pitfalls, problems, and challenges, and talk about organization.

Clearly, this can't be done by a private organization, way to much likelihood for corruption and out sized profits. It clearly, can't be done by the government, government in my opinion is typically good at 2 things, creating bureaucracy (which is somehow their way of creating jobs) and taking credit for things that work, which they typically had very little to do with.

So where does that leave us? A Charity. Yes, a good old fashioned 501 c3. The upside to a charity is that they can take full advantage of every government program under the sun to make the financing of this behemoth easier for the government to facilitate. In addition charities are less threatening for municipalities to work with and since this is a national project involving hundreds of municipalities this seems to be a wise course of action. Charities also must be more transparent in their accounting to maintain their status. There are quite a few other benefits that I won't go into now but will touch upon throughout the next few days and weeks.

I don't know anyone who can run this charity, handle construction, deal with municipalities, finances, etc. except me. I'm sure there are others out there better qualified, but for now I'm going with me in charge because it is easier and I know what I want out of the project and understand my motivations. I elect to pay me $100,000 a year to organize, administer and construct this project. Of course the charity will have to help with travel room and board at local motels (nothing extravagant we are a charity after all) but compensation for me or whomever is in charge will be $100,000.00, likewise for all working on the project this would be the ceiling at which they could be paid.

Part of the 450 billion needed to construct this project will be used to fund an annuity to pay for either all of it's maintenance over the years or a large portion of it. That annuity will then purchase municipal bonds to help the municipalities in this time of trouble. The management of the annuity along with the oversight on maintenance will also be done by me until a suitable replacement can be found and I will make $50,000.00 a year after all construction is complete to carry out those endeavors or likewise my successor would. For the years where there is some overlap I will simply make the $100,000.00.

I feel it is important to lay out 2 rough construction plans at this point for those reading to chew on.
1. We probably should do this in phases so as to minimize costs. Since I'm in charge I would recommend starting in the Southern Half of the United States for a few reasons. Energy production in the form of solar is likely to happen fairly quickly in the desert southwest, Texas etc. once the power lines are in place. The Southern half of the United States is having drought and needs water to continue economic expansion and a water line from east to west will begin to address that quickly. People get excited about a project once they see some success. If we start small and get it successful quickly people will likely be more supportive.

2. On the other hand doing it all at once and striking while the iron is hot is probably the best way to stimulate the overall economy by producing the most jobs at one time. Either way it is do able though challenging. I will address some of the challenges over the next few days and then start to dissect the costs in a more formal structured manner. Till later.

January 20, 2009

Infrastructure Project

I was moved today by Obama's speech and the inauguration. It was cool, for lack of a better word, to watch today. I'm hopeful he can remain true to his idealism in the face of our large economic challenges problems, wars, etc.

I've been working on an idea for several months which, after today's speech, I've decided to make public and seek public support for, advice for, criticism for etc. Obama et al talk of infrastructure projects that we need to do for the country to help with Jobs. I've been on the critical side in the past simply because most of these "shovel ready" projects won't really create jobs they will simply put a tourniquet on job loss. To really create jobs and make a difference we need to look at massive projects even larger than projects like the Hoover Dam and the Highway program of the 30's.

There are many problems with a project of this size, the largest of which, of course is government and government bureaucracy. But after the speech I'm going to take President Obama at his word. So here is my plan.

We clearly need an updated and more secure energy grid, water distribution grid, and internet grid to be competitive with the world and help us become less dependent on foreign oil. Solar and Wind are great but without a viable grid they are pointless. We have flooding where we don't need flooding and drought were we sure could use some water. The internet is the great leveler and likely, job business and enterpenurial tool of our future. That said let's pay the money and put in the grid.

I initially had a plan to start with a water pipeline form the upper Mississippi to Glen Canyon Utah. That pipeline would cost about 5 billion, of which 2 billion would fund an endowment to maintain it. Upon further thought I think we can make a better pipeline cheaper and more intelligently incorporating energy and the internet. I will do several blogs over the next few weeks outlining my plan. Feel free to criticize and point out the error of my ways I think it would be helpful in fleshing out the idea.

For now the gist is a grid of water, power, and internet across the entire United States. More to come. I do recognize it is a bit presumptuous on my part to think this hasn't been thought of or that is unrealistic but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

January 16, 2009

Frustrated by the Economy

The more I hope and hope that Washington will get things right and help with judicious fiscal policy the more and more I'm let down. As much as I hate seeing people loose jobs and be out of work and as much as I hate seeing people loose their homes it seems like the government intervention to try to stem these tides is simply wrong headed. I guess, to me, it proves that people can't really be responsible with so many competing interests.

Much like Atlas Shrugged, the book, my thought process at this moment in time is that the government simply needs to stand aside and let things shake out. It will be painful and potentially hard for a number of years but the more they intervene the worse it seems to be for the future. I guess sometimes the most responsible thing to do is let the system implode upon itself and strive to be "smartly reactive" in helping business and the private sector pick up the pieces through tax breaks, incentives, and less regulation.

Arguably the best way to regulate the banking sector was to let them fail and the market to punish them. It is an unfortunate reality that we could all be caught up in that and thus the government stepped in stopping mass hysteria which could lead to anarchy. At this point though people have had an opportunity to move money around and be more prudent and perhaps a massive banking failure from BofA and Citi would not have as enourmous implications. Hard to say.

My moderate side hopes the government will be prudent and wise the hawkish side of me says they are incapable of fixing the problem without creating more worse issues.

January 06, 2009

What needs to happen?

Wow, the news does not seem to be getting better. Tax credit syndicators are not able to sell tax credits, municipalities are not selling bonds, the market is stale with a lot of potential downside. It is a mess. I somehow feel it is the "deep breath" before the plunge. Maybe plunge is a bit strong but I don't see a lot of reason to hope things right themselves quickly.

It is funny, everyone, explains to me that people are shopping, their eating out, going to shows, sporting events, traveling; how can there be a recession. I wonder what the credit card debt is. You would think that if people were broke they would reign in spending but we have this tendency to not reign in spending even in dire circumstances. We will see how this will play out.

I was for the auto bail out. How do you lay off that many people and not cause massive collateral damage. In hindsight unfortunately that was probably a mistake. The US is simply to used to having their cake and eating it too. The auto companies are not going to make the painful decisions needed to fix their industry. The workers will get screwed ultimately, maybe not today or tomorrow but in the next few months to year it is becoming more and more likely.

It was funny listening to Barney Frank this morning get grilled about the financial bailout. He doesn't have the ability to execute the plan just to write it. Execution lies with the Treasury Secretary.

Well here are the facts. America is over-leveraged. The auto industry is non-competitive and doesn't seem to have a desire to get competitive in a hurry, people spend when they don't have money and we are actually on TV trying to make this more possible asking banks to be better about giving loans. Businesses are over-leveraged. Municipalities revenues are down because property taxes are in a free fall and people are at a higher than average risk of losing their jobs.

I watched a Saturday night live sketch where one of the actors, impersonating an economic advisor kept telling the actor news anchor to "Fix it". We just need to "Fix the economy." Obviously much easier said then done. I've posted in the past we could initiate massive infrastructure construction, but in light of the gross amount of bureaucracy and incompetence in the government that is just not a plausible solution.

The best idea is simply learn to adapt to the current conditions and make money in a down economy. We are going to have to come to terms with it going through its cycle and we are simply going to be in a "downturn" for some time. As soon as the government stops intervening I will jump back into the currencies. Until then It is other business options for me.

January 05, 2009

German Pancakes

This is a great recipe that I think we got from my Cousin in Stockton Chicky. They look a bit odd but taste great and are easy to make.

First, take a 9x13 pan and place in about 4 tablespoons or 1/2 cube of butter and set it in a 400Degree oven to melt. While waiting for that to melt mix the following together:

8 eggs
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
3 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Vanilla

Blend these all together until they are very smooth. Pull the pan from the oven and pour in the batter (It will be the consistency of half and half, thicker than milk but not as thick as cream). Place back in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes or until The sides of puffed up and the center is cooked and not jelly like.

Serve with powdered sugar or maple syrup. It is great.

Another variation is to brown off some sausage or bacon and throw it in the batter and bake the pancake with the sausage or bacon inside. This is great as well. Enjoy.

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