Rutgers, Misunderstood

Rutgers University athletics is back in the news again this Memorial Day weekend, and again, it is for all the wrong reasons.  The new athletic director, Julie Hermann, hired after former AD Tim Pernetti was forced to resign in the wake of the Mike Rice scandal, apparently carries with her some baggage of her own.  Specifically, in the 1990s she resigned as head coach of the University of Tennessee women's volleyball team in the wake of a unanimous letter written by her players, describing some pretty horrible coaching methods.  Additionally, though this has been known for the past few weeks, she was found liable in 1997 in a wrongful termination lawsuit by a former assistant coach alleging that she had been fired due to wanting to become pregnant.

It is certainly possible, at this point, that the scandal will carry over to some hypothetical tipping point, and Rutgers University will end up dismissing the new athletic director for some bad decisions that happened over a decade ago.  I am not certain this would be the correct move to make, as people's behaviors and attitudes are allowed to change over time (certain things that are not politically correct to say in 2013 were way more acceptable to say in the 90's), and also as it's impossible for a person to move through the ranks in a highly competitive field such as athletics management without burning a few bridges in the process.  (In fact, some of Hermann's colleagues stepped to the plate today to dismiss yesterday's allegations.)  But, it may still happen.

With Rutgers' mismanagement of its athletics department continuing to make news, I am sure there are people within Rutgers' administration who are wondering when they will catch a break on a good thing that the school does in the mass media.  If only some professor's latest invention or cure or something would make the headlines on the nightly news the way the school's bungling their latest athletic hire does on ESPN these days.  Lately, it seems the school has been in the news for all of the wrong reasons, and the point of this blog post is to help to understand why.

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I attended Rutgers as an undergraduate between 2002 and 2006.  I graduated with a B.A. in Biology (and I did pretty well there as a student, to leave it at that).  Later, to provide some context, I attended Boston College for my master's degree - so I know what it's like to attend a school with a different philosophy (there is no such thing as a "B.C. Screw", though there is an "RU Screw," for instance).

I love Rutgers to the core, though, and while I primarily love Rutgers for the academic opportunities and high amount of value it provides to students for a quality education, I've also been a football season ticket holder since 2009 - which has been more painful than enjoyable, but hey, I am a glutton for punishment.

My first point, as an alumnus of the University, is that for the most part, Rutgers does not seek to excel - and this is perfectly okay.  Rutgers, if it had a philosophy on this - and it probably doesn't, but bear with me here - seeks to be "good enough" and a good value.  Rutgers is now experiencing the bad side of an equation it's been taking advantage of for a very long time.  Nationally, the Rutgers name exceeds what people in New Jersey think of Rutgers.  When I visit my family in Florida and meet someone new, and it comes up where I went to school, I mention Rutgers and they think "Wow, that's a great school, you must be successful."

I think Rutgers is great, and to the extent I am successful, Rutgers played a huge part in that, but think about it objectively: who goes to Rutgers?  In reality, it's a safety school that takes advantage of the fact that New Jersey graduates WAY more college-ready high school seniors than the national average (because our educational structure is pretty close to top notch, and because of genetics and having lots of smart parents here, etc.).  Any qualified honors student in a NJ public high school could write his or her ticket to any small, private liberal arts college in the U.S. - if they wanted to pay tons of money to attend.  On the flip side, the Ivy League schools have to be way more selective toward NJ students because too many are over-qualified and they seek to have a geographically diverse student body (transplant any of these NJ kids to Kansas and Princeton would admit them in a heartbeat).

So here lies Rutgers, with attractive in-state tuition and the opportunity to obtain a very good (but not world-class) education, close to home.  I could have attended a small, private, liberal-arts school, but I am so glad I attended Rutgers instead.  I write this well aware that, with the exception of one or two academic departments, Rutgers is not excellent at anything.  And of course bureaucratically, due to its complexity and uncommon dependence upon the state, Rutgers has always been a nightmare for everyone (students, professors, staff, etc.).  This bureaucratic awfulness had to have played a huge role in a few of the recent scandals - Rutgers' response to every problem is and always has been to form a committee, adding another layer of garbage and noise to the problem - but in the news coverage of the scandals, it's sort of hidden between the lines, as subtext.

This is because Rutgers' national reputation does not include any of the above truths about what Rutgers is like!  So when a series of scandals like those that have plagued the athletic department over the past few months happen, everyone in the national sports media goes "Wow, Rutgers?!  That pillar of academic excellence?!  How can they be so messed up?!"  To which every Rutgers alumni responds back with a face palm and a "Duh," because even the best students at Rutgers who excelled at everything HAVE to remember waiting in line after line, being shuffled from department to department, in order to get anything administrative accomplished while they were a Rutgers student.  That is the not-so-hidden truth about Rutgers.

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Every candidate for the athletic director position at Rutgers had to have known all the good, and the bad, about working at Rutgers. The good had to the have outweighed the bad, though, because a number of qualified candidates were finalists for the position. But "qualified" and "without warts" are two different things, which leads me to my second point: Rutgers was never going to find someone to be their AD that did not have something checkered in their past.

Here am I speculating a bit, because I do not work in this industry, but it seems reasonable to assume that college athletics are a fairly murky area with lots of potential booby traps: NCAA infractions, overzealous and hyper-competitive recruiting of top athletes, academic scandals, shady AAU coaches, etc.  There seem to be too many ways for a person to fall into possible trouble while climbing the ranks of athletic management at the university level.  And Rutgers, which - let's face it - is not known for its athletics, was also not offering a large sum of money to the athletic director.  If Hermann keeps her job, I believe she will be paid $450,000 annually - I'd take it, and you'd take it, but it's not a huge sum of money for the position and for the responsibility.

So what did we expect to get from our new AD?  Former AD Tim Pernetti was a great find, but not without risk - he did not have a traditional AD background (he came from broadcasting) and as a Rutgers alum who loved the school, he was willing to be paid what was Rutgers was willing to pay.  (I would also assume that as a former TV exec, he was already so wealthy at the time of his hire that he was thinking of the position almost like working for a non-profit, a career change that many wealthy people make at mid-career.)  And it turns out that his flaw - keeping Mike Rice on board when he should have fired him - was probably at least partially a result of his non-traditional AD background.

I am not sure if Rutgers will end up dismissing Hermann for this, but the damage has been done already.  The real problem is that the Rutgers Committee to Select the Members of the Committee to Select the Athletic Director appears to have not known something about Hermann that anyone who reads the On the Banks blog knew about two weeks ago - specifically, that wrongful termination lawsuit (with an actual jury verdict, not an out-of-court settlement) from 1997.

That, above everything else that's happened over the past few months, looks really bad for Rutgers University, and it speaks to the core of the problem, which is that Rutgers seems to be a rudderless ship, constantly reacting to these issues without ever being proactive.  Whatever his good traits, new Rutgers President Robert Barchi has shown time and time again that he has no clue, or interest in, managing a medium-profile athletics department.  Athletics, whatever its warts, is fine marketing for the University, and if Barchi can't fix this series of negative news about Rutgers very quickly, in my opinion, he needs to be dismissed as President.

What I think doesn't really matter, though - there are plenty of influential alumni boosters who have to feel the same way about this, and if your money talks and if my money talks, their money SCREAMS.  And once that goes away, the Board of Governors will have no choice except to let the big boss go.  Let's see what happens in the days and weeks ahead...

CNN: Journalism for Stupid People

Earlier today, I Facebook shared an image of the below "BREAKING NEWS" on CNN.com:

I'll get to this bullcrap in more detail in just a second, but first, some background.  I will admit that I mindlessly check the CNN.com home page a few times a day.  It's no New York Times (to be charitable), but the New York Times instituted a 10 article per month viewing limit and I try not to break it too badly.  Further, I'll admit that part of the attraction of CNN.com is watching the cars crash into each other (kind of like when the shit hits the fan and they routinely jump the gun reporting the news - did you hear the Supreme Court completely overruled health care reform last summer?). 

And besides, where else can you find amazing graphics such as what I've copied below?

Let's break down how awesomely awful this graphic (which I downloaded a few years ago but still kept on my desktop - labeled "horrible image.jpg" - because I could not believe that something this horrible and stupid made its way onto a reputable news organization's web site) is.

1. The colors are too close to each other in hue, and do not organize in any reasonable fashion: bright red for a near-certainty of default and... pastel orange for a relatively low possibility of default?  Presumably these colors should be on a spectrum of some kind, since the variable they're describing is interval in nature.
2. The legend, holy smokes, the legend.  This legend looks like it was designed by a mentally challenged third grader on bring your child to work day, or, at the very least, someone who's never seen a chart before.  
3. In order to interpret this chart, I need to look at the nation I am interested in (luckily I'm good at geography!), try to decipher the color, and then move my eyes over to the Legend That Will Burn Your Eyeballs in order to determine... Ireland has a 51% probability of default?
4. But what does that mean, exactly?  Why should I care, and how does this relate to the rest of Europe, a/k/a that amorphous grey blob in between Ireland and the rest of Southern Europe?

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Since it's such breaking news that most of us still like Obama, let's look at the article in more detail and try to figure out why the hell this is BREAKING NEWS.

President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason he came out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.

Oh, I see.  CNN sponsored a research survey, and in order to maximize page views, they disguised the one potentially interesting finding in a press release labeled "BREAKING NEWS".  Because that doesn't spoil actual breaking news, like, I don't know...

The other breaking news story: THAT GIANT TORNADO THAT IS HEADING RIGHT FOR A MAJOR AMERICAN CITY. 

God, CNN is just awful.  People are about to die in a massive natural disaster in Oklahoma City, and some dumbass web editor is sitting at his or her cubicle, herping and derping about search engine optimization and new visitors because OMG, most of us still like Obama.  Sometimes I wish I lived in the 18th century.

Anyway, back to the article itself.  Hmm, President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason his approval rating held steady?  Wow, this reeks of expecting a certain result in a survey, not finding it, and designing some straw man excuse for not finding the result you were looking for.


The new numbers indicate that Obama remains popular, with 79% of Americans saying the president is likable.

"This underscores just how important the president's personal characteristics have been to him, and how useful it is to the White House that IRS, Benghazi, and AP controversies have not dimmed Obama's personal popularity so far," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Or, alternatively, it means nothing.  It means nothing because politicians are almost always inherently likable people - Bill Clinton?  Ronald Reagan?  Everyone loved those guys.  Smooth operator, that Slick Willie.  He could charm the pants off a cowboy. 

But likability has nothing to do with approval - approval exists along party lines, and likability is a personal characteristic.  So, I don't know, maybe this happened:

• The entire political machine has its head up its collective ass when it comes to interpreting and understanding research; specifically, they tend to over-state marginal differences and try to materialize stories out of the ether when no true data patterns exist.
• The political establishment thinks the American people care about Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and other issues ostensibly plaguing the Presidency.  In reality, most American people do not, and the data supporting the opposite point is rigged - specifically engineered by research companies on behalf of their journalistic-machine clients to make it look like randomly selected Americans participating in a research survey care about something they do not care about.
• Because no one cares in the universe about these issues, Obama's approval ratings don't move.
• BUT WAIT, EVERYONE CARES!  IT MUST BE BECAUSE HE'S SO DURN LIKABLE, THAT OBAMA.

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Last month, I was randomly selected to participate in Quinnipiac University's weekly political phone survey of New Jersey residents.  I was asked many "yes/no" style questions regarding my opinions on many different topics germane to current events in New Jersey.  For instance, should Mike Rice have been fired?  What about Rutgers President Barchi?  Do I approve of Governor Christie's performance regarding jobs and the economy?  Hurricane Sandy relief?

On several occasions, I did not know how to respond, so I simply said "I don't know."  But that's me being honest, and also being a survey researcher by trade and knowing that the "Don't know" option exists.  Most people, forced into a yes/no type question, will answer either yes or no.  And this is what ends up happening, as a result:

Fifty-five percent say the IRS and Benghazi matters are very important to the nation and 53% saying the same thing about the AP case.

"But that doesn't quite make either of them another Watergate - at least, not yet. Nearly two-thirds say [sic] that Watergate was very important to the nation at the time; 58% say [sic] Iran-Contra was very important during the Reagan administration," says Holland. "So Americans see the current controversies as very important - maybe as much as Iran-Contra, but not yet at Watergate levels."

First, how does something being "very important to the nation" translate to "I dislike how the President is performing, overall," even if the President were involved in the scandal (besides the point it's debatable the extent to which he knew about either issue)?

Second, I know virtually no one who thinks that the IRS, Benghazi, or AP scandals are very important to the nation - but maybe that's just my friends.  So I doubt your data's integrity, fundamentally speaking.

Third, what does it mean that Americans find these scandals roughly as important as Iran-Contra, but not as important as Watergate?  I know that Watergate got Nixon impeached and forced his eventual resignation; Iran-Contra is a blip in the history of the 1980's.  Some historical context would be useful, here.

The poll also indicates that 52% say the president can manage the government effectively. That's up 10 percentage points since the last time CNN asked the question, in 2011.

As always, Obama's Achilles heel remains policy issues. Most Americans say they don't agree with him on the size and power of the federal government.

How... how are you allowed to contradict yourself like that in the real world?  You just said one thing in Paragraph A, and the absolute opposite thing in Paragraph B.  Part and parcel of managing the government effectively is making policy decisions on the size and power of the government.  If I contradicted myself this blatantly, like, EVER, at my job, I'd get called out on it in a heartbeat.  And I'm not writing an article for the front page of a website that draws 10 gazillion page views her hour!

Seriously, did someone with a shred of common sense vet this article before going public with it?  Or were they too busy ironing out the pastel color scheme for their next incorrect use of a map, when a table would have sufficed?

Why Must We Live Someplace So Damn Expensive?

(Author's note: Occasionally I like to deep dive into personal finance topics, and this is one of those.  I swear, it'll be less boring than you think, but if this isn't your cup of tea, feel free to not read what I've painstakenly written. ::sniff::)

The projects of West Baltimore. Not where I currently live.

Like most people with a mortgage, I often fantasize about how awesome life would be if I didn't have a mortgage payment.  To me, this is the epitome of wealth; I'd keep working, and saving, and investing, but to not have to pay for the privilege to live somewhere would be the ideal way to live.  I think with the extra money I would have, I'd buy lots of socks, but wear each pair only once.

This led me to think about the practicality of ever not having a mortgage.  You see, houses in the part of New Jersey where I live are expensive.  I think there are good reasons why they are expensive - and I'll explore a few of them later in this post - but we bought our house for $375,000 two years ago, thinking we purchased a bargain, but thinking about the sheer magnitude of my mortgage payment is enough to make me wish I were paying rent again, instead.

When a person decides to live somewhere, they're not only selecting a neighborhood, a school system, and a town or city.  They're also selecting a specific micro-economy; a place where certain goods and services cost a certain amount, which is definitely different from the price your old college roommate is paying for their goods and services.  Some things, like a gallon of milk or an electric bill, cost more or less the same amount no matter where you live (with rare exception).  Others, like real estate and taxes, show incredible variance.

How much variance, you ask?  Let's take a hypothetical family, who just happens to live in the same house that my wife and I share, but in some alternate universe.  They have a household income of exactly $100,000.  After some time, they elect to move, because their $2,000 monthly mortgage payment strikes them as highway robbery, and frankly they are just plain tired of living in New Jersey - too much fist-pumping and littering on the side of the road, maybe. 

But where to move?  Well, here are their hypothetical options, including how much money they'd need to make in order to match their household income in New Jersey (overall), and how much their mortgage payment would be (instead of $2,000 per month), assuming they wanted the exact same type of home in their new destination:

• Chapel Hill, NC: $86,626 annual income, $1,460 mortgage payment
• Jacksonville, FL: $71,352 annual income, $940 mortgage payment
• Austin, TX: $70,440 annual income, $940 mortgage payment
• Seattle, WA: $88,981 annual income, $1,480 mortgage payment

(All of the numbers above come from CNNMoney's Cost of Living Calculator - it's a fun tool to play around with.)

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The first thing I think when I see these numbers, to be completely honest, is: why the hell do I still live in New Jersey?  None of the locations in the above list strike me as horrible places to live.  Some of them, like Chapel Hill and especially Austin, are downright wonderful - they're not backwoodsy, or poorly-educated, and they do not lack for culture, entertainment, and the arts.  

But this brings me to my second thought: the economics of supply and demand, in a very meta sense, do not make huge mistakes very often.  That is, New Jersey is a more expensive place to live than Chapel Hill, Jacksonville, Austin, and Seattle precisely because more people want to live here (relative to supply) than the aforementioned locations.  Even when houses in New Jersey sometimes end up looking like this:

Someone's seven figure beach home, uprooted by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.  I hope they had flood insurance.

There are other valid reasons to want to live in New Jersey.  For instance, part of the high cost of living in New Jersey is the association with a high-tax infrastructure that provides essential services (e.g., police, education) at a high quality.  People can disagree until the cows come home about the goodness or badness of taxes.  Personally, I don't mind paying taxes, so long as I can see the result of paying them.  Students in the public school district in my town end up at Ivy League schools, like, all the time.  I grew up in a town kind of like the town where we currently live, and all of the best high school teachers in my school earned six figure incomes.  And you know what, high property taxes be damned, they all deserved to earn six figure incomes!  They had gone to fairly prestigious colleges and graduate schools, and instead of pursuing more practical careers with greater income potential, they instead climbed the most gradual income ladder in existence, dealt with all kinds of frustrations (in addition to dealing with most kids, who suck), and ended up giving me a damned solid public school education.

Rest assured that in the four cities listed in the above cost of living comparison, teachers are not earning six figures.  In fact, income inflation is a matter of fact in areas with higher cost of living, which brings me to my next point: if our hypothetical family decided not to move, but to stay in New Jersey, eventually they could move wherever they wanted (more or less) and live like kings.

Assuming their mortgage payment were not too much to handle, they'd pay it off eventually.  And once it was paid off, at least in theory, they'd be holding a fairly valuable asset in a very desirable location, and it would be 100% theirs.  They could sell it to someone else (again, in theory, there would be a line out the door to purchase the house) and buy a veritable mansion in Jacksonville, Florida.

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Later this week, I will visit my dad in Florida (Jacksonville, no less... ha!) and at some point soon after arrival, I will see a 5 bedroom, 4 bath house with 3,500 square feet, an in-ground inside pool, and a frigging bowling alley on the market for the same price as our current house.  And, like always, I'll get a little pissy and jealous inside about living where I live.  But, hopefully, I'll read the above and remember: hey, you can't beat the food, the diversity, and the educational opportunities for future generations in New Jersey.

Even if the weather here sucks ten months out of the year, the traffic is endless and interminable, and your property taxes would buy a gently used BMW sedan every single year.

Grr, Florida real estate prices piss me off...

A Roadmap to Turning 30

Earlier today, Deadspin linked to a wonderful Esquire interview with former NBA star (and successful co-pilot) Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, who wrote eloquently about the 20 things he wished he'd known when he was 30.  Abdul-Jabaar, now 66, has always struck me as an interesting paradox; an intensely serious and physical player on the court, but every time I'd heard him interviewed (most recently on Opie and Anthony on XM satellite radio) I have been struck by how thoughtful and quiet - practically studious - he seemed.  Given this, I was very interested to read what he had to say to Esquire, the magazine that does the greatest work with making ordinary men seem extraordinary (and extraordinary men seem transcendent). 

Esquire does high-end journalism well in general, in my opinion, but its light shines brightest when it strives to use the examples of older men to teach life lessons to younger men.  I've been a long time subscriber and it's nearly impossible for me to read an issue without jumping directly to the "What I've Learned" interview (this month, Willie Nelson!).  It turned out that Abdul-Jabaar's self-authored article was even deeper than that.  Instead of small nuggets of advice, the article provided deep, sometimes excruciating detail regarding each of the items for which he wished he knew back then what he knows right now.

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I turn 30 later this year, and I am - except for matters related to planning a huge party - not considering it a very big deal.  People get caught up in milestone numbers, and sometimes this is with good reason; turning 21 is a legitimate excuse to purchase a legal adult beverage, and turning 80 (for instance) is an accomplishment worth truly celebrating for longevity's sake.  But 30 is none of that; unless you are a professional athlete, it's fair to say that anyone at this age has not yet accomplished even a fraction of what they will eventually accomplish. 

I know I feel that way about myself, which is why I read Abdul-Jabbar's article with a critical eye toward self-evaluation.  Where, if anywhere, did I seem to be doing pretty well for myself, still being a relatively young man?  And where do I know I am weak?  Below, I've sampled from his list of 20 items, and expounded a bit where relevant on where I stand:

(All words in italics are from the article itself.)

1. Be more outgoing. My shyness and introversion from those days still haunt me. Fans felt offended, reporters insulted. That was never my intention... I loved to play basketball, and was tremendously gratified that so many fans appreciated my game. But when I was off the court, I felt uncomfortable with attention... Basically, I was a secret nerd who just happened to also be good at basketball. 

If you asked me honestly what I wish I were better at, my first reply would be that I wish I were more of a people person.  Don't get me wrong, if I know you, we're cool, and we can talk about anything.  But I've always had problems connecting with people at first (through some combination of shyness + being a not-so-secret nerd who just happened to also be good at math).  Last year, I read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, which helped tremendously (especially for an item written about eighty years ago).  What I try to practice when I meet new people, whether it's at an airport bar somewhere or in line at the grocery store, is to find something easy enough to talk about (the weather, sports, work, family) such that most people can talk about it comfortably.  But it's a constant work in progress for me.  I wish I were better at it.

3. Become financially literate. I chose my financial manager, who I later discovered had no financial training, because a number of other athletes I knew were using him. That’s typical athlete mentality in that we’re used to trusting each other as a team, so we extend that trust to those associated with teammates. Consequently, I neglected to investigate his background or what qualified him to be a financial manager. He placed us in some real estate investments that went belly up and I came close to losing some serious coin.

I'm doing well at this.  When I left graduate school, I decided to become more actively involved in my financial future.  I designed my 401(k) allocation myself, picking the lowest cost index funds available to me and rebalancing annually to shuffle more funds into sectors that I felt were on the rise.  I've also been reading tons of blogs and books about personal finance.  As it stands, my financial security is one thing I cannot complain about as I turn 30.

6. Get handy. I always wanted to be one of those guys who, whenever something doesn’t work, straps on a tool belt and says, “I’ll fix it.” Recently my washing machine broke and flooded my entire downstairs. I was forced to stand idly by waiting for a plumber to arrive while water rose around my ankles because I didn’t know how to shut off the water. That’s the kind of experience that makes you have your testosterone levels checked.

Yeah, I mean, becoming handy - unless you start at a really young age - is a life-long process.  Over the past couple of years, I've learned how to paint, wire outlets and light fixtures, mow lawns, landscape, fix simple drain clogs, install a tub surround, a ceiling fan, and a door knob.  I'm probably leaving a few things out, and I know for a fact there's a ton left to learn (I know nothing about carpentry, for instance, which seems like something I'd be good at).  Maybe ten years from now I'll be able to compare myself to others and say that I am handy, but for now, I'll have to settle for taking on new home improvement projects and seeing how I do.

 

7. Be patient. Impatience is the official language of youth. When you’re young, you want to rush to the next thing before you even know where you are.

Another huge weakness for me; I may be the least patient person I know.  I work in an office building with a physical therapy office and I like to walk fast.  It absolutely kills me to have to slow down in order to accommodate the needs of someone who is walking slowly due to a physical condition - I don't mean to be an asshole, I just really need to get where I'm going.  Why do I rush?  I have absolutely no idea; I'm either walking to my desk (where I do my job perfectly fine without needing to rush) or I'm walking to my car (and I'll get home when I get home, there's no point in rushing).  Even though I understand it, it's like I'm addicted to moving fast.

I drive pretty fast, too, and I find myself being jealous of slower drivers on the road.  It seems like a very Zen thing to be; cool, calm, and collected enough to not need to PUSH to get where you're going.  I wonder whether any of these slow drivers were like me when they were younger (probably no, probably most people as Type-A as myself don't live to be that old in the first place - our hearts explode first).  But still, the point is to self-evaluate here, and if I can improve on this maybe just one day a month, that's something.

 

9. Career is never as important as family. The better you are at your job, the more you’re rewarded, financially and spiritually, by doing it. You know how to solve problems for which you receive praise and money. Home life is more chaotic. Solving problems is less prescriptive and no one’s applauding or throwing money if you do it right. That’s why so many young professionals spend more time at work with the excuse, “I’m sacrificing for my family.” Bullshit. Learn to embrace the chaos of family life and enjoy the small victories. This hit me one night after we’d won an especially emotional game against the Celtics. I’d left the stadium listening to thousands of strangers chanting “Kareem! Kareem!” I felt flush with the sense of accomplishment, for me, for the Lakers, and for the fans. But when I stepped into my home and my son said, “Daddy!” the victory, the chanting, the league standings, all faded into a distant memory.

I write this as a childless man, and I'll choose to remain childless for at least a while longer, I believe.  This makes me happy because I'm inherently selfish (at the moment) and don't want to give up any of the freedoms that I personally have worked very hard to obtain (at least for right now).  I'm sure that as I get older these priorities will change, but I'm living my ideal lifestyle at the moment, and that's what matters for the purposes of this post.

On the other hand, a man starts to wonder about getting old (which happens to those of us who are fortunate) and getting infirm and needing help (which happens to everyone, if they live long enough).  These are big picture questions and I can't even feign an answer to them right now.  Staying childless gives me the comfort of not having to address what being part of a family means.  My family life growing up was tough, in its own way, and my extended childhood is a great way to "punt" on these types of questions.  Similarly, it allows me to focus on my career - and I do care a bunch about my career right now.  Will things always stay this way?  Probably not, but Kareem's words are interesting to read at this point in my life, regardless of what the future brings.

10. Being right is not always the right thing to be. Kareem, my man, learn to step away. You think being honest immunizes you from the consequences of what you say. Remember Paul Simon’s lyrics, “There’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” So maybe it’s not that important to win an argument, even if you “know” you’re right. Sometimes it’s more important to try a little tenderness.

Unlike the patience thing, I am improving at this.  Because of what I do for a living, I'm rarely lacking for being around egos.  You can look at this in one of two ways, and I elect to look at it as being fortunate to work in a line of business that attracts smart and tough-minded people.  Earlier in my career and earlier in my life, I was so concerned that I wasn't competent/mature enough to fit in that I would push my arguments on other people.  Now I've learned to just give up and give in, even if I think I may be right about the argument itself.  

 

Many times I've feigned sympathy in conversations with strangers who have assumed my political views are radically different from what they are; in the past, I'd correct them and try to convert them to my cause.  Now I just let them think I agree with them.

I guess at the end of the day, I'd rather be well-liked than great at knowing stuff.  I think most people who know me know about my intellect already; there's no need to shove it on unsuspecting strangers. 

11. Cook more. 

Aw hell yes.  Man, do I love cooking.  I try to cook for my wife and me at least three times per week; my specialties are Mexican, Italian, grilled meats, and starchy side dishes.  The only place where I could see improvement over the next ten years is sharpening my skill set; for instance, I'd love to learn actual knife skills (get it? sharpen?), and I'd love to learn how to cook more haute cuisine-type stuff. 

13. Do one thing every day that helps someone else. This isn’t about charity, this is about helping one individual you know by name. Maybe it means calling your parents, helping a buddy move, or lending a favorite jazz album to Chocolate Fingers McGee.

Good at this, I think.  I'm extremely charitable within my own social circle.

14. Do more for the community. This is about charity, extended to people close by whose names you don’t know. You can always do more.

Awful at this, on the other hand.  Sometimes I wish I believed in God because - faulty premises aside - churches are great at getting people to volunteer; say one thing for religion, for better or for worse, it brings people together.  I do "guilty white person" things for charity, like donating money and clothing and old kitchen utensils and shit, but none of that seems real.  If I could make it to my 40th birthday having helped build a house or something, that would be ideal.

16. Don’t be so quick to judge. It’s human nature to instantly judge others. It goes back to our ancient life-or-death need to decide whether to fight or flee. But in their haste to size others up, people are often wrong—especially a thirty-year-old sports star with hordes of folks coming at him every day. We miss out on knowing some exceptional people by doing that, as I’m sure I did...You have to weigh the glee of satisfaction you get from arrogantly rejecting people with the inevitable sadness of regret you’ll eventually feel for having been such a dick.

BUT... BUT... arrogantly rejecting people is fun!  I am going to share a deep, dark secret with you right now - something I've never put on paper before (I think).  I've always sort of vaguely disliked other people until I get to know them.  I think it's the lasting chains of being a nerdy kid without too many friends in elementary school - when you're an outsider you start to think that the problems are with other people.  (And by the way, given how well my adult life has proceeded thus far, it's kind of difficult to prove to me that 8-year-old Fred didn't have a serious point.)  As an adult, though, this behavior can quickly become antisocial and overly judgmental.

So what do I do to fix this?  Well I'm pretty sure the issue is dispositional at this point; I am never going to be a social butterfly in this life.  But through learning better social graces I've been able to act somewhat smoother in casual interactions, which also helps keep me from judging (judging is, after all, a reflex with its basis in social anxiety).  This is another work in progress for me.

18. Watch more TV. 

 

I am an absolute STUD at watching TV.  No possible areas for improvement here.

20. Everything doesn’t have to be fixed. Relax, K-Man. Some stuff can be fixed, some stuff can’t be. Deciding which is which is part of maturing.

The day when I can learn how to say "fuck it" and actually mean it will be a paradigm shifting day for me.  I have to say, the big takeaway from reading Kareem's thoughts - and thinking how similar these issues are to the ones I face now, as I approach thirty - is that I'm a type.  Specifically I'm a driven, neurotic, ambitious person, which is both an awesome thing to be in the long run and an absolutely awful thing to be in the momentary quotidian of life.  The key is to learn how to enjoy moments, and I think that's something you just need time in order to figure out.  Or maybe more appropriately, you need a sense of the transience of time in order to figure out - I've yet to realize that time is short, and I am going to die someday.  I just assume that I'll keep growing, and learning, and becoming faster at running half marathons indefinitely.

Is this true?  Absolutely not, but it's nice to dream, at least for a while.  And when that dream ends, it'll be time to come to terms with item #20, which is ultimately about setting priorities.

Student Loans, or NONE LIKE IT POOR!

           For the longest time I believed myself and my friends to be members of Generation-X, mostly due to the fact that I heard this term flying around frequently when I was young.  A few years back, I found out that I am Generation-Y, aka a Millenial.  You know what else I found out?  That Millenials, in every sense, are screwed.

            The economy is still slow, and likely won’t pick up until people start spending again.  And the age range that traditionally spends the most, on everything but healthcare, e.g. cars, houses, furniture, etc, has no money to spend on these things for a number of reasons.  We have been forced into a number of Ponzi Schemes, namely Social Security and Medicare.  I say forced, because most Ponzi Schemes obtain members by stupidity or greed.  For us, it doesn’t matter if we are one, the other, or both.  What little money we have left is almost certainly going to student loans.  Why you ask?  Because parents drill into our heads from early on that you have to go to college and get a degree.

            I believe this to be a good course, but I believe too many people go and get degrees that are nearly useless, i.e. history, political science, art.  Or people major in whatever seems to be popular on TV, e.g. CSI lab tech, or use one of the aforementioned useless degrees to go on to something they watch on TV, e.g. lawyer.  I will take this time to disclose that I am an attorney, but took the time to become an engineer first.  Disclaimer, The Big Bang Theory did not exist until after I graduated, so there wasn’t a show glamorizing being a nerd, nor did any shows glorify the “patent attorney.”  Alas, while I feel I help advance the culture through bringing new technology to the market, I, like so many others carry student loan debt.  

            Law School, Medical School, and Business School are all very pricey, and I knew this going in, so I brought this on myself.  However, my point is that many colleges charge the same as Medical School, which will create someone licensed to save a life, for a degree that might get you a job as a waiter, if you are lucky.  Even the useful majors struggle these days to find that first job.  So the debt keeps piling up due to compound interest.  When will the student loan (non-dischargeable) debt bubble burst?  At what point will the job makers cut over-head to the point that the Millenials can no longer hope to pay off their student loan debt, and the original lenders can’t squeeze another penny out of them, or resell on the secondary market?  

More importantly, what will happen when the bubble does burst?  Will the current debt be forgiven?  Will lenders cease providing educational loans before then?  Will schools start going under because no one can afford them?  Or will they just become more reasonable with their tuition?  Will this lead to a reversion to the way we see things that we no longer tell our children they must go to college?  What will happen to the banks holding all these IOU’s that they can never collect on?

At this point in my life, I am starting to think that the best thing a high school graduate can do, especially in NJ, is to go be government employee from age 18-38, then retire with a pension, then get another job from 38-58, then retire with a second pension.  Avoid college and student loan debt.  You can still go to the parties, and you will actually be able to buy things that you want, in addition to those you need.

Why I Torture Myself, a/k/a Why I Run

How it looks is exactly how I felt - finishing a 10k race in March 2013

Yesterday morning, I woke up five minutes before my alarm clock would have sealed the deal - 6:55 am.  I slowly went through the pre-run preparations that allow me to run long distances (or, perhaps more accurately, keep me from feeling the negative after-effects of running long distances).  Fully stretched?  Check.  Guzzle down some water and fill up my nerdy as all hell fuel belt with 10 oz water, 10 oz Gatorade?  Double check.  Space age, fourth generation Gore-Tex long sleeved shirt and running pants?  Status achieved.  Body Glide (don't even ask)?  Absolutely necessary.

As I stumbled down the two flights of stairs in the Cape May bed and breakfast inn where my wife and I decided to get away for a relaxing weekend, I was thinking to myself, this is technically a vacation, my wife's up there sleeping like any sane person would be sleeping at 7 am on a Saturday morning on vacation, and I could be sleeping, too, for at least another hour and a half or so.  What the hell am I doing?

We'd been to Cape May, damn, I'd have to say this was the fifth time we'd spent a weekend in this town.  Because I treat this town as a place to unwind and relax, and because I generally do not associate distance running with unwinding or relaxing, I'd actually never run a single step within Cape May city limits before*.  But this morning, this unseasonably frigid April morning with temperatures barely above freezing and a complimentary 25 mph swirling wind, just to make things extra interesting, I was going to run the streets of Cape May.

(*NOTE: I'm fairly certain this is true, as I have meticulously kept statistics on every run I've taken since January 2008 in an Excel spreadsheet, but it is possible that I did run Cape May on a visit prior to 2008.  I encourage every runner to keep notes about each run - I keep date, distance, time, pace (calculated by Excel), location, and notes.  My "notes" generally include brief details about how I felt, whether I ran alone or with a friend, the weather that day, and any special achievements or items worth jotting down.)

The problem with this particular run was, it was God-awful terrible.  Specifically it was terrible in the worst possible way - I am generally a healthy and strong runner, but my one long-term weakness is cold and windy weather when I don't have my ski gloves.  I have poor circulation in my hands, and I also react awfully to frostbitten hands in a total body, almost autoimmune sense.  Now, every runner has to give up on a run (I call it "bonking", a phrase I learned from my father) once in a while, but 2013 had - to this point - been a banner year so far in the not-bonking category.  I had run dozens of times up to that point, under different conditions and for different distances, without a single bonk.

But 3.3 miles into a scheduled six-miler, I had to pack it in and walk back to the bed and breakfast, muttering curses under my breath, shamed by the road.  When I returned to the relative comfort of our heated room, it still took me another ten minutes for the frostbite to subside enough for me to relax and actually take a shower and get along with my day.

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Today's run was the complete opposite experience, by the way - seven miles at a comfortable 8:34 pace (how many of you knew that was 7.0 miles per hour?) at a local park.  Though it was still breezy outside, the weather had warmed to sixty degrees and as a result I was able to run in a t-shirt and shorts.  The park was buzzing with people, as today was the first truly spring-like weekend day of the year, and this actually inspired me to run faster.  As much as I hated yesterday's attempt at running, today was an example of why I run.

The health benefits of a moderate amount of running (let's call it 15-25 miles per week, though everyone is different) are pretty much indisputable.  A man my age and my size burns 150 calories per mile; running twenty miles in a week burns 3,000 calories, so it's pretty difficult for me to gain weight when I'm able to run twenty miles per week on average.

Mentally, the benefits are just as clear.  Twenty miles is about three hours per week spent running, at my current pace.  Whether it's on a treadmill or outdoors, that is a great deal of time for organizing one's thoughts and working through one's troubles.  Outdoor running is also forced sun exposure, which - in addition to a relatively strong early season farmer's tan - has mental health benefits as well.  People get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) for a reason, and I'm fairly prone to feeling down in the winter time as well.  When winter finally starts transitioning into spring each year, I can't wait to get outside and run.

These are benefits for anyone, and they are relative to each person's previous health condition.  A sedentary person could complete a "Couch to 5k" running program and achieve notable health benefits, just because of where they were before.  I'm a repeat half marathoner (my seventh half marathon will take place later this month) so it's a bit more challenging for me to push the health envelope - I would either have to run longer, which I do not want to do, or run faster, which I am begrudgingly attempting to do.

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I run to escape my problems, and I intend to be completely transparent about that.

I run because if I didn't run, I would eat the same way I currently eat, and consume the occasional few beers the same way I currently drink the occasional few beers - but I would not feel, act, or look the same way I do right now, because I run.

I run to compete against myself, because I'm years out of school now and I'm still addicted to competition.  Until you graduate college (or, I suppose, law school if you're a lawyer or med school if you're a physician), you're constantly competing intellectually against your peers.  If you're a talented student, you learn to love the competition (because you're used to winning, for the most part).  But in corporate America, I have found that score keeping is vague, competitions are few and far between, and you don't know who wins and who loses until everyone retires.  So I run to keep that spirit of healthy competition alive.

I run to be social, which is weird because for many people running is a solitary endeavor, and it is weird because I'm not a very small-talky, chatty person in my everyday life.  Put me in a race environment, though, and I become best friends with people I've never met before (I am also like this at bars and at playoff baseball games; random strangers bear hugged me after Mark Teixiera hit a walk-off home run in a 2009 playoff game against the Twins - I guess I am just very huggable). 

I run to live longer, because I'm convinced that the human heart wants to be pushed (within boundaries, as ultra marathoners are hurting themselves without a doubt) and the human heart does not want to beat a hundred times per minute at rest.  People disagree with me on this, and that's fine - I concede that runners have been known to drop dead from time to time - but in a very macro sense, an average, moderate runner should see more years on this planet (and more of those years should be healthy years) than someone who does not run at all.

Finally, I run to experience running.  Running hurts, and frankly running sucks sometimes.  But you learn a great deal about yourself through running distances, breaking down your own mental barriers, running with people, and becoming enraptured in the process of simply putting one foot in front of the other, quickly, for an extended period of time.

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I do not, on the other hand, run for the following reasons:

1. To compete against others;
2. To be "good" at running;
3. To push myself further and further every single time;
4. To crawl through mud, climb fences, be cut by razor wire, etc.

The above are perfectly reasonable reasons for a person to run (hey, whatever toots someone's noodle is none of my business, as far as I am concerned), but I simply cannot run for these reasons. I am not certain why I am not a very fast runner - I assume it's a combination of my genetics and my just not wanting to work that hard at anything - but I know that I lack the mental and physical fortitude to become a very fast runner.  Plus, as a recovering fatty, there's no way I would ever combine dieting with a distance running plan.  I run to compensate for my unhealthy nutritional choices and nonetheless remain relatively skinny; if I were to eat too healthy while running so much, I would lose too much weight.  Nobody likes a stick figure Fred.

I can't push myself further and further every time because then I'd burn out and stop running altogether.  For someone who races fairly regularly, I am exceedingly prone to running burnout.  I have my share of problems with running journalism (e.g., Runner's World), one of which is the assumption that the readership runs because they love and/or are addicted to running.  I face palm every time I read these articles about post-race recovery plans that include things like "We know the first thing you want to do the next day after a half marathon or marathon is get back on the pavement.  Fight that urge."  Um, I'm sorry, what?  Please tell me this is sarcasm and I am just not getting the joke.  After racing 13.1 miles and leaving every ounce of energy I had on those 13.1 miles of pavement, I barely want to drive down a road for the next week or two after the race, let alone run on pavement.  I get pavement PTSD.  I can't even listen to shitty 90's grunge rock, that's how scared I get of Pavement.

And finally, there is this totally okay for other people, but not for me, running subculture of these "tough guy" runs.  I was reading an article about how these "tough guy" Spartan runs attract type-A, masochistic macho stock trader types - the kind who pump iron because they just want to be awesome, brah.  Apparently these guys crawl through sewer pipes and have their nipples plugged into electrodes just to finish these "races", which are loosely inspired by Marine Corps boot camp hell weeks.  So to each their own, I suppose.  You guys should have fun at your Goldman Sachs sausage festivals, and I'll just stay the course and enjoy running regular races, which I guess will now consist of only regular guys and all of the women.  Sucks to be a regular guy, I guess.

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I will know that I love running when I am able to run consistently for a year without any sort of break.  As of the present time, I have never been able to pull this off.  I typically train hard through the winter and early spring for a half marathon; then break for a while and hardly run at all for most of the summer (just three miles here or there).  Then I pick it up again in the late summer and through the fall for a second half marathon; then I break for the holidays.  For all I know, this strategy (if you can call it that) has kept me from becoming seriously injured while running.  But still, I would appreciate a year's worth of consistency for consistency's sake - just so I know I could do it.

Luck be a Lady: Preparing for the 2013 World Series of Poker

After about a decade of playing the game seriously, and after years of vacillating back and forth on whether or not to do it, this year I am finally crossing an item off of my bucket list by playing in the World Series of Poker.  The real thing, a major poker tournament with a $1,000 buy-in, and the chance - if everything goes right and the cards fall my way for three days straight - to bring home a real champions' bracelet from Las Vegas.

This is a story you may have heard before, at least partially, if you've ever played the game of poker seriously enough to wonder how - maybe if you went out to Vegas just once, and somehow got incredibly lucky while you were out there - you might actually compete among some of the strongest players in the world.  It's what happens just before the closing credits of "Rounders", after Mike McD breaks Teddy KGB's spirit and crushes his pride.  It is the kind of pipe dream spoken across many a low-stakes home game, and it's the reason why lots of true amateurs play satellite tournaments (even now, in the post-poker boom years) just for the chance to buy into a real Las Vegas World Series of Poker tournament.

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So here's how I fell in love with the game of poker: it started, I suppose, with card games for nickels and dimes against a few family members when I was about eight years old.  I was then greatly assisted by Hoyle Casino, a PC game released by Sierra Entertainment about twenty years ago.  This game taught me how to gamble digitally for play money, and it also taught me aggression - it's very easy to gamble all of your chips on one hand when they don't count for anything.

And you can't forget the incredible influence of the Jersey Shore arcade culture.  I don't know if it's like this anyplace else in the United States, but if you grew up anywhere near a beach in New Jersey, you were almost perpetually exposed to arcade environments that were everything but an actual brick and mortar casino, except the cigarettes were made of candy and the video poker games gave you tickets, instead of money, for a made hand.

While other six-year-olds played Skeeball or Pole Position at the Bev and Wally's arcade at Keansburg Boardwalk, I was playing some medieval predecessor to Triple Double Bonus Video Poker.  Gambling (like other vices, I suppose) is a culture, and if you grow up in New Jersey and don't gamble, it's something like growing up in New Orleans and not eating gumbo (or drinking hurricanes).  Your parents must have been really lame, or evangelically opposed to the act, or some combination of the two.

Then, finally, for my 21st birthday, I received Doyle Brunson's "Super System" - which was, by then, already established as a book of gospel in the canon of poker literature and strategy - as a gift.  I couldn't get through more than half of the book because it focused on Texas Hold 'Em, a game I barely understood, even though I'd recently started watching ESPN's nearly non-stop coverage of the World Series of Poker.  With time, though, I started to understand the game enough to compete for real money.

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Lost, now barely a footnote among the various hyper-televised sports fads of the very early 21st century, is the fact that for several years in the early- and mid-2000's, playing poker and being a poker fan was an incredibly, openly cool thing to be.  ESPN's television coverage of the game (which recently debuted hole card technology allowing casual viewers to view the exact card holdings and strategies of the players) was a major factor in this.

So was the considerably culturally subversive nature of the game; the fundamental idea that the assortment of sociopaths, social misfits, math geniuses, criminals, cokeheads, and general unwashed that we all collectively called "poker pros" could somehow consistently win money through bravado, deductive reasoning, and luck.  There was an inherent logic to the game, that the odds favored the strongest players over time, and that with patience, prudence, and better than average luck, a regular guy or lady off the street could even make it big themselves as a poker player in Las Vegas.

To me (and maybe only to me, given how poker participation has been declining over the years), there's something that remains fundamentally attractive (in the general, non-sexual sense) about all of this.  Even if the poker boom has already faded, with the easy money provided by regular guys and ladies drying up, and the Department of Justice's 2011 crackdown on major online poker sites uncovering the thin truth that the most popular online gambling site used by American casual gamblers was actually a massive Ponzi scheme orchestrated not by Bernie Madoff but instead by some of the most famous "poker pro" faces you or I had seen on the television screen.  Poker still remains a beautiful game, at least to me.

Perhaps it's my countercultural streak (which, admittedly, runs too deep), but even now, years after interest in poker passed most casual fans of the game by, I still have the itch to find out how I'd do in Las Vegas.  And in just a couple of months, I'll be able to scratch that itch.

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My career as an amateur poker player is, objectively, slightly above average, and that's it.  On a good day, I can walk into a poker room rusty as all hell and take money off of experienced and practiced player; on a good day, I really can read the entire poker table, the game moves in slow motion, and I can sometimes legitimately feel as if I am printing money (in a cash game) or tournament chips (in a tournament).

The massive problem with my game is that, most of the time, it's difficult for me to know whether I am having a great day or a terrible day until it's too late.  By "too late", I mean that on my terrible days, I can't stay at the poker table long enough to figure out which side is up.  After years of deluding myself about this weakness, I now understand it better, and imperative among my goals for the World Series of Poker is to play with enough patience, particularly in the early going, to understand (a) what kind of day I am having, (b) how I am feeling, and (c) how I should handle the game in response to (a) and (b).

Over the years, I've had some large cashes, most notably a cash for $3,000 in the summer of 2009 and a separate cash for $2,100 in the summer of 2012.  I also made a final table at a poker table on a previous trip to Las Vegas (though for very little profit). I am reasonably certain I am "up" (i.e., profitable) over the very long haul, though this assumes that I invest 100% of my winnings in my poker bankroll - more often than not, they are reinvested into rounds of drinks for my friends at the casino bar.  I am just as certain, though, that my game is flawed and I will need to get fairly lucky in order to play deep and be successful in a $1,000 buy in event in Las Vegas.

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Here are some things I know to be true:

1. The caliber of poker player is stronger in Las Vegas than anywhere in the Northeast.  Simply put, many players travel to Las Vegas in an attempt to make it big playing poker.  Vegas then chews up and spits out at least 80-90% of these folks, and sends them back home (to wherever home is for them), flat broke.  That's pretty much a Q.E.D. right there.
2. I'm best served treating this event as a gamble than as a truly serious venture.  This way, even if I push all-in with kings in the second round and come up short against an unfortunate pair of aces, I can at least dust myself off, say "Oh well", take a walk around the casino, and enjoy the rest of my trip.
3. I should still study and practice my game, a ton.  Fundamentally, if I start playing this tournament and do find myself getting broadly lucky, I need to be certain my game is optimized, fine-tuned, and spit-shined.  I need to be sure that when I bust out of the tournament, it is on a decision I don't hate myself over in the coming weeks or months.  More than winning or losing money, I want to play a solid game of poker throughout the tournament.
4. I should also practice the physical aspect of the game.  I've played enough poker over the years to know that stamina is not my strong suit.  Some poker players delight in playing one, two, sometimes even three days straight, barely breaking for a cigarette or some nutrition.  I tend to crap out and get tired or bored after six or seven hours, tops, which pales in comparison to the 30 hours of poker I'll (hopefully) be playing over two straight days in order to make it to the final two tables of this particular tournament.  So in addition to the endurance training I am currently doing for my half-marathon, I am also endurance training through extended sessions at local casinos and poker games.
5. I should have fun.  Because after all, it's Vegas, a place were dreams come true, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to play in the grandest poker tournament in history.  As a fan of the game, it's incredible that I can do this, and I intend to have fun in the process.
6. I should try to relax.  Easier said than done - I can be anal retentive and a bit high strung - but hopefully the $47 first class ticket to Vegas (thanks, US Airways award travel!) will help.  A complimentary, pre-flight Jack and Coke should help, no?

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My first training session was last Thursday at Sands.  I played $1/$2 no-limit because I felt, in terms of absolute level of talent, the caliber of player I'd be seeing in Las Vegas would be about the same as that of a daily grinder at a $1/$2 table at an above-average casino.  Truth be told, most of the table did know each other already from daily competition, which is never a good sign when you're an outsider who doesn't have much confidence in his game.  Regardless of my jitters and some early sub-standard play, I did take $200 in profits off the table. I will have to play again soon.

As the tournament approaches, my plan is post again with a training update and some more random thoughts.  I'll also post Facebook updates on my tournament play in more or less real time, as the competition ensues.