The Alex and Amelia mysteries

It was raining that day. A hard rain. Actually, more of a light sprinkle, but that didn’t have as much dramatic effect as a hard rain.

After forty minutes of driving, Alex and Amelia arrived at ‘The Farm.” Much to Alex’s disappointment, it was not the CIA headquarters, but an actual farm. The parents said they were here for apple picking. Aunt Joy and Uncle Kevin came too.

Why they came all of this way to pick apples was a curiosity to Alex. After all, they picked apples every week at the grocery store, and that was only about ten minutes from the house. Yet here they stood, on the wet grass, under trees with leaves covered in droplets.

Alex insisted on carrying the bucket, so that he could more closely inspect these apples to figure out what made them different. Then he realized, there was no counter. Looking for the apples, he finally spotted them in the trees. This was only getting stranger! Why someone would hang apples in trees? At the store they were piled on a shelf, all together. Here they were all spread out!

Dad bent down and scooped up Amelia to where she could reach an apple. It took a few tries, but she finally managed to get her hands around one and pull it free. As she did so, the branch shook, pelting both of them in rainwater. Amelia squealed happily, and demanded that she be brought to another apple for pulling. Dad complied, and they dashed around the farm, scouting various apples for Amelia to wrench free of the tree and then carry back to the bucket all by herself. She had a bit of trouble in some of the wet grass, but overall thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Alex examined the apples closely as they went into the bucket, but could not figure out what about them made them so special. Mom and Dad helped him up to pull down apples as well. Aunt Joy and Uncle Kevin helped him when the bucket started to get too heavy, as well as reach more apples.

After an hour, with two buckets overflowing with apples, everyone quite soaked, only Amelia still wanted to continue picking, so they packed up and headed for Aunt Joy and Uncle Kevin’s house. There, they took off their socks and put them in the dryer, and Alex and Amelia changed into dryer clothes. The adults discussed uses of apples, and everyone had lunch.

Alex and Amelia both enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but never could quite figure out why someone would hang apples on trees.

CASE: UNSOLVED

Is Kickstarter part of the problem?

I recently listened to an interview with one of the head’s of Pimco. Pimco is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, with over two trillion dollars that it manages, and is the world’s largest bond investment manager. They know a thing or two about global trends and markets

One of the questions asked was what caused the financial crisis. The answer given, which is admittedly controversial, is that consumers took on too much debt. This is something that’s been said before, but consumers are supposed to take on debt, that’s part of how the economy grows. The clarification is that the debt they took on was predominantly consumption based, not investment based. People were spending money on nice things, fun experiences, trying to improve their overall happiness, but not investing in methods of improving productivity, or increasing domestic output.

This makes sense to me. One takes on debt with the presumption that it will generate a return greater than the cost of the debt with interest. A college education will generate a higher salary, a car will permit greater choice of living options and careers, etc.

If true, this is both compelling and frightening. Just because people have less money to spend does not mean that their appetite for new things and experience has gone away. If anything, they desire more because they can only afford less.

When the financial crisis really came to bear near the end of 2008, a lot of banks shut down their loan programs to small businesses, much to dismay of many economists. Without loans, these businesses cannot expand or grow their businesses. But something else did show up: Kickstarter.

Kickstarter launched in late April 2009, and it allowed people to ask for money from the public at large to produce things for the purposes of consumption: games, videos, movies, albums, etc. Looking at kickstarter, everyone and their grandmother has an idea for a 3D printer that they want to sell.

Pros: This effectively democratizes the creative process. You don’t have to know somebody in the publishing business to get your new album financed. So long as you have a means of demonstrating your talent and people are excited about your project, you have a decent chance of getting the funding you need.

Cons: This does not address our need to invest in small business capital expenditures that are important for growing the economy. The public at large has been trained by advertising agencies to view opportunities on a more selfish level. A sheet metal fabrication company is not going to have success on kickstarter trying to raise funds for a new stamping machine. It’s not very sexy compared to a new videogame by the creator of Mega Man.

There’s also no accountability. Donating to kickstarter does not guarantee that you will receive anything for your money. If a company fails to produce the good for whatever reason, you’re out of luck. Part of the vetting process for getting a small business loan was demonstrating one’s ability to handle funds appropriately, or at least be accountable if the company failed in it’s mission to generate profitability for those providing the loan. That vetting process has been thrown out the window. Say what you will about rich institutions, they can afford to take risks. The public is now bearing those risks, with less information, nickel and diming away our savings on neat things we may never even receive.

I hope I’m wrong. I’ve donated to a kickstarter campaign, helped a friend setup his own, and have several projects that might be good to bring to kickstarter to help get them off the ground. But is that the right thing we should be doing with our money?

The Alex and Amelia mysteries

Alex did not understand feet.

Feet seem to be inadequate for any real purpose, and need a lot of help to do anything. As Amelia demonstrated on a daily basis, they did not do a lot to support a person trying to walk upright. They’re simply too narrow to do the job effectively.

And even once you get decent with the whole walking thing, you need to cover them up to go anywhere. Mom and Dad insisted on Alex wearing both socks AND shoes whenever they went outside. Why not just one? But then inside, he could only wear socks, not shoes. Why not shoes?

As feet go, they seem to be really useless without at least socks and/or shoes. And the combinations and situations made his head hurt.

His sister’s selection was even more confusing. Alex had one pair of shoes. The socks rotated on a daily basis, but any random pair seemed to be sufficient, and you could always count on just one pair of shoes. If a pair got too tight or worn out, they disappeared and a new pair replaced them.

But for Amelia, she had at least three different pairs she could wear at any given time. Morever, she seemed to have opinions about which pair she should wear.

Amelia could not explain it, but the pink shoes with the ribbony lace were not for day to day use. Most of the time, you choose between the red or the purple shoes, depending on which onesie you’re wearing. But also the pants, or overalls, and possibly even the socks helping to determine which option to go with made for an absurd number of combinations to keep track. Sometimes, none of the options seemed right, and Amelia wished she had still more pairs of shoes to choose from to find a pair that was right.

Dad seemed just as puzzled by this as Alex, which worried him greatly. Dad seemed to understand a lot of things, but choice in clothing was not one of them. Often Dad might pick out an outfit, only for mommy to deem it unsuitable and go and choose something else. This never bothered Dad, it was simply beyond his grasp.

Alex sat by the door, waiting to go play in the park, while Amelia peered at the shoes on the mat in front of her. After a few moments, she picked up a pair and brought them to Dad to put them on. Once Dad finished, he proceeded to put on his only pair of shoes to also go to the park. But, while he did so, Amelia wandered over to the shoes again. After several moments, she picked up a different pair and brought them to Dad for him to swap out. He sighed, acquiesced, and then resumed putting on his shoes, slightly more hurriedly when he saw Amelia wandering back over to the shoes.

All of this to cover up things that don’t even really do anything? Feet are weird.

CASE: UNSOLVED

The Alex and Amelia mysteries

Of all the strange toys and all the houses in all the town, this one had to roll into Alex’s.

Dad presented Alex with a car, but not just any toy car. This one was larger than most. It was designed to look like a real car, with lots of little accents and details. The side mirrors had a chrome sticker to provide an actual reflection. The spoiler had a sticker that said “Zoom!” The only thing that seemed out of place was the radio antenna, coming out of the trunk, sticking up way too tall, completely out of scale with the rest of the car.

But the strangeness came with Alex realized it could drive without anyone pushing it. Dad flipped a switch on the bottom, and the car seemed to come to life on it’s own. Without anyone touching it, the vehicle would zip back and forth across the living room. It seemed to take a particular interest in the cat, which quickly vacated upstairs.

Amelia found herself so astonished, she needed to lean against the Ottoman to support herself.

After several minutes of wonderment, Dad walked over and handed a curious little box to Alex. A thin wire supported by a straw stuck out the front of the box. On top were two levers, one that could only go forward and back, and one that could only go left and right.

Alex fiddled with the levers for a bit, but noticed a curious thing as he did so. The car seemed to move about in unison with the lever. Screaming with delight, Alex realized that he could control the car from a distance. No longer would he be forced to get down on his knees and push things along himself! No longer would be struggle to convince his sister to bring toys back to him that rolled out of his reach (she never listened anyway)! The power! The incredible –whoops!

Alex, lost in the wonderment of his newfound power, accidentally drove the car into Amelia. Knocked off balance, she fell backward and sat on the car with a sickening CRACK! Dad ran over and checked on Amelia, who was fine, and even thought it was pretty funny. Then he checked out the car. The drivewheel could still spin, but the pinion system for steering was snapped in several places.

Dad shook his head, smiled, and apologized to Alex. “They’re not designed for little girls to butt-stomp,” Dad explained. “Good thing we got this at the dollar store.”

Alex wasn’t sure what that meant, but he sadly relinquished the control box back to his father. He’d need to practice driving some more before he did that again. Perhaps he’d go read up on driving on his dad’s computer….

CASE: CRUNCHED

The Alex and Amelia Mysteries

It was Dad’s turn for a mystery.

Like every modern day investigator, Alex began most of his searches by going to a computer to try and find new things, and the computer he could most easily reach would be the one down in Dad’s office. He’d figured out how to turn the computer on, but didn’t know the password. Dad added the password after Alex accidentally rotated the desktop and dad had to spend several days looking at the screen sideways before figuring out how to fix it.

Alex had a rough idea of what the password was. He knew it involved keys on the keyboard, so he tried different combinations in hopes of happening on the right one.

What his Dad did not understand, however, was how Alex managed to access the contrast settings from the lock screen, changing visibility to black and white, as well as locking out the keyboard, making it impossible to change it back without restarting the machine.

This made his Dad think that the real hackers were actually a bunch of three year olds in Germany whose childcare service provided them with a computer lab. The adults thought it was adorable, watching them tap away at the keys ‘randomly’, while they are actually conversing on Usenet, figuring out zero day exploits, and creating hacking scripts in a proprietary language called drool++.

Dad finished restarting the machine, logged in, and updated the visibility settings to return color to his machine. As he did so, he noticed that the machine’s fan had started making an odd sound. Peering around the case at the air intake, dad discovered where all of his paperclips had gone. Dad sighed with a smile. Make that two mysteries for him to solve.