Contributions when the economy is on the skids

A recent article in the St. Paul Star Tribune reports that the Twin Cities Chapter of the American Red Cross [OK Big Brother, there’s your cue] is reducing staff and terminating programs.

This story serves to illustrate the huge differences between big Red Cross chapters and tiny ones like the one I’m affiliated with in Albert Lea. We have two part-time employees and volunteers do a lot. The Twin Cities chapter is talking about cutting staff by 25, to 48. 48, compared to 1.6. Of course they do a lot more than we do, but still it’s a stretch for me to comprehend how different the operation is.

They’re going to terminate a program that provided free transportation to medical appointments for poor people. I’m sure that it was a fine program and probably one that was much needed. But I have to wonder how the Red Cross got into that business thirty years ago. I hope that they can find another agency to take it over.

The most scary single fact in the article is that their donations are down 70% between July and October from the budget. (I’m assuming that the budget was reasonable; I wish they had given us a percentage decrease from actual contributions in the previous period.) Given the current state of the economy, it’s not a surprise that contributions are down, but that’s a huge decline.

This brings up a related issue – the article describes how the decline in contributions is affecting a local chapter, but it’s also affecting the national Red Cross. The organization is being squeezed in two directions. At the very time that the economy craters and people don’t have the dollars to give, we were treated to tornados, floods, wildfires, and finally a very active hurricane season. The news coverage of these events was largely eclipsed by coverage of the political campaigns and economic issues. Perhaps you think that the Red Cross is reimbursed by Uncle Sam for disaster responses, but that generally doesn’t happen and most of this is financed by contributions from the public. That’s why you see the text, “All American Red Cross disaster assistance is free, made possible by voluntary donations of time and money from the American people” in and on official Red Cross materials and equipment.

Consider including the Red Cross in your charitable contributions. It’s for you to decide whether you prefer to contribute to your local chapter or to the national disaster fund; both accomplish good things but they are different. You can read about the national drive here. If you want to donate to your local chapter, find their web site using Google.

As I sit and watch the snow fall, I hope everyone is having a good Interdenominational Winter Holiday. Keep warm.

Software maintenance

My daughter is visiting for the holiday, and I decided to provide her with a Microsoft PC to use while she’s here. I took down a laptop that had been sitting on the shelf for a few months and before I gave it to her to use I knew I needed to catch up with the software maintenance that had been issued since it was last used. Here’s a summary of how that went:

• On my first visit to the Microsoft Update site, I had to download a new version of the software that’s installed locally on the PC to figure out what maintenance I need.
  
• The second visit downloaded a new version of the software that verifies that my copy of XP is licensed.
  
• Finally on the third visit I was actually able to download something useful – SP3. That took a while, and installing it took a while, after which I got to reboot.
  
• Visit 4: Download 21 fixes. That I left to happen overnight.
  
• Next morning: I find the laptop patiently waiting for me to tell it to install the maintenance. Well, duh, why exactly would I have downloaded 21 fixes if not to install them. This of course required yet-another reboot.
  
• Visit 5: Download two additional fixes and install them. And, of course, reboot again.
  
• Visit 6: Find that no more maintenance is available.

At this point I cranked up the Belarc Advisor, a free tool available from belarc.com and highly recommended for being sure that your PC is up to snuff on maintenance. It flagged a missing patch, and provided me a link to the Microsoft site. This patch is related to the recent worldwide flap about DNS servers, so I figured it would be nice to have, and clicked on the link that Microsoft provided marked “download”. This took me not to a download, but to the Microsoft Update site – the same one that had just told me that I didn’t need additional maintenance. Oh well. Good enough.

Oh, and I didn’t mention needed to separately go fetch the new version of Adobe’s Reader for PDFs. There are probably other non-Microsoft components that I really should have upgraded.

I belong to a few mailing lists on the topic of quilting. It is difficult to imagine a demographic that is less computer savvy than the quilting community. Yet the PC has invaded this group with sewing machines that are computer-controlled and software that is commonly used to design quilts. These folks are in a world of hurt. They describe having to reformat their PCs on a regular basis, and hold up as godlike figures the people who bail them out from computer problems.

I’ve been using personal computers for almost three decades, and I have never been forced to format a system because of a software issue. I recognize that I’m at one end of the normal curve and there’s a huge population at the other end. The general population has become dependent on their personal computers for their daily lives, yet most of them are incapable of even understanding basic concepts like firewalls and virus software.

While they’ve made huge strides in making their systems human-friendly, software companies have a long way to go. The concept of having the program itself check for updates is great, but installation of those updates is a royal pain. I spent several hours bringing a PC up to maintenance, and even though those hours would normally have been spread over a few months, that’s still more than we can reasonably expect a non-computer-savvy person to put up with. So rather than spending the time on a regular basis, the computer owner will end up with a system encrusted with malware or part of a zombie network and end up losing their data.

There must be a better way.

"You can find anything you want on the Internet"

There’s an amusing article in Friday’s Slate.com that discusses web sites that rate doctors. The conclusion is that they’re useless, summarized at the end of the text by “No one at the sites is really worrying about your doctor—they're just concerned with keeping the sites afloat.”

I found this snippet particularly funny:

As I moved from screen to screen, I found a curious offer. HealthGrades said that if I were Dr. Sepkowitz (of course they know doctors would be rummaging around their own sites), I could learn how, for no additional fee, to tell the 8,143,197 residents of New York City more about myself and my practice, including my philosophy of care (hold still, Plato, additional spinning is futile) as well as my history of publications and media coverage.

How much information on the WWW falls into this category of being provided by sites that are there primarily to attract visitors and thus reap ad revenue? Or worse, sites that are secretly sponsored to hype or denigrate a product or idea by people with an ulterior motive?

Too much of a good thing?

I like Obama’s ability to tap the expertise of experts. Unlike Bush, who was unwilling to hear any opinion that differed from his own, Obama has surrounded himself with the best minds in many subjects, including the economy.

There’s an interesting article in today’s Washington Post that points out that this may be more of a challenge than usual because of the size of the egos that many of these people bring to the table and the pressure of making decisions quickly. Too much of a good thing? It will be a challenge to impose a consensus on this group, convince them to work together even though no one plan will please everyone, and actually stick with a strategy for more than a few days.

Another article in the New York Times describes how the next administration will be able to work well with Congress. (There’s an almost-identical piece in the LA Times.) Not only will the Democrats have a majority there, but many of Obama’s staff have experience as congresscritters and good relationships with that branch of government.

These things give me hope that things will improve but make me realize that it will take time to see the positive trends. The American public isn’t known for patience. I hope they’re not looking for an instant fix.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Your tax money at work, part n

In case you were looking for another example of a government program gone awry, here’s one. It describes the federal government program to increase the number of vehicles that can run on alternative fuels. Unfortunately,

• Most of the vehicles were sent to areas where the alternative fuel couldn’t be purchased,
  
• The vehicles that are capable of using flex fuel come with larger engines than the ones they replaced, and consumed 1.5 million additional gallons of gasoline.

So the bottom line is that the legislation passed by Congress has accomplished the opposite of what was intended.

Kind of like the recent bailout. I actually purchased shares of Citibank this week when they fell below $3. There’s nothing wrong with the company; it will endure not because the government bailed it out but because it’s a solid company. Not that I’m running out to buy shares in any American car companies . . .