View from the Mountain

Being thankful for our tomatoes

It is a little unusual these days to hear about crop failures in the United States, but that is just what I read about in the NYT article, Northeast Tomatoes Lost, and Potatoes May Follow.

Apparently a late blight fungus is wiping out most of the region's tomatoes.  I talked to a friend in New Brunswick, Canada this week.  While his tomatoes are not a failure yet, he is worried the September frosts might rob him of most of his crop. Their spring has also been cool and damp.

Closer to home, my relatives in Yadkin County, NC near Winston-Salem are reporting a less than stellar year with their tomatoes.  Many of their tomatoes are very small, and some are showing blossom end rot. 

While wandering around the Roanoke Market last week, there seemed to be plenty of tomatoes, but it is hard to tell their origin.  At Jamison's Produce in Roanoke County, the prettiest tomatoes were from someplace in North Carolina.

With all this tomato trouble about in the land, it is something of an embarrassment to have more than we can eat from our four plants.  Today we made fresh salsa and stewed tomatoes with corn.  Every time we have a sandwich, even when it is not a tomato one, there is a tomato on it.

Still as you can see from the photo, we still have an impressive number of tomatoes even after an all out effort to catch up to the crop.

I know we have some Roanoke friends who would enjoy some of our tomatoes.  Maybe the timing of our next trip to the mountains will work out a little better with our tomato production.

For now we are just going to enjoy having homegrown tomatoes and wish everyone better luck next year.

Making a bad decision on a grand scale

As someone who sold computers to Virginia universities for many years, I can testify that the latest problems showing Virginia will pay $9,000 over the life of a laptop are nothing new.

In the late eighties when I first submitted one of Apple Computer's bids in response to Virginia's Department of Information Technology (DIT) requests for bids, I was amazed that a process which in theory was designed to hold costs down had become warped in Virginia to the point that it actually increased the cost of computing.

DIT in its wisdom specified only certain bundled equipment that could be ordered by state institutions.  Unfortunately DIT was staffed by people who were on the trailing edge of technology while university customers were on the leading edge.

Universities switched quickly to high speed ethernet networks. DIT required them to buy low speed AppleTalk connectors with each computer even though they did not need them. It added fifty or sixty dollars to the cost of each computer.  There was one of the departments at the University of Virginia which had a closet filled to the ceiling with unused AppleTalk connectors.

The worst abuse of DIT was the drawn out process of bidding and the contract itself.  In a world of technology where products rarely lasted more than six months, the DIT process was designed for products that were around for eighteen months.

I solved Apple's problem by just no longer bidding on the state contract. At that point state agencies did individual bids or signed contracts directly with us which lowered their costs.

This latest outsourcing of IT fits the pattern.  Plenty of United State government organizations have in one way or another tried outsourcing their information technology.  Unfortunately I also got to see how poorly those worked.  The most infamous case was the Department of Navy outsourcing to EDS.

I noticed that the EDS contract has been extended.  That comes as no surprise since once you implement one of these contracts, you no longer have the staff to do it yourself.  In fact you do not even have the people to evaluate whether or not the contract is saving you money or costing you money.

Typically these contracts have tons of modifications which keep driving the costs up.

My favorite example of a bad contract was NASA's Outsourcing Desktop Initiative or ODIN. NASA signed the contract for its computer procurement.  It resulted in second class, out of date technology in the hands of scientists who needed leading edge equipment. The contract had some real quirks that drove costs up.  Because it required external monitors, the vendors supplied useless 15" external monitors with each iMac.  The iMacs had a built-in monitor.  Scientists used them the extra monitors for doorstops.

Virginia's $9,000 laptop contract is particularly sad since my experience with Virginia taught me that some of the brightest minds in information technology are in Virginia. Virginia state universities have had to learn how to do more with less, and with just a few exceptions they have done just that.

Perhaps the state should have tasked one of its universities to manage its information technology. Certainly Va. Tech did a better job of lowering telecom costs than the state which tried to force universities to pay more for telecom just to help fund DIT.

The idea that a laptop, which is essentially a disposable item these days, could cost $9,000 to deploy and support over five years is laughable. It is a great example of government outsourcing gone bad.

I wonder how much it costs to support my $849 HP laptop that I bought two years ago?  The one thing I do know is that I could buy the same laptop with better specifications for under $600 today. 

Even if prices did not drop more I could buy a new laptop each year for five years and throw the old one away and still come in $6,000 cheaper than Virginia's contract.  At $40 per hour for support, with my $6,000, I could buy 150 hours or 30 hours of support per year.

If you need thirty hours of support a year to run a modern laptop, you need to retire and let someone else have your job.

I would think if your laptops are costing $9,000 over five years, then just maybe you should evaluate what operating system you are using and perhaps consider some alternatives.

Perhaps you should look at Apple products which cost more upfront but have been demonstrated to be nearly self supporting or Linux software which has been shown to be far more reliable and inexpensive than Windows products.

Even Apple laptops do not cost $9,000.

At this point, I suspect Virginia is out of options, they will have plenty of $9,000 laptops but fewer and fewer rest stops.

It is a sad commentary on what was once viewed by many as one of the most high tech of states.

Dining in the country, the Homeplace

The Homeplace is one of the Roanoke area's restaurants that has truly survived the test of time.  We probably first ate at the Homeplace in 1990. 

This past evening over nineteen years later, I can say that the food is still delicious, the staff just as efficient and gracious, and the dining experience far more pleasant than many restaurants where meals cost over twice as much.

I have written about the Homeplace before in 2005, and over time its scenery has inspired a number of posts like my Along the wood fence.  It is a great place to go to get away from the typical modern restaurant.

At the Homeplace, serving is family style.  Your waitress will bring fried chicken and another meat of your choice along with bowls of several vegetables and a basket of biscuits.  Expect to be asked a number of times if you want more of anything.  You will enjoy pitchers of lemonade and/or ice tea on your table.  If you have room, you will be served ice cream and a berry cobbler. The total cost per person including tax is $13.00.

While the cost has gone up a few dollars over the years, it has gone up very little. This evening we enjoyed green beans, slaw, mashed potates, gravy, and fried apples along with our fried chicken and country ham.  We passed on the pinto beans hoping to save some room for dessert.  Tonight I especially enjoyed making a ham biscuit out of the country ham.  It was a very good meal and as close to my mother's fried chicken as I have found in a restaurant.

I only managed a scoop of ice cream for dessert, but I left with the thought that it is a good thing that the Homeplace is about 337 miles from Cape Carteret, NC, or I might be dropping by a lot more frequently.

When government really disappoints

I rarely write about government, mostly because I like to write about positive things and government unfortunately ends up being a negative force far too often.  While we elect politicians to be leaders, they often end up pandering to special interests or fighting ideological battles which ending up hurting the very same people they are supposedly trying to help.

For seventeen years, I drove up Interstate 81 to work in the Washington area.  I would often leave on a Monday or Tuesday and come home on Thursday or Friday.  It was a lot of travel, but I chose to do it because I thought the Roanoke Valley was a better place to bring up our children than the suburbs of Northern Virginia or Maryland.  While we will never know for sure, I think it was a good decision.

I have a long history with Interstate 81.  My first trips on it were in 1963 when I went off to military school in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Then I followed it to college in Boston.  I watched Interstate 81 grow up.  I can remember driving home from college and being thankful when I hit the Shenandoah Valley and Interstate 81 at about sunrise.

I can remember being very thankful for the rest areas even back then in the sixties. My many work related trips to Northern Virginia were almost always by myself.  The drive from Roanoke to my daughter's townhouse in Northern Virginia took me almost exactly three hours and forty five minutes if I just stopped once for gas.

However, just as many who travel the Interstates, there were days when I left tired or late in the day after almost a complete day of work.  It was then that I really appreciated the rest areas.  Many times ten minutes of snoozing in one of the rest areas kept me from dozing at the wheel.  One of those naps may have saved my life.

I cannot believe Virginia has chosen to close rest areas on an Interstate highway that is among the most dangerous that I drive.  While I rarely head north on Interstate 81 these days, I often head south, and I am still amazed at how far over capacity Interstate 81 continues to be.

I spent a lot of time in North Carolina, and I cannot help but contrast Interstate 81 in Southwest Virginia with Interstate 40 east of Raleigh.  Both highways are four lanes and travel through some very rural areas.  The difference is that I40 has almost no trucks and all its rest areas are open.  The volume of traffic on I40 is far less than I81, and it is a much more pleasant drive than any part of I81 that I frequent.

I cannot count how many times that I have been by the rest stops near Radford and seen them overflowing with trucks.

Let me go on record as saying that closing rest stops on an already dangerous highway makes a joke out of representatives claiming they are working for the interests of the people.

If Virginia's government cannot do a better job with transportation than this, they should do us a favor and resign so some intelligent life can try to move this state forward.

North Carolina looks better and better.

Not everyone from NJ is a pain in the rear

I like to joke about New Jersey because one of my college roommates has lived there for years.  He lives in the Pine Barren coastal area, so it should only be considered as marginally part of New Jersey.

Yesterday my wife and I spent all way with a wonderful young couple from New Jersey.  They are hoping to relocate to the beach.  One of the reasons that they want to come is that they want their children to grow up around friendly people.  North Carolina has a reputation for friendly people.  Our travels yesterday brought that out clearly to our young clients.

The young owner of a local fast food chain took the time to talk to them because they might be going into food service.  Of course he knew my wife and I as regular customers. 

Our NJ visitors joked that they would have gotten some broken legs trying to have a conversation with a stranger in a grocery store in NJ.

They also got to talk to my neighbor for about one half and hour.  In general they were amazed at how friendly people in the area were.

Years ago when I did a lot of traveling through North Carolina, I used to joke that I was never worried because I was sure that someone in my extended family would know someone at any exit.

Of course, I have seen friendly people all over the country.  It might just be a little easier to find them in North Carolina and Virginia.

Yesterday we trying to see a number of homes.  I was having trouble getting in touch with the renter in one of the places.  I called the agent, and she said that they were having a lot of trouble with him because he doesn't want anyone to see the property because he wants to buy it when his property in NJ sells.

We were driving by the property on the way to another showing, I saw him in the driveway.  I happen to know him because I have eaten a few of his pizzas so I stopped to ask if we could see the house later in the day.  He was pretty rude to me.  As I was walking away, I noticed both of his cars had NJ plates.

That irritated me a little since I am a newcomer also to North Carolina.  The difference is that I registered my vehicles in North Carolina and paid the transfer tax.  So the rude renter from New Jersey is also a tax cheat since I know he has been in the area well over a year.

Perhaps that explains why the last large "meat lovers" pizza that we had at his restaurant only had five or six pieces of Pepperoni on it.  The bad pizza was enough to get him kicked off of my list of recommended restaurants.

It is a good thing that I know some New Jersey folks are very nice or I might get a complex about New Jersey. 

My college roommate from NJ claims to have never seen a Crape Myrtle blooming. I wonder if they have Crape Myrtles in NJ? Some colorful flowers might help lower NJ grouch index.

Maybe they need some just for the fun of it.  Life can be too serious.