Holiday Season in Armageddon

Things suck. The global economic news gets worse daily. Customers aren't buying. Panic in the streets of Birmingham. Perhaps worse of all, is when you finally make it home, you have to pretend you are psyched that its holiday time, less your kids become as miserable as you are.

Job sucks, boss sucks, company sucks, market sucks, Patriots suck, weather sucks………

Everyone has a story worse than the next. Pessimism is brutally contagious it seems.

So, allow me to cheer you (myself) up a bit. Things are never as bad as the news. I learned long ago from the Isreali's that "it only looks bad on CNN". The fact that unless CNN was staging bombs going off, it actually is bad, somehow alludes them. They live, they don't dwell. A lesson can be learned here.

As you know, I'm a fate believer. I'm also a Darwinist and a realist (when it suits me). I don't believe in the generic media as an educational instrument, but an entertainment complex geared towards building capital by playing to the lowest common denominator, and fear tossed at stupidity is an excellent recipe for that. Nothing is as bad – or as good – as it seems. Life is loaded with ups and downs, as is business. Neither can be taken for granted.

I'm not immune; I get caught up in all of it just like you. Here's my week's breakdown:

Business: It's brutal – people are tossing nickels around like they are manhole covers. Why? Because they don't know what's happening either. The worst part of the business climate is NOT the fact that companies will have to downsize for modern realities (yes, that sucks, don't get me wrong) – but that until they do, until the go or no-go decisions are made, companies are paralyzed. Doing nothing stops the whole machine. Once decisions are made and enacted, then the natural order of business continues again. Until then, people seem to wait around staring at each other. My previous rants about having legitimate value in the world are being proven in spades right now. If high value investments are being pushed off, what chance do you have if you are a no-value parasite? Probably not much. That's why Darwinism works overall. That's why I'm entirely against a bailout of the auto industry. I'm all for the auto workers, but anyone who supports ineptitude (really? You each flew a separate private jet to Washington to plead for billions? Really? Can you have your head tucked any further up your nether regions?) is nuts. Business works – those other American car companies (Honda, Toyota, BMW, etc.) are doing just fine and they are certainly going to be more than happy to take up the slack, buy up the assembly lines, and hire the work force. We are not going to stop buying cars just because GM goes away. Will it suck? Yes. Will we come out better for it eventually? Absolutely. Someone is going to keep selling Buick's to the Chinese. There is a reason people dominate the planet and not three toed sloths. Same thing for you IT types. You will figure out how to make it work, you always do. It might suck getting there, but what the heck, it sucks even without the world collapsing.

Mother: 65, looks 85, acts 11. Attempted to cook a grilled cheese sandwich directly on the electric stove burner, bypassing a pan altogether. Caused some concern at the apartment complex, post fire. A month earlier accidently pulled out her TV earpiece (she has her own apartment, why she listens to HGTV via an earpiece is unknown and non-debatable) thus blaring the volume of HGTV at 800 decibels throughout her quiet complex – at 2:17AM. Unable to turn down the volume or turn off the TV, she did nothing. 40 minutes later the police arrived to push a button. No one ever prepares you to deal with this.

16-Year Old Daughter: You can imagine. Fortunately, you get to imagine it happening to me and not you.

Dentist: I have approximately 3 of my own teeth left and yet somehow managed to break one and get a cavity in another.

Patriots: Murdered by the Steelers, in 33 degree (0 for you Celsius fans) pouring rain, which I sat through. Just signed Jr. Seau again, because Ray Nitschke is apparently still dead.

Home: No decorations, no tree yet. Wife not happy. Presents are expensive. Suggesting we all make each other things not well received. How come I have to be happy getting a paper plate with macaroni stuck to it and I can't reciprocate in kind?

So there you go, we all have our tales of doom. But you know what? It could be a heck of lot worse. 5 years ago at this very time I was hairless, ready to vomit at any given moment, with poison (Chemo) cruising through my veins killing everything and anything in its path. I spent my 40^th birthday unconscious and grey on a couch while my kids put a hat over my face and sang to me. I was bitching about things last night when the magnificent example of "good" in my life, my beautiful wife, reminded me of that. I'm paying it forward.

As hard as it seems, things will get better, they always do. They tend to get better faster with positive energy and optimism. I'm not suggested delusional absurdity, but just remember that work is a Dilbert comic and as long as you are on this side of the ground, there's something to be happy about. HP posted stellar numbers. From all accounts IT buying is NOT really slowing – it is getting more intelligent.

Two final observations; First, I had interesting conversations with two very different IT people this week, one from a Fortune 25 shop and one from a 80-person consulting company. Both told me the very same thing – they were both going to increase infrastructure spending in 2009 because they thought by doing so they could reduce ongoing costs in the following years. The big guy was focused on Opex, the little guy Capex. Both were pushing hard on virtualization.

This is proving to be the best time in recent memory to be selling boring old basic business value that we so often forget. If you have a legitimate Capex/Opex reduction story then you aren't going to ever see a better environment in which to tell it – so you best start shouting it from the rooftop. I'm old enough to have seen this before, and sooner or later we will be right back to fat, dumb, and happy and that means the users open to listening to your story right now will move back to "just buy more of the same from the big guys" mode. If you have real value, your time is now. If you don't, well, nice knowing you.

Second, and possibly to prove the point, is that even in these terrible times, there are record setting numbers being put up by big and small. HP, EMC, Brocade etc. may be feeling it, but it hasn't shown up yet. Sepaton, InMage, StorWize, Exagrid, Verari, and others all tell us they are experiencing record revenue THIS QUARTER – which still has 3 weeks left. I'm not seeing anything but goodness out of Isilon, 3Par, or Data Domain yet either. HDS is up across the board. So if current realities are actually good – then is all this pessimism based on the fact that we think things will suck next quarter?

Cheers

Comments

[beth]

You are right about the Patriots. They are probably going nowhere this year. That massacre against the Steelers and just eking out a W over a 2-10 team last Sunday feel like the writing on the wall.

It sounds ridiculous to say that when they have a winning record, and are in first place currently in the division, but their wins are against weak opponents and the division itself is weak. SD, Indy and PIT dispatched them with ease.

They stand a good chance of going 11-5 or 10-6 (thanks to games vs. Oakland and Ariz.) but the second they face a quality team if they make the playoffs, I will be quaking in my boots. Especially since the injuries keep rolling on--Bruschi and Wilfork last week and Vrabel got banged up. Ugh.