ForbesOnTech

How the American Legion and the VA Made my World Better

 

As a result of opening my eyes and agreeing to come in from the cold in the last month, I’ve had a long standing view of two organizations completely upended.

There was a time in my life when I didn’t talk much about the fact that I was a Marine Corps veteran who served at Khe Sanh and Hue at a time when both places were battlegrounds. I wasn’t ashamed of my service; in fact I’ve come to realize that it had a profound impact on my life; some good and some bad.

Very few people I worked with during my early days covering technology in Silicon Valley knew I had been in the Marines and fewer still knew I had been at Khe Sanh and elsewhere  in South Vietnam long ago.

I didn’t hang out with other veterans and I had resisted joining either of the two most well-known veteran’s organizations.

I  used one very few part of my veteran’s benefits’I went to college on the GI Bill. And in 1971 I went to a VA clinic to see a doctor, an experience that soured me on the VA for many years.

But my life has changed recently and I wanted to find out more about my veteran’s benefits. And my quest led me to a local American Legion post here in Escondido where several members pointe me to the VA and made sure I knew what to do to take action. So I joined the American Legion and I use it as a “club house” of sorts. Whenever I need to socialize an can get away from my duties around the house, I pop up to the Legion, read a  book and have a Coke in the patio.

Over a soft drink one of the officers of my local Legion Post patiently explained to me how the VA worked, plus how much it had changed in the last 30 years. He provided me with the information I needed to make a VA enrollment appointment at a local clinic and patiently explained that Legion volunteers were on hand at the two largest clinics here in San Diego County and there job was to help guide me through the VA’s organization.

So I had my first appointment with the VA today, had my picture taken for a VA ID card and was incredibly surprised by the experience. I waited two minutes for my appointment, was courteously treated by an enrollment officer who made the point of telling me “we’re here to help you.”

I quickly outlined the three service-related reasons I wanted to enroll with the VA:

I believe long term exposure to incoming and outgoing artillery caused permanent hearing loss in both of ears;

I think that as a result of having been in a bunker that took a direct hit from an incoming North Vietnamese artillery round, I have profound claustrophobia—aka PTSD;

Most of all, I was exposed to Agent Orange at least three times during the time I was in Vietnam.

I’ve always felt slightly ashamed about going to the VA with this. However, the enrolling agent at the clinic set me up with the appointments I need to get the ball rolling, and, he made sure I understood I should feel no shame for seeking help from the VA.

I’ve never felt more satisfied with any government agency interaction than I have with the VA clinic in Oceanside, CA.

Wow, they just knocked my socks off.

And it all started with the simple act of spending $35 to join a local American Legion post and asking for help from other veterans who had been in my shoes.

After a lot of years, I’m beginning to understand what it means to have been thanked for my service and to really have been “welcomed home.”-- Jim Forbes April 4, 2012.

 

 

The Latest Wave of GI Bill Students Arrives-- This Time Colleges and the VA are Ready

 

I was up at Cal Poly Pomona this week having a cup of coffee and was struck with a strong whiff of déjà vu. The feeling wasn’t caused by the strong odor of over roasted Starbuckian coffee beans, a southern malodorous breeze coming from the swine unit, or fresh lawn clippings from the lawn in front of the library.

I tried to identify what it instantly forced me to remember Cal Poly – and other California colleges-- in the early Seventies—and what triggered my memories of another period in my life. But looking out at the sea of students sipping coffee and reading text books, or talking with friends, the feeling washed over me.

The early to mid-twenty-something male students I saw were reflections of me going to college in an earlier era.

We share the experience of going to school and getting our degrees on the GI Bill.

I am huge proponent of the GI Bill. It’s hard to argue that any other program has done more to provide long term good for our society than the GI Bill. In our post WWII through the end of Vietnam world, the Gil Bill helped educate and train new generations of teachers, attorneys, engineers, trades professionals, actors and artists. The GI Bill wasn’t just about college education for our veterans, it also kick started the housing boom, and helped to transform our society.

Prior to the end of WWII, individual home worship wasn’t nearly as common as it is now. Because of GI Bill Home loans veterans became home owners, families moved into subdivisions that had once been barren land and scores of thousands of new schools were built in states such as California, Washington and Virginia and we baby boomers began the long slog to adulthood.

But it wasn’t just about getting a degree and becoming a first-time home owner. The GI Bill produced legions of engineers many of whom helped pioneer technologies leading to today’s technology rich society. Looking back through the fog of time at my childhood in Azusa, CA, I can’t remember a single male teacher who didn’t get their undergraduate or graduate degree on the GI Bill or one female teacher who wasn’t married to vet whose post military life hadn’t been shaped by the GI Bill.

In years past colleges didn’t pay much attention to the vet students. Some of my generation may have needed a little extra help. Especially if our monthly checks inexplicably didn’t arrive in the mail. My best hope the  two times this happened was to contact the offices of my US Senator, the late Alan Cranston (D.CA).All it would take was one point of contact and voila! The checks began arriving regularly again.

Credit needs to be given to many of today’s universities who have anticipated the flood of veterans now on campus. Many schools now have veteran’s coordinators and are quick to pair GI Bill students with faculty advisors. Moreover, today’s Veterans Administration is a much different organization than it was scores of years ago. The VA today is quick to provide detailed, courteous help and is dedicated to aiding veterans with most issues they are likely to face.

My quick trip to Cal Poly Pomona opened a flood gate of memories and helped me realize that we still have programs that can help young men and women get started in life. It wasn’t the coffee at the Bronco Café, or the bright green Cal Poly hoody I bought at the book store, it was the image of obvious veterans, some with red scars from combat inflicted wounds sipping drinks on benches and reading chapters of texts in preparation for classes later in the day. It was Déjà vu. All over. Again.

As an now retired boomer who went to college on the GI Bill, I can’t wait to see where today’s college educated veterans steer our world. To the young men and women taking advantage of the GI Bill to go to college; Have fun, don’t forget to play the occasional card game and “Thanks for your service and Welcome home.”—Jim Forbes a USMC vet and  Cal Poly class of 1973 graduate. March 29, 2012.

 

52 Churches at Churbuck.com; a true "Must Read" Blog Series.

One of the most interesting blogs I’m reading today is an ongoing series called 52 churches at Chubuck.com/wordpress. Written by David Churbuck, 52 Churches is a paean to church architecture, ecumenical differences and observations of a church’s congregants.

There is no visible religious preference in the 52 churches series.  What makes this one of the ”must reads” on the web is Dave’s intellectual curiosity, his encyclopedic-knowledge of religious architecture and history and a Hemmingway-like writing style that’s devoid of prejudice.

Initially limited to churches near Churbuck’s home on Cape Cod, David’s pilgrimage has taken him to California and most recently Istanbul where he’s posted entries on the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque.

This series is so well written it outshines any of the other blogs I read.  And in a moment of honest disclosure, I must say I consider David Churbuck to be a good friend, an inspirational writer, And, a much trusted former colleague in the trenches of PCWeek.

Without further ado, I recommend you immediagtely go to: http://www.churbuck.com/wordpress/52-churches/

Jim Forbes 01/31/2010

What Happens When the Music Dies in Iraq-- A Note From Balad, Iraq

The youngest of my generational cousins is an Army Sergeant First Class now on his fifth tour in Iraq. I occasionally refer to him in my blog as “the bass fisherman,” but truth is Paul Sele and I are both are people who like being around water first and catching fish second.

Paul is getting ready to rotate home at the end of June. While he’s been deployed I’ve tried to regularly send him goodie packages that I think reflect the tastes and humor of our common ancestors; Our grandfather, the Late William Kleiberger Sele, and Paul’s dad, my uncle, Richard Sele.

I’ve used the packages to make Paul Sele smile a little. Every month, I’ve packed canned salmon, smoked oysters, clams and of course avocados.

This morning I got an email that had been forwarded from Iraq. I want to share it.

WHEN THE MUSIC STOPPED

For those who are unaware, at a military theater, the National Anthem is played before every movie.

From a Chaplain in Iraq:

 

I recently attended a showing of "Superman 3," here at LSA Anaconda in a large auditorium we use for movies, as well as memorial services and other large gatherings. As is the custom back in the States, we stood and snapped to attention when the National Anthem began before the main feature. All was going as planned until about three-quarters of the way through The National Anthem, the music stopped.

Now, what would happen if this occurred with 1,000 18-22 year-olds back in the States? I imagine there would be hoots, catcalls, laughter, a few rude comments; and everyone would sit down and call for a movie. Of course, that is, if they had stood for the National Anthem in the first place. Here, the 1,000 Soldiers continued to stand attention, eyes fixed forward. The music started again. The Soldiers continued to quietly stand at attention. And again, at the same point, the music stopped. What would you expect to happen?

Even here I would imagine laughter, as everyone finally sat down and expected the movie to start.

But here, you could have heard a pin drop. Every Soldier continued to stand at attention. Suddenly there was a lone voice, then a dozen, and quickly the room was filled with the voices of a thousand soldiers, finishing where the recording left off: "And the rockets’red glare, The bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night That our flag was still there. Oh, say does that Star - Spangled Banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave"

It was the most inspiring moment I have had here in Iraq. I wanted you to know what kind of Soldiers are serving you here. Remember them …all our soldiers serving us here at home and abroad. For many have already paid the ultimate price.

Written by Chaplain Jim Higgins, LSA Anaconda is at the Balad Airport in Iraq,north of Bagdad

I’m not much of a patriot; I’m just one of several million Americans who once served in a foreign land, far from home, years ago. Just like young men and women of today. I hope your specific political leanings don't preclude recog nition of the sacrifice of today’s veterans.--Jim Forbes 04/06/2009

Strategic Criteria For Netbook Wins---Robust 802, Good Batttery Life, and Performance Count

Having lived with a netbook for almost two months and watched their gradual evolution for much longer, I’ve formed some strong impressions about this category of minimalist portables.

Foremost: Netbooks are not be-all, end-all, solutions to portable computing. Anyone who that tries to judge these new machines by past portable standards is probably headed for a big disappointment.

If you’re able to look at netbooks, however, as ultra portables that help you execute one or more critical tasks, you’ll appreciate their light weight as much as their ability to get you through a work day.

There are at least three significant criteria for most netbooks: Battery life, usability and a stellar 802.11 implementation are all critical to a good netbook design. First off, it’s hard for me to believe that a netbook with a battery life of less than six hours is anything more than a badly rushed first attempt in a new category.

One of the glaring shortfalls in many current netbooks is their 802.11 implementation. If you’ve ever used a netbook to try and read email in a crowded environment while 300-500 other people are sucking the life-forces from an 802.11 network, you’ll quickly come to understand that a well thought out, brawny, 802.11 transceiver could be a make or break technology for netbooks. Many of the netbooks I’ve looked at in retail (or which I’ve seen in use at conferences or in campus settings) seem to have difficulty connecting and staying attached to 802.11 networks whose access points are less than 70 feet away.

Performance will become a gating factor in future netbooks, and could become the wedge that separates Intel’s dominance in portable computing in future designs. While Intel’s Atom processor sits in the processor socket of most netbooks, the emerging demand for increased horsepower in netbooks could result in partial wins for AMD’s new Zeos or Qualcomm’s SnapDragon families (while Intel and AMD are focusing on traditional speeds and feeds, Qualcomm appears to focusing on chips designed for the holy grail of portable computing-- instant-on and persistent wireless connectivity).

Processor performance, however, is just one of the factors shaping how users will perceive future netbooks.  Disk and bus speeds also contribute to the equation.

The Acer netbook I carry everyday, --an Acer OneNote D150-- has a moderately fast 160GB hard disk drive that meets all of my needs, and is fast enough to meet most needs and has the capacity to let me keep important data locally.

To improve baseline performance and its impact on the overall netbook user experience, hardware makers may need to adopt an –in-their face attitude with operating system developers to provide  products that load quickly, run efficiently but, most of all, are not loaded with unneeded features. But one feature that netbooks desperately need is “instant-on” (introduced and on Hewlett Packard’s Omnibook 300, which was introduced in 1992 and also supported in the subsequent 500, and 800 models of that pioneering ultra portable notebook line).

One of the giant paradoxes of netbooks is meeting users’ demands without busting this form factor’s seams.

Battery life in current netbooks is a good example. Although Users want six hours or more of battery life, appropriate power packs add weight and increased depth and back end height, interfering with design aesthetics.

The evolution of netbook computers promises to be one of the most interesting tales coming down the technology toll road now. Some of the first generation netbooks I’ve seen are among the most rugged portables ever built. Other machines now in the development phase promise to expand the category exponentially, not only meeting existing requirements with room to spare, but also resetting the bar by adding designed in cell network connectivity (I’m pretty sure cell network co branding is imminent ) and full support of touch screen interfaces.—Jim Forbes/04/30/20098

Making the Final College Tuition Payment-- Cngratulations, Amanda!

I thrive on celebrations of life, small and large.

This weekend saw one of my most important life-tasks finally completed-- writing tuition checks for my daughter’s college education. It’s been a long haul and the credit for completing this task goes completely to the Lovely Miss Amanda, who may be one of the most self-directed young people in my family.

She got off to a very rocky start by attending a “women’s finishing school” near Boston.

She soon discovered that few of the courses offered by that institution weren’t transferrable, so rather than waste time, she zipped home to California nd began knocking down the classes she needed for her degree.

And, she’s worked to pay most of her living expenses while she’s in college. She was a Starbucks’ barista in Sacramento eventually becoming an asistant manager who helped run a profitable store.

Her sole creative outlet for much of this time was a giant horse she leased and rode regularly. Samsom,  provided both the attachment she needed and wanted while she busted her butt studying. Did I care that part of my tuition money went towards a horse that saw my daughter more than I did for several years?

Not really. Although after the second time the Lovely Miss Amanda was thrown by this 18-hand behemoth, I grew a little concerned.

Amanda’s college education has been a long haul. She’s forgone personal friendships, learned to live on a very tight budget and become more than I ever dreamed.

Last week, in a series of quick emails, she wrote the magic words every tuition paying Dad longs to hear, penning “Done, done done!”

I ran through the house and quickly told my mother, the cats, Mr. Perro and Miss Betsy the news. Now all I have to do is figure out what gift I can get to celebrate the occasion.

For her, it will be an appropriate bauble.  For me, I’m thinking long range 2009 fishing trip in the Sea of Cortez, but I’ll settle for just a couple more yellowtail, zipping line from my little reel, as I steam up the seaward side of the San Diego kelp beds in my panga just as soon as the water temp hits 68 degrees.

I need to add acknowledge my late Uncle, Mont Forbes and his sister, Bernadine Forbes Clark who helped me realize how important it is to help kids get through college.

Two through college and none left to go.  My son is a teacher enjoying his career and my daughter is about to start hers.

Amanda and Sean, you kids just rock my world.—Jim Forbes on 02/02/2009.

It's Time to let Steve Jobs Enjoy Some Peace-- Shouldn't Media know When it's Too Intrusive

    I've grown quite tired of technology and business writers making hay and headlines with reports on the health of Apple's co-founder Steve jobs.

    Reports in Gawker Media's ValleyWag here stating that Mr. jobs had been admitted to Stanford hospital over the weekend, speculating he was being operated on for Liver Cancer drove me over the edge.

    The post carried information from a source identified only as being an employee of Stanford Hospital.That an employee of any hospital would publicly disclose whether or not anyone is a patient at the hospital and provides the media any information on a patient's condition goes beyond despicable. Furthermore, that bottom feeding reporters who never leave their offices or homes to conduct basic "fact" gathering would base their information on such sources goes beyond the pale. In addition, what sets my teeth futrher on edge about ValleyWag and other media outlets coverage of Steve jobs is that reporters don't seem not to be asking a fundamental question: "Does the source have reason to know the information they've provided me."

    I've reached the point in life where I've grown exceedingly tired of reading about Steve Jobs. That's not the same as saying I don't care about Apple, or Mr.Jobs' future or impact on the company and personal computing.

    Truthfully, i care about both Apple and the cautionary tale that I think will be Steve Jobs' heritage when the day comes he leaves Apple at the end of a very noteworthy career.

    There are  Several things I'd like to see in this regard: Foremost, I want to see a reporter or book author get off their asses, out of their offices and try to make face to face contact with Jobs after having first prepared appropriate questions. Part and parcel with this, I'd also like to see named sources in articles and forthcoming books. I'm tired of the same rehash of the story told initially by ex-Infoworld reporters Paul Freiberger and Mike Swain in the seminal book, "Fire in the Valley." Editorial managers and literary agents have played a huge role in my changing view of how poorly Mr. Jobs and Apple has been covered. No one seems to be demanding basic reporting, resulting in books that under serve Apple's on-going story.

Also, why have so few reporters tried to turn Apple board members, or informed third parties into sources? If there was ever a time for enterprise reporting techniques to be used on Apple, it's now.

    It's unfortunate that the working press has gotten lazy in its Apple coverage. It's a sad day when hacks turn to second rate sources, or do their reporting while leeching free drinks at parties hosted by Web 2.0 sometime luminaries blowing chunks of their first-round funding on parties for technological strap hangers.

    Covering Apple and Steve jobs has always been a challenging editorial assignment for most reporters.  Sadly, few reporters ever drilled down beyond this company's veneer and the culture of it founders.  I hope that someday, an author will take the time to do a worthwhile book on the culture Steve jobs created and drove. What I've read for the last decade, however, convinces me that stories about Apple are under reported and overblown.

    Steve jobs faces serious health issues. In addition to being Apple's on-leave chairman and CEO, he is also a husband and a father. It's time he was allowed to have some semblance of privacy--Jim Forbes 01/25/2009.

        (Disclosure: I covered Apple as a reporter at InfoWorld and PC Week and admit to having used unnamed sources at times when the source declined to be named but satisfied me that they had reason to know about the subject matter I was reporting on. I was known to rummage through trash, call people in the evenings and conduct  amicable "ambush" interviews away from controlling corporate spokespeople. )

Carl Icahn Raider of the Lost Ark-- Silicon Valley Takeovers Can Happen

Silicon Valley has always been unique. Entrepreneurs have been free to follow their dreams—as long as they coincided with the same path to liquidity as that of their venture capital backers.

But its gene pool lacks much of the fresh talent from outside northern California that marks other industrial centers. There’s almost nothing in the history of Silicon Valley and its entrepreneurs that makes me believe any company—most of all Yahoo—can survive a proxy fight like the looming battle between Jerry Yang and Carl Icahn.

Yahoo may be the best example in Silicon Valley of how not to grow a company.  In it’s short history, it’s never really been able to create a top notch brand and it’s become a revolving door for talent that’s moves laterally not upward. Yahoo is an artifact from an earlier age; a time when start-ups thought they would become content kings or giant search engine/ information aggregators. Along the way Yahoo lost its focus and it has jumped from haphazardly through a variety of business models, never quite succeeding at anything it tried. Yahoo has become yesterday’s brioche and it really doesn’t appear  there’s much that can save it.

To make my point try this: Every time you hear the name “Yahoo” think “Excite@Home.”  Where is this company today? It’s little more than a footnote and absent a near divine miracle, I think Yahoo is doomed to become a subordinate entry in the same footnote list as Excite@home.

But if nothing else, the unfolding story of Yahoo should increase the pucker factor for entrepreneurs and their investors. Until now the Valley has escaped predatory investors and take-over kings.  But if things are changing Carl Icahn may just be the lead predator in a pack of hungry foxes looking at some of Silicon Valley’s cash plump chickens.  Do I think Donald trump is going to invade the Valley anytime soon?  Hell no. But there are some companies that have enough cash to make them prime targets.

Take a second and imagine Apple if Steve Jobs’ health were to crash.  (Note, I give Jobs and Apple high marks for management of Steve Job’s brief fight with Pancreatic cancer that affected the company’s stock not a whit). If there were a change in Job’s health I believe Apple’s stock price would drop and consumer confidence in the brand would tumble. Add to this Apple’s image as “only one person can manage the beast so we don’t have a strong number two” and you have the picture of a company that could be taken over.

Who would do this? There are two obvious candidates in Silicon Valley—Larry Ellison’s Oracle or Google.

All of this is pure conjecture on my part and I’m not saying it would happen, I’m just noting that takeovers of technology companies are possible and could happen, as, long as the right celestial tumblers line up and the lock that’s heretofore stopped corporate raiders in Silicon Valley pops open.—Jim Forbes 05/17/2008.

The Unintended Dangers of A Redial-- from a Soldier's Cellphone-- In the Midst of a Firefight

Today’s personal technologies like cell phones, portable computers and digital cameras are so commonplace among members of our military that many soldiers forget they are carrying them in the rucksacks or pockets of their utility uniforms.

            Take the case of a young soldier stationed in Afghanistan who tried to call his parents back home in Oregon but no one was home. So, the young Army specialist puts his cell phone back in his pocket and goes off on patrol.

            The patrol is engaged by Afghani evil-doers, the soldier takes up a firing position using a HumVee for cover.  The Problem then is that as the soldier presses up against the vehicle, his phone accidentally redials, connects and he ends up leaving a three-minute voice mail of a hot firefight, which scares the Bejesus out of his parents when they listen to their voice mail when they come home from shopping. The audio in the voice mail lays it all out, soldiers screaming for “more ammo,” orders to engage distant targets, and an urgent request for a replacement barrel from the soldier for his Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). The voices are urgent and in the background is the constant thud of an automatic 40mm grenade launcher, the longer brrps of the SAW and the high pitched racket of M16’s, all left on an answering machine back home in Oregon.

            The accidental redial ends about three minutes into the call, just after one of the patrol’s other members spots an incoming smoke trail and yells “RPG!” (rocket propelled grenade).

            The upside of all this is that the parents were able to reach the soldier on his cell phone later that day and discovered his was fine, but embarrassed about the commotion of the unintentional redial. It was then that his little brother posted the audio to YouTube. You can listen to it here.

            I guess that in addition to making sure that members of patrols are buttoned up, have clean rifles, chow and water, squad sergeants now have to make sure that soldier’s have their cell phones turned off before they cross the wire.—Jim Forbes 05/06/2008.

Why We Need to Teach young Adults Not to Rely on Internet Job Sites Fo that First Gig

Watching how my two children use the Internet is like reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

            For my kids, it’s the best of times, the worst of times, but they’re having a dickens of a time in their adult lives.

            My daughter, Amanda, relies on the Internet for a substantial part of her education. Yet, she’s quite adamant that the Internet causes many individuals to isolate rather than mingle with peers.

            My son, Sean, is a teacher and while in college had been led to believe that Internet sites listing teaching jobs here in California would make job searching an easy task.

            The reality was far different than what my son was told. He spent hours looking at and responding to job listings and after one year had not found a gig. As a parent watching the process I became very alarmed.  It didn’t take me too long to figure out that school districts were using the Internet to build large files of resumes.

            My daughter also used the Internet to find jobs.  But she used a much different strategy and as a result, she’s achieved many of her goals. What my daughter did differently was  focus in on a job she wanted, provide the basic requested information  and then show up in person with a copies of the same data and sell herself to get an in-person interview.

            Talking to some soon-to-graduate college students earlier this month, I was dismayed to find out how many s relied on the Internet as their primary source of job leads.  Looking at this group I was struck by my daughter’s belief that the Internet often depersonalizes things that over the years have worked best in one-to-one settings. And as I listened closely to the students I soon realized that they were unable to connect with a potential employer as anything more than a web page. At the close of one class, I asked a group of bout seven students to find out the name of the person who would hire them in an individual organization and then tell me how they planned to get an interview with that person. As I did this I was vividly reminded of how depressed my son had become when he wasn’t able to make contact beyond a web page.

            I am very concerned that the Internet has created an entire generation of young people coming into the workforce that may not understand that hiring decisions are made by people, not web sites. The best way to get the job you want is to by personal contact, not resume mass mailings to so-called job sites. It’s dismaying to me that in this day and age, the idea of one-to-one contact is going the way of the high-buttoned shoe.

           And to bing this full circle, I'm' happy to report that my son is now teaching, after getting an in-person interview with a school district he had originally applied  to on the Internet more than one year ago.

            Why back in the “old days” after graduation, some of us got in our cars anx (in my case) drove 400 miles overnight for that first opportunity to press the flesh and meet a potential employer in person. And guess what? That strategy worked.—Jim Forbes—04/29/2008