Healthcare.gov – A Source of Humor for IT Professionals

For anyone working in information technology, the plight of the US government’s Healthcare.gov web site has provided us all with a sense of déjà-vu.  Everyone has witnessed an application deployment that has tanked.  As IT professionals, we also know that eventually these “undocumented features,” (bugs) will get fixed, worked around, patched, re-patched, documented, or replaced.

I’m not going to crawl through all of the political posturing on both sides about the website of the healthcare act.  For geeks, this is just backdrop to the real show.  We are just all kicking back laughing our butts off as the mainstream media, Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House attempt to discuss a purely IT topic and fail so miserably in the process.  Nothing is as funny as a Congressman attempting to wrap his hands around something a wee bit more complicated than his antiquated BlackBerry.   I personally laugh out loud as the pundits on both sides attempt to sound IT-savvy.  It’s so cute…  They remind me of Penny on the Big Bang Theory.

So far the IT folks are on the sidelines in the debate, which is even funnier.  The people talking about the problem(s) really have no idea how this happened, or what is needed to fix it – regardless of what party you are in or your thoughts on healthcare in this country.  So they ask, well, stupid questions like, “What’s it going to take to fix this?”  How about a time machine and some prayer?  This is what you get when you pimp out the most important and publicized web site launch in the last five years to the lowest bidder.

Look, I can solve this for you and I know absolutely nothing about this web site or its design.  It really is that easy.  Here are the questions you should be asking and answering:

1.  Was there scope creep?  When were the requirements locked down?  I’ll put dollars-to-doughnuts that folks were making changes to this beast right up to the moment of launch.  Every IT person who has witness scope creep can spot it a mile off – and this project oozes of it.  A good follow-on question is who signed off on the design of this site and when?  You know this is an issue when testimony on Capitol Hill is sprinkled with phrases like, “late decisions…”

2.  What was the test plan – who agreed to launch this without a proper pilot test?  It is clear that this puppy was never really stress tested before it was launched.  So who agreed to push this out to the public before it was properly tested. I heard there was basic alpha testing done – after the launch.  I assure you that doing it after you launch is pretty much a waste of time and effort.  You do your testing before you have end-users collide with your digital debacle.

3.  Who is managing the vendor relationships?  I live outside of DC and cut my teeth doing government contracting, so let me tell you, there was more than a handful of contractors involved.  Even the big contractors have subcontractors who have subcontractors.  Add into this mix the actual insurance companies in the states and their staffs and their contractors and I’m willing to bet there was a small army of vendors with their fingers in the pie.  Better yet, I can assure you that no one person was overseeing, managing, and coordinating all of these bozos.  It was a recipe for debacle-stew.

4.  Were necessary data connections with the insurance sites established with time to validate they were working well?  This isn’t just a web site, it’s a bridge to a lot of other web sites.  You have to pass data – and to do that, you need to coordinate heavily with the vendors.  I’ll put down $5 that a lot of these vital connections were done at the last minute.

5.  What was your expected traffic to the site…and who signed off on that?  I keep hearing phrases like, “We’ve had an unexpectedly high volume of visits to the site.”  What was the freaking surprise?  Let me help you – oh great government IT seers – when you tell people that if they don’t sign up for insurance they will be fined – they are going to visit your site!  You can account for several thousand hits alone every hour by Fox News (attempting to prove the site doesn’t work) and MSNBC (showing just how awesome the graphics are!)  Only some moron in the government would be surprised by the number of people visiting the site.  And the expected traffic volume, that governs your design and the infrastructure, which can explain why it is slow.

6.  Did you have anyone who had built a large-scale commercial web site help with the design?  Think of it this way – have you ever tried to use a US Government web site?  Even the good ones are, well, crap. Broken links, search engine errors, and many have all of the appeal of an IRS audit (who also, I might add, has a bad web site.)  Did we just hire some government contractors to design a government site to perform commercial transactions?  Really?

7.  Who came up with this launch plan?  You can deploy something like this in a controlled manner, or “big bang,” blasting it out to everyone.  Controlled deployments, you start with a state like Rhode Island, shake out the quirks and bugs, then after a few weeks, add in two more states, gradually ramping up to the whole nation.  Big bang deployments introduce unnecessary risk and can sour your end-users because problems, even minor ones, impact thousands of people and tick them off.  Naturally we pushed for a big bang – you know, to share the misery.

Those of us in IT in the real-world know that this has already become a blame game, which doesn’t solve any of the actual problems but makes great press.  The sad part is, the actual guilty parties will go on to do other IT programs.  In the meantime, those of us in the IT community have been enjoying watching Congress and our Fearless Leader struggle with a traditional suite of IT issues.  To coin Bruce Willis in Die Hard, “Welcome to the party pal!”

Game Review – Dropzone Commander

For the last two GenCons I’ve hovered around Hawk Wargames’ booth to salivate over their Dropzone Commander game miniatures. This last GenCon they finally were announcing a starter set.  Starter sets are important for a game like this, otherwise you get caught not knowing what you need to get into a new system and end-up purchasing stuff you don’t need.  When I was given a chance to review this set, I hopped all over it because the minis I saw at GenCon were, well, sexy.

The box I got was deceptively small…don’t let that fool you.  You get a ton of stuff.

United Colonies of Mankind Starter Force:

3x Sabre Main Battle Tanks

3x Rapier AA Tanks

3x Bear APC’s

30x Colonial Legionnaires (on 6 bases)

3x Condor Medium Dropships

The Scourge Starter Force:

3x Hunter Main Grav-Tanks

3x Reaper AA Grav-Tanks

3x Invader APC’s

30x Scourge Warriors (on 6 bases)

3x Marauder Medium Dropships

Starter Urban Battlefield:

2x Urban Streets Posters, will join together in 4 different ways to create a 48”x33” road layout

10 x Pre-cut, pre-folded card buildings in 10 different designs

Rules and Accessories:

Full sized Dropzone Commander 1.1 Core Rulebook

UCM and Scourge reference sheets with stats, army composition and quick reference tables

Starter scenario and turn sequence prompt sheet

10x 14mm D6 black dice

1m/38” Hawk Wargames tape measure keyring

Full set of card templates and Scenario Object tokens

Okay, I want to talk about the miniatures, but I’ll jump into the meat of this – the universe and the rules. Mankind has reached the stars but it didn’t come with risks.  A mysterious orb appeared and warned the human race that an enemy was coming.  Mankind was given a set of coordinates to pack up in and flee to.  Some did, and when they left on this exodus, they were attacked by those that wanted to remain behind.  They bugged out leaving mankind to face the Scourge.

The best way to describe the Scourge are parasites that use other alien’s as their host.  They came and opened a can of kick-ass on the humans that remained behind.  Man was driven to their colonies.  But man was not alone.  Some aliens the Shaltari helped, as did the now Borg-like cybernetic survivors of the exodus fleet, the Post Human Republic (PHR).  The fight is on in the last bastions of mankind.

The universe is sound, we have four factions, each very distinct and different technology/weapons.  In the starter set you get the United Colonies of Mankind (UCM) and the Scourge.

Let’s talk rules.  First, the rules and universe book is big – 156 pages, filled with color photographs of the miniatures.  There are a lot of different weapons types in the game.  Railguns, missiles Gatling cannons, lasers, Plasma cyclones, acid streamers, plasma cannons, and ion storm generators.  Ranged combat is pretty sound.  You fire – taking into account countermeasures and enemy defense posturing – scoring a certain number of hits.  You then determine if any of those hits did any damage, factoring in the target’s defensive armor and the weapon’s energy. The unique weapons add some distinctiveness to the play, some are much more devastating to a particular type of target (Plasma sprayers against infantry for example).  I found after a few test rounds of play, once you get the system down, it’s pretty easy.  My only gripe was that that target’s movement didn’t seem to factor in much.  If paintball has taught me nothing is that it is hard to hit a moving target, harder if you are moving too.

Close combat is, well, dice intensive.  It is a good system, but be prepared for a lot of dice rolling.

The rules for urban combat are pretty hefty but some of the best I’ve seen in the last few years.  Bear in mind the starter set is a big urban battlefield. I also enjoyed the rules for fighters.  They come rip-roaring over the battlefield, wrecking havoc, getting shot at along the way.

Dropships play a big role in getting your forces onto the map.  I like the feel of them, the rules are pretty sound.  The miniatures actually are designed to hold the units they are bringing in – which is both unique and awesome.  Some of the minis you can purchase that don’t come in the game are very devastating from what I can see.  Razorworm Packs are nasty little buggers designed for urban combat. My only critique to the book is there is no images at all of the actual aliens in the game. The descriptions are good but some images would have given some good context.

Alright I have to say something about the miniatures.  They rock!  These are model-quality plastic minis which take some time to assemble and paint, but it is time well spent.  The Scourge are very Alien-appearing (alien as in Alien the movie).  Bioorganic armor, they almost have a creepy look about them. There are a lot of details on these pieces, even on places you don’t see like the bottoms.  There are painting guides in the rulebook too.

I’m not the best painter – but this gives you an idea of scale.

Some unpainted infantry on one of the two map board along with units from both sides. Notice the dropship coming in with a tank?

The UCM minis are pretty typical – they tend to favor actuated arms with different weapons on them mounted on traditional tank.  These are still loaded with a lot of detail.  I love the APC’s (Bears).  Each race has some pretty distinct look and feel to them.

The battlefield that comes in the box consists of cardboard buildings that you fold into place.  These are remarkably well detailed.  When you fold them they make a little rooftop edge to them.  These are great.  I found in play the only issue is that they are very light.  Plan on using some tiny pieces of transparent tape to hold them on the maps, otherwise they tip over pretty easily.  Having said that, I was stunned at the level of quality and depth of this urban battlefield.  It was a risky choice for Hawk Wargames to go with that in a starter set.  The safe play would have been a wilderness battlefield.  Doing this is a game changer – and Hawk and upped the ante for other game companies with their starter set.

I like Dropzone Commander a lot.  This is more than enough to get you off the ground with this game at a pretty reasonable price.  Looking to expand?  I love the look of the PHR units – very sleek and flowing.  They are very smooth looking.  Best yet, the urban battlefield in the box can be used for a wide range of miniature games.  I’ve showed the mini’s to a few of my BattleTech buddies and they are the right scale and add some options for custom ‘Mechs.  Yes – this system has ‘Mechs!!  And because they are plastic, BattleTech fans can do a lot of customizing here.

I give this five out of five stars – a solid hit.

Myths and Misconceptions About the Cuban Missile Crisis

In three weeks or so my book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Fires of October, will be released.  As we are in the middle of the anniversary of the crisis, I thought it would behoove me to dispel some of the commonly held misconceptions about the crisis.  A lot of these myths have been born in popular media…that and the fact that we don’t do a good job of teaching history.

We were hours from Armageddon.  This crisis was the closest we came to a nuclear confrontation with the former Soviet Union, but that does not mean that we were on the cusp of all-out nuclear war.  Because we went to DefCon-2 we did move some of our nuclear arsenal out of a highly controlled state to where lower ranking officers had access and the capability to unleash weapons without authorization.  Yes, the risk was there, but dropping bombs on the missile sites in Cuba did not necessarily mean we’d be toe-to-toe in nuclear war immediately with the Soviets.

The US was at risk of a first strike from Cuba.  Okay, on paper this was true, but in reality, the Soviet missiles in Cuba had to be prepped, set-up, fueled, targeted, etc..  All of this took considerable time.  With our Blue Moon reconnaissance flights over the island, we would have had some advance notice if the Soviets were preparing to launch.

This was the Soviet’s fault.  I’ll grant you, the Soviets put the missiles in Cuba.  In reality however the Kennedy Administration created the circumstances that led to the crisis.  The debacle of the Bay of Pigs signaled the US wanted to topple Castro.  The Berlin crisis which led to the creation of the Berlin Wall was not responded to by President Kennedy, seeming to signal that US resolve was not strong.  Yes, Khrushchev set the missiles to Cuba, but after the summit with the US President, he was convinced that the young American leader was weak and indecisive. Kennedy inadvertently sowed the seeds that led to this crisis.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were pushing to get the US into war with the Soviets.  The movies and some of the memoirs sure seem to point to this.  Having said that, I’ve listened to some of the key tapes at the National Archives, and have spent hours going over the transcripts.  Much of this rhetoric that the JCS was trying to ignite a war is speculative and is often quoted out of context.  What they did repeat, over and over again, was that there was no way to ensure that all of the missiles were destroyed by airstrikes alone.  You’d need boots on the ground.  Their role, as they stated in conversations with the President, was to protect the United States.  The best way to ensure that was to attack and possibly invade Cuba.

The US made the Soviets back down.  Secretary Rusk’s comment, “”We’ve been eyeball to eyeball and the other fellow just blinked,” confuses some people.  This crisis was averted not by making the Soviets back down – but via a backdoor (non-public) agreement on the part of President Kennedy to trade the obsolete Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the missiles in Cuba.  We didn’t make the Soviets lose.  We didn’t make them back down.  We traded with them.

The infamous clash in the plot room.  The movie Thirteen Days made it look as if there was a clash between Secretary of Defense McNamara and Admiral Andersen in the plot room at the Pentagon resulting in Admiral Andersen stating, “We’ve been running blockades since the days of John Paul Jones!”   This is bolstered by McNamara’s autobiography.  However there are two sides to every story.  I found several written accounts by Admiral Andersen that certainly cast doubts on the McNamara account.  I’m not saying that McNamara is wrong, but if the truth is somewhere between these two versions of the event – then the movie is inaccurate.

The Soviet ships ran right up to the quarantine line, nearly sparking war.  The truth of the matter is the majority of the Soviet ships turned around hundreds of miles from the quarantine line.  In fact, the US contracted the line during the crisis, bringing it in closer to Cuba.

The US invasion of Cuba would have been a cake walk.   Okay, this is the subject of my upcoming book.  Let me assure you, this was not a walk in the park for the US.  We thought there were 17,000 Soviets on the island – there were 44,000 – and these were highly armored/mechanized units.  We could only account for 11% of the 100,000 men of the Cuban Army – and army that had been recently trained by Soviet advisors.  There’s more – but then again, that’s why I wrote the book.  Cake walk?  Far from it!

What did I miss?  Were there misconceptions you’ve spotted over the years that I missed?

Robert E. Lee – One of America’s Greatest Generals

Lee and surviving Confederate officers meet in 1869

Today, October 12, marks the day that Robert E. Lee passed away in 1870 and Washington College (now Washington and Lee University).  Idolizing Confederate Generals has become politically incorrect in recent years, as is anything connected with the War of Northern Aggression. This is short-sighted and lacks historical integrity.  Some of the Confederate officers were outstanding military and professional men.  Robert E. Lee is such a man…political correctness be damned.

Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Virginia, the son Light Horse Harry Lee, hero of the American Revolution.  He had the distinction of graduating West Point with no demerits during his time there.  Lee married Mary Custis, great granddaughter of Martha Washington.  He lived in the Custis home, Arlington House, overlooking the Potomac River and Washington City (DC).

Lee was an engineer in his early military career.  During the Mexican War he served as one of General Winfield Scott’s aides.  His service during this war won him promotion and gave him the experience that would serve him later in life.  After the war he served as Superintendent of West Point.  When John Brown led a raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, it was Lee that led the Federal troops to apprehend him.

When the war broke out Winfield Scott recommended Lee to command the Federal forces.  Lee, for his part, saw secession as a calamity for the nation.  At the same time Lee was offered a chance to command of Virginia’s forces.  Most of us don’t comprehend the loyalty that men like Lee had to their state during this era, and it was this sense of loyalty that compelled him to accept commission in the Confederate forces.

Lee’s first military action was a defeat for him, at Cheat Mountain.  He earned the nickname “Granny Lee,” for a timid style of command.  Lee overcame that nickname and altered his fighting style – becoming highly aggressive and always seizing the initiative – forcing his enemies to react to his actions.

When General Joseph Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines outside of Richmond, command fell to Lee.  People’s hopes were not high based on his reputation.

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The Federal Army had moved up the peninsula outside of Richmond and were so close they could hear the church bells.  Lee struck back viciously, despite being outnumbered and outgunned.  He lashed out at General McClellan in what would be referred to as the Seven Day’s Battles.  Lee struck hard at his foe, despite the odds, using the wilderness to diminish the Federal advantage in manpower.  The Seven Day’s taught Lee what officers he could rely on, and which one’s would have to go.  He lost almost all of the battles, but he succeeded in breaking the will of General McClellan, forcing him to retreat and saving Richmond.

He struck at General John Pope at Second Manassas, demonstrating a trait that stunned his enemies; dividing his army in the face of superior foes.  Unsatisfied with his victories in Virginia, Lee took the fight north into Maryland.  Facing General McClellan at Sharpsburg, Lee was once again outnumbered and outgunned, yet managed to fight the Federals to a stalemate.  Given that McClellan had intercepted a copy of Lee’s orders prior to the battle, it should have been a crushing Union victory.

Lee defended Fredericksburg against the Federal forces under General Burnside, devastating the Union Army.  He saw the battle as so savage he referred to it as murder.

When General Hooker assumed command of the Federal Army he launched potentially the most sweeping move against Lee, swinging around behind the Confederate forces near Chancellorsville.  Outnumbered three to one, Lee once more divided his army…twice…and savaged the Union forces into retreat back across the Rappahannock River.  But it came at a great cost, one of his best subordinates, General Thomas Jackson.

Lee marched north again into Pennsylvania to fight at Gettysburg.  While he lost the battle, he managed to escape with his army mostly intact back into Virginia.  After a series of probes into the autumn of 1863, Lee was about to meet someone that understood his style of fighting…Ulysses Grant.

Starting in 1864 Grant waged a grand strategic war against the Confederate forces.  He understood the advantage of the Union forces in terms of manpower and did not shirk from a fight.  After losing the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant did not retreat like other generals before him, he continued on, forcing Lee to react to his moves.  This marked the twilight of the Confederacy.

At Spotsylvania Courthouse, the North Anna River, and Cold Harbor, Lee fought gallantly, but lacked the manpower or resources to seize the initiative.  He inflicted massive damage to the Federal forces, but Grant did not break off.  He could afford to lose men that Lee simply could not.

Yet despite the odds, Lee clung on, giving the Confederacy with a hint of hope and life.  Besieged at Petersburg, Lee eventually was driven out of his trenches to Richmond and eventually to Appomattox Court House.

At the time of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, his army was in rags and starving, yet some of his officers insisted on fighting a guerilla war.  Lee did not favor this.  There had been enough bloodshed.  He managed what others thought impossible, a surrender with dignity.

The cost of the war for Lee had been great.  His home, Arlington, had been seized by the Federals and turned into a graveyard for the military dead.

Lee encouraged his former men to return home and be good citizens of the United States.  Lee went on to support civil rights and supported President Johnson’s Reconstruction plans.  He sought out obscurity but was convinced to serve as president of Washington College.  Despite offers for amnesty and pardon, Lee’s application was conveniently lost in the process.  It wasn’t until President Gerald Ford granted him his pardon that Lee was considered again a citizen of the United States, one of only a handful of men treated as such.  He spent much of his post-war years attempting to get the United States to reimburse him for the loss of his beloved Arlington House.

Lee suffered a stroke on September 28, 1870 and died on October 12.  He was buried beneath the Lee Chapel at the university.

Lee was not fighting for slavery – instead he was fighting to defend his homeland – Virginia.  While he had the opportunity to drag the war on further as a guerilla conflict, he refused that option in favor of peace.  Constantly fighting against a foe that outnumbered him, Lee managed to wage a successful but eventually doomed war effort for years.

Regardless of his cause, no one can deny that Robert E. Lee was one of America’s greatest military leaders.

Death By A Thousand Bullet Points – Why I’ve Come to Hate PowerPoint

I will demonstrate my age here. Back “in the day” we used to use overhead projectors to make presentations at work. We printed on transparent sheets and if we wanted to make a point, we would mark on them with markers. It was not a golden era, but it worked. Barely. The overheads often had burned out bulbs and finding markers back in the era before the extensive use of whiteboards was always a challenge.

Back when I was at Ford, we introduced Harvard Graphics to do presentations. It worked, but most truck engineers really didn’t want anything to do with it. We didn’t have a good way to project slide shows, and the graphics capabilities in those pre-Windows days, well, they sucked. One engineering manager told me, “I print out the three graphs I need and talk to the other managers about what we’re going to do about the data trends.”  Wow. Back in those days kids, we actually got stuff done.

Then came PowerPoint and projectors in every conference room. And with it came the dumbing down of the workforce. That’s right. PowerPoint has crippled many people’s abilities to communicate well.

Oh, I get it, PowerPoint is a tool and a tool can be used for both good and evil. PowerPoint, in my humble opinion, has led to a downfall of intelligent presentation skills and even analytics. It panders to the lowest level of communications skills. Why do people love Twitter so much?  I’ll tell you, it’s like writing bullet points in PowerPoint – a competency that they demonstrate every day in the cube farm.

Complex concepts are whittled down to incoherent bullet points or pretty pictures which fail to convey a complete thought. Sometimes complex things are complex for a reason. Or worse, someone uses PowerPoint to write War and Peace because upper management will look at a PowerPoint deck before reading a twenty-page proposal. What I cringe at the most is that PowerPoint reinforces poor writing (much like my blog). People write bullet points that are fractured and disappointingly shattered pieces of sentences and it is accepted as the norm. I grant you the business schools are struggling to teach students how to write professionally, but why bother?  When they get a job they are going to simply pile together a bunch of Tweet-like-sentences in PowerPoint anyway.

We used to engage people in meeting with meaningful discussions. Now we read to them from poorly worded lists on a screen. Rather than using PowerPoint to augment or enhance a discussion, it becomes not only the focal point of the discussion – it also becomes the document of record. PowerPoint is used as a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a horrid teleprompter.

I like to think I use the tool well – especially when it first came into prominent use. But just when I started to enjoy it, every company/firm I worked for began to implement standards for PowerPoint. I got hamstrung by palette of colors that hinder any real creativity. There are templates I’m required to use which, over the years, eat into any bit of creativity in the name of corporate conformity.

I work in this bitch-of-a-tool every day of my career and have come to loathe it. PowerPoint caters to the inner-idiot we all try and conceal from our coworkers. I have watched people make decisions based on a pretty picture or graph rather than the risks and facts tied to a concept. At times it seems like a contest as to who can provide the slickest graphics. I saw a chart once that had five dimensions to it – not only was it unreadable but if you looked at the center of it long enough you could disrupt the space time continuum.

PowerPoint has forced me to be a graphic artist just to keep up with the Jones’s. Decades ago in my career I ran a desktop publishing team. It is not a step forward for me to have to rekindle those antiquated skills. Large organizations have entire graphics teams to help you take your horrid little image and process it for PowerPoint for your special presentation. Can you believe that –  a hidden army of PowerPoint graphic artists.

There are even people out there that have implicated the use of PowerPoint in the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia.  That’s right, the use of PowerPoint can kill people. Don’t believe me, check this out. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901444.html

Have you ever been in a meeting where someone shows up for a thirty minute meeting with 67 slides?  Ticks you off, doesn’t it?  Or the douche-bag that thought it would be cute to put up a six point font on his/her slide, as if any human can read a font that small?  You know who I’m talking about. How about the guy that discovered the transitions feature and turned ever slide into a hideously animated mess.

My biggest pet peeve is one I mentioned earlier – the moron that reads his or her slide deck to me. I went to college, I write books, I can read for myself. You even sent me the side deck in advance – I read it – let’s move on!  Tell me what’s not on the slides, tell me what the key points are in your argument. Convince me – sell me, compel me! Use PowerPoint to augment your skills in presenting for God’s sake!  Reading me what you have on slides is just insulting and demeaning for both of us.

What I do from time-to-time is not prepare a PowerPoint deck for a meeting. I admit, I do this just to be a jerk – it’s an endearing trait (so I tell myself.)  It throws people off completely. I’ve actually had people stop me and ask if I have the information in a slide deck I can send them. “No, it isn’t necessary.”  They almost glare at you like, “it’s not a real meeting unless we have pretty pictures for me to look at.”  Thanks PowerPoint – you’ve managed to mutate corporate communications into something that is less than functional – and you’ve indoctrinated a whole generation of managers into thinking they have to have a slide deck in front of them or they can’t think.

In my book Business Rules – the Cynic’s Guidebook to the Corporate Overlords, (which you should just buy right now – duh)  I rip into PowerPoint with the rules you need to know. Suffice it to say, however, I don’t have this blog post in a PPT deck – yet.