Dan from Madison

HVAC and the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

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Today I read this choice article on Fox with the lengthy title of “Air conditioning shortage ahead of hot summer causes nationwide price spike” and was reminded of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. To remind everyone, the definition is:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

As someone who has been in the field of HVAC distribution for 32 years I know a thing or two, as they say. Lets take a look at this article (yes, a good old fashioned fisking) and see if it reports what we are seeing on the ground here, or if reality has been distorted somewhat, and we perhaps have an example of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect as I peruse the rest of the news for today.

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ChicagoBoyz Waiting Room Series: 35

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That Mask Thing

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I’m a simple guy. So why on earth is anyone wearing a mask anymore here in these fine United States?

I was at an outdoor activity with several hundred people in rural Wisconsin for most of the weekend and saw zero masks. On the way home from that today I stopped at a large, chain hardware store in the city of Madison. The majority of people in the store were wearing masks.

Employees were all wearing masks, although that is not mandatory. Indeed, I own a business in the city of Madison and do not require my employees to wear masks although they can if they want to (none do).

The majority of customers were wearing masks. There is no mask mandate locally anymore, although everyone always asks you to wear one if you aren’t vaccinated.

Which brings me to my question. I was told early on that the masks weren’t for the person wearing them, they were for others, because you care. So, if this is the case, my logic works thusly.

If you are vaccinated, there is no reason to wear a mask – because you can’t get covid. If you are not vaccinated, you do not need to wear a mask “because you care”, because those that are vaccinated cannot get covid.

So, logically, cut it out with the face diapers – right? Is the new theory that vaccinated people can give non vaccinated people covid? The evidence locally doesn’t support that as our covid cases are statistically insignificant.

So was mask wearing all virtue signaling all along? Good to know. Cuz science.

When this whole sad episode started I said to my wife “as soon as we start understanding that none of this makes any sense at all, it all makes sense”. When the books are written, I think this will be right.

Radio Garden

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As previously mentioned on these pages, I decided a while ago (when the Chinese commie crud started) to get really good at a few things, rather than being really average at a lot. After analyzing my total free time and assessing my preferences, I ended up on basically two things that I want to do with my free time. Maintain physical fitness and learn French.

Learning a language is a long haul and I expected that. What I didn’t expect is how rapidly I am learning things with the help of the many free or practically free aids you can find online. The space is cluttered and extremely competitive. After 15 months of throwing myself at this I have made some really nice progress. My original plan was to be fluent in 5 years, but if I can keep up this pace I believe I can do it in 3.

Through an acquaintance I discovered Radio Garden. I don’t have time for a lot of tech in my life so any new widget or gadget has to have a couple of qualifications.

1) extreme and 100% ease of use
2) add value to my life

Radio Garden meets my qualifications.

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Continuing Supply Chain Issues

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I have been sharing supply chain woe stories over the past year plus, ever since the Chinese commie crud took over the headlines. I work in the world of industrial distribution.

Many of those supply chain issues remain to this very day, and some are getting worse. I have been in the industry for 35 years (HVAC distribution specifically, a subset of industrial distribution) and with a mature industry such as the one I am in, supply chain always had ebbs and flows, however these were easily predictable and looked like a very shallow sine wave. Over the past year and continuing to today, the supply chain is very spiky and extremely difficult to navigate.

Disasters such as the Suez Canal closure and plants getting damaged in Texas over the Winter added to an already miserable time. Many businesses are opening back up and demand is surging as equipment that was previously mothballed or otherwise inoperative is coming online (and breaking). We continue to have transportation issues with LTL (for those who don’t know, LTL stands for Less Than Load, or semi trailers that are making deliveries of many skids of product to different locations rather than a straight shot to one location) being a disaster right now. Labor is a problem as many that were laid off have either moved to other jobs, or simply refuse to come back to work due to overly generous federal and state unemployment benefits.

The whole enchilada is quite the mess. Oddly, when I go to work in the morning I am resigned at this point to just saying to myself “I wonder what insane thing I will have to deal with today” and just put my head down and deal with it. When you get used to adversity things don’t bother you as much, I suppose.

I made the decision to never cancel any orders and simply take on more inventory. This hurts in the short term as cash flow and inventory turns are adversely impacted, but mission number one is to smooth out these spiky curves to our customers, so they can continue to make money – it needs to be my job to bear the brunt of this and to make it virtually unnoticed for our contractors. It remains quite the challenge. There will be major issues this Summer with imported equipment such as ductless mini splits, window airs and dehumidifiers imported from over there due to the persistent port delays on the West Coast. These issues are already happening. As hard as I am trying, I can’t get every product for every customer in these conditions. Most have been understanding. If they aren’t, well, I can’t unload the containers so….

Here is an interesting story about a different industry, flowers. I always take my wife out to a nice brunch for Mother’s Day. In addition, I always get her a corsage with three spray roses, the white ones with the red tips. I called the florist to order it up yesterday and the person on the other end laughed and said that they hadn’t seen spray roses in a year. In fact, when I go to pick up my corsage, they couldn’t even tell me what type of flower it would be. The shipment of flowers shows up and they have to make do with what shows up. She said that it was probable that I could get a single white rose but no guarantees. I told her that I could completely relate as I have been living this hell for a while too. She was pleased to speak with someone who was sort of in the same boat and went on to tell me that the last year was full of enormous challenges in the flower industry – that a lot of flowers simply didn’t exist to purchase.

While that is an anecdote, it is still telling of how we will likely see supply chain issues for some time to come.