Tolls, Taxes and Transportation

I hate to say “I told you so”, but…  Just as I’d predicted, Governor Malloy’s hand-picked Transportation Finance Panel has finally issued its recommendations for paying for the governor’s 30-year,  $100 billion transportation “plan”. 

First off, the Governor’s “plan” is not a plan but a wish-list of projects for all 169 towns and cities in the state.  It has been vetted by no one and has no priorities, (though CDOT

Commissioner Redeker says about two-thirds [$66 billion] would be for repairs and replacement of what we already have, not any grandiose schemes for monorails down the middle of I-95.)

Interestingly, as it began work last summer the Transportation Finance Panel wasn’t allowed to debate the merits of anything in the Governor’s “plan”, so all they could do was suggest how to fund the whole thing. 

Atop their newly issued report is a telling quote:  “If something’s worth having, it’s worth paying for.”  Duh!  But that’s a pretty soft sell on this mega-plan given the unpopularity of their funding suggestions:

• ·       Raise the gasoline tax two cents a year for seven years
• ·       Hike bus and rail fares 2.5% annually
• ·       Introduce electronic tolls on highways with congestion (time of day) pricing.
• ·       Land value capture at transit sites

That last idea is a doozey.  It suggests that if someone owns private land next to a new transit station and it appreciates in value, the increased taxes collected by the town should be shared with the state.

That is perilously close to last year’s Machiavellian bill that would have created a quasi-state agency, the Transit Corridor Development Agency (all of whose members would be appointed by the Governor) which would have the power of eminent domain on any land within a half mile of a bus or train station.  Though rejected, that idea is already being re-thought by OPM, so watch out this session.

But before you set your hair on fire… don’t worry.  All of this is moot.  Nothing is going to happen, and here’s why.

The Governor says that none of his panel’s proposals should even be discussed until there is a transportation “lock box” in place.  That won’t happen until November’s election and will depend on passage of a constitutional amendment ballot question.

Why the delay?  Because the Democrats in the legislature don’t want to have to vote on something as unpopular as tolls or taxes before the next election.

Meanwhile, even Governor Malloy seems distracted from his transportation mega-plans, as he is rumored to be lobbying for a cabinet seat in the Clinton administration come 2017. And the Presidential campaign season will doubtless see Governor Malloy on the road quite a bit on behalf of his could-be boss.

So don’t look for a widened I-95, high-speed rail or new deep-water ports anytime soon.  The legislature will be busy with more important things, like getting re-elected, before they can deal with funding the Malloy “plan”.

Working in EPM? Live in South Florida? Not going to the South Florida EPM Meetup? Why?

Why indeed

Just what is a meetup?  Given EPMers’ technological bent, it is surprising to me that we don’t readily cotton on to the concept of a meetup.  That’s a pity because they are a great way to (danger ahead:  a geek who thinks he’s witty) meet up with like-minded individuals.  Think of them as a social media tool involving living, breathing meatware, using their collective wetware, all occurring in real life.  Isn’t slang wonderful?

What does that all mean in Plain English?  

Here’s a good definition, a meetup is “a meeting, especially a regular meeting of people who share a particular interest and have connected with each other through a social-networking website”.    

Have you been to an ODTUG-nurtured EPM meetup?  Hardworking (given her ODTUG volunteer workload it’s more like insanely hardworking) Janice D'Aloia heads that initiative within the ODTUG EPM community.  A note about these meetups:  ODTUG encourages them through funding and support but at the end of the day a meetup is owned by its members, not ODTUG so please don’t think attendees are taking any orders from what-is-likely-the-best-Oracle-user-group-ever.  It’s all part of ODTUG’s service to its community members and yes, it is pretty noble sounding and it just plain is.

If you are interested in getting help starting up a meetup in your area, please contact ODTUG at erin@odtug.com to start the meetup ball rolling.  ← That’s an idiom, not slang, but aren’t idioms just as wonderful as slang?  Discuss.

South Florida EPM Meetup

And that brings us to a specific meetup, namely the upcoming South Florida EPM meetup.  It’s  occurring on Thursday, 18th February, 2016 at Dave & Buster’s Hollywood, Florida location from 3:30 to 6:30 (or later if you’re having that much fun) pm.

What’s on offer?  The very things that make meetups so much fun:  education in form of a Special ODTUG Surprise (And no, I do not qualify as a surprise, or at least not a pleasant one.  There will be a projector, and a laptop, and a demo.), a super geeky-cool game, and the opportunity to meet your fellow Floridian EPM practitioners.  What’s not to like?

It’s easy-peasy to register – you can do this on ODTUG’s EPM meetup page right here.  Meetup.com provides a lovely confirmation screen once you’ve registered.

And Bob’s your uncle, you’re set to attend.  You are going to, right?  You should if you’re not.

And to whom to do we owe the pleasure?

As I noted, ODTUG is an enabler but meetups are intrinsically grassroots.  They are founded and led and staffed and attended by you, the EPM geek.  The organizers are just like us – people who live, breathe, and eat EPM.

In the case of the South Florida meetup it’s Jessica Cordova of ARC EPM and Kris Calabro of Tyco International.  Jessica and Kris make meetings like this possible and we’re all in their debt.  Meetup organizers, whether they be hiking enthusiasts, British sports car owners (make mine a Sunbeam Tiger with Minilites), or yes, even EPM practitioners do it because they love whatever the passion is.  Benefit from their enthusiasm if you’re in the South Florida area on 18 February, 2016.  Join us, won’t you?

Be seeing you.

Don't Blame the Trucks

Driving to Hartford the other day (no, you cannot really get there by train) I saw a beautiful sight:  hundreds of trucks!  Yet, motorists hate trucks and mistakenly blame them for traffic congestion and accidents that cause hours of delays.

Readers of this column know I’m a “rail guy” and would love to see freight trains replace trucks, but that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.  But as motorists we should not blame truckers for traffic woes of our own creation.

Check the facts and you’ll find most highway accidents are caused by motor cars, not the trucks.

Do trucks drive too fast?  Sure, but don’t we all?  Next time you’re on I-95 check who’s in the high-speed left lane and you’ll see cars, not trucks.

Should there be better safety inspections of trucks?  Absolutely!  But for every over-weight truck or over-worked truck driver there are doubtless hundreds of unsafe cars and equally road-weary warriors behind the wheel whose reckless disregard endangers us all.

Truckers drive for a living.  They are tested and licensed to far more rigorous standards than anyone else.  And because they drive hundreds of miles each day, overall I think they are far better drivers.  When’s the last time you saw a trucker juggling a cellphone and a latte like some soccer moms?

And remember… they’re not out there driving their big-rigs up and down the highway just to annoy us.  We put those trucks on the road by our voracious consumption patterns.  Every product we buy at stores large and small, including the very newspaper or iPad you hold in

your hand, was delivered by trucks.  Want fewer trucks on the road?  Just stop buying stuff.

By definition, trucks are high-occupancy vehicles.  Compare the energy efficiency of a loaded truck delivering its cargo to you in your “SOV” (single occupancy vehicle), even if it is a hybrid.  Only rail offers better fuel efficiency.

Why are trucks jamming our highways at rush hour?  Because merchants require them to drive at those times to meet the stores’ delivery timetable.  If big-box stores and supermarkets only took truck deliveries in the overnight hours, our highways would flow much better at rush hour. 

Truckers must use the interstates while passenger cars can chose among many alternate routes.  Why is the average distance driven on I-95 in Connecticut just eleven miles?  Because most of us drive the ‘pike for local, not interstate trips.

If we were smart enough to “value price” our highways (ie return tolling) we’d see fewer vehicles of all kinds on I-95, and those that were willing to pay for the privilege of motoring there would get real value in a faster ride.

I’m hardly an apologist for the trucking lobby.  But neither is it fair for us to blame anyone but ourselves for highway safety and congestion.  It’s the SOV crowd, not the truckers, who are to blame. 

Let’s be honest about this mess of our own making and stop trying to blame truckers as our scapegoat.  As the great philosopher Pogo once put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

Stupid Programming Tricks No. 28 -- LCM, 7z, and Planning migrations

How long can Yr. Obt. Svt. be wrong?

The answer to that question is apparently indefinitely.  And the task so trivial.  Sigh.

The problem

This post was supposed to be one in my Compleat Idiot’s Guide to PBCS series and I will use some screenshots from a future post on on-premises to PBCS and back migration but I got hung up on making this work.

And then I realized I made the same mistake at a client.  Remember what consultants are supposed to do:  help customers.  I did, sort of, but I made my task much harder.  Sorry.

Let’s walk through this using PBCS although as you will see the issue is exactly the same in on-premises.  Sigh.

The Brotherhood of Man

I have to give credit to my younger, taller, smarter brother from a completely different set of parents, Celvin Kattookaran.  In my hour of need (I have many, too many) he came through for me and didn’t even make all that much fun of me when he explained the answer.

Breaking LCM

I want to migrate an on-premises application to  PBCS.  I have the old Planning sample application from (I think) 11.1.1.3.  I have it working in both 11.1.2.3.500 as well as 11.1.2.4.  It’s a simple application, really simple, and I find simple hard enough as will be shown.

Please leave the premises

Here I am on my on-premises install of 11.1.2.4.  I click on Application Management and…

Here I am in good old Shared Services:

I then export the application file objects:

I’ve moved it to another my Windows 7 VM (I try to keep my 11.1.2.4 VM local only):

Not a cloud in the sky

Here I am in PBCS’ Application Management.  It’s just about the same as Shared Services:

Upload the LCM zip file:

And, as expected, here are the artifacts in PBCS.  As Danny Kaye says, everything is tickety-boo.

So what’s the problem?

If I unzip the application download and then make a change, any change, or even no change at all, and then rezip the file I get this on reimport.

Here I am in 7-Zip, a really awesome WinZip open source clone.  Fwiw, I actually have WinZip (I even paid for it and don’t like violating licenses by installing it on more than one machine) on my bare-metal laptop but 7-Zip is free and has almost all of the functionality; in some ways it’s quite a bit more advanced.

Here’s the folder unzipped.  If I were migrating this to an on-premises install I could copy this entire folder without compression to the import_export Shared Services folder.

Now I’m going to zip this to SampApp1a.zip.  Note that not a blessed thing has changed to the contents.  Also note that the compression engine, be it 7-Zip or Windows’ own compression functionality, makes no difference.  

The below are defaults:

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah indeed

Uh-oh.  There’s a difference in size of the compressed archive.  How can that be?  Nothing and I mean nothing has been changed.  Oh well, there couldn’t possibly be anything to worry about yr. obt. svt. blithely thinks.

The upload goes swimmingly, I think.

Oh how wrong I am despite this lovely message:

And what happens when I try to open the file?

¡Ay, caramba!

Is the service really not available?  That’s silly as it’s clearly there and thus we see Yet Another Confusing Error Message.  Perhaps Oracle never anticipated someone doing something as boneheaded as is described below?  Probably.

Here’s the problem.  I zipped an unzipped folder and that was the issue.  Wot?  It’s the same, right?  Nope.

Here’s the zip file from Planning.

And here’s the unzipped-to-zipped archive.  Do you see what I did?  I zipped the SampApp1 folder within the archive.  What?

It actually makes sense – I zipped c:\users\cameronl\downloads\SampleApp1 to c:\users\cameronl\downloads.  The SampApp1 folder is part of the overall path and thus it gets included in the zip file.  Ultimatel Fail.  Although to be fair that isn’t actually an intuitive result.  Regardless, I should have looked into the zip archive itself but alas did not.

Nothing’s Impossible

The solution is to go into the SampApp1 folder and zip from there.

And here we go, just as LCM defines the file structure.

Success! Boil in bag!

Upload it and all is well.  Despite the changed (or in this case not changed) zip file.

Ballin’ the Jack

And that’s it.  So trivial and so painful.

Oh yes, my poor unfortunate client.  Ugh.  I was tasked with splitting up a Planning application.  I downloaded the LCM xml files, did my modifications, zipped them back up and…failure.  Bugger.

As this was on-premises Planning, after a moderate amount of pain I was able to get access to the import_export folders and move the modified LCM files.  I understate the case:  getting that access was really painful.  If only I had begged on my knees asked for Celvin’s help back then.

May my errors not be yours.  

Great American Songbook

It’s difficult to tell if any of you ever click through on the hyperlinks I sprinkle throughout these posts.  Assuming that you do (or maybe assuming that you don’t) I thought I would give you a listing of the music (and one TV show and a few movies) so you can have some idea of my strange cultural tastes.  As I like to remind Natalie Delemar –  @EssbaseLady – popular culture pretty much doesn’t interest me much past 1965.  It shows.

 

In order:

1. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, The Brotherhood of Man, Robert Morse (The 1967 version is the OBC definitive version or as close as we can get save a time machine to get back to 1961.)
2. The Honeymooners, Please Leave the Premises, Jackie Gleason aka The Great One, et. al.
3. Eddie Stone, Not a Cloud In the Sky
4. Merry Andrew, Everything is Tickety-Boo, Danny Kaye
5. Song of the South, Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, James Baskett
6. Swing Time, Pick Yourself Up (medley), Andy Williams and Jack Jones
7. That’s My Boy, Ballin’ The Jack, Dean Martin, Polly Bergen, and a guy who reminds me of me only with a lot more talent
8. A Hundred Years From Today, Peggy Lee
9. Jazz is America’s Classical Music, Billy Taylor

I like to think that a hundred years from today The Great American Songbook will be what our descendants will view as the musical acme of the 20th century.  Jazz is America’s Classical Music, or at least it is on this blog.

Be seeing you.