Author Archive: Paul Epps

One More Thing on IndyMac

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One thing I forgot to mention: When I was let go from IndyMac a year ago — and in each subsequent round of layoffs shrinking the workforce from 10,000 to 7,200 — it was called a “right-sizing.” God, I hate that word. I noticed they finally dispensed with the bullshit last week . . . when they cut another 3,800 people from the remaining 7,200, just before failing completely, the word “right-sizing” was not used . . . Read more →

Chuck Schumer Can Blow Me

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Disclaimer: I used to work at IndyMac. It was poorly run and deserved to fail. They got way too much credit for their success when times were good. Look — in a housing bubble, a monkey with a sign can sell mortgages. Then when things started to turn ugly, they took the approach of trying to manage the stock price rather than managing the company. They started up a blog called The IMB Report, the purpose of which was to provide timely spin control on all the bad news about the company. The title — The IMB Report — gives away the game. The IndyMac Report would be a much more obvious choice; IMB is the stock ticker symbol. In shutting down the bank, the Office of Thrift Supervision said this: The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of… Read more →

Spanning the Globe

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Because EppsNet is sweeping the globe like nuclear fallout, I sometimes get comments like this one, where it’s hard to tell what’s spam and what isn’t. Often it comes down to this — if the person is a native English speaker, I think they must be putting me on. One clue is to check the IP address. For example, the above comment was posted from Mauritius, an small island nation off the coast of Madagascar. While English is the official language and French predominates in media and business, the most widely spoken language is Mauritian Creole, considered the lingua franca, or native tongue, of the country. Verdict: Valid comment. Read more →

Mowing the Lawn

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A co-worker tells me that when she was growing up in Seattle, people did their own yardwork . . . not like here in Southern California where that work is done by Mexicans for hire. I told her we used to mow our own lawns in SoCal too. In fact, if you like A Christmas Story, you would have loved our neighbor next door. He was like Darren McGavin, but instead of the furnace, he’d curse at his beaten-down jalopy of a lawn mower. And not in the basement — right out on his front lawn. I mowed my own lawn at the first house I ever owned. Pride of ownership! And this was not in Irvine, where I live now and the lawns are the size of postage stamps, it was on a large lot in La Verne. Of course, I soon tired of it and paid a Mexican… Read more →

This Doesn’t Look Good, Indy

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IndyMac, my former employer, laid off another 3,800 people this week, more than half the remaining work force. I got the axe myself almost exactly a year ago. Prediction — at job interviews, these people will hear something I heard a lot during my own interviews: “We’re seeing a lot of applicants from the mortgage industry.” Yeah . . . tell me something I didn’t know. The Elite Mortgage Daily Blog has helpfully provided a brief history of IndyMac stock: Read more →

Family Reunion

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My family is back from Thailand . . . At 6:30 this morning, I’m awakened by the dog pawing on my bedroom door. I get up to see what’s going on and find my son — who is never up at 6:30 in the morning but is still operating on Thailand time — playing a video game in the family room. “Rise and shine, parental!” he says. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for work?” “I was up till 1 a.m. getting you home from the airport so I was planning to sleep until 7.” Meanwhile, the dog is trying to get someone’s attention by jumping around next to his food bowl. “Why is he jumping around like that?” I ask. “I don’t know,” the boy says. “Has he eaten?” “No.” “Mystery solved, Encyclopedia Brown. I’m going back to bed.”   A few minutes later, the boy inexplicably shows up in… Read more →

Is the Front Door Locked?

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Every night at bedtime, my wife asks me to check and make sure the front door is locked, even though we live in the Safest Big City in America. It’s annoying — and not just because it’s always locked, but because sometimes she waits until I’m already in bed. Then: “Did you check if the front door is locked?” And I have to get out of bed to check it. She’s out of town this week. I got up this morning and noticed that I’d left the door unlocked all night . . . Read more →

My Father-In-Law Died Today

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My father-in-law died today. Or, maybe, tomorrow; I can’t be sure because of the time difference. He’d been sick . . . my wife was planning to visit him one last time this summer, but it was always one more week, too much work to finish, and finally he couldn’t wait any more. I cried a little when she told me, even though he lived in a far-off country and I never met him, because all of a sudden she seemed like a lost little girl, and I wished I could do something for her and I couldn’t, and for all the other things I’ve wished I could do for her and I couldn’t . . . Read more →

George Carlin, 1937-2008

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To paraphrase George Patton: Carlin, you magnificent bastard! I read your books! I also bought his videos and saw his live shows! I don’t know who’s ever been funnier, really . . . CNN has an obit, and Fox Sports has wisely reprinted “The Difference Between Baseball and Football.” Read more →

The One-Sentence Motivator

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My friend G.L. Hoffman has a great post over at U.S. News and World Report called “The One-Sentence Motivator.” His own one-sentence motivator (spoiler alert) is “Be the man you dreamed you could be when you were a little boy.” Here’s mine: To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred. — Albert Camus It’s not as heartwarming as the little boy one but it gets me out of bed in the morning . . . Read more →

Two More Reasons I Won’t Go on a Cruise

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Captured by pirates, you are given a choice between walking the plank or joining the crew. The crew are all Yankees fans.   When your luxury cruise ship, featuring Las Vegas–style live entertainment, sinks in midocean, you find yourself adrift in a lifeboat with a tiger, a chimp, and an Herbalife salesman. On the second day, the tiger and the chimp commit suicide. — Susan Schorn, “Worse Things Happen at Sea” Read more →

Interview with Jim McCarthy

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Q: What do you perceive as the greatest current challenge for software development managers and how do you help them overcome it? The greatest current (and past and future) challenge for software development managers, and for all humans everywhere I suspect, is accurately perceiving reality and effectively accounting for it in their behavior. . . .   Q: What is your number one software project management tip, trick or technique? Discussion should be illegal. Less talk, more code. — PM Interviews: Jim McCarthy Read more →

House of Cards

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My son suggests that we buy some red wheels for the SUV to match the color of the vehicle. “How much would that cost?” my wife asks. “I don’t know,” I say. “A lot of money.” “But it’d be the pimpingest pimp sauce thing you could ever do,” the boy replies. That’s what Ed McMahon’s financial adviser used to say when Ed said, “Are you kidding?! The only way I could afford that is to work till I’m 90!” Read more →

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