Carol H Tucker Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
When people ask why no one trusts the good intentions of the United States, I bow my head. Remember, 68 years ago today, we decided that ending the war was the most important priority -- and dropped the second atom bomb.
Four-World Line-up. Look towards the low east-northeast an hour before dawn on Saturday for a striking alignment of the razor-thin crescent moon, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury. Jupiter is the brightest of the trio of star-like planets and will be closest to the moon at less than 5 degrees.
The second Wordless Wednesday offering showed a path, the beginning of the journey
All too often we find ourselves in the mists of self-doubt, wondering what our purpose in life is, wondering if we are where we were meant to be, if we have learned the lessons we came into this life to learn....
Working on atttiude today -- after all, why should I be disgruntled because the bossman expects me to work when I am in the office? Granted not many folks are working today -- the commute was a breeze -- because most of them took today off. I chose not to and am here. Just what is "unfair" about that 'o grumpy gus that hides inside my head and grouses?
It would seem that masks these days need to be high tech. This should pose some problems -- bank guards already routinely ask customers to remove hoods, caps and hats so that they can be seen on camera -- they going to start going for glasses too?
And be careful -- the fashion police aren't just about making sure you don't wear white shoes before Memorial Day or after Labor Day! Beware of silly hats! Good thing they don't try these rules in the United Kingdom area of EPCOT.....
And last, just a cool picture that I liked of the the Cross Road ladder in Bermeo, Basque County, Spain
Today in the Banc Investment Daily, this snippet caught my eye:
GAO Study: The Government Accounting Office reports its
analysis of the causes of community bank failures (<$1B in
assets) from 2008 to 2011 found failures were largely driven by:
credit losses on CRE loans, particularly loans secured by land
development and construction; aggressive growth strategies
supported by nontraditional, riskier funding sources; weak
underwriting; weak credit administration practices; and
accounting rules for loan loss reserves that did not allow banks
to use forward looking analysis (lead to inadequate allowances
to absorb losses). These are all “lessons learned” so bankers
should make sure to review each one and monitor things going
forward in these areas specifically, as regulatory exam teams
certainly will do so.
It is interesting to me that they specifically mention the areas of credit administration and the calculation for the Loan Loss reserves. Administration falls under Loan Servicing and is often taken to mean the analsysis of the financial information but it involves a lot more than that -- tracking convenants, managing document exceptions, reporting on portfolio concentrations to senior management, monitoring payments. Unfortunately, this vital position falls under what I call "housework" -- it is not a profit center but a cost and therefore most companies, especially the smaller ones, try and keep the resources allocated to that function at a bare minimum. The Loan Loss Reserves is a touchy subject as the regulators decided back in the 90's that banks were hiding taxable income by inflating their reserves and actually would levy penalities if they felt the reserves were too high, even if senior management felt that the risks in the portfolio needed it.
The picture from yesterday is of Ocean City NJ. My ex believed that vacation was for rest and relaxation, not for running around trying to do things, so for ten years, going there for two weeks right before Labor Day with my ex's parents was vacation -- two kids and four adults in a two bedroom condo. Sometimes I would get up early and walk the boardwalk just to have some alone time. And sometimes when I would get bored to tears with "relaxing", I would take the kids out for a walk -- a junk food odyssey! We would buy soft ice cream, funnel cakes, peanut butter fudge, cookies, caramel popcorn, whatever struck our fancy and meander about in and out of stores [back then there were some nice boutique type shops about] and arcades. Finally after a couple hours, we would make our way back to the condo....
My Wordless Wednesday offering came from the National Geographic picture of the day from Tuesday. There is just something about that image of the deer being summoned to the light....
When I was young, Grandpop Hughes and my father were both hunters and they would go out every deer season. Grandpop hated that the woods filled with hunters who didn't seem to understand just how to really stalk game or knew how to find a deer that they had wounded and failed to finish off. I remember the last time that they went out -- I was in my early teens -- Grandpop bagged his buck, but said he was done with hunting. Literally, the guns were cleaned and mounted on wall racks and there they stayed. He finally told us why some time later -- they had found a fawn crying in the woods, nuzzling a doe someone had shot illegally and left to die a long painful death. Grandpop had to kill both of them. Said the sound of that little fawn crying was the most heartbreaking sound he had ever heard and that both of them just looked at him with those big eyes. Killing them and putting them out of their pain was the right thing to do, but neither he nor my father ever wanted to go hunting again.
Memorial Day is many things -- the official start of summer. A three day weekend. The day the fashion police declare that wearing white shoes, white pants/skirts, straw hats, carrying white or straw pocketbooks is now permitted until Labor Day.
Sometimes we don't think much about the simple statement: They gave their all.
As happens sometimes in what we call "real life", I have hit a dry patch in my 2nd life and haven't been logging in very often of late. Here is a collage of images lifted from the "last screen" visual of what you see when you log out of Second Life. These are all from Friday night, 05.24.2013 as I went through each one, making sure they had accepted LL's latest TOS and clearing out the backlog of messages.
In the order that they appear starting at the top and going from left to right:
CEOExpress
It all depends on how you look at it....
Live long and prosper!
As happens sometimes in what we call "real life", I have hit a dry patch in my 2nd life and haven't been logging in very often of late. Here is a collage of images lifted from the "last screen" visual of what you see when you log out of Second Life. These are all from Friday night, 05.24.2013 as I went through each one, making sure they had accepted LL's latest TOS and clearing out the backlog of messages.
