Equilibrium

My father is fond of talking about "looking at the whole picture" when taking on a new purchase or plan or whatever. Say you want to buy a new computer. Well, you can spend $500 and get an Acer from Wal-mart, but that's not taking into consideration that you'll have to spend money on repairs because the parts are too cheap, the lost data because the system crashed, etc.

Well, a different way of looking at this came out the other day: "what is the equilibrium point?" We were talking about installing computer systems [at colleges and universities]. The idea being, if you replace typewriters with computers, what will be the eventual equilibrium point you inevitably reach? Once you head down that path, where will you end up? If you replace typewriters with computers, the next real equilibrium point is a completely networked environment that you rely upon for all of your daily business. If you go down that path, computers will become an integral part of your business. There is no way around this, it will happen.

We as people have a tendency not to think about what the inevitable outcome will be. For instance, sticking with the computer theme, I just recently bought a computer. I built it myself with parts from Newegg (Once you know, you Newegg!) (it's true.) and I had planned for a cost of about $500 dollars. When I got done, I had logged about $750. Why? Because I didn't look for the equilibrium point. I initially bought a case, motherboard, cpu, video card, RAM, hard drive, and power supply. I had planned on using my old optical drives and old OS. Problem was, the new components I bought and the old components I had were not really in equilibrium. In this case, specifically, the video card did not work with my old OS. Neither did I have full functionality of the motherboard. And my old video card wasn't supported by the new motherboard. Basically, none of the parts were swappable old to new. So, I had to order a new OS. And since I was getting a new OS that was 64 bit, my old 32 bit hardware which lacked 64 bit drivers was useless. So I had to get a new optical drive. Additionally, I needed new case fans to cool the new (and hot) hardware.

So for those of you that don't understand all the above gibberish, look at it this way. If you make a change, you may necessitate further changes you didn't envision. Plan accordingly.

(Another example, for all you young men out there: Suppose you find yourself a nice young lady and you ask her to be your wife. And she says yes. Break out the champagne. All's well and good. But...this is a change that will necessitate other changes. Don't suppose that your wife will care as little as you do about what kind of dishes you eat from, what the curtains look like, what the furniture looks like, whether the floor is clean, when you hang out with your friends, and don't neglect the very real correlation between marriage and children. All of this will undoubtedly require changes you have not yet considered. Changes you cannot yet forsee. The next real equilibrium point is most certainly not where you currently are. Plan accordingly.)