The Slamlander

Good lord, is this the same twit?

The US House of Representatives has passed a massive housing rescue bill that could help struggling homeowners get cheaper loans.

Something needs to be done but I’m not 100% sure that this is it. The need is not for cheaper loans but to adjust existing loans to current market reality. Someone is going to have to take a loss and it looks like the US Gov is stepping up to the plate.

Under the rescue plan, hundreds of thousands¹ of homeowners trapped in mortgages they cannot afford on homes that have fallen in value would be able to refinance their mortgages with more affordable, fixed-rate loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

Nice summary but overly simplified. Every homeowner has taken the hit in house value. The government needs to step in because they can’t raise the Fed rate until they get all those sorry sods, with VARs, into fixed-rate mortgages. They have to do that to fight inflation, which is pushing towards 5%. Currently, pushing up the Fed rate directly results in more bankruptcies, as an unavoidable consequence.

Many congressional Republicans are angry about the legislation, which they say bails out irresponsible homeowners and unscrupulous lenders.

This is definitely not accurate. A ignorant few grandstanding Republicans say this. Most realize the source of the problem, just like the Democrats. Like the Democrats, they don’t have any better ideas on how to fix it. Although, it could have been prevented, post facto repairs are all problematic. The bottom-line is that someone has to take huge losses, somewhere. This represents a huge wealth reduction, in the US.

Some home buyers were indeed irresponsible in paying more for their house than they should have, because VAR loans were too easy to get. Lenders simply followed the market. The ones being unscrupulous were all those loan agents that signed all those Prime qualified customers up to VARs, because VARs paid better commissions. However, the real problem is that VARs should never have been allowed as a debt instrument and that’s a failure of government regulation and the Federal Reserve Board² .

However, I might point out a conspicuous absence; There is no current language directly prohibiting VARs, as a debt instrument, that I can see.

1. Not hundreds of thousands but millions [↩]
2. Goes back to Greenspan’s time [↩]

What the hell is Barack Obama doing on an International tour?!?!? I hate to break it to him but he hasn’t been elected US President yet and this move is most presumptuous.

The Senator from Illinois could be on a tour with a group of his fellow Senators, from both sides of the aisle, where he is only a part of some US Congressional mission. In which case, he could be forgiven for this. But he is using his own campaign funds for a personal tour and acting like he is elected already¹ .

John McCain, where is your howitzer? You’ve just been handed a golden opportunity to swat the upstart.

This underscores Obama’s inexperience like nothing else does. He is not going to meet many constituents in Kabul or anywhere else on his tour. This definitely puts the nail in his coffin, as far as I’m concerned. He has now confirmed that he is as big a megalomaniacal twit as Geo. W. Bush. I’ll go with McCain after this.

1. Actually, I know what he is doing; If you start acting as if the deal is done then, come the election, many people will vote as if the deal is done. However, it is definitely high-risk because it is too easy to sink a torpedo into that tactic. [↩]

I just saw his speech about the economy. The man is a bald-faced liar and anyone who believes him is dumber than stink. He blames so much on the current administration yet the administration could not spend the money without the approval of the DEMOCRATICALLY DOMINATED Congress¹ . He himself, as a sitting Senator, knows this and approved the tax rebate measure. Now he is pretending that it’s all Bush’s fault. Well, it’s Congress’ fault for going along with it, Obama knows this, and that makes him a bald-faced liar!

I was willing to cut Barack Obama some slack but this just convinced me that I can’t trust him, EVER! I’ve been on record here for years, wondering where the hell the Democrats have been while the Religious Right² have been trampling all over our Constitutional Rights. Now I know, they are as large a problem as the Religious Right.

1. By Constitutional law, all appropriations MUST originate in the House, get filtered by the Senate, and get delivered to the President, who then executes the orders Congress gave him. Bush may have requested it but without the Democrats, he wouldn’t have gotten it. [↩]
2. The Religious Rights had hijacked the Republican Party from us real Republicans, back in the days of Pat Buchanan. [↩]

Some of you may not know it but I started these Econ posts in an attempt to figure out where my Industry was going. The theory is that good economic time create jobs and bad time destroy jobs. Ergo, to predict what jobs are doing one must watch what the economy is doing.

I was only partly correct. Ever since the dot-com and telecom crashes, the technology sector has been lackluster, at best. This was even in the face of the so-called Business Recovery of 2004-2006. Greenspan called it a Jobless Recovery. In part, it was supported by the business infrastructure overbuild we did during the dot-com and telecom boom days. There was enough spare capacity to support growth rates of factors of five to ten, with existing staff. During that time, the technology sector experienced unemployment rates greater than15%¹ .

Well, during this process I learned that economic systems are not closed and isolated. One part effects other parts to varying degrees and all industries are somewhat inter-related and inter-dependent. In an effort to glean some positive tech sector data, I became obsessed with the various business channels. I learned to reach beyond the economics that a normal MBA gives you² . I tried to use this to predict the market, all the while hoping that I would see signs of revival in my Industry. I’ve been doing this for almost seven years³  and I learned a lot. I learned that technical market analysts are not any better than any other numerologist or shaman and that you’re just as well off consulting the I Ching. That the only thing to pay strict attention to was market and economic fundamentals.

In doing this, I actually predicted the sub-prime problems, as a direct result of the Feds raising the interest rates. I also predicted the consequential current down-turn, not to mention problems with the Falling Buck. I knew, beyond doubt, that the jobless recovery was not a real recovery and that it wasn’t sustainable. Current events prove me correct.

The US and UK have persistent structural problems in their economic infrastructure. The sub-prime crisis is only a symptom of this. The problems in the UK are caused by similar fundamental problems. Continental Europe, on the whole, doesn’t have the same problems because they are much more heavily regulated. Banks here aren’t allowed to make 125% mortgage loans or charge variable interest rates. Contracts are required to be of fixed rate, term, and value. The borrower is also required to bring in a certain amount of equity so that they have a share in the risk and a vested interest in making sure that they are not paying more than they should for their house.

The US economy was poisoned by variable rate mortgages while the UK economy was poisoned by no-equity home buyers. Both suffer massively inflated housing bubbles as a direct result. These are bubbles that are going to take years to deflate/write-down. The deflation issues represent a massive destruction of wealth and they are largely being absorbed by the consumers.

Fundamental economic issues for the US

1. A multi-trillion dollar trade deficit and running current account deficit.
2. A multi-trillion dollar war that the chief twit is refusing to carry on the books⁴ .
3. A multi-Trillion dollar wealth destruction, due to the sub-prime crisis.
4. A devastated financial infrastructure with Trillions of dollars yet to be accounted for.

79% of US GDP is created by consumers yet all the above effects the consumer directly. Add to this, a long period where salaries have not gone up and have even deflated and jobs are harder to find. The consumer-driven jobless recovery was fueled by the inflating property bubble and not by real production⁵ . Now that the property bubble is deflating, consumers no longer have the cash to support the economy. As we know from the US Jobs Report⁶ , many don’t even have the jobs they once had either. Of course, consumer sentiment is down!

Conclusion

The thing that started me on this track was the attempt at predicting when work would be available, in the technology sector, again. The short answer, seven years on in the US, is that there are still less jobs than there are people to fill them. This means that wages are going down as profits rise, especially in the new bear market. I don’t blame the large corps, I blame the US Federal government for not making jobs a part of the recovery, like Reagan did.

1. as opposed to 6-9% for everyone else [↩]
2. As the former Managing Director (CEO) of a Silicon Valley consultancy, this is already considerable [↩]
3. the same length of time that my company flourished [↩]
4. US balance sheet [↩]
5. Don’t forget the minor detail that most production has been off-shored [↩]
6. released yesterday: 65K jobs lost last month and 65Kjobs lost in May. [↩]

My lawyer in Houston just informed me that the major obstacle to SG and I getting married has now been removed. My marriage to my second wife is now legally done and I am now divorced from her. I still have a lot of paperwork to do, in two other countries, but they are only a minor detail of processing. The essential problem, my prior marriage, has now been removed. The final decree is expected here on Monday, via FedEx.

We are planning a strictly secular wedding, for the middle of August, and hope to have my daughter here by then as well.

Some would say not. In yesterday’s post, I made a reference to Abiotic Oil, a Russian-Ukrainian theory. Need I state that the US isn’t prone to accept any theories from the former USSR, even if the Cold War is long over¹ .

The best argument for the veracity of the theory is as follows:

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is by no means simply an academic proposition. After its first enunciation by N. A. Kudryavtsev in 1951, the modern theory was extensively debated and exhaustively tested. Significantly, the modern theory not only withstood all tests put to it, but also it settled many previously unresolved problems in petroleum science, such as that of the intrinsic component of optical activity observed in natural petroleum, and also it has demonstrated new patterns in petroleum, previously unrecognized, such as the paleontological and trace-element characteristics of reservoirs at different depths. Most importantly, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins has played a central role in the transformation of Russia (then the U.S.S.R.) from being a “petroleum poor” entity in 1951 to the largest petroleum producing and exporting nation on Earth.²

The paper goes on to state;

In this article is described a project for exploration and production of petroleum in an area which had been previously condemned, according to the perspectives and reasoning of the old “biological-origin” hypothesis: the northern flank of the Dnieper-Donets Basin. This specific project has been chosen because it is a "pure" modern project: the geological area explored is one which had been extensively studied in the past and had been previously condemned as possessing no potential for petroleum production; the exploration techniques applied, from the initial work-up, through the well planning, to the production tests have been carried out in ways peculiar to such for abiogenic hydrocarbons in crystalline environments; and the scientific tests upon the petroleum produced were specifically designed to test the assumption that the oil and gas originated at great depth in the Earth.³

So, while they were developing the fields, they were also testing the theory. Note that, all the test wells were down at 3800-4400 meters, much deeper than normal wells.

The best validation of any theory is empirical success.

While I am more of a businessman/engineer than a scientist, a theory stops being only a theory when there is a wealth of empirical evidence to back it up.

During the first five years of exploration, in the early 1990’s, of the northern flank of the Dnieper-Donets Basin, a total number of 61 wells were drilled, of which 37 are commercially productive, an exploration success rate of 57%.²

Without the Abiotic theory and these fields, Russia would not be the top oil producer in the world.

PARIS: Russia is the biggest oil producer in the world, extracting 10.08 million barrels per day last year ahead of Saudi Arabia pumping 8.48 million barrels, IEA data published on Tuesday showed⁴.

I’d say that the jury is back, with a unanimous verdict for the abiotic theory of oil.⁵ .

1. In spite of Bush’s admiration of Putkin (hint: They’re both fascists) [↩]
2. The Drilling & Development of the Oil & Gas Fields in the Dnieper-Donetsk Basin [↩] [↩]
3. Emphasis, mine [↩]
4. IEA Data published in the Economic Times and more links available here [↩]
5. Note that all of this is consistent with a 20 year development timeline [↩]

Right up front, I believe that the answer to both questions is a resounding NO. The problem is the overall economy¹. They also make a good case for blaming a large part of this on US Sanctions. But the real reason is that long-term investments haven’t been happening. They are so far behind the eight-ball that it will take massive capital investments to increase the oil flow. In any case, it’s a complex set of issues.

The Saudis make a good case, and I have no reason to not believe them, that oil production actually exceeds demand, slightly². All the talking heads are mystified as to why this doesn’t drive prices down. But it isn’t current supply/demand that’s driving the markets right now. Instead, it’s future supply/demand coupled with a current flight to safety, by institutional investors³ .

Fundamental Issue: No new oil exploration

1. The average age for a geologist is 40 and there are very few new geologists entering the field. The days of Jed Clampet are long gone and you can’t find new oil without a team of geologists.
2. There hasn’t been any large-scale exploration in almost 20 years⁴.
3. It takes 10-15 years from the time a deposit is found until it is brought into production⁵
4. Oil is a mineral and can even be found in space. Unlike coal, it isn’t a fossil fuel. It’s rare but it’s not as limited as we thought⁶ .

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory⁷ of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is by no means simply an academic proposition. After its first enunciation by N. A. Kudryavtsev in 1951, the modern theory was extensively debated and exhaustively tested. Significantly, the modern theory not only withstood all tests put to it, but also it settled many previously unresolved problems in petroleum science, such as that of the intrinsic component of optical activity observed in natural petroleum, and also it has demonstrated new patterns in petroleum, previously unrecognized, such as the paleontoogical and trace-element characteristics of reservoirs at different depths. Most importantly, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins has played a central role in the transformation of Russia (then the U.S.S.R.) from being a “petroleum poor” entity in 1951 to the largest petroleum producing and exporting nation on Earth.⁸

Fundamental Issue: Maximum extraction capacity

1. The Saudis have already stepped up production to maximum. Without major investment, they cannot do any more.
2. Given customers that want to divorce themselves from Arab Oil⁹ , why should they make the investment¹⁰ ?
3. All real analysis determine that real demand is actually slightly less than current production.
4. BTW, Petrochemical Engineers are as scarce as geologists.¹¹

Fundamental Issue: aging production infrastructure.

1. We, globally, are at close to our absolute peak of refinery capacity¹².
2. No new refineries have been constructed, in the US, in 30 years¹³ .
3. It takes 10-15 years to bring a refinery online, at full capacity¹⁴.

Fundamental Issue: Weakened economic market.

1. Currency markets are in chaos with the falling US Buck.
2. EU economy isn’t looking good
3. Emerging markets are weakening.
4. Banks have been weakened with the sub-prime debacle
5. Years of cheap and easy cash have inflated US and UK housing and Real Estate markets¹⁵ .
6. Oil and gold are the only steady gainers against the Falling Buck.

The Speculator’s, cornered!

What they are calling Speculators, aren’t¹⁶ . The real players driving prices beyond 140USD per barrel  are the large institutional investors looking for a safe place to put their money. They dare not use the banks while they’re still doing 30BUSD write downs, the NYSE is expected to drop below 10K before Christmas, Real Estate isn’t a good idea, and inflation is a serious issue. That only leaves oil and gold. Are speculators pumping the market into a bubble? I don’t think so. They look at all the issues above, and realize that oil is going up and staying there for, at least, the next 10 years. Oil and gold are the only safe places for money these days.

1. According to OPEC [↩]
2. stated a few weeks ago on CNBC [↩]
3. Mutual funds and fixed income, long-term investment houses. In case you don’t know this; these are the guys that manage the returns on your 401K. You can stop them but then don’t complain about lackluster returns. [↩]
4. I wrote about this a few years back [↩]
5. Remember the Alaska Pipeline, 10+ years to build and another 10 before we saw the first drops of oil. [↩]
6. We just have to work a lot harder to find and develop it, see Abiotic Oil, more references can be found in this list. [↩]
7. The fundamental problem is that it is a Russian-Ukrainian theory and some Cold War thinking still applies, in the US. [↩]
8. Russian confirmation is here. [↩]
9. Here is old George, getting the US into trouble again [↩]
10. Better to lend to US banks, at 11-12% [↩]
11. Worse,  with various oil industry retrenchments, in the past 30 years,  huge numbers of them went into another line of work. [↩]
12. even if we pumped more oil, we can’t refine it [↩]
13. Although many have been decommissioned [↩]
14. faster/cheaper to build a nuclear plant, maybe? [↩]
15. That balloon is now deflating [↩]
16. That’s just a political device [↩]

I dropped the Link Summaries feature last night. It looked like they were more of a nuisance than a benefit¹ .

1. The footnotes are still cool though [↩]

This comes from this article on the BBC, a consortium of twits. If you block port 25 then you have no mail. What they want is to block end-users from using port 25 and force them to use only the mail systems of their ISP. My systems don’t send spam but I will be treated like a spammer regardless. Sorry, I will not accept that. My ISP, BlueWin.CH, has proven themselves remarkably incompetent, over the years. There is also the contractual issue that our Internet access is unfiltered.

I got it, let’s isolate the UK from the Internet and let’s start with the BBC?

PS. Upon further research, I find that MAAWG has, as principle technical advisor, my old ICANN nemesis Dave Crocker. He first proposed this policy on the Network Solutions Domains Names lists, back in the late 90’s.¹

1. It’s too damned small a world we live in. Yes, I slammed him on it then, as well. [↩]

is unstable. It’s fine if you turn it off every day but leave it on all the time, like I do, and you will likely find it hung by morning.

Okay, this is only news if you’ve been living under a rock¹ someplace. On 19Jun08, the BBC ran this article.

My Reaction

Oh boy, I wonder how far they wandered this one from the standards? What’s this, a hole found already? I guess I’ll give this a pass until the birthing pangs are worked out … in a month or three.

In the meanwhile SG and I are using Firefox 2 on our Win2K machines, having replaced IE6, in that environment. This is now my recommendation since MS is no longer actively supporting that ancient browser. It’s too bad that IE7 will not run in a Win2K environment. At the moment, that is the preferred browser, under Windows greater than XP. Ergo, lacking the ability to run IE7 leads me to support Firefox, on Win2K clients and servers, in spite of how gruesomely fat and clunky it is. It is certain that IE6 has too many fatal vulnerabilities to be safe anymore, in any environment.

Even with Firefox 2, there are differences between them and neither are compliant with the supposed standard, the W3C. Specifically, CSS positioning from TOP differs between the two;

For Firefox, I do this, in the main CSS file

   1:  #p-cactions

   2:     {

   3:         position: absolute;

   4:         width: auto;

   5:         height: 2.5em;

   6:         float: right;

   7:         top: 210px;

   8:         left: 13.1em;

   9:         margin: 0;

  10:         white-space: nowrap;

  11:         width: 70%;

  12:         line-height: 1.1em;

  13:         overflow: visible;

  14:         background: none;

  15:         border-collapse: collapse;

  16:         padding-left: 0;

  17:         list-style: none;

  18:         font-size: 95%;

  19:     }

For IE7, I have to overload this CSS class with this, in the IE70.css file

   1:  #p-cactions {

   2:      z-index: 3;

   3:      top: 197px;

   4:  }

   5:   

Note in particular, line 7 in the top example and line 3 in the bottom example. It is the same predicate top but with different values. I derived the correct values heuristically. They have to do with the tabs being located a precise  distance from the top of the page, on this site.

IE7 is closest to the W3C standard. Note that closest does not mean in compliance with. Both of them are wrong.

As a web developer, I am fairly afraid of the gnits that Firefox 3 will bring to the party. Firefox is still Mozilla, which is still Nutscrape. They’ll be different from MS even if MS complied 100% with the standard. It is simply their nature.

PS. The formatting on this one looks a hell of a lot better on my Wordpress site.

1. or under a bridge, with no computer access. In which case, you still don’t care. [↩]

It’s been a busy few weeks. Currently, we are experiencing the Fete de Musique here in Nyon. There are bands playing everywhere and there is a Battle of the Bands competition as part of the music festival. Some of these guys are damned good, others are fairly tame. The French bands are real eye openers. It’s a different style and I don’t know why it never caught on in the US.

For various reasons, we had to push the wedding out to mid-august. I still don’t have the Final Decree from the last one, although it’s close. The judge changed his mind and now wants a notarized sheet of answers to some basic questions. Mostly, this is to authenticate me¹ . A quick trip to Geneva and we got that done and sent off.

Since I no longer have to travel to Houston, we can afford to bring my daughter out here. Jenny is already working her end of the deal and getting a US Passport. On that front, she had a bad turn last week. She had moved from Livermore to Oakland² and as a consequence, had her lovely Honda stolen. She is quite heartbroken over it. They found the corpse in a chop-shop. It was a special model of high performance Honda CVCC Si. The only good thing about it is that she had a car loan and they made her carry full insurance, as a part of the deal. Good thing, I say. At least, the loan is covered³ and they will cover the rest of the value so she can get another car. The reason she moved was that she couldn’t afford the housing, in the tri-valley, and the cost of fuel⁴ from Livermore to Hayward, where she works. With the theft, she has now chopped about a $K from her recurring monthly expenses. If she can get a cheaper car without incurring another similar car loan, she could be better off.

She’s my daughter and I worry about her. She has no family left in the SF Bay Area⁵ and life’s not treating her real well, at the moment. All I can do is to give her advice and the link to the autotrader . My ex-wife, who Jenny did develop some attachment to, isn’t speaking to either of us. But she’s in Houston anyway. Jenny can’t stand her bio-mother, who is still in Orange County, South California. Ergo, Jenny is feeling rather lonely right now. Short of winning the Euro Millions, there is nothing much that I can do.

There are some techie things which I will cover in another post.

1. Notaries are only witnesses to the signing of a document. That the signatories are who they say they are. They do not validate the document itself. [↩]
2. Lake Merrit District [↩]
3. She had about 6K left on it [↩]
4. $4.60+ per gal [↩]
5. My sister, a not-so-nice person, lives in Santa Barbara and my brother lives in Simi Valley. Both are hundreds of miles away. [↩]

After getting this laptop, getting MS-Office 2007, getting enough RAM to make it work¹ , and upgrading Vista default to Vista Ultimate, I am finally able to load an entire book into word. After all of that and the associated aggravation, it opens and loads in "Compatibility Mode". Actually, I was expecting that from when I made the MSO97 -> MSO2000 jump. The problem is that Compatibility Mode isn’t, compatible that is. Sure, you can edit in the older version but headings, footers, margins, and other crap become static. Adding new pages becomes a real problem when the page numbers in the headings have to auto-increment. Ergo, only minor changes will be allowed in the older version thereafter. Can we say "Micro-shafted"?

This wouldn’t be a problem with a final draft but I still expect to be working on this in both places. I guess I now find out if I can dual-install from the same CDs² . If not then I will only be able to work on the books using the laptop. How lame is that?

The bottom-line is that I now have to decide which version to work in, MSO2007 or MSO2000. I cannot install MSO2000 on Vista, that’s why I had to get MSO2007 in the first place. Now to find out if MSO2007 will install on Win2K. There are times when Microsux sux³ worse than usual.

1. laptop came with only 1GB [↩]
2. Assuming that it will even install on Win2K Advanced server [↩]
3. That sucking sound you hear is Microsux vacuuming all the cash from your wallet and bank accounts [↩]

In the Cafe again¹ . Yesterday they changed the access key to WAP, from open. Believe it or not, you actually have to enter the dashes! It’s four groups of characters separated by dashes and you have to enter everything. Anyway, I couldn’t login from here yesterday and had to come back today for social reasons, to be polite. I don’t want them to think that I’m mad at them. But they are about to close and have already cut me off from the coffee.

ciao-

1. Free WiFi and good coffee [↩]

It’s the Web Calendar Project. I’m still playing around with it but it’s one of the coolest projects I’ve seen. I’s fully iCal compliant and you don’t have to give your information¹ to Google. This is just in time for the Caselle-Net public site redesign.

1. soul [↩]

The new matching theme for the Wiki was a PITA but it’s done. Monobook has been converted with new graphics and code to the new styles. The original author made it as difficult as possible but I got it done It’s on my professional Website or I’d give the URL.

Now I have some other work to do. One side note, when I got here Vista ambushed me with the SP1 update. almost an hour later, I finally have my laptop back.

Y’all might want to look at this.

The US government seems to have forgotten its place. Yes, some of these are of good intentions but leave the doors wide open for serious abuse. In particular, the seizure provisions are very much of concern.

and that’ll relearn me about messing with things that aren’t broken. I was wrong.

It wasn’t enough to delete one of the gateway routes, it had to be the correct one. The one to keep is the one on the VPN’s NIC and not the  one on the LAN, contrary to what I thought yesterday. I missed the fact that the VPN uses IGMP, a form of dynamic routing.

I made the deletion last night. When we got here¹ , the test failed. I then left every thing here with Salegamine, walked back home, and corrected the routes. Everything is now copasetic again and I can browse my LAN once more.

1. The Café [↩]

This morning, I decided to fix a few loose ends. I should have left them loose. I can’t get to my internal servers again so, I’ll have to back out the changes. On another note, I did successfully move DBMS3¹ from the VPN² gateway to another box³ . Having done that, I came here to retest the VPN, with the result I just told y’all about. Quick lesson here; when there are two NICs⁴ installed in a host, only one of them needs a default route, preferably NOT the one assigned to the VPN. What I had yesterday was working fine⁵ and I know better than to fix what isn’t broken.

Salegamine . is working late tonight⁶ with no clue when she’ll be home. It’s schedule crunch time. Fortunately, they really like Reggae here.

ciao

1. I have four Database servers and DBMS3 is the main one. [↩]
2. Virtual Private Network [↩]
3. Osprey [↩]
4. Network Interface Cards aka LAN adapters [↩]
5. For various definitions of fine. [↩]
6. Programmer’s hours [↩]

This time to test my email. This morning, I had to move the hMailserver from the machine that is now the VPN Router and gateway. To do so, without losing anything, required transferring data from the VPN gate. This was far from easy since nothing worked from outside of the box. Fortunately, I could still get from that box to the others. Multi-megabytes later, it works fine.  That box does nothing other than VPN routing now.

This has been a real learning experience. MS feels that VPN end-points need to be ultra secure. For us, this is a bit of over-kill.