Why We Hate You Bastards

“you” being a CEO or other ridiculously over-paid figure head in any company that participated in the financial frenzy and subsequent meltdown of the financial market. A recent report has been leaked that former Merill Lynch CEO John Thain was cutting budgets, laying people off, and dumping business, back in 2008. At the same time, he spent a whopping $1.2 million on renovating his office.
Yes. Not his house. Not his ranch. His office. Sorry, you’re fired….but before you leave, can you tell me what you think of my $87,000 rug?

No, I am not kidding. Check this list out:
$2,700 for six wall sconces.

$5,000 for a mirror in his private dining room.

$11,000 for fabric for a "Roman Shade.”

$13,000 for a chandelier in the private dining room.

$15,000 for a sofa.

$16,000 for a "custom coffee table.”

$18,000 for a “George IV Desk.”

$25,000 for a "mahogany pedestal table.”

$28,000 for four pairs of curtains.

$35,000 for something called a "commode on legs.”

$37,000 for six chairs in his private dining room.

$68,000 for a "19th Century Credenza" in his office.

$87,000 for a pair of guest chairs.

$87,000 for an area rug in Thain's conference room

and another area rug for $44,000.

$230,000 to his driver for one year’s work.

$800,000 to hire celebrity designer Michael Smith, who is currently redesigning the White House for the Obama family for just $100,000.

That’s unbelievable. I guess when you pay yourself a few ten or twenty million a year, what’s 1% of that to remodel your office?

A guy I know is a client of mine at a company. He is the only guy working his particular department and is on call 24 x 7. They laid off the other guy to cut back on expenses. They also need to spend a little money on some network upgrades, but don’t have the budget. He asked for a raise and was denied. No money.

Yet, they manage to pay three consults $30,000 each, every month to do project management. That’s $90,000 a month in consulting….but there isn’t any money for the raise.

Then you look at companies like AiG and others and it just makes you sick. My favorite part? We bailed ‘em out. After all the bullshit and all the frivolous spending and the horrible management decisions we, the taxpayers, bailed ‘em out. The companies we bailed out are still squandering millions of dollars.

And speaking of the bailout….nice to see the banks extending credit lines so people and businesses can continue to do business. Oh? What’s that? They aren’t doing that? They are spending the money on investments and other business ventures? Gee…too bad we gave it to ‘em on silver platter without any provisions on how to spend it.

That’s why we hate you. We work hard for our money. We go to work every day and grind it out to have a nice living and an xbox-360. You spend it with disregard and respect for your fellow man and then the government hands it right back.

Death Socks

Everyone should have a pair….



And why do I have a pair? I wear them when I ride my mountain bike. They go particularly well with my bike shoes…. Yes, more specialty items. The right socks, with the right shoes, which are just for biking. My g/f says that I have a special tool for everything. Trust me, there are a lot of things that I don’t have.

I’m riding a lot because I am getting ready to go snowboarding and I want my legs to be in shape. I remember the first time I ever went skiing (I didn’t snowboard then). I was trying to figure out my budget so I asked my friend how many days we thought we’d ski. He said maybe two or three days. We were going to be there just over a week. What?? Why only two or three days? He said it was because I’d be too sore to ski more than that.

Fuck that. I was much younger and already in better shape, but I started rollerblading and working out every single day. Sometimes I’d rollerblade over 10 miles a day at least three days a week. It paid off. I went skiing and was up on the mountain all but one day. I wasn’t sore or particularly tired after a good day on the slopes. Of course, I didn’t ski very well either as I was learning. But I did a black run before my first week was up. The other folks were too sore to ski so they did other things.

I plan to board about four days out of the week that I’ll be on vacation. I have to get my legs in shape therefore I am back to blading and biking. And if I am going to bike, I need the right socks….

Obama’s Inauguration

I wanted to watch the inauguration. Whether you like it or not, it’s a fairly historic moment for us as a country. It’s the first time someone other than a white, Anglo Saxon male took the oath and office of the President of the United States of America. Black people in particular should be proud. We’ve come a long way from when we treated black people as property and sub-human. Not that we don’t have a long way to go, but it’s a step in the right direction.

I had told several people the day before that I wanted to watch the inauguration. For some odd reason people kept trying to schedule stuff for me to do during the inauguration. I was getting upset and started telling them “no.”

Schools apparently were having a big problem with it. Why it couldn’t be considered a great opportunity to experience history and be utilized as a learning experience is beyond me. I don’t know why schools had such a problem with it. If I had a kid, they would have stayed home that day.

But I did have to work and unlike a lot of people I only have one TV and it’s not in my office. So I took a little time off to go watch it. I only got to see part of it. From about the time that Bush and Obama left the limos at the Capitol Building until just after Obama’s speech is what I saw.

It looked like it was pretty chilly and the reporters said it was 27f. Nice. I was entirely surprised at the number of people that turned out, but it was still a little shocking to see. I don’t know what the final counts were but the people were packed in like sardines for about a mile back. Who the hell could see anything from that far back? I guess that the point was that they were there. Umm….OK, I had a much nicer view on my big screen and I wasn’t freezing my balls off or unable to get to a beverage or the bathroom for two hours.

I was surprised so many important figureheads and members of the government were all in one place. Yes, it was historic but one good bomb and it would have wiped out a huge chunk of our government leaders in one fell swoop. Aside from the obvious human tragedy maybe this would have been a good thing? Everyone keeps talking about change and hope, that certainly would have been a lot of change and you’d be hoping that someone figures out what to do.

In any event it was nicely coordinated and everyone seemed to be very civil to one another. I thought Aretha Franklin was a nice touch even though she completely butchered My Country Tis of Thee. Why do really incredible vocalists feel the need to over dramatize everything?

I also thought the first priest / preacher was extremely dramatic. I think he practiced his deliverance while watching William Shatner.

Obama and the Justice fudged the oath a tad. I would have been nervous, too. Not an easy thing to make history and bear the responsibility.

And then Obama gave his speech. I’ve only seen him speak a few times and one of those was a non-political speech. He is a very eloquent and articulate speaker. He gives great speeches. But his speech bothered me. It bothered me because in his speech he reinforced several beliefs and doctrines that he is going to embrace that I feel are wrong.

I’m not convinced. I don’t believe he is “The One.” It certainly seems that the attitude of some peoples are that he is going to fly in and save the country and hand them whatever they need on a silver platter. I have hope, but my hope is that he simply does a good job and doesn’t undermine some of the basic and founding principles that our country was founded on. That he isn’t a chicken shit and will fight our enemies. That his plan to spend a trillion dollars works far better than I think it will. That he will figure out that crippling people with high gas and energy costs is not the way to solve our growing need for energy.

Only time will tell. We’ll have to be patient and see what happens.

Observing the Economy

Has anyone else noticed that the price of goods is going up and not down? Has anyone else noticed that manufacturers of foods are giving you less and less while charging you more? Even the airlines are continuing to nickel-and-dime you to death while keeping the rates nice and high.

It’s interesting because you would think that somewhere along the line that commercial enteritis would figure out that people are spending less money, not more, and that by continuing to raise rates and offer less value for the money it isn’t going to net them more profit.

I wanted to take a ski trip and go snowboarding. I have my own board and gear, but I won’t be taking the board. Why? Because it will cost me an additional $300 to fly my board round-trip. This is not a fuel issue because my board and bag weighs far less than most people’s luggage. They are hitting surfers, golfers, skiers, boarders, etc. with this excessive handling fee. It has to be affecting people’s vacation travels.

I’ve been monitoring the pricing of a TV I’ve been looking at. It’s the
Panasonic TH-50PZ800U. None of the stores around here carry it so I’ll have to order it online. About the best price I ever saw on it was $1750 with free shipping. A few days ago the prices started to creep back up. Now I can’t find it for less than $2000 at the same places I could get it for the lower price. That could be a function of the retailers thinking that people will be buying more sets as the deadline for digital conversion looms. I wonder what will happen after the deadline?

More Peaceful Muslims

The UK is having a lot of problems with "radical" muslims protesting the Israeli confict with Palestine. They currently have a bill of over 1.5 million (US) in place to fund controlling the mobs.

Here is what happens when the police officers are not afforded the opportunity to cary any real anti-protest weapons.

Even More Craziness!

My friends and I often get into heated discussions (arguments?) about various things. Most of ‘em think I am completely nuts and overact to world events and government action. Too often I hear that what I am telling people is absurd, that it’s the slippery slope argument, and that it will of course never happen.

So here are a few things that have happened that I am sure most of you would be surprised at:

The UK levies a yearly tax to own and operate a TV. Yes, that is correct. You must have a license and update it yearly to actually own and watch TV. Of course that would never happen in the U.S. would it?

Also in the UK, the conservatives are about to propose a bill that would ban plasma televisions. I’m not sure exactly how they would enact the bill or if it would grandfather existing plasmas, but it’s being considered. Why? Because they consume too much energy for the greenies. LCD TV’s aren’t as good as plasmas, but who cares? There is also speculation that this will be used to leverage purchasing carbon credits.

And speaking of….it looks like the Obama machine is still working with the greenies to enact a carbon trading scheme. I think this is absurd and can’t believe we are even considering it.

Additionally, there is talk about Co2 being made illegal. Yes, that’s right…a natural gas that is necessary to sustain human life could be made illegal. Better get your respirators and lug your HEPA air scrubber with ya. Then again, I suppose you could just pay more money into the carbon credit trading scheme or something.

Also in England Tony Martin was convicted of first degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm. He is now serving a life sentence for defending his home from burglars that broke in and attacked him in the middle of the night. He was also sued by the “victims” families. Why? Because he owned a gun, which is a crime in England.

And just do a google search on the banning of motorcycles.

But I suppose this is all just more absurdities that will never happen….

Delay the HDTV Rollout?

The other morning I was having breakfast / lunch with my friend and she asked what I thought about Obama suggesting that we delay the switch to all-digital programming. I told her I didn’t know anything about it and so I’d have to think about it a bit.

My initial reaction is that we’ve delayed the switch for too long anyway. It was supposed to happen several years ago. I suppose I’m not real empathetic to people being reluctant to change since I work in an industry where the technology changes every three months. Change or become obsolete.

It’s also not like people haven’t been aware of this for almost ten years. True that it’s only been in the last two or three years that people really had to start thinking about it, but that was still two or three years ago. Haven’t you had enough time to plan?

And what about all those TVs out there that won’t work. My question is, what about all those TV’s out there? How many of them are already connected to sat. or cable systems and should keep on working just fine? I haven’t seen any research indicating how many people will truly be without a TV once the cut is made. There also had to be a fair percentage of HDTVs out there that are already ready to go.

And of course, the govt. had the coupons available to those people who want to continue to user their analog TVs for over-the-air programming without having to upgrade. The coupon allowed you to go and get a converter box that would allow you to receive the new programming. The coupon covered about 75% of the cost of the boxes. Now the government is running out of money and there aren’t many coupons (if any) left.

I don’t recall what the govt. allocated for the coupons but it had to be fairly substantial and cover a butt-ton of converter boxes. So that is even more TVs that we don’t have to worry about.

My friend thinks that perhaps Obama is right and that perhaps right now is not the right time to force people to deal with it and / or make them spend money. I’m not sure I completely agree with that because as I’ve already stated, people had YEARS to deal with it.

But I can’t say that I really care one way or the other. If we delay it, it doesn’t really bother me too much. My only real concern is what we are supposed to tell all the companies that invested billions of dollars to purchase the air-space and have already begun investing developing product for the frequencies they purchased. Somehow it doesn’t quite seem right to tell them “sorry.”

I was thinking that perhaps a good compromise would be to find a little more money out of the proposed 900+ Million that Obama wants to spend on other projects and re-allocate some of it back into coupons so that people could still get the little converter boxes. I mean, if he is really that concerned about the problem it certainly seems that there might be other solutions.

Busy as Usual!

2009 as started off with me being fairly busy with work, my side project, and personal stuff. I just haven’t felt a whole lot like writing lately. Often times, I think of stuff to write about but I’m already in bed or just too tired to write it all down.

One thing that I haven’t been doing enough of is riding my motorcycle. We are having odd temperature swings and every time it’s been a really nice day outside I’ve had too much stuff going on or too much to carry around to ride the bike. I gotta get more riding in!!

Welcome to 2009!

Belated Happy New Year to everyone. We had some unseasonably warm weather a day or so ago. It was in the 80’s. Here it is, the new year, January 3rd and we were having an 85 degree day.

In some ways, that was OK because it was my gf’s bDay and we went to the Dallas Arboretum. It was pretty packed since it was so nice out. Overnight it got down in the 40’s. I came home and my house was a cool 62 degrees!!! Apparently the heater had decided to stop working.

The induction motor’s pressure switch has failed so the unit won’t turn the gas on and blow any hot air. The weather has since gotten colder and is now hovering around 31 with freezing rain. Fortunately the switch is getting fixed today as it is a balmy 55 in my house this morning. I had to change my normal routine of drinking the juice of life (aka Dr. Pepper) to a cup of hot chocolate to try to warm up. My fingers are a tad cold, so it’s a bit hard to type at the moment.

It’s also my first day back at work. I have about a bazillion emails to go over. I think about a third of them are scheduling me for work so I’ll have to skim them carefully and start tweaking my calendar.

Oddly enough, my last week of vacation was almost all work. Not for the company, but for everyone else (including myself). I helped several friends and family members out over the last week with computer / network related problems.

And of course the big story right now is Israel. The one thing I am astonished by is that the little bit of press coverage I keep reading and hearing about continuously scolds Israel for attacking Hamas and lists all the civilian casualties. They talk about how Israel is not cooperating with the U.N. (which is a joke anyway). What is barely talked about is how the Hamas attacked Israel and continued to do so. They barely tell you that the Hamas are sending missiles into Israel randomly – that means they don’t care that they are attacking civilian targets. The Israelis are only trying to attack Hamas military, but those chicken shits are hiding amongst civilians.

Personally? I hope the Israelis wipe out the Hamas.