Entries from January 2008 ↓

My company is moving its corporate headquarters. It is simply amazing how a 72-hour event can waste six months of a person’s life (mine). I exaggerate slightly when I say waste. On the other hand at least 50% of the meetings I have attended related to this process have been redundant or unnecessary.

Job satisfaction, in my mind, is highly dependent on how much employees are treated as stakeholders versus how much they are micromanaged. Meetings can be good tools for communicating. They can also be good tools for micromanagers to ensure that control is being maintained. I am not going to go into extreme detail on the topic in this post, other than to state I have never attended a meeting with more than six people sitting around a table at one time that wasn’t wasting four of the people’s time 75% of the meeting’s duration.

Did that confuse you? The bottom line is - think about why you are having a meeting and whether or not everyone really needs to be there.

I am not sure I understand basic thinking in regards to modern economics. How is giving me an $800 one time tax credit (loaning me some of my own money) going to fix a debt/spending driven economy?

President Bush publicly confirmed for the first time that he would propose a package of emergency measures, outlining its basic principles on Friday, in an effort to restore the eroding confidence of investors and consumers. The package is expected to include more than $100 billion in one-time tax rebates for individuals and an opportunity for businesses to rapidly write off their capital investments.

As far as I am concerned everything the feds talk about is semantics unless it involves budget cuts or real reductions in federal spending. I don’t know anything about Ben Bernanke. Why should I listen to what he has to say? Someone convince me we aren’t headed for a crisis.

Here’s a fascinating blog entry on dressing practically from the perspective of a successful executive.

When I lost 60 pounds through a combination of vegan diet and exercise, I began to look for new clothes from an engineering standpoint, not a fashion standpoint. To work 20 hours a day and fly 400,000 miles a year, I need very practical clothing that fits well, survives abuse, and works in a multitude of settings .

Well worth reading. I wonder what percentage of the population puts this much thought into anything.

I just got a weird e-mail from my sister that someone is trying to organize a class reunion for my graduating high school class for next year. It’s been 18 years since I graduated, so that would put the reunion at 19 years out. I thought 20 was the big number when everyone got together to compare how we screwed our lives up and lost all our hair and dignity along the way.

Anyhow, if you are a member of the graduating class of 1990 from Winter Haven High School in Winter Haven, Florida and you come across this page let me know how you are doing. Hopefully, things won’t turn out like they did in Grosse Point Blank.

When 9/11 happened, I was horrified by the event itself. However, the long-term results of that single event strike much more of a chord of fear in my heart. Government is too big in the United States and 9/11 was an excuse to grow it to levels no one had tried prior to that terrorist attack. 9/11 birthed the Transportation Security Administration, an organization which does little to nothing to improve security when you fly but has made huge inroads in curtailing freedoms that we used to take for granted.

A House of Representatives panel yesterday released a damning report about a Transportation Security Administration Web site built to address grievances from travelers errantly flagged by the government’s no-fly list. It concluded that cronyism and a lack of oversight exposed thousands of site visitors to identity theft.

The news article quoted above goes on to conclude that the TSA is wasting taxpayers money by awarding no-bid contracts and building web sites that expose the public to malicious use of personal data. Sounds like we are less secure because of the TSA, which is the opposite of what we were promised.

Al Sharpton needs to be silenced. We don’t need a lynching either.

We just need to tell the media we are sick of the guy and please stop putting him on the air. I’m not sure when Al was hired as Tiger Woods’ spokesracist, but he apparently thinks that is his job. Al’s latest burst of mouth diarrhea got me thinking about lynchings a little bit. I realize most people have only one mental image when it comes to lynchings - an image of a black man hanging from a tree. The truth of the matter is that people of all colors have been lynched over the centuries, by people of all colors.

When Al Sharpton tries to claim ownership of lynchings on behalf of American blacks he is distorting reality. Even in the United States during slavery and Jim Crow laws, 20% of lynching victims were white. Why do I have to keep hearing from Al? I feel zero guilt for the institution of slavery and I have zero responsibility to pay for the problems of black Americans.

While I do have an interest in improving the lives of Americans everywhere, regardless of their color, Al Sharpton is only interested in improving his own lot in life. He has done nothing to make America a better place to live, except for himself.

I don’t know of a more clear example of a media outlet trying to skew public opinion than the recent example of Ron Paul being excluded from the most recent Republican debates hosted by Fox News despite the fact that his numbers in the Iowa primaries were more than double Rudy Giuliani’s.

But the best thing that happened to Paul in recent days was that despite his $20 million and his 10% showing in New Hampshire polls, Fox News excluded Paul from its Sunday night Republican debate with the big five — Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain. So Paul gets 10% in Iowa and gets excluded, but Rudy gets 4% and sits on the left end of the Fox Box desk. Hmmm.

There was quite an uproar and the New Hampshire GOP withdrew its sponsorship of the debate. Paul supporters, mocking the network’s “Fair and Balanced” motto, flooded Fox with protests, calls and e-mails and are organizing a boycott of Fox sponsors. Never one to miss an opportunity, NBC’s Leno invited Paul to appear and explain.

Last night I was watching CNN and Anderson Cooper was talking to various idiots in front of a backdrop that consisted of a solid sea of Ron Paul signs and supporters. Anderson, whom I met in Iraq, and who seemed like a very down to earth and genuine guy, apologized to his viewers for the Ron Paul swarm and tried to ignore them. I found that deliciously ironic. Where were Hillary’s people? CNN kept cutting to b-roll of that nasty piece of trash pretending to care about all of us and talking about her wonderful ideas for America all misty eyed. Good God that was some scary footage.