It’s a Strange World Out There

CNOOC wants to buy Unocal Corp. and LUKOIL has started selling gas in our local area.

CNOOC of course is based in Communist China and buying Unocal means selling a company from a Democracy to a company that is Communistic. Joe McCarthy would be rolling over in his grave.

LUKOIL is a Russian based company and almost all of the local Mobil gas stations in our area are now Lukified.

What better way for China to win a war, the economic and final war. I ask you this; would China allow U.S. based companies to buy out critical Chinese owed companies?

So far in recent months IBM Personal Computers and Maytag have been targets, who’s next after Unocal?

For more information on CNOOC:
http://www.transactioninfo.com/cnooc/about.php

For information about LUKOIL:
http://www.lukoil.com/

Supreme Lunacy

Well once again the Supreme Court has convince me that they are out of control and are no longer part of the checks and balances created by our founding fathers but have now set them selves up as above all else. There latest ruling “that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development” only serves to prove my point.

Coming soon to the Supreme Court nearest you is the Ten Commandments, one of which starts by saying: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house!


For additional information see:
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050623/D8ATDSD80.html

Sooner or Later I’m Gonna Get Ya!

Well it looks like another company spilled the beans or should I say had a Big Fat Security breach (about 40 million worth of info) concerning credit card information.

While not much detail is available, apparently CardSystems Solutions Inc., “CardSystems is a registered agent for Merrick Bank Corporation, South Jordan, Utah and The Provident Bank, Cincinnati, Ohio. “ of Atlanta, GA. Is working with the FBI to investigate how this occurred.

The two most common types of security breaches according to many security experts are caused by ‘Hackers’ and inside personnel.

If your company is connected to the internet then sooner or later a hacker is gonna get ya. In plain terms if your computer is connected to anything other than a wall outlet then your exposed. If you are required to store or ship data media then it should be password and encryption protected.

Yes you can tout how your company uses the latest security tools, but lets face it those tools are all defensive in nature which gives the hacker the advantage because they are offensive and always finding new ways to accomplish their goal.

So like many of us I called my credit card company(s) and was assured that they did not use CardSystems and was not affected, one card issuer is still investigating. So I guess I may have dodged the bullet this time, but did you? Call your card issuer and find out!

Time Forgotten

Eastern War Time, the early beginning of Daylight time. Railroad Time, each railroad set its own time based on location and destination. The International Date Line “the imaginary line on the Earth that separates two consecutive calendar days”, which if you could stand precisely in the middle of, you would be neither in yesterday or tomorrow.

What they haven’t named yet is ‘Airline Time’, you know the time lost waiting in line, flight delays, sitting on the runway, circling for a landing and finding your luggage. And last but not least ‘Blog Time’, you will notice this blog has never received any comments and therefore the blog time is nearly indeterminate.

For more information see:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/us_tzones.html
http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/d.html
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/international_date.html
http://www.fremo.org/betrieb/timezone.htm

Would you walk down a dark alley at 3:00AM?

The chances of making to the other end without a bodyguard would not be good!

Unfortunately the internet has become exactly that, a dark alley. According to a recent report (http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single3709 ) the survival time is down to 20 minutes once you connect an unprotected pc to the internet.

This means you are subject to:
Viruses, worms, ad-ware, spy-ware,

Rootkits: (http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/rootkitrevealer.html)

Phishing, (typically a fake email indicating that you must update your credit card or banking information by clicking on the link provided)

Pharming:
(http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,120268,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp )

Turning your pc into a Zombie:
(http://antivirus.about.com/od/whatisavirus/a/zombiepc.htm )

And god knows what else.

For more on how to protect your pc see Brian Livingston’s Windows Secrets article:
http://www.windowssecrets.com/050113/

I'm Back

A lot has happened in the last 45 days, in no particular order:
Prince Renier: The fairy tail of a prince and a girl from Philadelphia. Made Monaco what it is today.

Pope John Paul II: I’m not Catholic but he was a great Pope and a great man. You may not all agree with my position but don’t judge less yee be judged.

Terry Shiavo: The courts and all their judges looked like idiots. How much effort and sensibility would it have taken for a judge to order a team of independent experts to evaluate her condition before making a decision?

There have been many others worthy of mention so my apologies.

Snow Shovels

Well it snowed again today, which is the fourth significant snow storm this year. The local TV news stations did their usual coverage of people buying milk, bread, rock salt and snow shovels. Milk and bread seamed to be in good supply but as the rock salt and snow shovels were hard to find as most places were out of stock.

Now it is understandable that the rock salt would be gone from the shelves but snow shovels. This is not news, it seams every storm drives people out to buy snow shovels. What I would like to know is what did they do with the shovels they used during the prior three storms, for that matter what about last year?

Maybe they take their frustration out on the shovel and beat it to death or it could be they leave them in the driveway and run over it with the car. Kids could be secretly using them to slide down the local hill or the neighbor decides to take back the one he let you borrow last year. Whatever the cause, being in the business of manufacturing new or finding lost snow shovels could make you rich!

Adware/Spyware

Imagine it’s the mid 1950s and you open your front door (today’s browser), to get a breath of fresh air. You close the door and turn around and find that the walls are now papered with advertisements all over the house. What you don’t know is your phone has now been bugged and there is person hidden in the bushes next to a window watching every thing you do.

Would this be an allowable or acceptable practice back then, I think not. So why should the equivalent of this kind of action be an acceptable practice on your PC in today’s world!

For more information link to WindowsSecrets.com/050127 Brian Livingston's Windows Secrets Newsletter dated 1/27/05.

Blogging the Boss

Don’t look now but your boss could be reading your blog.
End result is you could be fired! As more than one unfortunate person found out the hard way when posting comments about their managers.

The trouble with managers is there are as many bad ones as there are good ones. I say this with experience having been in and out of management and technical positions too many times to count.

You start working for a company in technical capacity and you soon find out that you have little control of what goes on around you and or your job. This makes you think that the grass may be greener if you where a manager. You could make things change for the better, both for you and your fellow employees. Unfortunately is just doesn’t work that way, at least not all the time as you (the manager) discover that you also have a manager that you report to and his or her ideas/plans don’t necessarily agrees with yours.

Warning:
Any managers that may be reading this blog, then read the next part very carefully.

One of my first jobs started out as a tester on the production floor. About once a month the president of the company would tour the facility and take time to talk to some of the employees on an informal and one on one basis. The amazing thing was that he knew your name and the name of each of nearly 1000 employees. The company was sold and as time went by I eventually reached the Operations level of management, which in simple terms meant that on any given day I was responsible for the entire plant. I never forgot the simple but meaningful lesson of taking the time, no matter how busy things got, to talk to the people that worked at our location and other companies I work for over the years.

What makes a good or bad manager?
My experience tends to the ‘Leaders are born and not made’ theory. Far too often an individual who has demonstrated excellent technical knowledge and achievements time and time again finally receives a promotion to a management position. At this point they become like a fish out of water, floundering and jumping around on the beach in a desperate search for something that will save them and their project. Unfortunately no amount of management training will save them; it only serves to prolong the agony for them and everyone under them. In the end desperation settles in and they begin to take it out on the employees as a form of relief. Sometimes it can be so subtle that it hardly noticed by anyone except for the person in the center of the bulls eye. Other times it reaches the point of intimidation, threats, abusive language and on and on.

Now here this!
A good manager treats their employees as assets, just as valuable or more so than capital equipment. They help them when they need help, they provide training to sharpen or broaden their skills; thus making them more versatile. A good manager will reward them for doing a good job, even if the only thing they can do at the time is to say: thank you for a job well done. Most importantly they do everything possible to make an employee’s job rewarding and a success. You see if your employees succeed then you as a manager succeed.

A bad manager is one that takes their frustration out on their employees, belittles and berates, screams and threatens, makes unrealistic demands, offers no help when asked, spends more time trying to climb the ladder than manage the tasks given to them, is never available when you need them and always around making small talk to their pet employees totally oblivious to the rest of the team who feel like their in the dog house. They often arrive in your section or department offering great things for the future but seldom deliver, moving on to their next assignment and leaving behind a shambles.

Let me finish by leaving you with a real story.
It’s about a small group of engineers I was asked to manage. They where looked upon as I soon found out with extreme disgust by every other manager in the plant. Every Monday I would attend a meeting along with other managers, which was held by the plant manager for the purpose of reviewing the schedules and tasks given to them from the previous week. This person would take delight in running everyone up and down the flag pole for things that did not go as planned. At first I was an easy target and received more than my fair share of his foul language. Over time as I re-arranged the tasks assigned to my group to better match their skill set we were able to meet everything asked of us, thus I was no longer one of the poor slobs that had to endure the plant managers wrath.

One day after completing a particular hard set of tasks on time and in budget, I wanted to show my appreciation to the team, but had no money to give them as a bonus, or even a framed letter of appreciation. So I called everyone for a short meeting and thanked them for a job well done. After the meeting one employee approached me and said “Jim you are the first manager ever to say thank you”. Having known these engineers for a long time, even before I was there boss and had meetings over the years with each of their pervious managers, some of which I had held in high esteem, I was shocked in disbelief and said not even John (not his real name) and he said no, not ever.

Remember: it cost you nothing as a person to say thank you every once in a while!

The Jack Rabbit

Just because you are 30 years old and have a fast car doesn’t mean your have good driving skills. Take for example the typical jack rabbit that all of us have seen buzzing down the highway at 80 to 90 MPH, weaving in and out of traffic, getting stuck multiple times behind a slow car because he or she made the wrong lane move. You see they don’t think four or five moves ahead like in a chess game but jump at the first opening they see. The end result for all their hard work is that they may have a ten second lead on the smarter drivers who pick their moves carefully.

After all that hard work the jack rabbit now takes the same exit ramp that you do, hits the brakes going into the first turn and now you know you got the rabbit, I guess the turn scares rabbits at the speed they are going. You know this exit; it’s a long S turn and you enter buy accelerating slightly and banking to the right, passing the jack rabbit. You accelerate more while going up the incline, jack rabbit is mad because you passed him, but rabbit is in the wrong gear and can’t catch up as you go up the hill. You set yourself up for the next part of the S which is a fairly sharp left hand turn. This turn has those orange night time reflectors imbedded in the road to mark the left hand edge of the lane. You enter the turn and hold the car just to the point were the left front tire just touches the edge of each reflector making a slight ticking sound. Nearing the end of turn you let the car drift out and across to the outside lane and enter a long down hill straight. About halfway down the straight you look in the rear view mirror and see the rabbit is just coming of the turn, a full 3 tenths of a mile behind you.

Now you enter onto another major 8 lane highway and rabbit is working his way back up. Ahead the road divides, go straight and you enter local traffic, keep left to take the high speed bypass. By now rabbit has passed you again and enters the bypass, which is a sweeping left, rabbit brakes again entering the turn, you speed up and try to pass rabbit on the outside lane in the turn. Rabbit isn’t going to have any of this again so rabbit guns it, but you know something rabbit doesn’t, so you keep the pressure on rabbit until just before the turn enters a long downhill straightaway. At the last second you back off with a smile on your face and let rabbit pass you like a bat out of hell. Rabbit who is now doing about 80 mile an hour suddenly discovers what you know; the state police car waiting at the end of the down hill. Flashing lights and a few seconds later it’s all over for rabbit who will be waiting for about 10 minutes to hear those famous words “Have a nice day”!

Outsourcing Is Bad

There are a number of companies that believe that Outsourcing is the key to profitability and the cure for all ills. If fact, the ideal goal would be to outsource all U.S. based jobs to countries with significantly lower wage rates. The logic would be that with no employees to pay, except for a privileged few, there would be nearly infinite profit.

But wait, with no employed U.S. citizens, who would have any money to buy their products, certainly not the people employed at their outsource locations as they are paid too low of a wage to afford what they make.

Think this is all a bad joke, take a look around your house and see how many item you own that are still made in the United States. Oh sure the name may be that of a company based here, but where is the item actual made?

For my money any company that outsourcers more than 50% of there product or gross earnings should not longer be considered U.S. based and therefore are subject to tariffs and other trade restrictions so as to truly level the playing field.

Outsourcing Is Good

I read a blog (shar131.blogspot.com) recently about a person who went through the same horrible experience I’ve had several times when calling Dell Technical Support and in all fairness, other companies for help.

I’m also aware that President Bush made a comment not so long ago about the outsourcing of jobs is good for the United States. Well Mr. President then I would suggest that you outsource your cabinet members, think of all the tax payer money you would save and you can simply place a telephone call or email for advice and receive something close to gibberish like the rest of us. Of course if they tell you there are still Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq (gibberish) you can always escalate the call priority and ask for their supervisor!

Red and Blue America

The meaning of a word changes

Over time the meaning of a word can change. I have always believed that translation of old documents can and do sometimes end up misinterpreted. The end result is that one little grain of mustard seed can sprout a lot of controversy. Don’t believe me, than take for example and old 1934 movie titled: ‘The gay divorcee’, the censors then objected to the word ‘Divorce’ and added and extra letter e at the end. Back then (only 71 years ago, imagine what several centuries can do to a word) gay meant happy or cheerful. Today a movie with that title would mean a completing different subject to most movie goers.

Now we arrive at Red and Blue America. During the election coverage the color red was used to indicate the state went Republican and blue was used for the Democrats. Let us go back about 25 years in time and place ourselves in a meeting being held by Red China’s chairman, the purpose to watch carefully the U.S. election results. The results are in and after seeing a sea of red states on the map of the U.S., one of the party members exclaims: Look at that, the whole country’s gone communist. At that time if you said to someone ‘he is a red’, it didn’t mean Republican.

As for me there are three colors on the U.S. flag, so next time I’ll vote White!

Tower of Bloggle

According to one web site there are in excess of 6 million blogs out there. Some simple math would show that if it took on average one minute for a person to read each blog, it would take more than 11 years to read the most recent entry of each blog. This assumes that language and lack of sleep is not a problem.

So if anyone reads this blog, I guess I’ll see you back in the next decade or so, then again maybe not!

Where’s The Beef

(or in this case the WMD)

Well the U.N. couldn’t find the Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Bush team couldn’t find them, so they tried again with the same results; NO WMD.

Now I think everyone knows about spent nuclear waste, nobody wants it in there back yard, the stuffs too hot. Nuclear energy plants, especially the older ones have at least one reactor that too hot (the radiation permeates the place until its longer safe to work inside).
So if there were any nuclear programs how did Iraq cleanup a site so there was no residual emissions to measure? Chemical weapons can be disposed of by incineration or other techniques but there always some measurable waste. Bio weapons, sure you could dispose of them by releasing the agent into the air or water but I think there would be a trail of death.

If you want to find WMD look no future than the U.S., some of our allies and some countries not considered allies. You can find more information about VX by searching GOOGLE using the key words “Material Safety Data Sheet -- Lethal Nerve Agent VX”.
The manufactures name on this data sheet: Department of the Army!
Or if you like search on “Radioactive Waste”.

So unless the Government releases some documents under the freedom of information act (without the blacked out sections) that proves to the contrary, which I doubt. Then what we should have done was to turn Iraq into another Cuba, an isolated nation.

FBI - The Virtual Case File

Well it hit the TV news today that the FBI's Virtual Case File project is in trouble again. Perhaps they should have consulted with Google on how to find information.

All Good Things (or bad)

The saying is that “All good things must come to and end”, but they must have a beginning also. Who is this poet anyway?