Ethics in Income Act
Many years ago, we had news stories about someone occupying a chair at a major brokerage firm for six months while “the board” searched for a full-time candidate. After attending…
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2016 – Year of the Water Electric Hybrid
The title is not a fluke. In truth, we will most likely see production vehicles much sooner. Most people who live in cities don’t understand why the country needs an…
Do Kids Know This Today?
I was sitting in my office checking email this Sunday morning when suddenly I couldn’t send email. Oh I thought, my email service must be down. No problem, I’ll check…
This is How MBAs Think
47 stories, no elevator Are you sure this building wasn’t designed by American MBA graduates who are currently in charge of Fortune 500 companies? It certainly sounds like a design…
Diablotek
I have picked up power supplies from time to time just to have spares. Yes, it’s not as bad as it used to be, but, I don’t like the thought…
RABT
Time is almost up to take advantage of the Reading Addiction Blog Tours Summer Discount. All Tours/PROMO’s must start before August 31st to be eligible. *Note, there is a 2-week…
Innovera Yakov
YA Fantasy Date Published: 2/14/13 Innovera Yakov is a beautiful world of crystals that turns under five moons and two brilliant suns that never set. Flitters take care…
Russian Dolls
Russian Dolls By Cristelle Comby New Adult – Mystery&Detective Date Published:3/13/2013 Alexandra Neve is a student at University College London whose world suddenly falls apart. When her best friend jumps…
Days Like These
I am convinced days like these happen because we as humans are both too stubborn and too stupid to heed the warning signs. You all know the kind of days…
Free Nationwide WiFi
I was absolutely elated when I heard this story on NPR. Later there were many stories posted about it being “wish fulfillment” or “wishful thinking”. Personally, I don’t think it…
The Ever Shrinking Definition of Full Size
Recently I took my Buick Rendezvous in to have it undercoated and rust proofed. Since I’m obviously going to have to keep the ride at least another five years I…
No More Saturdays
In an effort to wipe out the national debt by collecting taxes sooner congress is passing a bill removing Saturday from the calendar. Republicans have determined that taking 52 days…
The Ultimate Water Enhancer
The water additives market is pretty huge now. You can have anything from premeasured powder “sticks” to highly concentrated drops if you don’t want to buy preflavored water. Flavor enhancers…
Me and My Syndrome
This syndrome plays a big role in my upcoming book “John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars”. I won’t attempt to explain it in depth or cheapen…
Asking a Writer to Give Up Nicotine is Like Asking a Shark Not to Swim
I was never a regular watcher of “Sex and the City”. Quite possibly I didn’t see my first episode until it was about off the air. I have this habit…
Freight
You have to put this movie on your “to rent” list. I had never heard of it, but was glad I added it to my Block Buster list. Oh, this…
Why Do You Tip So Much?
I get that question a lot. If I’m in a particularly pissy mood my response resembles a line from Heathers, “Because I can.” The truth is a bit more moderated….
Spare Parts to End Writer’s Block
I’ve actually stopped subscribing to all but one physically printed and mailed writing magazine. In part I stopped because of all the wasted space covering poetry. If you want to…
Star Wars Fans Are Not SyFy (Sci-Fi) Fans
I just had this argument with an editor for “John Smith – Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars” so it is fresh in my mind. In truth, he sent…
Fairly Missing
A new year is starting. Most of the Web sites and news organizations are putting out lists for best of, worst of, and lost. In truth, the list of TV…
Ethanol Needs to Learn From Wine
As you get older in life, you begin to appreciate the importance of being a well rounded individual. Though it may sound counter intuitive, a well rounded individual won’t slide…
Acer Aspire One 722 Wireless Network Bug
After a few days of playing around with my new toy, I decided to install a bunch of software to make it my full time writing device. Of course the…
Mint 13 KDE on Acer Aspire One 772
I’ve been tired of my Toshiba A215 notebook since I bought it. I was in a situation where I needed to replace my existing notebook when I bought it and…
Windows 8 – Vista Part Deux
It is difficult for me to not pick up the phone these days and make an “I told you so” call to a past client. This guy was absolutely baptized…
Our Love Affair With House
In many ways it is sad that “House” went off the air. While I know the producers, writers, etc. wanted to go out on top or at least close to…
InfoSys Nailed Again!
http://news.yahoo.com/2nd-lawsuit-alleges-infosys-misuses-us-visas-130747618–finance.html?_esi=1 This time by an account manager! If anyone should have know about the criminal activity it should have been the account manager.
There Never Was a Skills Gap
It’s quite refreshing to find out that now even the Wall Street Journal is supporting the very statement I have made for years. There is not now, nor was there…
Indiana Should Thank Illinois
Yes, they really should. We have genetic misfits being quoted in the paper about how much the new $1/pack increase on tobacco products is going to raise for the state….
The Fastest Way to Boost E-85 Consumption
Quite honestly I get tired of hearing government officials spout about how we need to cut our dependency on foreign oil and boost renewable fuels consumption. I get tired of…
The Robins Keep Us as Pets Now
I remember long ago the summers of my youth on a farm. Back there and back then a farm really was a farm. No matter what you said you raised…
Estate Tax – Just a Tax on Greedy Stupid Power Hungry People?
I am not an estate planner, financial advisor, or any other type of legal advice dispenser. These are simply my observations and you do with them what you will. Every…
Does Anyone Else Remember When the Ghetto Was Universally Hated?
The title kind of says it all. I remember those times. Perhaps I’m part of the last generation which will remember such times. I know prior generations held firmly to…
Why the LS-120 Still Survives
I’ve written about the LS-120 on this blog before but I thought about it again today. You see, yet another Micro Center sales paper showed up. There were big sections…
It May Not Be Your RAM
Several months ago it seemed like my monitor quit working after a reboot. It had been working just fine before that, so, naturally I was perplexed. My ViewSonic VG2030wm had…
Intermittent Amped Wireless Failures
Is there anything more infuriating than intermittent failures? They happen time and again until you finally find a pattern. Usually you “upgrade” to something different long before you find the…
Good Writing Equals Good Radio
I used to read a lot more writing magazines than I do now. Now I’m down to just one and am always amazed at the diametrically opposed advice columns which…
Why Not Cap and Trade Welfare
I had a rather large discussion about this last night in a chat room. It was pretty obvious, the one government worker championing leaving Welfare as it is, completely unsupervised…
Thanking the Japanese Beetle
I’ve had this conversation a few times now with a friend, so it is time to share it with you. There seems to be a lot of press as the…
Part Supersession Debacles
I have run into this problem so many times during my career it is not funny. You get this problem when you higher managers from rinky-dink schools like Keller and…
What We Choose to Remember Isn’t Usually What We Should Remember
What we should remember tends to get overwritten by what we choose to remember. Memorial Day teaches us this each year. If you happen to be somewhere nice enough to…
In IT, When Something is Going to Fail Spectacularly, We Call it a Cloud
Not all that long ago I put out ISBN-13 978-0-9770866-6-5 “The Minimum You Need to Know About Service Oriented Architecture”. Some of you may remember that it won a 2008…
Automatic Concordance File Creation
Wanna be technical writers search in vain for this pink Unicorn. You see, the ugliest part about writing a technical book is creation of the index. Normally this involves a…
Billing Rate vs. Effective Rate
This question just keeps coming up. In fact, just today I had a “ discussion” about it with a pimp who had no concept, he was just trying to get…
Did You Ever Wonder Why Billing Rates in Florida are Criminally Low?
No, it’s not due the massive “import/export” business running through Florida, it’s Senior Abuse. That and the fact that the FBI hasn’t bother putting anyone in prison for violating the…
Why Not Split
Things get stuck in my head and I cannot get them out. This is how geeks end up surfing the Web from a laptop in bed at 2AM, and they…
Are You Really Paid and Are They Really Unpaid?
Every now and then I actually get round to reading some of my writing magazines. Today, I got around to reading a portion of the October 2010 issue of “…
Calculating Your Minimum Billing Rate Pt. 3
If you travel for at least six months at a time. You want enough time to get a good feeling about the area, and to find a housing situation which…
Calculating Your Minimum Billing Rate Pt. 2
Here are the rules of thumb for extended stay hotels: 1 The lower the chain’s price, the higher the odds an off-shore company is stacking L-1 and H-1B workers eight…
Calculating Your Minimum Billing Rate Pt. 1
“How do I calculate my minimum hourly billing rate?” I get asked this question a lot, and not just by green/new consultants. Whether you are billing locally or for work…
Ethics in Income Act
Many years ago we had news stories about someone occupying a chair at a major brokerage firm for six months while “ the board” searched for a fulltime candidate. After…
Eggzactly
Perhaps I’ve been an IT analyst too long. Perhaps I paid too much attention when I watched Food, Inc. Perhaps growing up on a farm has taught me too much…
Googled by Geeksquad
There are times when I could save myself a lot of heart ache if I followed my instincts or took my own advice. Recently, I’ve been back in Dublin, OH…
The Unseen Downside of a Down Economy
As a traveling consultant you would think that I would encounter this situation more often than I do. Well, one would think that if they didn’t know I usually try…
The Car I Miss Most
It’s a beautiful day outside, and after spending some time playing with the puppy and thinking of things gone by, I got to thinking about the car I miss most….
For Whom the Hard Drive Tolls
I can’t read the following article without thinking they must have been hearing the opening bell from AC/DC’s “ Highway to Hell” throughout this entire demonstration. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Microsoft-shows-off-Windows-apf-68417458.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode= MickeyWare has failed…
The Doctors Without Limits
I must confess that I was deeply saddened to learn that David Tennant would not be continuing as “the doctor” in Doctor Who. As a young kid, I was never…
Thirty Two Seconds of IT Experience
We all get these phone calls. Well, this week I got another one. Here’s how the phone call went: Caller ID: I really should leave the phone number in here…
Today Is the Day I Really Missed My Neighbor
I knew that if I didn’t manage to stay away from the family farm this day would finally come, but I had kind of put it out of my mind….
New Life for Old Software
DOS software will be with us forever. It seems that Microsoft can never get away from it no matter how many names they put on the OS. Since I’ve had…
Loud Cell Phone Addict 0 Universe 1
On Saturday I finally got to fly back from New York. Nothing makes one miss home like being in New York. Yes, it was a trip from hell involving a…
Vendor Management Systems = Price Fixing and Wire Fraud
Price fixing is rampant in IT since Vendor Management Systems were introduced. Indeed, price fixing is the primary reason the systems were adopted. Recently I had an interesting discussion with…
Substring Exists in String
Today I got to burn about three hours looking online for an answer to what F$LOCATE() makes a simple task. What simple task you ask? Why, I was trying to…
Plausible Deniability or Just Plain Lazy?
Years ago, pimps actually did a tiny bit of work for their massive margins. They actually read resumes rather than using a GREP utility searching for keywords. They also engaged…
Wrong Bucket for the Job
For about a week now I have been hearing the Wall Street supporters saying “leave executive pay out of this package, deal with it later” while Wall Street engages in…
Russian Cold War Construction Practices
If you are my age or a little older, you have some childhood memories of the cold war. Too young to understand it at the time, you remember parents watching…
Adding WiFi to Your Whole Farm
Adding wifi to your whole farm is a decision most should have made years ago. Some get there kicking and screaming. Eventually the day finally comes. You’ve known it would…
Grade 8 Bolt Syndrome
No matter how long you work in this industry, you will never cease to be amazed at the Grade 8 Bolt Syndrome. What is this syndrome you ask? It is…
Disposable Management
In the days of old, in order to get into upper management you had to start off at the bottom of the company and work your way up to the…
Quote from “The Myths of Innovation”
Many innovations, for all their progress, leave a sailboat of forgotten goodness behind. And in our race to innovate, we instinctively reject people who hold on to the past. We…
The Mythical IT Shortage
It seems you cannot turn on a newscast or read a business magazine these days without hearing about this mythical IT shortage. I’ve been hearing about it for years. The…