Monthly Archive for October, 2011

Do you think…

That the mother of this young woman looked down upon her new daughter, as she was holding her for the first time in those precious moments right after her daughter’s birth, and thought, “I can’t wait to see the videos my daughter will make!”

This sort of thing is what makes parents lose sleep.

I don’t know if learning my children think this woman’s idea of feeling one with the horse would be better or worse than finding out that one of my kids was attending a furry convention.

(With apologies to Junior Miller, who has asked the question above many times.)

Published on October 31, 2011 in General Interest. Closed

Going to India…

I am leaving tomorrow night on a trip to India.  I won’t be back to the island until the 5th of December.

One month plus of business travel.  I have a full schedule of meetings, conferences and associated falderal.

I”m going to be on a trip that will span my birthday, the Marine Corps birthday, Veteran’s Day, and Thanksgiving.

Not being home for Thanksgiving will be OK as Jerry is just going to fuck it up with a noon time meal.  The horror!

Published on October 30, 2011 in General Interest, Higher Education and Island Life. 1 Comment

Divali was this past week…

And the students put on a celebration for the staff!

Dancer

This had to be the strangest two hours I’ve ever spent in an academic setting. The students sang, danced, performed skits and also served us lunch.

I gave my camera to one of the staff members to take a picture of me with the mark on my forehead. I accidentally deleted it from my camera. Honest.

Published on October 30, 2011 in Island Culture and Island Life. Closed

Zombie is awesome…

Here is his post on Occupy Oakland.

Just scroll through the pictures.

Published on October 30, 2011 in General Interest. Closed

Regulatory Capture…

Read up on it.

For those of you taken with the Wall Street protests, you need to understand regulatory capture before you will really understand the nature of the relationship between Wall Street and D.C.

I would like to make this clear: you would not be thinking about Wall Street if the government did not continually run a deficit.  The U.S. government needs Wall Street more than Wall Street needs the government.

The only way to fix the problem these protesters are complaining about is to reduce the size and scope of government.

Regulatory Capture: Let me google that for you.

This is in direct response to the crap coming through on my facebook feed.

Published on October 29, 2011 in Economics. 1 Comment

Roissy…

Or whatever he calls himself these days, used to write like this all the time, the conclusion:

Men will man up when women man down. The one must follow the other. The polarity cannot be reversed.

Again, go read the whole thing.  Report back to tell me you’re pissed I linked to that.  It’s ok, I can take it.

Published on October 29, 2011 in General Interest. Closed

You Sometimes…

Just have to shake your head.

A little work story that I found funny:

One of my associates spends a great deal of time securing internships for our students.  He and his assistant, a constant source of trouble, went to visit a large multi-national consulting firm that everybody has heard of.  There might even be a reader or two that are employed by this outfit.  They had their meeting with the head of local HR about getting our students in for internships.  The meeting went well, very well.  My associate is confident we’ll be able to place several interns with these consultants.  As the meeting drew to a close, the HR guy asked my associate if he could talk to him in private.  The assistant was asked to wait in the reception area.

My associate then was told about what a wreck the assistant was and that he had better watch out.  He was given specific examples of her crappy manners, coarse and abusive language, petty and wholly unreasonable demands (demands she had no business making), the list went on.  My associate told me he was thinking he had read the meeting all wrong and there was no way we would be able to place interns with this outfit.  He was also getting quite angry with his assistant as he was being beaten about the head and shoulders with her rude performance.

The consultant finally let up and told him we would still work together, but that he never wanted to see the assistant again.

My associate walked out into the reception area to find his assistant sitting there smoking!  He told me he couldn’t believe what he saw. He said smoking in that reception area would have tantamount to lighting up in church.   He said he let her have it with both barrels in the car on the way back to school.  Her defense was that there was an ashtray sitting there, so she assumed it was OK.

Later that afternoon the consulting firm HR guy called.  He told my associate about the smoking.  My associate said, “Well, there was an ashtray there.”  It was a weak defense and he was embarrassed making it.

The HR guy said, “Did she tell you that she had to stand on our leather sofa, in her high heels by the way, in order to be able to get the ash tray off the top of the bookshelf?”

She was, to use a phrase we used at one of my former employers, shot the very next day.

Published on October 29, 2011 in General Interest, Island Culture and Island Life. Closed

As long as I’m on a bit of a baseball jag…

How can the visiting team win a game when it is behind after eight and one-half innings?

Here is a discussion of a couple of possibilities:

This led to some speculation as to how the visiting team could manage to salvage a win out of that final half-inning, given that they had no further opportunity to score any runs. My proposal was that they could try to get as many players on the home team to be rendered ineligible to play (say, by injuring them or provoking fights and getting them thrown out of the game), until the home team had fewer than nine eligible players, at which point they would be forced to forfeit the game.

There is no doubt that he and his associate had been drinking while having the discussion.  Do read the whole thing.  Especially if you are a baseball fan.

HT: Ilka

Published on October 28, 2011 in General Interest. Closed

This is the start of the workday…

And people are actually wanting to do work!

Don’t they know I’m trying my best to follow a baseball game?  Pujols just doubled!  Berkman walked!

Leave me alone for a few minutes.

Published on October 28, 2011 in Dallas and General Interest. Closed

You should be over here…

With the Rangers leading 7-5 in the bottom of the eighth.

With the Rangers web site giving a pitch by pitch summary.

It is agonizingly disconnected from the action.  I can’t hear crowd, I can’t hear announcers.  Nothing.

Yet  I am still tense as the Cardinals just loaded the bases.

They don’t give you any live action from the game on the website but you do get commercials.

I bet my son back in Dallas is not even watching.  Baseball is of no interest to him.

Published on October 28, 2011 in Dallas and General Interest. Closed