Almost done

So this semester of school is finally drawing to a close. I have had a couple of interesting classes this semester, my entrepreneurship class has really made me feel like I have found my calling in life. My accounting and financial statement analysis class has also contributed to helping me find what isn't my calling in life. I don't really mind accounting, it makes sense, and it's not too difficult but it just isn't what I want to do.
I recently did a presentation on starting a Volvo Equipment rental franchise, I think it's a market that could prove to be very profitable in a down economy since the companies that are still around are going to have a hard time getting credit they can use rental equipment as a way to maintain their workload while freeing up their assets. If only I had $750,000 in liquid assets, oh well.
My biggest question for my teacher was how do I go about getting the funding for my projects, I have several that I have put together decent financial data for that I think could be beneficial for both myself and the investor, but I haven't figured out how to get that money flowing. My teacher said that if I found an opportunity that I was passionate about and had substantial research, then he could get me the investors.
So I have been working on a couple of ventures, one's a tech company that I have been working with some classmates to develop, the other is a green construction company that is really where my passion lies. I think now is a good time for start ups particularly in real estate. I expect prices will continue to drop for a bit longer but by the end of next year or shortly thereafter real estate values should, and likely will, pick up again. So that provides a good opportunity for a company to pick up parcels on discount, make improvements and resale at an increased margin.
One item I am conflicted on is the idea of HOAs. I really like the idea of having an entity to maintain common space (clear snow, rake leaves, cut grass, etc.). I also think that some amenities are not practical on an individual basis (wind power, swimming pools, tennis/basketball courts, skate parks, etc.). So far the best solution to these kinds of needs is through an HOA. Now the downside to an HOA is that the community has to come to some sort of agreement, and even if they don't agree they still have to pay for it. The other consideration is that all the amenities could be broken off and paid for on a "use" basis but often the "use" is not enough to justify each amenity individually but collectively it works. Like a gym membership, while you pay for the use of the whole club you often use only a couple of peices of equipment, if you broke out the price of just those peices and paid for only them, the gym wouldn't be able to function, but collectively, since you pay for stuff you don't necessarily use it works. The problem with an HOA in this same respect is that the residents don't really have the choice of which gym they are going to join, except by purchasing the home. My question is are HOA's worth it? What would make them worth it? What could make them better?

How do I become "too big to fail"?

So I am tired of hearing about these banks and automakers that are "too big to fail." I have to disagree, no company is too big. I know Nancy Pelosi would think I am heartless because I don't care if 240,000 people lose their jobs (see this link for her "concern"). I do care but I also think people are better than that. I don't think that just because a major automaker fails people are going to just stop working. Those people who are building cars or working at banks well there are probably many of them who are very good at their jobs, so they can start their own small businesses. This is how innovation works. Both the Banking and the Auto manufacturing indutries have been wanting an overhaul, and now government (that includes congress and the executive branch) wants to stop that from happening. Why?
I know it's tough to let people loose jobs but that is how the economy renews and becomes better. In my opinion it is obvious that the business models for automakers and banks were outdated, or maybe they were never intended to be profitable? So how do we fix a broken industry, with either an outdated or poor business model? Let it die and start over.
I would hate to see so many people loose their jobs but I would hate, even more, to see us propegate a bad business model just to keep people employed.
I think most people would agree that economically based businesses have an end goal of making money. If a business is not able to accomplish that end objective with current business strategies then an overhaul is required, sometimes that means abandoning the old business model. In the case of automakers I think unions are a serious challange to the success of that industry, why is Subaru so efficient? No unions. Banks I think just got greedy, the senior executives were (still are in many circumstances) living well beyond the means of the company, on the company's dime. So scrap the old business model and come up with something better, surely this is possible. I don't have all the answers, but I am sure there are probably at least a hundred or more people in that 240,000 that can figure out a way to create a better automobile, and actually sell it for a profit.
Alright well that's enough for today

So much for "Change"

I guess the change will be to bring in more people associated with scandal:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6201900&page=1

I sure hope he appoints better people in other areas.

Prop 8 and hypocrisy

So even though I didn't get to vote on this, since I don't live in the Golden State, the impact of this is very broad. This was the most expensive ballot measure ever $73million dollars spent, and a voting count that went right down to the wire. I was really disappointed by an ad put up by the opponents of Prop 8 that shows LDS missionaries (they even announce themselves as such in the add) barging into the home of a lesbian couple, they proceed to take their wedding rings, tearing up their wedding license, and rummaging through their home. I am not sure what the message is other than the opponents of Prop 8 seem to hate members of the LDS faith so much that they find it necessary to degrade them. The hypocrisy of this add is astounding, the whole campaign is based on not discriminating, and that is the very essance of this add. I was really happy to read the LDS church's response to the whole deal.

click here to read the whole release, otherwise at least read my excerpts ;-)

Two of the most notable excerpts in my mind is this paragraph:
"The Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage neither constitutes nor condones any kind of hostility toward gays and lesbians. Even more, the Church does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches. "
and:
"Before it accepted the invitation to join broad-based coalitions for the amendments, the Church knew that some of its members would choose not to support its position. Voting choices by Latter-day Saints, like all other people, are influenced by their own unique experiences and circumstances. As we move forward from the election, Church members need to be understanding and accepting of each other and work together for a better society."

Biased Media?

So I have to admit I am really glad this election season is finally winding down. However I got wind of this little news clip from my cousin, I'm not sure how many people that read this blog like Savage Nation but I have typically appreciated his take on things, the most interesting thing about this is the person filing the lawsuit is a fellow democrat. Check it out and judge for yourself.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGtGitwMR0

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57C9b-ZoNTo

Who robs the house that can't even afford grass?

What a week! Well I am glad that is behind me.

For those of you that may not know this last week was probably one of the worst I have had in quite some time. I think it was really just in a matter of two days that most of the damage was done but anyway…
So we had our house broke into on Wednesday, the thief stole my laptop, Candi’s laptop, the Xbox (including all 4 wireless controllers, and the charger for the controllers but not the power supply), Candi’s iPod, our Safe (which had exactly zero dollars in it but had all of our titles, birth certificates, etc.), $60 in cash from Candi’s mom, and a few other items. It was crappy. The worst part is we lost photos, and work that can never be recovered, guess I learned my lesson (should-a backed up earlier)
Thursday didn’t really get much better; I was at best despondent the whole day at work. I had to keep busy with physical activities; I couldn’t focus working on the computer. On my way home I was driving along in my out-of-body state when I realized I was going like 45 mph in second gear, I think my tach hit about 6k rpms. Which is not good for the ol’ Jeep. Running the engine that high sent a lot of coolant toward the t-stat, which then blew a seal. So by the time I got home I was leaking about a gallon of coolant per hour. After walking in the house, Tom was getting started to work on the basement, and had just turned on my air compressor which then started to smoke from the engine area, not really ever a good sign. I am pretty sure that is toast now but I am going to try to dismantle it and see what I can find in there. Then we started looking at the bids for our badly needed new roof, anybody have a couple grand I can borrow or even better have ;-)

In other news, I have been working on a business plan that I think is really going to be big. I replaced my thermostat & gasket for $12, Tom is doing some good work on our basement, and my new classes start tonight.

Free Market, my eye!

So I am currently taking an Economics class, it has been an interesting time to be taking this kind of a class. I am not sure what my professor believes, from his tone regarding political situations I would have pegged him for a solid liberal, but then last night he said he was a proponent of supply-side economics. Supply-side economics is based on the idea that if you make the supply cheaper businesses will thrive and wealth will increase. It is generally classified as a republican doctrine; lots of democrats will refer to it as “trickle-down” economics. So now I don’t know what the heck he thinks, maybe he is just disgusted with the both options? I am not sure what doctrine the democrat party would like to have attributed to them but it seems closer to Marxian than Keynesian, in my opinion. The “new” plan proposed by Obama is based on the concept that if you increase the flow of money to the consumers you will increase revenues, I am pretty sure I have posted my issues with this concept on prior posts. I am not really keen on a redistribution of wealth, I think it discourages innovation and businesses suffer.
Either way I have been thinking a lot about our economic situation and I think we are in a very unique situation. I think we are headed for a recession in some markets and inflation in other markets. I don’t know what the economic explanation for this type of situation is but I don’t think it can be defined with traditional macro-economic theory. Because while many markets such as banking, housing, technology are all facing reduced prices other markets such as oil, food, and energy are still seeing record high prices (even with a massive drop in oil, it is still much higher than our overall inflation).
I was thinking about this because last night we had a discussion of actions that could be taken fiscally and monetarily to “fight” recessions and inflation. A recession is caused by and creates an environment opposite to that of inflation. The proposed solutions to recession can cause inflation and vice versa.
Another point that I thought was interesting was the fiscal solutions for fighting inflation are to increase taxes and cut government spending. The idea is to remove money from the “system”; based on basic supply and demand this increases the “price” of the money. Funny thing is that both candidates want to cut spending and taxes? I am not so sure about the governments ability to cut spending, and raising taxes hasn’t ever been a really popular proposition.
Finally my real point was that the “Free Market” is often blamed for our current financial crisis. I don’t see how it is any more the free market’s fault than the fault of those “controls”. It isn’t like we ever let the market run free, we are too concerned about market failures so we create these controls, fiscal and monetary policies to try to “correct” the market. If the market fails I don’t think any educated person can fairly blame the “Free Market” since there really isn’t such a thing. I think this claim is no more than liberal propaganda trying to vie for more social systems and government intervention and a further reduced free market. I am not convinced that a truly free market would suffer from any of the traditional market failures, since it has never really been attempted.

Partisan Politics

So I have been meaning to post on this whole financial meltdown for quite a while. I am amazed at what has happened and how mainstream media has pandered to Obama over the last week or so. The whole issue of McCain flying in as a stunt, and how the "Radical Republicans" are responsible for killing the bailout, etc. It is all pandering, the bailout was killed by both parties, and they both were lacking a significant number of votes. Sort of a moot point now though I suppose.

Granted McCain's flight back to DC may have had some political motivations but he wasn't the only one plus it was requested that he and Obama both attend the meeting. So why isn't it a White House political stunt by all parties? Because the media loves Obama.

I find most ironic the continued battering of Obama that this crisis is a result of deregulation. It is actually the opposite. It is the result of improper regulation. Here is a video link that explains it quite well though it does have some very obvious political overtones I think the facts that it presents are very valid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_597487

Here are some key facts out of this video that it blows over very quickly.

• The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was regulation designed to force banks (in order to get FDIC approval) to provide loans to low income. Initially created in 1977 this program was helpful and housing prices grew consistently with inflation.
• In 1994 under the Clinton administration the CRA was expanded and forced higher levels of low income "affordable" mortgages from banks. Housing "value" exceeded inflation by monstrous amounts for the next 10 years.
• Who gets money from Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac. Why are these "government regulated" companies making campaign contributions? Seems like a massive conflict of interest to me.
• There were attorneys who actually sued banks for not maintaining their minimum required "affordable" loan packages, Obama was one such attorney.
• It takes time for the effects of bad politics to make an impact. I think both Bush Sr. and Clinton were riding on the coattails of Reagan's fiscal plan. Unfortunately "W" got stuck with the mess that Clinton and company made. I think they were too distracted by scandal to actually take care of the economy.

In other news the stock market has been tumultuous at best over the last couple of weeks. I think it is going to get worse before it gets better. I am most concerned by Obama's supposed "economic plan". Can't say that I would personally hate having all my personal income exempt from tax, but I don't think many people realize what the other consequences of that "benefit" really are. Under an Obama administration businesses would be taxed to death, small businesses would likely suffer the most, since the tax burden would be proportionately larger. Obama's plan is a completely backwards form of economics. The Reagan administration has often been referred to as following the idea of trickle-down economics. Basically what this means is that if you reduce the tax burden on businesses they can thrive. When businesses thrive people have more job opportunities, more competitive pay, and the capital required to invest in further R & D. Obama's concept is "trickle-up" economics. By relieving the tax burden on individuals making less than 250k the idea is to give consumers more money so they can spend more then the businesses have more revenue to compensate for the higher tax burden. The problems with this philosophy are: it completely removes a huge source of tax revenue generated by illegal immigrants (since they don't file tax returns), it doesn't work if people don't spend money, and most of the products that would be purchased with additional expendable income are not manufactured in the United States (it would likely benefit China a whole bunch). The reason I draw the last conclusion is base on the tightening of the credit market. The US has primarily converted to a services based economy, the products that we do create are often very large and require credit (houses, cars, etc.), as the credit market continues to tighten it becomes more and more difficult to afford these types of products.

Alright well there is my political post for the last little while. I am sure everyone was just dieing to know what I was thinking.

The Highly Visible (formerly invisible) Hand

I am almost half way done with my first block of classes for this semester. I am taking an Economics class, which seems rather timely considering the current state of affairs on Wall Street. I guess I am just a complete capitalist. I am not really happy with the idea that tax payer money is bailing out these businesses that were plagued with incredibly poor and shortsighted management. It is quite troublesome to me that the federal government feels like it needs to take over the industry. I can’t see any reason why the banking market would benefit from a government takeover; didn’t we just finish de-regulating this industry? I think that they should just let them crash, that is how the market stabilizes itself, it purges out those greedy institutions. I think it would be sad for all the investors that had stock in those institutions, and unfortunate for the good employees of those banks. But, that is how the market works, investors are expected to complete their due diligence prior to investing and employees who are not responsible for the catastrophe are nearly always employable by competitors. I know I am heartless and cruel, but I guess I just think that is the way it is. This is where I draw a stark contrast from Barak Obama, who would like to blame the capitalist market for the troubled financial market. I can’t stand that blame game, why can’t it be the financial market’s fault that they got into that situation? Why should taxpayers have to pay for a bloated governmental institution to oversee these markets? What ever happened to the ideals that Democrat JFK was famous for “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Obama certainly does not prescribe to this doctrine; he seems to think that somehow taxpayers (who he has classified as the rich) are somehow responsible for the non-taxpayers. I can’t stand this shift in responsibility. I’ll tell you who I am responsible for, myself and my family, nobody else. Now if I someday become independently wealthy I think it would be in my best interests to contribute to the well being of America however I don’t think I should be forced to. I think that if I want to contribute to charitable organizations I should be able to decide, independently, which ones and how much. I don’t need a politician to tell me who needs it the most.

Bailouts reward bad behavior; it sends a message to CEOs everywhere that this bad behavior and poor management will not have negative consequences. If the government wants to help out an industry they should create positive incentives, not bailouts. If they want to improve the efficiency of cars they should provide incentives for businesses that create more economical cars, they could create a competition (similar to the Virgin Records Airplane to the Moon). The bailouts and tax penalties work in the wrong direction; it puts the focus on the negative behavior rather than on the innovation and positive behavior. The best thing the government could have been doing during these times of “lax regulation” is to have provided incentives to those financial institutions that were willing to meet certain criteria, including making proper disclosures and maintaining adequate capital. It would also help the less educated masses gain a little transparency as to the legitimacy of the firm they are considering investing in. This method would give an incentive to operate an institution within the guidelines without unnecessarily restricting the market. The reason I am so vehemently opposed to market regulations is they discourage innovation. Discouragement is the nature of restrictions.

Here is the problem with my proposition. I think it kills the current legislative branch, no longer would they be spending time figuring out how to word the bill so that it would restrict a very specific action, no longer would they be accepting bribes from companies or lobbyists trying to undermine the system (unless they were for less than the potential gain of the company), and it would require them to actually be creative in how they formulated incentives. I have already voiced my opinion of the Pork and Barrel spending in politics, I think its garbage, if a bill can’t be voted on its own merit then don’t vote on it at all. I am opposed to personal income tax because it undermines one of the basic building blocks of this nation “no taxation without representation” when is the last time we got an update on how and where personal income tax is being spent? This doesn’t apply to businesses so I don’t have much of a problem with that. Property taxes are accounted for; sales taxes are accounted for, even fuel taxes are accounted for. I don’t have any clue what the number is but I would venture to guess that if we eliminated Pork and Barrel spending entirely we would have a national surplus within a year maybe two. Of course then we will have these special interest groups that would go un-funded. Based on their inability to draw up financial support from the community, maybe they should stay that way.

Well that’s probably enough for this week or so… By the way if you have money invested in the banking industry just remember, buyer beware.

The Most Important Election, EVER

So I was listening, in and out, to the Republican Convention last night. I caught most of Rudy’s speech and most of Sarah Palin’s. I love how every election is the most important, I suppose it is because it always determines the future, at least to a certain extent. I thought Palin did a good job and that following Rudy made her look like an even better speaker. I seriously thought Rudy was supposed to be eloquent and what-not but he really seemed to me to be stumbling through the majority of his speech. I did like the contrast that was brought up regarding executive experience vs. legislative experience. Legislators don’t have to make any real decisions, they can just be Present, and not vote yea or nay. Executives can’t do that their decision is yea or nay, no present votes allowed. It accounts for about 3% of all the votes he cast as a state legislator, so not too many but… I think present is a stupid vote; it shouldn’t even be an option. Either vote yes, no, or not at all. I also think it illustrates the difference between being a leader and a law-maker. I think Palin did a very good job with her speech, I think she is a nice contrast to McCain, the only area where I think she could really use some help is in the experience department, but what other options are there?
I’m not sure if I am going to listen to McCain’s speech tonight. While I think the conventions could serve a purpose, they tend to be somewhat of a pandering event for either party just to sell themselves to their current constituents. I would like both parties to actually make a plan, and present it to the people. Instead of just saying you will increase jobs, reduce taxes, reduce spending, etc. I would like to know how they plan to do all these things. I am really turned off by contradictory statements like lowering taxes for working class while raising wages and balancing the budget. The money has to come from somewhere, if they reduce personal income taxes then they will have to increase business profit taxes, or they can take out a loan (unbalanced budget). I am a little tired of Obama’s statement that he is going to “reign in government spending” how exactly does he plan to do that? Does he see areas where there is excess? Why not just say he is going to cut funding for XYZ project? Or if it is the intent remove pork and barrel spending, and all these projects that can’t pass without being attached to a more important bill? Of course politicians are famous for their ability to add on to bills (irrespective of parties) traditionally the democrats have a greater propensity to inflate bills, at least in the cost department.
I would like to change the process for presidential elections. I think it would be nice if we set up job qualifications to apply to be president. Like maybe some sort of quantifiable economic understanding, it would also be nice if they really understood the constitution (one reason I really like Ron Paul), I hate to say it but military experience of some sort is almost essential (aren’t they applying to be commander in chief?). We could have them take a series of personality tests that can then be published to the masses, evaluate their ethical behavior, personal conviction, ability to relate with others, even sense of humor. Of course the biggest challenge in doing this would to be to maintain an unbiased perspective. Drug testing isn’t a bad idea either; this is pretty cut and dry as far as I am concerned. It makes me cringe to think that here Americans are left to choose between two candidates that in many ways aren’t really qualified for the position; of course that is my opinion so… I think the business world understands what it means to hire people; all those tests and interviews actually are there for a reason. Attrition is very expensive, at the Presidential level it can’t even be put into numbers the cost. I guess my choice has just come down to who is the most qualified, or the closest to being qualified.

Eco-Capitalist

So my thoughts of late have revolved around the environment. I consider myself a pretty “green” conservative, which in most people’s minds sounds like a walking contradiction, but I don’t think so. Anyway I have a small collection of some interesting thoughts regarding energy efficiency:
1. CFLs – Compact Fluorescent Lights you may know these as those swirlly looking light bulbs, they are about 7 times more efficient in their use of energy over your standard light bulb, and they last about 12 times longer. The downside is they have a ballast structure built into the base of the bulb that contains Mercury. Mercury is a toxic chemical that requires disposal in a toxic waste site (check the CFL package, they are not to be discarded in a standard landfill)
2. Hybrid Cars – we now have a whole gamut of “hybrid” cars, trucks, and SUVs hitting the market. I have several issues on this one,
a. First is the inflated MPG numbers that are often reported, this happens across the board for the most part, in my experience Toyota and Honda are the most prominent offenders.
b. My other gripe is the fact that the Hybrids really aren’t all that environmentally friendly. While they may provide better gas mileage, they generally use Nickel Cadmium as the base for their batteries. The mining of this ore uses strip mining, and leaves a sludge that is highly acidic; it destroys vegetation and water for miles. Then you have an issue of how to deal with the battery once it is used up, that is another story though.
c. Finally, the maintenance cost is very high, the batteries are very expensive (~$5k), and don’t last beyond 100,000 miles, most are only guaranteed for 30,000. So you pay a premium on the initial car purchase, then within 10 years you get to pay another premium. Hybrids on average are about 15% heavier, this leads to an accelerated schedule for other maintenance items such as tires, axles, transmission, etc.
3. Cow Farts – These things are toxic, comprising an estimated 15% of total greenhouse gases (per myth busters). Scientists should be spending more time finding ways to streamline the digestive process of livestock, beano for cows or something.

Going back to where I started; I think that being a capitalist doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive from having environmental responsibility. My evidence that this is successful is to look at all the “Organic” food in your grocery stores, if they can charge a premium for that label then why can’t we charge a premium to sell items that are environmentally friendly. The challenge is being able to charge a premium high enough to offset any additional costs incurred to create a more environmentally friendly product/service. I don’t think it is that hard, and I think the real problem is not the additional “cost”, but the all too common misconception about “green.” I saw a survey, forgot where sorry, that said that most CEOs estimated the cost to make their company green at about a 25% premium above their current costs, when an outside analysis was performed it was found the costs would only increase 5%, on average, and that is short term. So the work that needs to be done in my mind is creating more awareness for environmentally friendly alternatives and the benefits of these products over their less friendly alternatives. However it should also be given a fair analysis, I think some of these “green” alternatives are just hype and no substance.

Finally just an interesting thought (I couldn't figure out how to create a poll): Which house do you think uses less energy Al Gore's primary residence or George W. Bush's Ranch? You could probably guess by the question that it is actually old W who has the smaller carbon footprint, how's that for some irony, or maybe it's just "An Inconvenient Truth."

Olympics, Life, and Overtime

So lets see, I’ve apparently been busy, or something. I’m really liking my new position at work; it is a good fit for me. I have recently spent a good deal of time watching Olympic events, I love the swimming, basketball, and I can even tolerate the gymnastics. In past Olympics, excluding the 2002 games, I wasn’t really very interested but for some reason this year has been pretty interesting to me. I like the more definite events though like swimming and basketball because it is exact as to who wins; there isn’t really any speculation other than the possibility of cheating. Gymnastics is tough for me because most of the time I don’t even know why one person gets a lower score than another. For example the other day on the men’s gymnastics this guy did a freakin sweet routine on the palm horse (sp?) and his score didn’t seem to reflect it. Plus the women would do these floor routines that appeared to be much more difficult than the Chinese (I am not very knowledgeable as to what is really hard there) but the “difficulty” level was not representative of that appearance. Anyway it has been fun and that Phelps is just amazing, my favorite so far was the relay where they beet the “heavily favored” French by a couple hundredths of a second, awesome finish.

In other news we sold the Durango, it was a nice vehicle for us for the time we had it, but the gas mileage was killing us plus it is nice to have one less car to insure. I fixed the jeep; it took all of about 10 min. I had pretty much already figured out what the problem was. I got this new coil and ignition wires for my birthday a couple of years ago, for the novices out there the coil is the part of the engine that sends electricity to the spark plugs. Anyway, I installed it because it was “high-performance” it was supposed to allow me to gap my spark plugs wider so I would get a larger spark, therefore better combustion, and more power. Well suffice it to say that it didn’t deliver, in fact I put the original one back in after it completely failed and as soon as I put the old one in the engine fired right up. So the moral of the story is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” or at least make sure to do diligence when purchasing after market “high-performance” parts when you are replacing OEM parts that haven’t failed.

Our front yard looks like a mini-tornado went through it, it’s pretty ugly. The basement has somewhat stalled out since I got the carpet into “initial” position. I need to get more money before I can work on it too much more.

I was supposed to go on a Fathers & Sons campout this weekend but it looks like they are going to want me to help out with the accounting department. I find this somewhat funny since as I was getting ready to come over to the Outside Plant division my old boss said that she thought I would be begging for my old job back, and now she is begging for me to come back. I was a little tired of camping after this last weekend anyway (at least for a little while), so it’s probably for the best.

a New job, a New office, a New 10-Key

So here I am in my new office, I started in my new position officially on Monday. This position is rolling out as a beta for the company. I am really looking forward to taking on some different responsibilities and see what kind of an impact I can make. So far I have spent a good deal of time just getting settled, and trying to figure out what kinds of things I can do that would be useful to the department. My new assignment is as Project Controller for Outside Plant. Basically I am responsible for making sure jobs get done on budget and on schedule. I have spent the first few days working on the budget aspect and I want to get to some training to help me better figure out the scheduling side of things.
So far I like the opportunity; it has been a good transition for the most part. My former boss seems a little overly tight on the “security” she wants to grant me. I am not sure if she took away my security clearance because I am suddenly a different person or what, it was in the name of internal controls but it seems more to me like an exercise of power than anything else.
I am now working for Randy and he seems to have a good amount of faith in me and what I can do to help his department. I also had a meeting with the owner where he basically said it was up to me to step up and take control, the authority is in place. I really like the idea of having the corresponding authority and responsibility, one reason I really like Americom; the owners seem to be very aware of that balance.
I just want to say a little bit, or maybe a lot, about Politics. Mostly my comments revolve around the idea that a Bi-Partisan system in no way serves the greatest number of people. I think the only president ever elected that wasn’t just the lesser of two evils was George Washington. But my real concern revolves around the idea of sensationalism. Before I go bashing the liberals I should probably preface my remarks with the fact that I don’t find either candidate appealing, at least not at this point. I think Obama is a pro when it comes to being sensational. He has the media wrapped around his little finger (I am coughing in Letterman’s general direction, can’t even watch that show anymore). Not to mention the ridiculous “endorsements” he has received. I get a little tired of hearing about endorsements; I think they are a bunch of crap. Should I even care who the governor of Florida is voting for? I find some of it rather amusing, especially when candidates try to back-peddle out of endorsements that may have at one time served them well but have since turned very sour. How will people act? I think most all people change how they act when given a new level of authority, not even I am exempt from that one. So how would either candidate act if they were elected to be president? Would they act based on their voting record? Maybe. Would they act based on their values? Maybe. Would they act based on what their spouse told them to do? Probably. The problem is we really don’t know how people will act, surely a longer voting record may provide some level of trust that their actions would follow the pattern but it certainly isn’t a guarantee. What if they don’t have a voting record? Should we just believe what they say? I don’t believe a single one, the first one that starts voting for lower wages for politicians is the first one I would consider believing, don’t worry that will never happen. Our political system is so dirty it makes me sick; laws get passed based on the size of a pocketbook or in many cases black book. What ever happened to the idea of putting a bill up, and if it doesn’t get voted in, it goes away, instead of pulling the bill back (add a whole bunch more crap to it, like a fund for sickly Africanized spiders) then resubmitting it at twice it’s original size with the caption that it will only get bigger if it gets rejected again.
I don’t know if it is possible for politicians to be ethical, unless they work pro bono including rejecting all those little perks, like NBA season tickets, golf club memberships, etc.
Maybe lobbyist should be illegal, if people want a voice they should try using their own rather than purchasing one.
My last line is traffic sucks, I can’t wait until the teleport technology is perfected.

Wait for the End!

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

So I suppose I haven’t updated in a bit today I have been surfing the disturbing news stories a bit so I have some stuff to rant on, including but not limited to: political fundraising, home foreclosures, and jibjab.

1^st jibjab, just because I am guessing you already watched the video before even reading my post, yep that is Sir Isaac there at the end, awesome ehe? Go ahead and make your own.

2^nd Political fundraising is ridiculous; these people have raised more than 200 million dollars, and what for? Just so they can further plaster there images across the web, TV, and various other media outlets. Seems like a massive waste of money to me. Especially since the reason they are spending money at this point is not to increase awareness but to persuade people that they are right.

3^rd Housing crisis, what a mess this country has gotten itself into. So in Las Vegas in the month of June (and only the month of June) 1 in 99 homes was sent foreclosure notifications. That seems staggering to me, since it is just one month of a now 6 month slump for the Vegas area. Not to mention that they have said there current downturn has come because construction has slowed, well that means it is going to get even worse because if energy prices (including gas) stay the same then people are going to stop heading down to Sin City, and I am pretty sure the biggest revenue in Vegas comes from tourists.

In other news Candi and I have been working on our basement for the last couple of nights. We got some shelving built in the “mechanical room” and put a whole bunch of crap in there, but now it looks nice. My next project down there is to finish rolling out the carpet and frame the last two walls. It is coming along and I think in the next month or so it is going to look pretty nice. Plus it is nice and cool down there. We really look forward to having the extra space. Finishing the basement will make it so we can move one couch, the TV, the DVDs & CDs, all of our books, and the LoveSacs. That will make room for us to have a dinning room upstairs. I am really looking forward to the idea of having a place to eat dinner; getting a little tired of the coffee table, 4 years is just too much.

Consider yourself "Blog-Tagged"

I've been blog-tagged. I guess here are the rules: come up with 6 unimportant facts about myself, link back to the person who tagged my blog, and tag 6 new people.

This came from Steph

This is tough because everything about me is important, but I will give it a try.

1. One of my pet peeves at the office is crappy staplers – when the staple doesn’t go through and just bends up, or it doesn’t bend after it goes through (leaving a nice sharp point that you can later rip your finger open on)
2. I like to cook, not to be confused with baking (baking is for the women folk ;-D). I like throwing spices and stuff together in a pan as well as grilling up delicious meats and veggies
3. My iPod has enough songs on it that I could listen to music for 9.87 days straight, without getting a single repeat. However my longest playlist is only 1142 songs. I am also obsessed with iTunes, making sure all my music is organized the way I like it with album covers and all.
4. I am an aspiring Ham Radio operator, I am taking some classes to become an amateur operator starting next month.
5. I don’t like cake, especially yellow or white. I like some pies and love the crisps, but cake is just too cakey.
6. I have only fainted twice in my life, once from dehydration (I fell down a mountain, fractured my hip and sprained my knee), and once from a combination of low blood sugar and loss of blood (I cut my thumb tip off, the next morning when I took the bandage off I lost a bunch of blood, and knocked my head on the shower door a couple of times, while Candi was showering)

So now I am supposed to “tag” six other people, since the likelihood that 6 other people actually read this banter is rather slim I will just go with the default “tag” line, if you read this you have been tagged, sucker.

Scars Revealed

So the bandages came off yesterday. I thought I should put up a picture of my new “zipper.” It kinda looks like the cut could just split right back open again, but it seems to be okay for the time being. I have been doing massages and stretches to try to get the tendons back to the point where I can grip stuff again. Sometimes when I think I am grabbing something it just falls out of my hand, since stretching the tendons is already a lot of resistance. So I am going to have to put aside my aspirations of becoming a hand model, unless somebody is looking for a Frankenstein version.

I started training the “new guy” yesterday, my replacement. I am glad they got someone to start, though I am a little frustrated with the way some things have been implemented. They knew this guy was going to start two weeks ago and yet HR never bothered to get his user name, email, or any log in stuff set up. So it makes it so that I can’t do anything when he is doing something and vice versa, the problem is it takes him a lot longer to get stuff done than it does me, so if we have time sensitive tasks he just has to sit back and watch.

We busted out our tent yesterday, it was a little on the stinky side, so hopefully we will be able to get it cleaned up in the next day or so. Candi washed the rain fly in the tub so that part is so fresh and so clean. We are getting ready for our regular 4^th of July trip up to Bear Lake. It should be a good trip, as long as we can keep the bugs off.

Well I have to go play some rock band so hope ya’ll have a good evening

It's 4:57 and I am ready to go home

So I still have a stupid half cast on my right hand. It is pretty annoying. But I get it off on Monday so that should make for some good times. I have found that I can type pretty well but my handwriting is absolutely horrible. I had to look at the incision; it is a lot longer than I thought would have been necessary. I guess that plate is like a salad plate or something. It is going to be a pretty cool scar though.

I have finished my summer classes for my first semester of my MBA program at Westminster. I really liked my classes; I feel like I learned a lot.

We decided to get our front yard redone by some trained professionals, so now Tom is working feverishly to make something beautiful out of our disastrous front yard. I am looking forward to him getting started on it, since I have been meaning to for months now. I guess it just speaks of my serial entrepreneurship nature. I love starting new projects, but then if it doesn’t come together rather quickly I get bored and lose interest. I think it is my patience that I really need to work on. Speaking of patience, I was promised another position with my current employer like 2 months ago and now it is going to be another month and a half, so I can train the new guy. I think I am going to ask for a raise in the interim, I think I have been performing well and I would like a little more money. I was supposed to be getting an increase with the new position, but that seems to be taking forever to actually happen.

Anyway it’s go time so peace out.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

So I am going in for surgery on Tuesday. That should be a grand ole' occasion. I am trying to get my reading for my classes done before that so I don't have to worry about it while I am heavily medicated. They wouldn't let me schedule a time for the surgery, they will call me on Monday to tell me what time I can come in. Seems pretty pathetic to me that they can't schedule a surgery more than 24 hours in advance. It isn't even at the hospital so it isn't like it would be affected by emergency situations. I get to have a metal plate put into my hand with some screws, I will forever be searched at the airport.
Work is going well, they finally hired a replacement for me, so now sometime in the next two months I can move over to my new office. They are in the process of rebuilding a house that is next door to our current office for the purpose of expansion. I think it will work out pretty nicely once all is said and done.
School is nearly over for the summer, only two more of each of my classes. Seems like they just barely started too. They are going pretty well, I should get a pretty good grades this semester.
I got a new grill for father's day, it is pretty nice. We grilled up some burgers last night and I just wasn't used to how fast the new grill cooked, they came out a little dry, I even had it on low the whole time. I think I am going to get some of those ceramic heat dissipaters for the bottom to help spread out the flame a bit more.
Well that's all I have to say for now, maybe I will try to put up a post after my surgery, I try to do it before I get too far out of the "drunken state"

Busted Stuff

So here is my hand, and that little spur coming off the back of it is... not "normal"
While I was making preparations for our Moab trip I wanted to check the brakes on the durango to make sure they would be okay for towing. Somehow during that process my brain forgot (twice) how close my jack handle was to our concrete steps, the first time I smashed my thumb so I decided to get a different grip, at which point my vigorous nature took over and my overzealous arm attempted to push my hand (with the jack handle in it) through the concrete steps, they won. So here is the proof of either my stupidity or severe short term memory loss.
I thought maybe some of the medically aware people that read my blog may fully appreciate the pics
So now on Monday I have to go see a specialist (hand doctor, not sure what they are called). It may require surgery because of how it is spiraled.
And to answer the potential question, yes I have just been dealing with it for the last 13 days, thinking that somehow it would fix itself. It didn't hurt excessively bad until last night, the doc did prescribe some heavy pain killers, we'll probably get those tomorrow.

What do you say when it snows in June?

So I don’t know what the heck is going on here in Utah but today is June, and on my way to class, in the Salt Lake Valley, I came across this little pile of what appears to be… that’s right snow. Are we ever going to be done with this crap? I like the desert because it is supposed to be nice and dry but not this year it has turned into a regular tropical climate around here.

In other news, Obama is now the “presumptive” democratic nominee, whatever that is supposed to mean. Why can’t the news just tell it like it is? Here is my version of this story… “For today’s top headline we have determined that this coming November voters will be able to head to the ballot boxes and place their vote for the person whom they feel would best be able to lead our nation for the next four years, or if they don’t feel like throwing their vote away or they just can’t figure out how to write in on an electronic ballot, they can vote for either Obama or McCain. Either way it doesn’t really matter though because the colligate system has taken the voice away from individuals and given it to states.”

Just exhibiting a bit of wishful thinking here: what if a “write-in” name won the general election, how does the vice president get chosen? Could the winner just pick whoever they want? Weird.

I am sure some are getting tired of my complaints about national and local politics, but really if I didn’t complain about it what else could I do? It isn’t like I can actually change the two party system, or sew Rocky Anderson’s mouth shut. So my only resolve is to vent through the World Wide Web.

So my classes at Westminster are now more than half over, and we just barely got back our first sets of grades. Must say I am pretty happy with myself so far. I have not really ever considered myself an over-achiever, I don’t really try to get A’s, most of the time I just like putting forth a concerted effort. In my Strategy class our group presentation was the first item graded, I pretty much wrote the whole paper that accompanied the presentation, since I was in Moab when the presentations were scheduled. It came out very nice thanks to some solid editing from my lovely bride. We got the highest score in the class on that project with a 9.5/10. Then tonight I got back my first assignment for my Ethics class. It was a journal assignment, which I always thought were very easy since they are very informal and handwritten. The teacher gave mine back and made some comment like, “you did very well” and another student asked “Didn’t everyone just get a check or a check minus?” the teacher proceeded to say, “Well mostly but there was one check plus.” Now that was awesome when I looked down and realized that I had got the check plus. There is something really gratifying about being the best in my classes. I think it is because I consider my fellow students now to be much more competitive and overall more intelligent than my undergraduate classes. I will try to not let it all go to my head but it sure is nice to gloat for a bit.

So I have another ethical perspective for those that are interested it is Cognitive Rational. Basically makes an association between intelligence and morality, not that all who are intelligent are moral (we can simply look at Hitler for a stark contrast to that statement) but those that are most moral are inherently intelligent. I believe this works with Egoism to establish what my basis for thinking is. I think that people will serve the interests of others by serving their own best interest if they have a complete understanding of all consequences. In other words if people are more intelligent they are more apt (at least capable) of making a morally correct decision. Another view we looked at but one that I certainly don’t agree with was Peter Singer, check out YouTube for the crazy talk. It was interesting because he professes to be the ultimate Utilitarian. He is certainly the ultimate vegetarian; he says we should treat animals just like we treat humans. I wonder if he believes animals should treat each other the same way. Does this make the lion unethical because it eats other animals? Personally I love my meat group, so I won’t be prescribing to this doctrine at any point.