Friday, December 08, 2006

Would Walt Disney outsource?

"The first year I leased out the parking concession, brought in the usual security guards - things like that - but soon realized my mistake. I couldn't have outside help and still get over my idea of hospitality. So now we recruit and train every one of our employees. I tell the security police, for instance, that they are never to consider themselves cops. They are there to help people. The visitors are our guests. It's like running a fine restaurant. Once you get the policy going, it grows." - Walt Disney (in Walt Disney Famous Quotes)

I'm guessing not. Too bad Bob Iger thinks it's a good idea. More and more people, now working in the actual resorts (down to the parks and hotels) are being let go in favor of outsourcing the jobs. What a world we live in.

Mark Twain motivates...

Twenty years fron now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Everyone has a degree in India?

You know how corporations in America keep talking about the proliferation of degrees in India as a compelling reason to offshore jobs there? Have they also revealed that this is because it is paid for by the government? Yes, that's right. Unlike the people in the United States, those people don't have to pay their own way. I wonder if these corporations that are singing the praises of this system would even begin to consider paying into a similar system here. We know that answer. They definitely wouldn't think about it for more than half of a second, if even that long.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

The police and their botched raids...

Check this out. An interactive map of all the botched police raids in this country. So many people think these never happen. It must be nice to live in their fairy tale world.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Your Oilers - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Photos from the guide book... Apparently not so good, but funny.
Ethan Moreau and Steve Staios After Hours

Missed this during the Cup Finals. Good stuff with good players.
Oilers Halloween

Talking about Shawn Horcoff being Gene Principe for Halloween...

Liars, Cheats, and Thieves...

Yeah, you know who you are. A bunch of fake women attempting to exert undue influence upon a bunch of others. Those who don't fall under the spell are cast from the society. A plague upon you. Try being honest. You can be an asshole, if you want to be, but be honest about it.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Skinny Puppy - Worlock - REMASTERED!!

You must see it, but you should really be a fan of:

1. Skinny Puppy
2. Horror films
3. Gore (and not Al Gore)

Thursday, November 09, 2006

A little happy about the election...

I think only one of the candidates I voted for actually won, but I am relatively content with the results. I am not a fan of the Democrats, but I like seeing the Republicans take a punch to the nose like this. I was a little tired of their arrogance.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Horrorfest coming to a theatre near you?

If you are into horror films, you should check this out. A bunch of horror films are being debuted together in theatres across the nation in November.

A sucker for Walt Disney World...

Despite having a horrible experience at Walt Disney World earlier this year, and seeing that company for what it truly is, I find myself wanting to be able to go there once everything works out financially. No, I don't want to go so badly that I would compromise financial security to do so, unlike trips in the past, because I know better these days, but I still would like to go.

Of course, the family plan is that there are no Walt Disney World vacations until we have managed to pull off a trip to Disneyland for all of us. So, it isn't like Disney is totally out of the picture.

You have an office with your own lights...

...so why do you have to turn on all the other lights?

Friday, October 27, 2006

A Life Plan

It's time to make a life plan. It is time to figure out what is most important. Time to figure out what the ideal life would be. What the things are that will make me happy. Then the challenge is to go after those and make them reality. Corporate America isn't going to make it a reality. I've been riding in their boat and they seem to enjoy rocking it while threatening to sink it.

It's time to build my own boat.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Corporate America Sucks

There is no doubt about it. It totally sucks. There is no soul in there. There is no life to be found.

Friday, September 29, 2006

ESPN Mobile is shutting down...

Who could've seen this coming? They were charging way too much for this service. Now they will just license the content to others, which is what they should have been doing from the beginning. This concept of a 'premium' cellphone provider is a faulty one. I wonder what this means for somebody like Helio now?

Disney outsources the cleaning at Walt Disney World...

A lot of people already thought the cleaning was subpar, so I guess it will get worse. It will be a miracle if outsourced work is an improvement over the original internal work. I've never seen quality go up via this method of passing the buck before.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Kazahkstan doesn't like Borat...so what...

"The Government has expressed its displeasure about Borat's representation of our country.

"Our opinion of the character has not changed.

"We understand that the film exposes the hypocrisy that exists both here in the USA and in the UK and understand that Mr Cohen has a right to freedom of speech.

"Nursultan Nazarbayev has taken Mr Bush up on an invitation to visit this country to help build our relationship with the USA.

"I cannot speak for the president himself, only for the government, but I certainly don't think President Nazarbayev and Mr Bush will share a joke about the film.

"The bottom line is we want people to know that he does not represent the true people of Kazakhstan."

The Kazakh government has previously threatened Baron-Cohen with legal action, for allowing Borat to, among other things, make fun of his homeland, demean women, slander gypsies and urge listeners to "Throw the Jew Down the Well."

Friday, June 23, 2006

Bruce Arena reveals he has no tactics.

After a "1998-ish" World Cup debacle by the US national team, it has been revealed for all to see that Bruce Arena has no tactics hidden away in his mind. They must have accomplished their 2002 feat on hard work and surprising the other teams. Nobody was going to be surprised this time, so you needed some surprising tactics to gain an advantage. Especially if you run into a problem where some players are not properly motivated, or they are outclassed unexpectedly, you need a tactical mind to overcome it. Unfortunately, he was not able to overcome this.

For that reason, he should be sacked. However, the problem we have is that I believe he is clearly the best American available for the job. Fortunately, this is a global game and we can choose someone from afar that can guide the team to the next level. Limited ourselves to only what our own domestic coaches can attain is going to hold our players back. It is time to move on. National pride be damned, because we now have players who are more capable than our coaching.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Ottawa Senators choke and exit the playoffs...

Once again, the Ottawa Senators have underachieved and seen an early exit from the playoffs. Three tries in the playoffs against the Sabres and they have been defeated. The very first time they made the playoffs they pushed Buffalo to 7 games. The second time they were swept. This last time they were almost swept and struggled to take it to 5 games before losing the series with an OT shorthanded goal from Buffalo.

Go figure. The only thing I am certain of now is that Jacques Martin, Patrick Lalime, Alexei Yashin, and Radek Bonk were not responsible for the problems in previous playoff disappointments.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Even at Walt Disney World, thieves rule the day...

There has been a myth going around that nobody does evil things at Walt Disney World. That myth should be shattered forever. While recently attempting to spend several days at WDW, someone got the nerve to steal our camera. Shame on us for bringing such an expensive camera ($1500+), I suppose, but the real shame should be on the thief. Another share of the shame goes to Disney Security and Orange County's Sheriff Department, who were more interested in treating us like criminals than dealing properly with the situation.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

No tolerance for "zero tolerance" laws/rules

We have the ability to think and reason. We should be expected to use this in every aspect of our lives. "Zero tolerance" is an attempt to remove human reason and judgment. It is an attempt to turn us into robots and not allow us to make decisions, even punishments, based upon the available evidence. I don't know why they are so popular, but they are certainly not fair. Punishments do not need to be equal across the board for fairness and equality. Punishments should be different based on the incident and those involved.

I've, thankfully, not been caught up in any sort of "zero tolerance" enforcement, but I do wish the concept would die away. Humans are capable of much more and should not be legislating artificial caps on our own abilities.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Free market capitalist no more...

This is no essay, as I am prone to say. I am not documenting anything. I am just posting some thoughts. That's what my blog is.

I used to believe that the answers to all, or most ills, could be found through a free and open market. That people would not do business with bad companies. That the government did not need excessive regulation because people would do business with the companies who did things the right ways. That the companies, their executives, and their shareholders would do the right things because the market would not tolerate the wrong things...

I began to have doubts with the numerous financial scandals that began to break over the past several years. All of that is still shaking out and more are being discovered. I have had to admit that these people were not doing the right things and the market was buying up all their lies and some people made a whole lot of money while others lost a whole lot of money. Some totally innocent people, such as the employees of these corporations, may have ended up with less than nothing thanks to losing pensions, 401ks, their jobs, and then their homes.

Sure, the government is attempting to do their proper job by holding these men responsible for these crimes against society. But justice really takes a long time and these guys have a lot of money to assemble the best defense that money can buy. Meanwhile, the government has made it harder for those who lost their lunch to declare bankruptcy. In the end, big corporations ended up ahead of the average person once again.

Walmart is a company that is busy driving down wages, driving down benefits, driving down property values, and is putting cash in the hands of the Chinese government by being almost-singlehandedly responsible for our ever-growing trade imbalance with China. To further turn my stomach, they drape themselves in the red, white, and blue of the American flag to generate some sort of patriotic feeling amongst the consumers. They benefit, in major ways, from eminent domain land grabs. If they really are such a great company and believe in the free market, why aren't they buying the land for their stores via the same free market?

I no longer think that the market, as a whole, has the ability to rein in problem corporations. The majority of people just are not willing, or do not have the time, to make sure they are properly informed and do business with companies that do the right thing. Another side is that, as a result of this 'race to the bottom' across all industries, a lot more people can no longer afford to do business with the good companies and are forced to do business with, and seek employment with, companies that they would not ideally have anything at all to do with.

I used to believe in Milton Friedman, but a lot of what has happened over the past 5 or 6 years has really changed my mind. The shine came off for good when I found out he may have played a very significant role in the "payroll withholdings" scam that the government employs to steal our money throughout the year instead of submitting taxes at the end of each year.

Just a few thoughts while waiting on slow computers to respond on a Sunday morning at work...

Friday, January 20, 2006

For those of you against "gay marriage"...

...that think a popular vote is the way to determine who gets that right...

Understand that interracial marriage has only been legal, in every state of the US, since 1967. That is less than 40 years ago. It is also quite probable that, if left up to popular opinion, "The South" would have never desegregated its society. There are just some things that cannot, and should not, be decided by popular vote.

I have no horse in this race, but it seems rather silly for people to get so upset about it. Absolutely no one has made a sound case that same-gender marriage causes any harm to any person, nor how any non-consenting adults might end up being forced into one.

From Wikipedia...

In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, many American states passed anti-miscegenation laws, often based on interpretations of the Bible, particularly the story of Phinehas. Typically a felony, these laws prohibited the solemnization of weddings between persons of different races and prohibited the officiating of such ceremonies. Sometimes the individuals attempting to marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself, but felony charges of adultery or fornication would brought against them instead (Vermont was the only state to never introduce such legislation). The constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1883 case Pace v. Alabama. In 1965, Virginia trial court judge Leon Bazile sentenced to jail an interracial couple who got married in Washington, D.C., writing:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

This decision was eventually overturned in 1967, 84 years after Pace v. Alabama, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Loving v. Virginia that

Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.

At the time that anti-miscegenation laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, 16 states still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Those laws were not completely repealed until November 2000, when Alabama became the last state to repeal its law. According to Salon.com:

...after a statewide vote in a special election, Alabama became the last state to overturn a law that was an ugly reminder of America's past, a ban on interracial marriage. The one-time home of George Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr. had held onto the provision for 33 years after the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Yet as the election revealed -- 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep the ban -- many people still see the necessity for a law that prohibits blacks and whites from mixing blood.

The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, also known as Hays Code, explicitly stated that the depiction of "miscegenation... is forbidden."

Saturday, January 14, 2006

A Year at WDW...

You can click on the title above to go to the website.

The basic premise is that this 19 year old saved up $100k and is going to spend 6 days out of every week at WDW for a year. I love the idea and wish I had done it when I was younger myself!

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Legal rights for uncredentialed photographers...

If anyone happens to see this, by chance, do you know an expert on the legal rights for photographers at sporting events? Specifically non-credentialed photographers at NHL games?

Just looking for a little help with some questions.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Paint your own house, offshore outsourcing asshole!

I was listening to NPR this morning and heard a story about a surfboard maker who has the foam core for his boards made in China. When confronted that he is a part of the problem, which forces entire industries to go entirely offshore (well, except for the US-based executive team), he makes the (probably trademarked by now) excuse "I am just following global trends."

To make matters worse, he says anybody put out of work by this sort of activity should spend their "unplanned vacation" by "painting their house" or better yet "go surfing."

How about...make your boards entirely in the United States if you are only selling them here. Don't have work done in other countries that you do not sell your service or product in. It really is not that hard, is it?