the first few weeks I had it and Dell had to send me a new hard drive. After the new hard drive was installed, the machine worked reasonably well, but it never quite hummed along as well as I would have liked. Frequently, Microsoft programs would freeze up or just stop working. I also had to deal with an occasional "blue screen of death," which would require me to power the computer down and re-boot it. Well, last week the wifi connection stopped working. One moment I was surfing the internet using our secure wifi connection, and the next moment I am being prompted for the logon and password for a proxy server. I tried everything I could to get the Inspiron to work, but this morning I gave up. I transferred all my personal files onto a back-up hard drive and I am now trying to re-install Windows Vista. I fear that the problem with my computer is a hardware issue, not a software issue. However, I needed to do something to try to fix the computer. I am now using one of our spare laptops (oh stop even thinking that we have too much technology here East of the Equator) while I try to re-install Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. Wish me luck.Saturday, January 31, 2009
I am mad as Dell and I am not going to take it anymore!
Late in 2007, I purchased a Dell Inspiron laptop to replace my older Dell laptop. It arrived on cold wintry day in November, 2007, and from the start, I had problems with it. It never quite worked right 
the first few weeks I had it and Dell had to send me a new hard drive. After the new hard drive was installed, the machine worked reasonably well, but it never quite hummed along as well as I would have liked. Frequently, Microsoft programs would freeze up or just stop working. I also had to deal with an occasional "blue screen of death," which would require me to power the computer down and re-boot it. Well, last week the wifi connection stopped working. One moment I was surfing the internet using our secure wifi connection, and the next moment I am being prompted for the logon and password for a proxy server. I tried everything I could to get the Inspiron to work, but this morning I gave up. I transferred all my personal files onto a back-up hard drive and I am now trying to re-install Windows Vista. I fear that the problem with my computer is a hardware issue, not a software issue. However, I needed to do something to try to fix the computer. I am now using one of our spare laptops (oh stop even thinking that we have too much technology here East of the Equator) while I try to re-install Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. Wish me luck.
the first few weeks I had it and Dell had to send me a new hard drive. After the new hard drive was installed, the machine worked reasonably well, but it never quite hummed along as well as I would have liked. Frequently, Microsoft programs would freeze up or just stop working. I also had to deal with an occasional "blue screen of death," which would require me to power the computer down and re-boot it. Well, last week the wifi connection stopped working. One moment I was surfing the internet using our secure wifi connection, and the next moment I am being prompted for the logon and password for a proxy server. I tried everything I could to get the Inspiron to work, but this morning I gave up. I transferred all my personal files onto a back-up hard drive and I am now trying to re-install Windows Vista. I fear that the problem with my computer is a hardware issue, not a software issue. However, I needed to do something to try to fix the computer. I am now using one of our spare laptops (oh stop even thinking that we have too much technology here East of the Equator) while I try to re-install Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
What a week... and it is only Wednesday
It has been a pretty wild week and there are still a couple more days to go. In my most recent post, I talked about the profits my employer made last year, despite the tough economic conditions seen for the last half of 2008. To be frank, I am busier now at work than I was just a few short months ago, but I think that I am busier because I am able to do so much more as I have learned about the skills needed to do my job. Over the course of the past few days the following companies have announced major layoffs:
Caterpillar
Boeing
Home Depot
Sprint Nextel
Stabucks
Pfizer
TDK
Alcoa
ING
Texas Instruments
Microsoft
Harley-Davidson
On Monday, 26 January, the companies listed above and a host of others announced
layoffs totaling over 70,000 jobs. That is a lot of people. People who have a car payment or a mortgage or medical bills or some other life expense. This economic downturn appears to be much deeper than most economists expected. And for the record, I use the term "economist" loosely. In my professional experience, the economists I have met are people who wanted to be mathematics majors in college but could not do the math required to be a mathematics major. Most of the economist I see as a talking head on one one of a dozen different news channels can usually tell why some company failed or why some industry go to the sorry state it is in, but can rarely, if ever, provide a path to prosperity for the aforementioned company or industry.
I have been told on more than one occasion that I am a "glass half full kind of person." I suppose that is true. My mother said to my spouse once when she was asked what kind of child I was, "Well, he was always a happy baby." I am confident that despite all of the sour economic news and dire predictions by economists, the economy of the United States will rebound. It might take a year, or even 18 months, but it will come back. Through the history of the Republic, there have been recessions, runs on banks, credit crunches and a Great Depression that lasted more than a decade. I would like to think that we as a nation have learned from the mistakes of the past and actions will be taken to get the country moving again.
The new administration is touting an economic stimulus package that will cost somewhere between $800M and $1T dollars. That is a lot of cash and I fear that the next few generations might be left paying that bill. However, inaction at this moment in time could be even more dangerous than doing something. President Hoover was criticized (again after the fact by economists) for not taking action quickly enough after Black Tuesday, 29 October, 1929. President Hoover was voted out of office in 1932 and President Roosevelt took immediate actions to try to get the U.S. economy moving. Now, I am not making comparisons between 1932 and 2009, but the point I want to make is any action that will improve the perception of the public that this economic trouble will pass as all other have is a good thing.
I will continue to be optimistic about where the country will be in a year or two. I am old enough to remember the inflation and interest rates of the late 1970s, and I certainly remember the boon years of the 1990s. Call me hopelessly optimistic, but I am what I am. The U.S. economy will be back and it will be back with a vengeance.
Caterpillar
Boeing
Home Depot
Sprint Nextel
Stabucks
Pfizer
TDK
Alcoa
ING
Texas Instruments
Microsoft
Harley-Davidson
On Monday, 26 January, the companies listed above and a host of others announced
layoffs totaling over 70,000 jobs. That is a lot of people. People who have a car payment or a mortgage or medical bills or some other life expense. This economic downturn appears to be much deeper than most economists expected. And for the record, I use the term "economist" loosely. In my professional experience, the economists I have met are people who wanted to be mathematics majors in college but could not do the math required to be a mathematics major. Most of the economist I see as a talking head on one one of a dozen different news channels can usually tell why some company failed or why some industry go to the sorry state it is in, but can rarely, if ever, provide a path to prosperity for the aforementioned company or industry.I have been told on more than one occasion that I am a "glass half full kind of person." I suppose that is true. My mother said to my spouse once when she was asked what kind of child I was, "Well, he was always a happy baby." I am confident that despite all of the sour economic news and dire predictions by economists, the economy of the United States will rebound. It might take a year, or even 18 months, but it will come back. Through the history of the Republic, there have been recessions, runs on banks, credit crunches and a Great Depression that lasted more than a decade. I would like to think that we as a nation have learned from the mistakes of the past and actions will be taken to get the country moving again.
The new administration is touting an economic stimulus package that will cost somewhere between $800M and $1T dollars. That is a lot of cash and I fear that the next few generations might be left paying that bill. However, inaction at this moment in time could be even more dangerous than doing something. President Hoover was criticized (again after the fact by economists) for not taking action quickly enough after Black Tuesday, 29 October, 1929. President Hoover was voted out of office in 1932 and President Roosevelt took immediate actions to try to get the U.S. economy moving. Now, I am not making comparisons between 1932 and 2009, but the point I want to make is any action that will improve the perception of the public that this economic trouble will pass as all other have is a good thing.
I will continue to be optimistic about where the country will be in a year or two. I am old enough to remember the inflation and interest rates of the late 1970s, and I certainly remember the boon years of the 1990s. Call me hopelessly optimistic, but I am what I am. The U.S. economy will be back and it will be back with a vengeance.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The General made $18.1B in 2008
I am not going to say that the economy right now is a pretty tough place. The December 
unemployment rate for Michigan was just released and it was a 10.8%. Business are closing and I am reminded of that each day I drive into work and look at the Grand Rapids Circuit City with a big sign that says, "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS." However, where you stand depends on where you sit. My employer posted in Q4 earnings yesterday and reported profits of $18,100,000,000. That's 18.1 billion dollars. What was reported in the news? "GE profits down 44% from 2007." Well, almost all companies saw their profits drop in 2008, but my company still made money. To give you a sense of how much 18.1 billion dollars represents, in 2008 my employer made a profit slightly less than the entire gross domestic product of Denmark. This profit was based on revenue of $183 billion. That is an amount slightly less than the gross domestic product of the country of Malaysia. Times are tough, but there is still tremendous opportunity out there. I continue to work hard each day to improve my employer's position in the economy and I am also optimistic about the future.
unemployment rate for Michigan was just released and it was a 10.8%. Business are closing and I am reminded of that each day I drive into work and look at the Grand Rapids Circuit City with a big sign that says, "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS." However, where you stand depends on where you sit. My employer posted in Q4 earnings yesterday and reported profits of $18,100,000,000. That's 18.1 billion dollars. What was reported in the news? "GE profits down 44% from 2007." Well, almost all companies saw their profits drop in 2008, but my company still made money. To give you a sense of how much 18.1 billion dollars represents, in 2008 my employer made a profit slightly less than the entire gross domestic product of Denmark. This profit was based on revenue of $183 billion. That is an amount slightly less than the gross domestic product of the country of Malaysia. Times are tough, but there is still tremendous opportunity out there. I continue to work hard each day to improve my employer's position in the economy and I am also optimistic about the future.Monday, January 19, 2009
A FEW RAMBLING THOUGHTS...
OK, I have not updated this blog on over two weeks. So sue me if you are unhappy. However, I have been busy with my other blog, and I have not added much to this one because, frankly, I have not had much to say. Now, on the eve of the inauguration of our next President, I do. Thus, it begins.
I have been watching the news coverage of the events leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Obama and most everything has been upbeat and positive. A lot is being said about the change that will be wrought by his administration, and how this is change we can believe in. I think that it is important to understand that in the November election, President-elect Obama garnered 53% of the popular vote while his opponent had 47% of the vote. The Electoral College went clearly in to Obama's favor, where he posted a 365-173 vote win. While then Senator Obama had a 2-1 margin over Senator McCain in the Electoral College, his margin of victory in the pluralist vote was a mere 6 percent. This means that while the majority of people in the United States voted for Senator Obama, over 59 million people voted for his opponent. What I am trying to express is that while Obama won the election, his margin of victory was not that great. He has his work cut out for him. The U.S. economy is having a lot of problems right now, the Federal spending deficit is approaching a trillion dollars this year, and we are still trying to fight and defeat an ephemeral enemy who hides behind religion to justify why killing civilians is an acceptable practice in this struggle with the U.S. and all that it represents.
The past two weeks I have heard about how "historical" tomorrow's inauguration will be and those words ring hollow to me. What is historical about the inauguration tomorrow is not that the junior Senator from Illinois won, but rather that there will be a peaceful
and lawful exchange of power from one person to the next for a position that is, despite recent events, the most powerful this planet has ever known. After the election last November, the people who did not vote for the winner did not take to the streets in protest. Rather, they accepted that rule of law and that the majority of people voted for one candidate or another. That, dear reader, is what is so extraordinary about the recent election. While and individual voter might bitch and moan that their candidate did not win, but that we all, as Americans, accept that results of each election as vox populi, the voice of the people. Sure, in 2 or 4 years hence, the people on the short side of this election might work a little harder to convince their friends and neighbors why voting for the incumbent just does not make sense based on his or her actions the since the last election. However, the democratic process endures here as it has since 1776 when a group of angry citizens took up arms against the most powerful nation in the world at that time, pledging "our lives, our fortunes and out sacred honor" and made the change can still be felt today.
I wish the new President well. As I wrote above, his plate is full. Some companies in the U.S. are fighting to survive, the financial markets are in shambles and there are threats abroad that will require the expenditure of the nation's blood and treasure to secure its future. Whomever sits in the Oval Office daily lives this phrase from Henry IV: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The President of the United States wears a virtual crown every day in office, and must constantly be on guard to protect the citizens and national interests of the country. To think that for even a day or a moment that whomever is President does not think about the awesome responsibility of the office is absurd. These past eight years, President Bush has worn that uneasy crown and he has take a tremendous amount of criticism for the actions he took or appeared not to take while in office. However, as President, he took the actions that he felt were in the best interests of the United States. He was no different that President Clinton, or Bush or Reagan or Carter or pick a former President. President Bush did what he thought was right and he will let history judge if his actions where correct or proper.
As Colin Power said as one of his tenants of leadership, "Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off." President Truman lived this tenant throughout his presidency. He fired General MacArthur, fought constantly with Congress and made some unpopular decisions regarding economic and domestic policy. When he left office, Truman was one of the most unpopular chief executives in history. His job approval rating of 22 percent in the Gallup Poll as of February 1952 was actually lower than Richard Nixon's was in August 1974 at 24 percent, the month that Nixon resigned. Public feeling toward Truman grew steadily warmer with the passing years, however, and the period shortly after his death consolidated a partial rehabilitation among both historians and members of the general public. Since leaving office, Truman has fared well in polls ranking the presidents. He has never been listed lower than ninth, and most recently was seventh in a Wall Street Journal poll in 2005.
What I am trying to say is, the jury is still out on President Bush. Many people today despise him for what they feel has done, or not done. However, you cannot judge the work of a President in the time they are in office or even for years after they leave. History will eventually judge whether President Bush was good, bad or indifferent.
I wish President-elect Obama well. I hope that he can deliver change we can believe in as was often said during his campaign. He is taking on an enormous responsibility with a resume that is short on executive leadership. Being a Senator does not mean that you have executive leadership experience. Being a Senator means that you are a member of a very exclusive deliberative body, one where leadership is demonstrated by consensus building. Frankly, I have more executive leadership experience than the President-elect. Being President, as Harry S. Truman knew meant that the buck stopped in the Oval Office. President-elect Obama will soon learn the true meaning of what it means to be in charge.
So, tomorrow, a little after 12 noon eastern standard time, the greatest nation the world has ever known will witness an event that is not extraordinary in what is occurring, but rather that it is occurring at all. The lawful and peaceful transition of authority and responsibility of the Presidency. That, dear reader, is what is so extraordinary and fantastic about what happens the 20th of January on the western steps of the U.S. Capital every four years.
I have been watching the news coverage of the events leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Obama and most everything has been upbeat and positive. A lot is being said about the change that will be wrought by his administration, and how this is change we can believe in. I think that it is important to understand that in the November election, President-elect Obama garnered 53% of the popular vote while his opponent had 47% of the vote. The Electoral College went clearly in to Obama's favor, where he posted a 365-173 vote win. While then Senator Obama had a 2-1 margin over Senator McCain in the Electoral College, his margin of victory in the pluralist vote was a mere 6 percent. This means that while the majority of people in the United States voted for Senator Obama, over 59 million people voted for his opponent. What I am trying to express is that while Obama won the election, his margin of victory was not that great. He has his work cut out for him. The U.S. economy is having a lot of problems right now, the Federal spending deficit is approaching a trillion dollars this year, and we are still trying to fight and defeat an ephemeral enemy who hides behind religion to justify why killing civilians is an acceptable practice in this struggle with the U.S. and all that it represents.
The past two weeks I have heard about how "historical" tomorrow's inauguration will be and those words ring hollow to me. What is historical about the inauguration tomorrow is not that the junior Senator from Illinois won, but rather that there will be a peaceful
and lawful exchange of power from one person to the next for a position that is, despite recent events, the most powerful this planet has ever known. After the election last November, the people who did not vote for the winner did not take to the streets in protest. Rather, they accepted that rule of law and that the majority of people voted for one candidate or another. That, dear reader, is what is so extraordinary about the recent election. While and individual voter might bitch and moan that their candidate did not win, but that we all, as Americans, accept that results of each election as vox populi, the voice of the people. Sure, in 2 or 4 years hence, the people on the short side of this election might work a little harder to convince their friends and neighbors why voting for the incumbent just does not make sense based on his or her actions the since the last election. However, the democratic process endures here as it has since 1776 when a group of angry citizens took up arms against the most powerful nation in the world at that time, pledging "our lives, our fortunes and out sacred honor" and made the change can still be felt today.I wish the new President well. As I wrote above, his plate is full. Some companies in the U.S. are fighting to survive, the financial markets are in shambles and there are threats abroad that will require the expenditure of the nation's blood and treasure to secure its future. Whomever sits in the Oval Office daily lives this phrase from Henry IV: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The President of the United States wears a virtual crown every day in office, and must constantly be on guard to protect the citizens and national interests of the country. To think that for even a day or a moment that whomever is President does not think about the awesome responsibility of the office is absurd. These past eight years, President Bush has worn that uneasy crown and he has take a tremendous amount of criticism for the actions he took or appeared not to take while in office. However, as President, he took the actions that he felt were in the best interests of the United States. He was no different that President Clinton, or Bush or Reagan or Carter or pick a former President. President Bush did what he thought was right and he will let history judge if his actions where correct or proper.
As Colin Power said as one of his tenants of leadership, "Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off." President Truman lived this tenant throughout his presidency. He fired General MacArthur, fought constantly with Congress and made some unpopular decisions regarding economic and domestic policy. When he left office, Truman was one of the most unpopular chief executives in history. His job approval rating of 22 percent in the Gallup Poll as of February 1952 was actually lower than Richard Nixon's was in August 1974 at 24 percent, the month that Nixon resigned. Public feeling toward Truman grew steadily warmer with the passing years, however, and the period shortly after his death consolidated a partial rehabilitation among both historians and members of the general public. Since leaving office, Truman has fared well in polls ranking the presidents. He has never been listed lower than ninth, and most recently was seventh in a Wall Street Journal poll in 2005.
What I am trying to say is, the jury is still out on President Bush. Many people today despise him for what they feel has done, or not done. However, you cannot judge the work of a President in the time they are in office or even for years after they leave. History will eventually judge whether President Bush was good, bad or indifferent.
I wish President-elect Obama well. I hope that he can deliver change we can believe in as was often said during his campaign. He is taking on an enormous responsibility with a resume that is short on executive leadership. Being a Senator does not mean that you have executive leadership experience. Being a Senator means that you are a member of a very exclusive deliberative body, one where leadership is demonstrated by consensus building. Frankly, I have more executive leadership experience than the President-elect. Being President, as Harry S. Truman knew meant that the buck stopped in the Oval Office. President-elect Obama will soon learn the true meaning of what it means to be in charge.
So, tomorrow, a little after 12 noon eastern standard time, the greatest nation the world has ever known will witness an event that is not extraordinary in what is occurring, but rather that it is occurring at all. The lawful and peaceful transition of authority and responsibility of the Presidency. That, dear reader, is what is so extraordinary and fantastic about what happens the 20th of January on the western steps of the U.S. Capital every four years.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Slacker Update
OK, it has been a week since I updated my blog. Mea culpa. However, looking after Deirdre is nothing short of a full time job. I needed to take a couple days of vacation before the General shut down for the year, so I was off 23 & 24 December. Having those two days off enabled me to plan all the meals I wanted to make over the holiday break, as well as to pick up the ingredients I needed. Deirdre worked until the Kingdom shut down at 4:30PM on the 24th, so I was able to move freely to make certain that when I picked her up from work on Christmas Eve that we would not have to go out for much of any reason until well after Christmas. I am happy to report that I accomplished that objective.Originally, our plan was to spend Christmas Eve at home and I was going to prepare one of Deirdre's favorite meals. However, that changed on or about 22 December. Our Grand Rapids parent, Bud & Barbara, invited us to have dinner with them on Christmas Eve. We were just going to meet them for a drink that night, but when Barbara called Dee to ask us over for dinner, Deirdre said we would be happy to join them, but only if they let us take them to the Amtrak station on Christmas Morning. A bit more background on that. One of Bud & Barbara's children live in Chicago and their plan was to take the train there on Christmas morning to spend a few days together. The train leaves daily at 7:35AM from the station, and at first Barbara politely refused our offer to take them there. She felt that it was too much of an imposition on us to get up so early to get them to the station on time. Barbara's plan was to "take a cab." We would have none of that. Our dinner with them on Christmas Eve was nothing short of fantastic and Barbara clearly appreciated that we would be taking them to the train station on Christmas morning.
Samson woke us up on Christmas at his customary time of 5:45AM. We tended to his immediate needs, then headed out at 6:30AM to pick up Bud and Barbara.
If you look at the two previous posts in this blog, you will see that we had a bit of nasty weather to deal with starting on 21 December. Close to two feet of snow fell from 21-24 December, which ensured a "White Christmas," but it made for horrible driving conditions. The roads on Christmas Day were nasty, but thanks to Deirdre's tank, the drive that morning was unremarkable. We got them to the station a little before 7AM and just before we dropped them off, Barbara thanked us again, saying that she was concerned about a cab actually coming to get them that morning. We were, of course, happy to help them. We returned home, woke up Samson and then enjoyed a very relaxing Christmas holiday.We had a fairly busy weekend after Christmas. Our friends Dave and Aileen were married on Saturday, 27 December, and Deirdre served as their photographer. I helped Deirdre with her lenses, tripod and monpod, and after the ceremony was done, we were able to enjoy ourselves at the reception.
Deirdre and I also marked a milestone the past week. On 1 January, we celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe
that on a warm, sunny New Year's Day in Guam that Deirdre took my hand in marriage. We looked back on our time together and we realized that we have spent perhaps 8 of those 22 years under one roof. Indeed, I have spent more time at home in the year that has passed since I retired from the Navy than I had in the previous five years. We also reflected on 2008. While it was a difficult year in many ways, it was a pretty incredible year for us. I also want to report that we have great expectations for 2009.I was back at work on Friday, 2 January. Most of my co-workers took that day off, but there were things that I needed to do in support of the programs I am working. Because Deirdre worked on Christmas Eve, she was off on the 2nd. Thus, she and Samson barely moved as I got up to go to work Friday morning. However, tomorrow we will be back in our routine. As ever, updated to follow as conditions warrant.
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