Ouch! This Hits Home

I just saw this commercial that features rugby and nothing but rugby. That’s a pretty rare event, and it definitely got my attention. But a 39 year old scrum half? That club must be hard up for players. Not only is that old, but this guy reminds me of my all time favorite inside center. He wasn’t known for his perfect passes as much as he was for spiking people and wearing a green monkey that could hold a pint of liquid.  So this is for you Toddy.

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The Missus just asked if this commercial made me want to go to that church. Nah, not really, but it made me want to write this post, and it made me glad to be retired from rugby. 🙂

Miami Drivers Unite!

Quick!  Take the opportunity this power outage has provided you to prove to the world once and for all that you are the biggest collection of jackasses alive.

We were just watching Fox News here at work and they’re showing a busy intersection (79th and 10th I think) where the stoplights are out.  People are just cruising right through at high speeds like total morons.

And what the hell is the police department doing?  They showed a couple of motorcycle cops cruise through exactly like the rest of the drivers.  It doesn’t take a PR genius to realize that this exact intersection is on worldwide TV and that you need to get this one taken care of–force the, ahem, “news” people to find another intersection to film idiot drivers.  Then again, I guess they’d only have to go a block or so to get the exact same footage.

All Your Children Are Belong To Us

At least one state senator, DiAnna Schimek, in Nebraska thinks so.

Her bill would require home-school students to take state-mandated tests or have their schoolwork assessed by an outside evaluator. If studentsprogress falls short academically, they would be sent to public or private schools.

That’s ironic.  One major factor in parents’ decision to homeschool in the first place is that the State doesn’t seem to measure up to their standards.  This would actually make sense if the schools and parents swapped roles–parents should be mandating standards to the State, not the other way around.

“Our responsibility is to see that the children of the state do have access to an education,” she said. “That’s a constitutional responsibility.”

The children of the state?  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt–I’m sure she misspoke and meant to say “the children who live in our state”.  Surely.  And while I’m sure Nebraska is constitutionally bound to provide access, are they constitutionally bound to force participation?  My guess is no.

I don’t know anything about the governor of Nebraska except that he is correct in his assessment of the bill:

“The bill presents a heavy-handed, state government regulatory approach to this issue which, in my view, is not warranted,” Heineman said in a statement. “It dramatically infringes on Nebraska parents’ choices regarding the education of their children.”

According to the article, this lady’s husband is a lobbyist for a teachers’ union, but that doesn’t influence her.  Right.

She said her concern comes from the stories she hears about students who are kept out of public or private schools but receive little to no schooling.

She heard some stories.  She should have said that in the beginning.  My bad.  Never mind–totally justified.  It now makes perfect sense.

I Never Thought I’d Live To See It

Tennessee is the top ranked team in the nation? In basketball? Men’s basketball?

You have to understand, I attended the University of Tennessee during the reigns of Wade Houston and Kevin O’Neil. I was a pretty die hard fan back then. Of course it was easy to sit in the front row of the student section back then. But my memories of Tennessee basketball consist of Carlus Groves and Steve Rivers running their version of the shake and bake (mostly off the court bake), and poor Allan Houston carrying the load on his own. I guess that’s not totally fair. Houston had help from Token Lang Wiseman and Corey Allen. Of course they were canceled out by Gannon Goodson and Jay Price, both of whom I can vouch for as really nice guys, even if they weren’t great players.

Who would have thought back then that just 16 short years and…hang on, let me count them…four coaches later the Vols would be ranked #1?

Now that the big game is over and decided, it will be nice to hear local sports call in shows get back to talking about what really matters. Of course, I’m talking about football: “Guys, do you think we’ll beat Flarda this year?” and “When are they gonna git rid of Fulmer?”

See, basketball don’t really matter ’round here. Did you notice the players weren’t jumping up and down after the big win? It’s because all they care about is football too.

Or maybe they have class and they expected to win?

More LOST Than I’ve Ever Been

I’ve been thinking a lot today about last night’s episoe of Lost.  Why am I thinking about that?  Why not?  What would you have me think about?

Anyway, there are some spoilers here, so if you haven’t seen it yet stop reading.  Feed readers sometimes don’t pick up on the –more– from WordPress (that ruined this week’s episode of The Wire for me), so be extra careful.

Continue reading “More LOST Than I’ve Ever Been”

Yeah, What He Said

The other day I posted a meandering attempt at not ranting about information technology and the manufacturing sector. Today, Seth Godin wrote a post about basically the same thing. The difference is, his post actually makes some sense.

Talent is too smart to stay long at a company that wants it to be a cog in a machine. Great companies want and need talent, but they have to work for it.

Stop whatever you are doing and read the whole post. If you don’t read Seth, you probably should. Whether you are the guy running the show or the guy who sweeps the floors at night, he has great insight delivered daily for free.

And here’s a nice bit of irony for you…Seth Godin’s blog (for whatever reason) is blocked by our corporate IS department. Luckily, the concept of RSS feeds and readers hasn’t trickled down to them yet, so we can still read whatever we want through them.

Give them a few years and they’ll get Google Reader blocked as well.

BIG Manufacturing. Last to Know, Last to Go

I was mulling my current employment situation over yesterday, and I thought of something that I think not many people have realized yet. Dare I say this is a bold prediction?

Big manufacturing companies are notorious for being late adopters of technology. From my experience, technology tends to happen to them instead happening for them. Allowing this to continue is fast becoming a dangerous approach to business.

Manufacturers (especially the large ones) prefer to dictate the market (especially the labor market) instead of adjust to it. When the market changes, most adjust slowly and reluctantly. They’ve been successful thus far with this strategy, especially when dealing with their production work force. But they are quickly falling behind in dealing with their IT work force.

Why are they falling behind and why is this dangerous?  Because IT is becoming more and more integral in measuring and locating the biggest threat to manufacturing margins–inefficiencies.  The cost for entry into efficiency analysis technologies is becoming cheaper and cheaper, which allows smaller manufacturers with more agile and hungry management to tool up with the same resources as BIG manufacturers.  As a result, the demand for those with the skills to implement these technologies is growing.

Many big manufactures haven’t tooled themselves to the point of realizing that their old methods of measuring inefficiency are themselves inefficient.

By being late adopters, many BIG manufactures are getting a late start to using the technology available to them, and even those who catch on early run the risk of losing their talent to market forces over which their control is diminishing because of their “business as usual” mentality.

Want to see what technology can do to big industries that try to maintain the status quo in changing marketplaces?  Check out what is happening to some other “bigs”–namely BIG music and BIG newspapers.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m completely wrong.  Time will tell.

In This Year of Political Calls For Change

I decided to make a few changes in my career today. Well, I didn’t actually decide today. I just put the wheels in motion officially. So there’s a good chance that I’ll be available for anyone who needs BI, software development, or sys admin work done. Of course, only high rollers need apply. I hit the ground running in two short weeks.

Might as well quote another Van Halen song while I’m at it…

Change, nothin’ stays the same
Unchained, and ya hit the ground runnin’
Change, ain’t nothin’ stays the same
Unchained, yeah ya hit the ground runnin’

Patrick Henry Would Have Loved David Lee Roth

Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” But that was before DLR and Sammy Hagar left Van Halen. I asked my readers to choose to replace the word death with a Democrat, a Republican, Michael Bloomberg, or VH with Gary Cherone. Cherone was chosen by 38% of respondents.

That means that Cherone is not just capable of killing the ultimate party band. He’s also the equivalent to real death in many people’s minds.