Work Vent
Here at Skyce we have this plotter (A plotter is a rather large printer that prints construction drawings and sheets that are 24x36). Plotters are very expensive machines generally in the 3-15K range. When I first got hired here about 2 years ago I found one for the company an HP and it worked well since that time. Most of our hiccups centered around the wireless network because we had a Mac hookup and when our PC machines needed to print there was the inevitable conflict - but we always got those fixed. Late last week the plotter crapped out. The rollers on the printer jammed and we spent a day trying to get HP out here to fix the machine. They sent someone out here on Monday - who actually made the problem worse! Now the printer wont even stay on! Everyday since Monday someone from HP has been here working on the machine and it still is not working! UGH! Damn it! At what point should they just give us a brand new Plotter! Anyway, hopefully they will get the new part on Monday and we will be back in business but in the mean time I am out here now shopping for another plotter as a back up! What a mess!
Week in Business in Review
Every week Wizbang publishes this week's business news. I am going to try to keep it cross posted here because there are some very interesting numbers and stats. He tends to change the stats every week one week he will focus on the the subprime mortgage crises..or other times basic stats like inflation rates. Here is this weeks post - Enjoy - if you are a geek and nerd like me! LOL
Posted by Jayson Javitz
Published: Sep 14, 07 07:01 AM
Federal Spending + Revenue
10% - decrease in federal budget deficit, August 06 - August 07
20% - increase in federal budget deficit, FY 06 - FY 07 (annualized)
27% - decrease in federal budget deficit, FY 04 - FY 07 (annualized)
Retail Sales
Overall retail sales in August rose 0.3%. That was below July's
upwardly-revised growth rate of 0.5%. Consumer spending accounts for
about 70% of all economic activity.
Health Insurance
The Kaiser Family Foundation released its annual survey of health
insurance costs and related items. This follows on the heels of a
recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau on incomes, insurance and
poverty rates.
- 84.2% - Americans with health insurance coverage in 2006.
- 86.0% - Americans with health insurance coverage in 1999.
- 59.7% - Americans with employer-bought private health coverage in 2006.
- 63.9% - Americans with employer-bought private health coverage in 1999.
- Employers on average pay 73% of the cash premium costs for health
insurance coverage offered to insured families of four and they pay 85%
of the premium costs for employees who are single. Meaning that workers
on average are paying between 15% and 27% of the costs of premiums for
their employer-sponsored health coverages.
- The current growth rate of the combined health coverage premium
costs for employers and employees: (i) is lower than the growth rate of
total incomes for all Americans, and (ii) is less than the growth rate
of profits for American companies.
- The growth rate of the combined premium costs for employers and employees has slowed four consecutive years.
- For obvious reasons, the national liberal Democrat media's
reporting of these items was couched in the most negative, misleading,
and biased terms practicable.
Apple of the Street's Eyes
Apple sold its one millionth iPhone. Which raises an interesting
question: When young liberal-bot students drive their parents' Beamers
and Benzes to shopping malls to plunk down several hundred dollars on
iPhones do they complain about the economy on the way back to their
3,500 sq.-foot homes in the suburbs?
Hmm.
In any event, if you're still reflexively buying Apple's stock when
it rises you need to sit down and then read -- sentence-by-sentence --
the seminal investment treatises of Benjamin Graham.
OPEC + Energy Day Traders
OPEC announced an increase in actual production as opposed merely to
quotas. Meaning 500,000 additional net barrels of oil will be added to
the market. That same day, however, oil prices rose. Some of you might
have thought to yourselves: "Hey, wait a minute. If OPEC is raising
actual production then prices should have dropped. How could prices
have risen that same day? What gives?"
Well, over the short term the energy markets are driven by such
things as: carry trades, leveraged call options, short covering and put
option stop losses, momentum, and 200-day moving averages. Fundamentals
take a back seat. C'est la vie.
Value Investing
-- Leading private equity buyout firm, Carlyle Group, recently
raised $10 billion, of which 1/3 is earmarked for real estate. The firm
is considering further capitalization for potential buyouts of
financial services companies. All of which makes sense. For as the
Zoloft and Paxil brigades on CNBC continue foaming at the mouth,
regarding the putative "credit crunch" and related items, the smart
money out there will be looking for oversold and thus cheap buying
opportunities in the real estate and lending sectors.
-- Speaking of smart money and financial services companies,
multi-billionaire investor Joseph Lewis disclosed a huge investment in
fallen Wall Street icon Bear Stearns. Mr. Lewis purchased large chunks
of Bear Stearns' common stock in August. That's when the Lithium
brigades were selling in a panic over a couple of failed subprime hedge
funds owned by that company.
Strange Bedfellows -- NAFTA
Check out this roll call vote on a major amendment to a pending highway spending/infrastructure bill.
Sam Brownback and Barbara Boxer. Tom Coburn and Ted Kennedy. Bernie
Sanders and Jeff Sessions. All voting together. James Inhofe and John
Kerry too. Like peas in pods. That's what happens when you combine a
GOP administration's desire fully to implement NAFTA and (gulp) Mexican
long-haul trucks.
Long-term political observers will not find that vote too
surprising, however. Exhibit A: Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan joined at
the hip in opposition to NAFTA back in 1993. Business politics in
general, and free trade politics in particular, make for strange
bedfellows. For reasons that should be quite obvious.
YAY - school update and Vacation update together!
YEAH BABY!!! My two classes are scheduled and set to begin on Sunday as expected!!! This should pay off my luggage and my recent car repair(s) and will easily allow me to get my plane tickets once I receive my passport! YIPPEE! So, it looks like Mid June I am thinking for my vacation! Very cool!!!!
Is he gay or straight? At a glance, the key to telling might be in the way he walks.
A swing of the hips or a swaggered shoulder is enough for many casual
observers to identify a man’s sexual orientation, according to a study
published in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology.
Observers were only able to accurately guess the sexual orientation of
men; with women, their guesses didn’t exceed chance. But what’s most
interesting to researchers is understanding how that snap judgment can
unleash a series of stereotypes — even from the most liberal-minded.
...
As the gay men walked, they slightly swayed their hips. The observers
were accurate in assessing the men's sexual orientation a little more
than 60 percent of the time.
“There’s reason to think that gay people can’t conceal their
homosexuality,†says Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at
Northwestern University. “I don’t think it’s a performance that gay
people enact. I think it’s something that either is inborn, or it’s
acquired very early, perhaps by watching members of the other sex.â€
Research such as Johnson's may give scientific credence to "gaydar,"
suggesting that people really can tell whether someone is gay or
straight from visual clues.
As the lesbians walked, they slightly moved their shoulders back and
forth — Johnson calls it a less exaggerated version of an Arnold
Schwarzenegger-type swagger.
But when it came to identifying the sexual orientation of the women, it was all up to chance.
We really need to get these people working on curing diseases. They
don't seem particularly bright, but they can at least wash test tubes
for the cause.
Friday Funnies
Monty Python is this week's funnies! On of the most enjoyable parts of life is laughter and humor and I try to always get my fill. My sister, in her infinite wisdom thinks I have an very odd sense of humor. Sometimes I agree.
There are some comedians and movies and blog articles for that matter that can get me laughing so much that I end up having tears in my eyes. That is such a fun feeling that I don't think happens enough. So one of the reasons I started going Friday funnies is sort of part of the reason why I quote so much from Ace's moron blog...its freaking funny! I hope you all enjoy these clips as much as I do.
Bring out your dead
This of course is where I got my comment when in Facebook Tasha said she is dead.
1
mine too
"Aziz? LIGHT!" LOL really funny! one of the best movie with Bruce Willis, a lot of great actors and... Milla Jovovich.. is so sweet (well.. also sexy hehe)!! the best scene is the one with Leeloo that continue to say "mul-ti-pass... multiiiiiiiii-paaaaaass" "leeloo multi-pass muuuuuultiiiiipaaaaasss" LOL LOL really, can't believe that it has been released in 1997!! here are a lot of quotes: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/quotes
Posted by: BHK72 at September 14, 2007 03:56 AM (gnqgE)
2
I liked Chris Tucker...as Ruby Rod. He was the plucky comic relief throughout the movie...his hair-do in the shape of a dick was just too funny!!! I tried to find a clip of him when we first meet him in the plane with Korben, but its not on youtube anymore.
Posted by: Robert Woolwine at September 14, 2007 06:13 AM (oHBxM)
Update
This week has been absolute hell....between the day job and the teaching. I have 3 classes going through finals now - 2 classes hopefully starting right back up again....and next week I found out I have to be back at my sister's watching the niece and nephew. I hope to have things back to normal be tomorrow... I hope!
Interesting polls - Is Osama Dead?
A few blogs I have been reading are running polls is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive? They tend to be running at about 60% are convinced OBL has ceased to be. Ace comes out and does one further. Here is his post:
Update: Osama bin Laden, Dead
I'll say it. Doesn't mean much when I say it, but let's put it out there anyway:
One does not need to stoop to transparent fakery to show a
"speech" from a man who is still alive and therefore capable of
delivering it in a more straightforward fashion.
No one, for example, ever spliced together old tapes of mine to create
a "new" Hoist the Black Flag show. It was far simpler to just get me to
record a new one.
But then, I had an advantage over Osama bin Laden. I wasn't dead.
So, you murderous monster, burn in Hell, eternally. I don't believe in
Hell, but I'm trying to will into being just for you, Pal.
And you thuggish imbeciles running Al Qaeda: Ha, ha. In trying to prove
your pederast coward of a "leader" was alive you proved he was dead.
Death is coming for all of you.
As the man said, "We will bury you."
Just like we buried your pederast princeling bin Laden.
So what do you think? Is Osama a dead parrot? Is he (as a commentor on Ace of Spades says - So now bin Laden and Muhammad are taking turns anally raping each other in Hell while Hitler jerks off in their beards.)? Inquiring minds want to know!
Bombing Iran???
Ok this is an interesting development. Various countries were working on a way to file economic sanctions against Iran. Today Germany basically pulled out. This sort of undercuts any opportunity to peacefully compel Iran to give up its Nuke research and now there is an even stronger likelihood that we will have to take action militarily against Iran. This is very interesting. Here is the scoop from Ace and Hot Air's Allahpundit Germany Refuses To Implement Sanctions, Washington Moves To Plan B: Bomb Iran
And Germany makes the surprise and indelicate public announcement that they will oppose such efforts.
They can't have it both ways. There may -- may -- be a small chance
that non-military methods can check the Iranian mullahs' nuclear
ambitions. They can either support this non-military method as they
like, or not; but some action will be taken.
As we've long thought, Europe is simply Chamberlainized beyond
redemption. It was this same nonsense, actually, that forced the war in
Iraq they so opposed.
Over at Hot Air, a digest of the buzz in DC;
full-scale bombing operations are being planned and everyone seems to
know it. Which is rather suspicious in itself; it does seem to a
deliberate leak designed to increase diplomatic leverage.
FoxNews says the timeframe is sometime in the "next 8-10 months," which
I suppose is just far enough off to allow the world to digest either it
can attempt to forestall this through real efforts to denuclearize Iran
themselves, or we will do it for them, using the means the most abhor.
From Allah's link, the real "Neocon Madmen" -- Iran's Mullahcracy -- trying to talk tough:
The new head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned the
United States Tuesday that Tehran has identified its "weak points" in
Iraq and Afghanistan and would launch a crushing response to any
attack. The comments by Mohammad Ali Jaafari, appointed head of the
elite force by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, just 10 days
ago, come amid mounting tensions between Tehran and Washington over
Iran's controversial nuclear drive and its role in Iraq.
"The Revolutionary Guards have identified all the weak points of the
enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan and based on this have consolidated the
defensive capabilities of the country," General Jaafari said.
"And if the enemy wants to take any impudent action the Islamic
Republic will for sure give a decisive and teeth-breaking response," he
said, according to state broadcasting.
Jaafari did not explicitly say that Iran would strike the US "weak
points" if attacked but Tehran has always warned of a tough response to
any aggression while insisting it would never initiate an attack.
I don't mean to be over-sanguine about war as I was before Iraq, but I
do know that the US military remains capable of at least one mission:
Utterly destroying and decapitating an enemy government/power structure
and rendering a country ungovernable and ungoverned.
At this point I'd gladly trade continuing chaos in Iraq for fresh anarchy and mayhem in Iran.
One Bush administration official said Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking
pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials
believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea. The administration official said Israeli officials believed that North Korea might be unloading some of its nuclear material on Syria.
“The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what
little they have left,†the official said. He said it was unclear
whether the Israeli strike had produced any evidence that might
validate that belief.
Meanwhile on Wednesday the Nazareth-based Israeli Arab
newspaper The Assennara cited anonymous Israeli sources as saying that
Israeli jets “bombed a Syrian-Iranian missile base in northern Syria
that was financed by Iran... It appears that the base was completely
destroyed.â€
Theme Videos
One of the best TV shows I ever enjoyed was Highlander (they made the original movie with Christopher Lambert in 1986) These songs were important to the series - and most of them are from Queen! I really loved the mix of history and suspense with action.
And hell they had Roger Daltry in the series (lead singer from the Who) and the lead singer from Fine Young Cannibals too) - and lots of sword play! When this series was on TV back in the early and mid 1990's - I used to be on a variety of mailing lists for this show...and we would have little "gathering's" at people's houses to watch the new episodes. Those parties were a blast
And we would swap tapes of bloopers and such...and the one sword I had was a Katana that was a replica of the Macleod's Katana from the TV series...but it was stolen in one of my break in's. I am collecting the series on DVD now.
According to NME.COM,
LED ZEPPELIN will officially announce its reunion gig during a press
conference on Wednesday, September 12 at the O2 Arena in London
beginning at 4:00 p.m. BST.
Singer Robert Plant reportedly confirmed last week that the rumors about LED ZEPPELIN reforming were in fact true.
He explained that the band had a meeting about show on September 5 and said the reunion will be for one night only.
"There's not a lot to work out as it's only going to be one-off gig," he explained.
Youtube clip - Fall at your feet
Wow, what a week!
We have another new clip! YAY!
This one is just of Tasha and Yair enjoying life and enjoying being together. It really is as simple as that! And, they picked a very cool and relaxing song too. It's simple and relaxing. A wonderfully cute clip!
But who sings the song?
And were was the footage shot?
Enjoy!
What I also find funny is that in the comment section people are asking where is Adi.
The song is Fall at your feet performed by crowded house. There's also a great version done by James Blunt.
The footage is from various trips we made: The western wall and jerusalem (and my cousin house, with the cutest cat
) Neve shalom (where I act like a vempire) Monkey park (Well, the part with the monkies
)
Hope you enjoyed this celebration of love, I know I did (I watched this video about 100000 times
Well, have a great jewish new year guys, Peace and love, yair
Posted by: kobaiko at September 12, 2007 09:13 AM (TRQoI)
3
First we had T&D productions then it became T&D&D productions and now Scary Monkey LOL hehe I hope these aren't real businesses LOL I can just imagine the bureaucratic nightmare
Posted by: Robert Woolwine at September 12, 2007 09:21 AM (oy596)
4
Hehe I believe there was even a "Lital Mizel Productions" for her 30 million clip or some other one. Hehe Oh, its DD&T Productions
Heh thought id correct you on that
:p Heh
Posted by: dguy011 at September 12, 2007 09:34 AM (5vkyw)
5
very relaxing clip!!! this is perfect to watch after a day at work hehe the 30 millions clip has been produced by the LM Studios we're ready to create a quiz for the movie section on facebook hehe LOL
Posted by: BHK72 at September 12, 2007 10:03 AM (sDdaK)
Haha Yeah, man..that topic/game i started on facebook, "Name that clip". got me thinking of making a quiz...which i started last night :p Hehe Only came up with two questions so far..Hehe but it would be kool to have one created
Hehe
Posted by: dguy011 at September 12, 2007 11:05 AM (5vkyw)
8
Oh Geez, one could use Omri's clip for the Tasha and Dishka mix as another one! And hell..I write quizzes all the time for my classes I could easily throw in a few questions LOL
Posted by: Robert Woolwine at September 12, 2007 12:16 PM (oy596)
I must give props . . .
To MSNBC for actually showing a minute by minute broadcast of 9/11. Last year CNN only showed it online. I saw it then. Now it is finally back on TV. The MSM needs to show this and cease hiding it. I do not usually watch MSNBC because they suck! LOL But today, they did really good by showing it again. Its 10 pm here now...and I am watching it.
Everyone
else is talking about the sadness, the loss associated with the 9/11
attacks. The main thing I remember from that day is fear and rage. And
this piece written by Laurence Simon
(reprinted without his permission, but he's stolen from me enough that
I feel I can get away with it) is something that we need to remember
every now and then.
(Warning: strong language, but if you know anything about Lair, that should not be any great surprise.)
To those extremists that perpetrated this crime against our
nation, I have a warning for you. There are those of us who look at
your actions as irrational, twisted, and completely inhuman. By all
measures, what you have done can only be seen as insane. I have news
for you. We're more nuts than you, and it should scare you shitless.
You may think that when you die for your cause, you go to Paradise
with 72 virgins, can leave reservations for 70 members of your family,
all your sins are forgiven, and you sit at the side of Allah. Big deal.
We had 39 guys who rented a Beverly Hills mansion, cut off their nuts,
built a web site, and proceeded to poison themselves to death to hitch
a ride with aliens out on the Hale-Bopp comet.
You shoot guns into the sky to celebrate victories over enemies, and
people are killed by the bullets raining down on them. We not only do
this for New Year's Eve in some cities, but we burn houses down, tear
up streets, loot and sack our stores, and beat ourselves senseless when
our sports teams win championships.
Sports teams! We made a sequel to Police Academy 5. We gave an award
for singing to two guys who never even sang. We put little sweaters on
dogs. We shot John Lennon six times and didn't even aim for Yoko Ono.
We think Elvis is still alive. We put Braille on drive-up automatic
teller machines. We think that a simple button on a web site that says
"Do not click if you're under 21" will do anything but cause a person
under 21 to click on it. We take a large chunk of the island on which
those buildings you destroyed sat and pretend that it isn't a part of
our country after all, let people fly into our airports that we want to
kill, drive them in limousines to speak against us on this "pretend
territory" land, let them drive back to our airport, and let them fly
them back home without a scratch. We sell hot dogs in packages of ten
and the buns in packages of eight. We can't even decide if pitchers
should have to bat for themselves or not. All those baseball fields
we've got. And none of them are even remotely the same size.
We gave millions of dollars to a guy that told us that God was going
to kill him if he didn't raise enough money. When he didn't get enough
money, he didn't die. So we gave him more money in celebration of the
fact that God didn't make him die. We've managed to keep the formulas
for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken secret for decades, we encrypt
the most banal communications on our Information Superhighway, and yet
we given away our most important nuclear secrets to the Chinese and
Russians at the drop of a hat. And yet, with all this on the A-1 Psycho
balance sheet, you still think you're more nuts than us that this won't
result in your complete and utter annihilation? One way or another,
your way of life will be over, period.
Freedom's kind of a crazy, kooky, nutty thing when you look really
close at it and all the bizarre and loony things that can result from
it, but it's better than any other ideas anybody else has come up with.
It's been that way since 1776, and built to last no matter how insanely
we try to screw it up on a daily basis. We are even so nuts and
ruthless enough as a nation to start insanely tearing at those of
ourselves that even remotely resemble you in such rancorous,
deplorable, and angry ways that will make you wonder if Allah has
enough glue to piece enough of you back together for a flesh
paperweight in Paradise.
We may not know where you are now, but when we do I guarantee you
that the majority of our high school children will still have no idea
where on the globe where you are or where you will end up being buried.
But we will send them anyway, and we will allow those of them that went
into the armed services because they didn't manage to get into college
*still* rain down Hell and fire on your worthless hides. It will all
come down on you, because we're nuts enough to give all four of our
branches of military services extremely powerful and deadly aircraft
even though only one of them is actually called the Air Force. Picking
a fight with the most insane nation on Earth with the hope that your
message and influence will spread throughout the world, well, that's
just downright stupid.
Update: Lair informs us that this is the "expurgated" version. And for those who wonder if he still "has it," wander over here and see his thoughts on 9/11 + 6 years. It's more a laundry list than a coherent whole, but it's still well worth reading.
Another Note: The video claims the conversation terminated with the
collapse of the building. I don't believe that could be true (were
people still alive on high floors at that point? It seems impossible)
so it seems like an attempt to over-dramatize that which does not need
additional drama or tragedy.
Hehe
