Mix signals?
Is it just me, or is the economy giving us mixed signals. The Dow Jones has recovered nearly 3000 points from it’s low, yet 84 banks have failed this year as of last week. That averages out to 2.5 bank failures per week. Ouch! There are still signs of things sinking, particularly in commercial real estate. Yet other signs show we are improving. Mix signals? As the only vice presidential candidate we’d wanna see in a centerfold would say, “you betcha!”
However, this is a little bit of silver to an otherwise dreary lining. Our recession is moving through its progressions, which equals progress. Our markets are also clueing us in that the big picture ahead is looking brighter. Just remember that the markets don’t reflect our current reality, but our perceived future. We’re continuing to hit turning points, which is good news for our future.
Unfortunately for us laid off folk, future doesn’t fix the present.
But being laid off does have its advantages. Especially in a recession. This is the perfect time to step back and take stock in our life. Do we like where we were going being we were laid off? Should we change paths? Would furthering my education advance me, or should I look at another career. Some of us may be used to working in industries that routinely lay off and rehire (defense contractors and the like are notorious for this. My friend’s dad has been laid off and rehired between Solectron and General Dynamics for almost two decades, ouch!). Maybe this one stings a little bit more, and makes us realize we need to find something more stable.
So to all my fellow unemployed/underemployed persons, use this as your opportunity to start going in the direction you want to go. Although the “potential employee” pool is larger than normal, we now have the opportunity to make a move and shine. So take advantage,
As for me, I used this as my sign to go ahead and finish school. I was almost done with my associates when I was laid off (I graduated in July), but instead of taking time off before transferring to a 4-year, I took being laid off as my sign to go ahead and get it done with. I’m now in my first semester at UNCC, majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Physics, with a minor in Mathematics. I still have withdrawal pains from the job world, and it is still weird being the “old fart” around campus. yet it has already been challenging and rewarding, and I can now focus on everything a lot more. By the time we’ve mostly recovered from this recession, I will have positioned myself to be a strong candidate for anywhere I want to go.
So use this opportunity wisely, recessions don’t happen everyday.
A lesson for citizenship
Ok, Ok. This is a joke I got in the email. Some of you may find it offensive, but if you do, then you’d probably walk out too. Just remember, I don’t discriminate, unless you’re russian 
The other day, I needed to go to the emergency room.
Not wanting to sit there for 4 hours, I put on my old military fatigues and stuck a patch onto the front of my shirt that I had downloaded off the Internet.
When I went into the ER, I noticed that 3/4 of the people got up and left.
I guess they decided that they weren’t that sick after all. Cut at least
3 hours off my waiting time.Here’s the patch. Feel free to use it the next time you’re in need of quicker emergency service.
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…It also works at the DMV and Laundromat. Don't try it at McDonald's, the whole crew will exit and you'll never get your order. (ok, so that last part a lil harsh)
What is up with my ISP?
Ok, so maybe I shouldn’t be annoyed, but I am. Ok, I guess I should be. When you pay $43 + tax a month to AT&T for 6 Mbps internet, you expect 6Mbps internet. Usually I get it, or fairly close. But not tonight. I noticed things were cranking out like dialup tonight, so I went to speedtest.net to check my speed. Needless to say, you can see the image yourself. And that was the faster of the two results. Arg!
It’s all good though. In a few weeks I plan to switch back to Roadrunner. With cutting out all of my phone companies mess, I can add HD DVR and a few more channels and still save money =)
And in case you were wondering what I’ve been up to lately, besides some exterior updates on my house and trying to pass the time being unemployed, I’ve been working on a pet project. After years of trying to do research on my family but coming up empty handed, I finally started finding some answers. I’m a budding little genealogist :-) Well, on the real, I’m still an amateur, but the logical problem solving techniques that have helped me in math and science pay off well. Unfortunately I’m at a brick wall, one that has stopped many before me, but I’m determined to get through it. Anyways, this pet project is a Joomla powered site, putting forth all of the data regarding the background of my family up to the road block, including all supporting evidence. And wow, there is a lot of supporting evidence!
This voyage has been fairly involved, and will take me much longer to put together than I anticipated. But hopefully in the future, some little smuck with a computer and the good sense to use google will one day come across my site doing a google search on his family background. That way he won’t get mislead by some dubious persons who have leaked out bad ancestral regarding my family.
Iran saves face
The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered the prison closed because it lagged below the required standards - whatever those are in Iran
In an odd move by the Iranian government, the authorities fired and arrested the warden and a security official at the Kahrizak prison facility that was closed late last month. They are purportedly being held for mistreatment of detainees, this coming in the wake of the death of two detainees that were being held for protesting the June 12th election there. The prison was ordered to be shut down by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid reports that the prison did not meet the required standards. You can read the full story at CNN.
No offense to the people who were detained there (as Kahrizak may be home to more human rights violations than we’ll ever know about), but I find the matter rather amusing. After the recent display of self-destructive protests in Iran, the government is in a position where it needs to restore some faith from its people. The supreme leader has had a taste of how truly insignificant his position is in Iran. He is supposed to be a direct link to Allah himself, his word being final. Yet those protests of the (rigged) elections, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being re-elected under “curious” circumstances, were condemned by the Ayatollah, yet continued on with full force. I hate to saw I’ve lost my best for now: I was betting on a civil war.
But this move shows just how fragile the power hold on the Iranians is right now. Most of the time, the regime would’ve swept this under the rug, even if it were students as in this case. Anyone who would have spoken out would have been foolish, like playing Russian roullete with a Colt 1911. Yet had this story had surfaced, and the regime behind the game on it, oh boy what a mess.
I believe that we will see even more divisive cracks like this in the coming months. The Islamic Iranian government had unwittingly provoked the Persian soul of its inhabitants, and has quickly learned to respect a culture that is older than Islam itself.
"Ahem, I would like to speak both to my people, and the infidel nation of the United States. This one's for you!"
So for those Americans (or anyone else for that matter) who are afraid that we are going to pick another fight and go to war with Iraq’s neighbor, I wouldn’t be too concerned. There will probably be a war there at some point, but we’ll probably be on the sidelines. This election may well be the straw that broke the Iranian camels back.
Russians, clunkers, and hackers
Akula class Russian submarine, like the two that were found off the East U.S. coast
Seems like Russia wants the world to know that it is supposedly back on top of its military game. The U.S. has been tracking two Russian submarines off the east coast of the U.S., hanging around in international waters. That’s comforting to know given that A) I don’t trust Russians and B) I live on the east coast. Of course, I’d be a maniacal conspiracy-theorist to believe that they are out there sitting for me, but it still isn’t comforting. Russia has been showing signs of wanting to reunite its former soviet states, and has been showing that this new “democratic” government – lead by Medvedev, prime minister Putin’s puppet – is still built a lot like it’s former socialist self. I’ll save my evidence for another day though, I’m sure I’ve pissed enough folks off saying I don’t trust Russians.
Aside from Russians, wtf is this about clunkers? If you guessed CARS – Cash for Clunkers – then you’d be absolutely right. This geniously little program, which is about to run about $3 billion once Obama signs the latest bill, has done more to stimulate than the $750 billion+ economic bailout/stimulus. They are estimating 750,000 cars sold. Even if half of the buyers were planning on buying anyways (according to economists), that’s still hundreds of thousands of new car buyers out there. That’s billions of dollars worth of new loans flowing into the market place, hundreds of millions if not billions being pulled out of savings to pumped back into the economy. That’s salesmen who finally are getting a decent check, sales managers who have work to do. A definitely positive shot to the economy. So for all you naysayers, complain once you kiss your elbow.
So now what does the 1st part, and this last part, hackers, have in common? Is it that they are both listed using an odd number, or that putting the numbers together makes an unlucky American number (13) ? Well, its true and all, but the meaning is much deeper than that. Russians = hackers. Maybe. At least some who manage to stay away from the Vodka water fountains long enough =)
As I said, it could be. If you haven’t heard, someone or a group of someones led a distributed denial-of-service – DDoS – attack against twitter and some other services yesterday. Turns out that this attack was launched specifically at sites by a man named “George”, including his twitter page, livejournal, and facebook. As of this writing, his Livejournal and Facebook page is still down. But why him? To quote CNN:
His recent posts include: “How Russia was preparing military agression (sic) against Georgia, how they were training soldiers and mobilizing military equipment, what kind of provocations were carried out by the separatists prior to the war.”
“Seems somebody did not like such a chronicle of events,” he [ "George" ] told CNN.
So was it Russians? Was it someone in Georgia who is pro-Russian? Hopefully the world may end up finding out. Given that this dipshit(s) didn’t just take out one page, but knocked out Twitter, numerous groups are now involved with this, including the Georgian government. But I would be more concerned with the hackers that use Twitter.
What this all boils down to is more Russians or pro-Russians afraid of the truth. They should’ve just stuck with the vodka.
Oh, and for one last jab. I just noticed that if you look at Medvedev and Putin side by side, Medvedev looks like 007, while Putin fits the bill for one of his Russian enemy masterminds.
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Where are we from?
Times Business & Tech- Mark Hurd: Who Will Hire the Ousted Hewlett-Packard CEO? September 4, 2010
- Lights, Camera, Groceries!: Tesco Supermarket Turns Film Producer September 4, 2010
- Toyota: New Car-Safety Issue Hits Company After Recalls September 4, 2010
- Study: Young, Single, Childless Women Earn More Than Men September 4, 2010
- Seeking Alpha Financial News
- The Cost of Bernanke's Failure-Aversion September 4, 2010
- Hurricane Earl, And Other Threats to Insurers September 3, 2010
- Will the FCIC Report Be a Whitewash? September 3, 2010
- Friday FX Interest Rate Monitor September 3, 2010
