No pain, no pair gain?

Heretic! Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

Just kidding. Four plasma TVs? I've got zero. (I just refuse to pay that kind of money for a TV.) Prefer to put the money in my Roth IRA. I'm funny that way...

Really. LCDs are better. But I have none of either.

However, we do have five cars.

At one point in time we had six. Me, wife and each of the kids. Fortunately the kids went to school, married and moved to their own abodes, so we're now down to two vehicles.

In a three car garage that works quite nicely ;-

...Jim Thompson

Sure, but the higher the GDP, the more your average person has to be able to give away to charitable causes as well.

I know, I know, realistically they'll just buy the plasma TV and car anyway, but at least a high GDP creates some *potential*.

"Our" pattern is more like, turn it off at 8:00AM (when the wife goes to work) and on at 5:30PM (when she returns home). :-(

No, that's our normal usage, other than free times. Some months it's less (as low as 1 minute), some higher (I worked at home a couple of weeks ago and had an hour meeting I had to call into). I hate telephones and simply don't use them if I can avoid it. Email is another thing. My wife an email each other all day during the week; far less intrusive.

We see my mother maybe twice a year and she's in a (semi) managed care apartment complex, so we call her as often as possible. After

Iv'e never seen a roaming charge with Verison. The phone warns of roaming, though even then I'e never been charged. Get too close to the border though and it may be "international", even though neither end is. I turn the phones off if we go anywhere close to Chanuckistan. When we cut through they're *always* off.

Certainly. During the business day I'm at work. It's their dime. ;-)

The transmitters exist, but I know no one who has an external antenna. They just don't exist, though there are at least five stations most could get (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and CTV).

Ok, why not use it for personal?

That's not a monopoly situation, unless you consider the ultimate evil monopoly (government, particularly local hacks).

Sure, vote the bums out. That's a local government issue, rather like HOA crap. You can't blame the providers for that situation.

All the missys are getting back together. I can't say I'm too happy about that either.

I wish for many things. Overall things *are* far better than they were a decade ago. Remember the joke of ISDN?

Electricity is state regulated. There *is* something that can be done about it but if the costs don't permit, bankruptcy isn't pretty either. ...and voting with the feet is pretty powerful. ...my plan for beating property taxes.

-- Keith

Sure, like the state and local treasury.

You should see the LCD displays the government buys.

Hello Keith,

Maybe not in urban areas. But out in the country like here many people use antennas. Sometimes even those with satellite because having the local stations in the mix costs extra.

A few email, yes. But I don't use the web much for personal stuff. There is so much more to life than sitting in front of a screen.

Well, the big ones love that situation. It keeps innovative small providers out of their hair. Very comfy.

"It Still Does Nothing"? ISDN was IMHO almost dead on arrival. I mean, a step from 14k to 64k is not exactly something to write home about. What were they thinking?

That could happen here as well, might depend on the elections. In blue states there is always that lure of "let's sock it to the corporations". Problem is, they tend to forget that these have feet, too. Big feet.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Keith,

ROFL! Ain't that true.

But charitable giving is not restricted to money. When we do lay ministry to grieving people that easily adds up to 10-15 hours between my wife and I. Unpaid, and no reimbursements. The rewards are also non-monetary.

Schools, too. It's amazing what they throw away. And then they are always whining that there isn't enough money. I am running my biz with two modern laptops but none was over $1500, small screens. Plus one

Regards, Joerg

I've been told that this problem reflects different "pots" of money being available to schools, and therefore until the overall system is fixed it's not a question of "fancy monitors vs. better paid teachers" it's "old monitors, same teacher pay" vs. "fancy monitors, same teacher pay."

That being said, I was a little torqued when the University I was attending a few years back went off and replaced all these nice, 20" monitors (that were only a few years old themselves -- still nice and crisp, and there must have been hundreds of them total) with 20" flat panels... and simultaneously raised tuition... @#$#$%

Where my mother works they're partially government funded and it's the typical, "here's your budget for the year -- if you don't spend it you'll (1) lose it [you can't keep it for next year] and (2) it'll be taken as an indication that you're overfunded and we'll have to reconsider wehther or not you really need this same budget next year." :-( Not exactly a system that encourages either long-term planning (trying to save up some money from year to year for shceduled replacement of big ticket items) nor fiscal conservation...

Probably paid for themselves in a year, with less HVAC and power consumption

martin

You ve got the wrong dilemma. Sane people would argue "fancy monitors" vs. "lower taxes" or "over-paid/under-worked teachers" vs. "lower taxes".

Taxes are worse than tuition. The latter is voluntary.

Certainly. And worse, "if you didn't use your budget perhaps you don't need as many people either". which then morphs into "if you don't need your budget, perhaps you're overpaid as the executive".

Hello Joel,

Exactly that needs to change. It is time that industry standard procedures are introduced, with incentives and penalties. They need one pot and when they overspend they must come up with a really, really good explanation.

A clear case of waste of taxpayer and tuition funds. Why does nobody raise the issue at board meetings? Or get the press involved?

Again, industry rules must be applied. When we did our budget we were measured by a very clear and sensible parameter: Yearly budget versus yearly revenue of our division. There are no two ways about that. If we reduced that factor we were rewarded but still had the freedom to set our budget as needed for next year. This allows for new projects. We were never grossly above but had we been the grilling by Wall Street guys would have been ugly. And the CEO would have chewed me out.

Schools should be measured by budget versus attendance, with some buffer allowed for schools with very old buildings or other special circumstances (within limits, of course).

Regards, Joerg

Hello Martin,

Nope. A maintenance guy told me he had to fix something in a school that required him to check cabling in every classroom. School was out for the summer, nobody was there. Not one car in the lot except his truck. He said the AC was going full bore. He turned it down but had to wear a jacket because it was around 65F in the rooms and about 100F outside. And then they whine that there is no money.

Regards, Joerg

raised

Thats just incompetence, it's everywhere.

martin

Ah, but industry often has the very same traps in it!

At our company a few years ago, the writing was on the wall that there would be cutbacks and layoffs, so our mid-upper management decided to be pro-active and make the cutbacks and layoffs BEFORE asked by the big guys, to show what great managers and company men they were.

Their reward? When the mandatory cuts came down WE WERE HIT HARDER THAN ANYONE because we had already shown we were overstaffed and overbudgetted!

Even in industry, being under budget is a bad, bad thing, unless you are in a small company where the budget folks are the same as the management folks. It is just a signal to the higher ups that you can endure more cutting.

Ah, but you think, this is only just one small example? Au Contraire! (sp?) It happened to me twice before. On one project, there were two groups, the hardware group, and the software group. The hardware group got their portion of the project done on time (after several slippages from other sectors that should have derailed us!) on budget (despite having assigned to us a 'field manager' whose political connections prevented his dismissal and how basically bought stuff for his own personal use...) and with no major gripes and complaints to the management. My boss was the best I have ever had. He knew his stuff backwards, forwards, and sideways, and when the curves came, he was already steering that direction.

The software group, on the other hand, was WAY behind schedule, hugely over budget, and went into every meeting bemoaning the fact that they were never going to make it. The manager there was one of the worse I have ever seen. (I need a piece of information. I am not going to tell you why, or where it will be used, because that would make you as informed as me. Just answer this question...)

Also, the HW group was about 6 people, the SW group had 20-30 folks counting all the temp and contract folks that came and went.

The final result? They laid off the ENTIRE HW group, moved the HW manager to every scut position they could find to try and get him to quit, and promoted the SW manager. Obviously, the HW manager must have been overstaffed since he never had any problems...

Charlie

Hello Martin,

It's a matter of checks and balance. Sometimes they seem to be absent. If my boss would ever have come into our section of the building on a weekend and the AC would have blown in unoccupied areas I'd have had a summons into his office on my table Monday morning bright and early.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Charlie,

Sound like a management blunder at the executive level. Never happened where I worked (or I would have resigned).

Another example of short-sighted executives. When companies do that you can set the clock and predict when they'll have their first major "oh s..t" experience. Then they realize that the whole machine is coming to a grinding halt and there is almost nothing they can do about it. Soon it turns out that only so-and-so knew how this hyper-widget really worked but he was among those laid off.

here.

Amazing that those new power plants got on line so soon!.

You might want to check today's news: Lay and Skilling of enron have been convicted on most counts. Among Enron's sins under their administration was manipulation of the California energy market, creating false energy shortages in order to jack up prices.

No such luck, in either case. In the second, they were building a toll road, so once it was built, they didn't care anymore as long as it made it through the first year...

Charlie