Monster Noodle

Been in the IT industry for a few years and looking for a good chuckle? Take a look at the latest news on outsourcing giant EDS. These folks have been filling the flesh peddling niche for years with the cheapest “globally outsourced” labor that money could buy. In the process, they have played a key role in the move to commoditize IT with plug and play workers.

Sure it’s survival of the fittest but you can’t help but get a little sick satisfaction out of the coming slash and burn that is sure to come to the top of EDS once HP begins to cull the executive herd. These are the same guys that helped countless companies streamline their labor costs by outsourcing their in-house IT staff to some other part of the world. HP should be able help EDS to “streamline its labor costs” too in the very near future. Afterall, isn’t that what EDS is all about? 

Until next time, happy blogging.

Megadisclaimer: Take nothing at face value. Everything on this blog is for entertainment purposes. It won’t change the world, or even your opinion in most cases. If you believe everything that you read stop reading now!

written by Lochshen \\ tags: Information Technology

Americans have spent the past two and a half decades on the biggest shopping spree in world history. Ranging from new houses, to new cars and everything in between, Americans now have undisputed claim on the title of the most prolific shoppers in the world. Unfortunately, as with any shopping spree, there comes a time to pay the bills. Yes, it’s true that what goes up must come down.

For several weeks now one of the most popular debates has been about the definition of a recession and if we are currently in one. The question is irrelevant. What matters is that we as Americans realize that we have some self destructive practices and that we take this time as an opportunity to fix them.

Here are a few random thoughts from the soap box that may identify some of our pitfalls and how to avoid them in the future.

Anything that does not provide value will not survive.

From the tech boom and bust in the late 90’s to the housing crunch that we’re in now, things that live on self generated hype don’t last. It’s a simple equation, if supply exceeds demand watch out. Continue reading »

written by Lochshen \\ tags: blog, political commentary, rant

Stephen Hawking just hit the proverbial nail squarely on the head. Hawking’s recent statements regarding the need to dedicate more resources to space travel and exploration could not have come at a more relevant time.

Global warming, dwindling oil supplies, economic turmoil and practically every other popular world problem have their roots solidly in one single issue, explosive population growth. The world has gone from an estimated 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.6 billion today. Amazingly, there were less than 1 billion in 1800.

There are plenty of counter arguments but there is one simple truth. When population exceeds carrying capacity a system will collapse. We are not close to reaching the planets carrying capacity but this kind of growth is not sustainable. The world is only now beginning to see the results of increased competition for resources and that trend will only continue to intensify.

Mr. Hawking’s answer to this problem is the only viable long term solution. We as a planet must dedicate more resources to finding more resources. There’s only one way and that’s up. Carl Sagan often espoused the same views as have countless other progressive thinkers. 

There has never been a better time for humanity to look to the stars. We are in an age that can still afford to spend “venture capital”. It will not be this way forever. There will come a time that every patch of ground that we have must be used to feed us. That train is coming.

Until next time, happy blogging.

Megadisclaimer: Take nothing at face value. Everything on this blog is for entertainment purposes. It won’t change the world, or even your opinion in most cases. If you believe everything that you read stop reading now!

written by Lochshen \\ tags: green, NASA, space

WARNING!!! Strongly undiplomatic opinions ahead. If you’re easily offended, you likely will be.

We may be in a correction, recession or whatever you want to call it but we’re definitely in the process of paying for some long-term debts owed. For the past several years the US economy has been artificially inflated by loose lending and overly ambitious development. We’ve ignored a trade deficit that has robbed us of our fortunes and instead fueled our economy by building more of what we didn’t need and purchasing it for more than we could afford. These are the things that I see that have really crippled our economy:

1. The automotive industry: If you don’t understand that this was one of the backbones of our economy you need to really get in touch with what has been happening in Detroit. When the Japanese manufacturers decided to enter into the larger consumer truck market, we lost the backbone of our industry. For years Japanese manufacturers have avoided this market to ensure that American consumers had plenty of money to pump back into Japan. When Toyota made the decision to climb to the top at any price, it killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Bad for the US you say? Maybe, but the kamikaze tactic will ultimately cost Japan it’s place in the world economy. Toyota will finally achieve its dream of being number one. Good luck selling cars in China.
2. The housing industry: For two decades or more contractors have been building houses as fast as they could grab the land and put them up. For the most part, these houses are vastly inferior to the construction of a half century ago. In many cases, the land may be worth more in ten years without a structure at all. At the same time, the consumer has cut his own throat by leveraging as much of his pay check as possible to buy the biggest house that a bank would finance. If you paid more than three times your annual salary for a house and you didnt’ have significant financial reserves, you’re part of the problem.
3. The banking industry: Keep on loaning to people that can’t afford it, for things that are not worth it. Enough said.
4. Commodity prices: We have been in a relatively calm area for commodities for the past couple of decades. However, a little pressure in this area can cause mass devastation. All it really took was for oil prices to surpass current cost of living standards. Guess what, it happened in the 70’s too. I guess that we forgot. 
5. Fiat Currency: I hate to jump on this bandwagon but for all that is holy, you can’t print money without something of value to back it up. It used to be enough that the US government backed it and the world believed it but terrible lacks of judgement in how we print money in the past few years have damaged our credibility. Sure, it may help to keep our business back here in the US but there is a fine line between manipulating a currency and destroying it.

In the end, the US has a lot of work to do to reclaim it’s dominance in the world economy. At some point, we must create something real value and sell it. Wow, what a concept.

Until next time, happy blogging.

Megadisclaimer: Take nothing at face value. Everything on this blog is for entertainment purposes. It won’t change the world, or even your opinion in most cases. If you believe everything that you read stop reading now!

written by Lochshen \\ tags: banking, credit, economy, ford, gm

The world is something that you may want to relate to and that you may want to change but the bottom line is that you better understand it. Take care of yourself.

Until next time, happy blogging.

Megadisclaimer: Take nothing at face value. Everything on this blog is for entertainment purposes. It won’t change the world, or even your opinion in most cases. If you believe everything that you read stop reading now!

written by Lochshen \\ tags: green, iraq, islam

WARNING!!! Jargonistic Technobable ahead…

Recently the Gartner group presented their views on the state of the future of Windows as well as a their assesment of the problems with the current MS operating system, Windows Vista. Leave it to the boys at Gartner to take a relatively simple issue and make it complex. Vista’s failure is about hardware requirements and performance. It’s that simple.

The gaming industry was slow to adopt Vista because quite simply, XP is faster. When it’s about speed, why pay more for less.

Corporate environments could have made very good use out of the inherent security features that were central to Vista but the required hardware to effectively run the software was cost prohibitive. Having managed a fairly sizable client base, I can tell you that IT has become a cost to be managed instead of the first line provider of business solutions. When you operate under that model, budgets don’t lend themselves to a $1500 PC to run standard office software and a mail client.

Vista has been adopted fairly widely by the standard home user. It has been a stable platform to operate on and that is what most average users care about, well that and the eye candy.

According to Gartner’s annoucement, the future is hypervisor and virtualized machines. Didn’t I hear the same thing about Java years ago? Wasn’t java supposed to make us OS independant and replace old warhorses like RPG and C++?

If you haven’t read Gartner’s last announcement regarding the future of Windows, you should give it a few minutes to at least get a chuckle. At least they were spot on with licensing. MS licensing has become more convoluted than the tax code.

Until next time, happy blogging.

Megadisclaimer: Take nothing at face value. Everything on this blog is for entertainment purposes. It won’t change the world, or even your opinion in most cases. If you believe everything that you read stop reading now!

written by Lochshen \\ tags: it, java, tech, windows

I don’t know much of anything about the “Free Tibet” movement. I can see that it is an embarrassment to the Chinese government at a time when it is vulnerable. I can also see that there are those in the world that will benefit from the timing of this issue but I don’t have a clue about who’s really right or wrong. Can someone with a real life experience of the situation help me to understand what’s going on and why the US should be involved?

I’m not interested in “subjective reasoning”. I want to understand the facts of the matter, as best as they can be understood. If your arguments cannot be supported by verifiable fact or real life experience please do not post.

Update 4/10/2008: Kudos to Ron Paul for not blindly following the crowd.

Until next time, happy blogging.

Megadisclaimer: Take nothing at face value. Everything on this blog is for entertainment purposes. It won’t change the world, or even your opinion in most cases. If you believe everything that you read stop reading now!

written by Lochshen

It’s easy to hate bankers. With the recent headlines showing that many financial institutions are shamelessly taking advantage of those in financially weak positions, it is an easy sentiment to have.

There are a few out there however, that have taken the time and effort to truly give back. I was encouraged to read a recent article posted in Newsweek by Mr. Peter Peterson of the Blackstone group. Mr. Peterson’s views of social responsibility go beyond those of many of his peers. In a follow up interview with internet readers earlier in April, Mr. Peterson outlined many of his ideas and presented a solid foundation for the kind of social responsibility that many of our top financial institutions could only hope to emulate.

So, if you’re interested in hearing a banker say something other than “How does this benefit me?”, take a few minutes to get to know Peter Peterson. You may find that decency can transcend the boundries of monetary gain.

Until next time, happy blogging.

Megadisclaimer: Take nothing at face value. Everything on this blog is for entertainment purposes. It won’t change the world, or even your opinion in most cases. If you believe everything that you read stop reading now!

written by Lochshen