Month: December 2016

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Happy almost New Year

I hope your New Year’s Eve revelry is safe and that you’re going to ring in the new year with a bang… (The good kind, not the bad kind)

For those of you that have pets, please remember that fireworks can be very freightening to them, so let your pets spend the evening inside with you.

I’m at work, OT pay baby!

I’ll be at work, New Years Day as well and since I’ve grown tired of the political posturing of the NFL, I’m trying to think what I’d like to do instead of watching football.

It’s supposed to be rainy here, so I’m not sure about anything outside…

I could always grab a couple movies, make some popcorn and settle in for the afternoon.

As I think about it, that sounds like a smashing idea…

I haven’t seen SPECTRE yet… Yep, that sounds like a plan.

If you’re out & about tonight, be safe and don’t have too much of a hangover tomorrow. I think this will be me this afternoon.

 

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Merry Christmas

The weather isn’t frightful, but it has been raining in San Diego.

First time in many years that I’ve been working on a major holiday. This is a strange experience but I’m getting paid Time & 1/2 so it’s worth it.

Thankful for the iPad, I’ve watched Die Hard and am watching Die Hard 2, a couple of my favorite Christmas movies.

If I have to sit here in an office waiting for a phone call, There’s no reason for me to have to be bored doing it.

The new iPad with multi-tasking and the ability to have video playing in a small window is very cool.

Things are quiet here but all things considered I’d rather be home with myself family. I know… DUH!

Just a couple more hours and I’m outta here.

I hope that everyone is having a great Christmas.

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Shut up and take my money!

I’m over it,

I’m tired of corporations being political. I’m tired of companies who feel that they’re somehow entitled to attempt to shame any of us into thinking the way they do. Yes, that includes Apple and Microsoft.

All of you have exactly one thing that you need to do. Provide your products or services and shut the hell up about anything else.

You don’t dictate policy, and you deserve what ever punishment you get when you stick your noses outside your area of expertise.

If you want to pull advertising, or make a statement about politics or elections… DON’T.

Either you’re a goods & service provider or you’re not. As a shareholder I’d be seriously pissed off at Kellogg and their executives, not for their opinions per-se, but because they’re stupid enough to remove themselves from the advertising sightline of potential customers.

How moronic can you be?

Conservative money spends just as well as liberal money.

Have you people learned nothing? Trump won because a rather large percentage of people in this country are sick and tired of being told what they’re supposed to think, how they’re supposed to act, and what they’re supposed to feel; by a bunch of ivory tower “Elites” whose sole concerns during the day are if their maid is stealing cleaning supplies, whether to wear Channel or Cartier, or if their driver is smoking in the limo.

Get a clue.

The larger majority of Americans are concerned with feeding themselves, and paying the bills.

Which does open an interesting possibility…

If the demand for Kellogg cereals drops, does it follow that the company will be forced to lower their prices? Isn’t that one of the market factors that control prices?

I don’t as a rule eat cereal so that’s a non-issue for me personally. But I can’t see myself purchasing products from companies that don’t know their place.

That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? I don’t have to actively protest or boycott anything. I can simply choose to make my own coffee, cook my own taco, breakfast, or burger, I can hold on to machines and other durable goods for a few more years and in the process save money.

So to corporate America, keep your opinions to yourselves and take my money.

To Kellogg… I’ll expect deep discounts in the coming months and an apology would be nice too. $6 for a box of cereal? Really?

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Probably Unwise…

Apple was running a Black Friday sale.

On the plus side of the page, my Christmas shopping is done. On the negative side of the page my Christmas shopping is done.

My iPad and the other half’s iPad were both getting long in the tooth. For example some of the applications that I use on my iPad were no longer updatable.

The other half was in even worse shape. That iPad wasn’t holding it’s charge very well and was prone to arbitrary resets and hangs.

Enter Apple’s Black Friday… $100 gift cards with the purchase of new iPads. Uh Oh.

Well the $100 does offset the cost of Applecare.

The short story is that there are now two new iPad Pros in the household. The other half’s is the 12.9” unit and mine is the 9.7” The other half is already using the thing as a Gig book and to some extent a replacement for the Macbook Pro.

Both have keyboards, pencils, max memory, and cellular connections.

Sigh… Now the trick is to pay them off.

I must say that these machines are pretty amazing. I could easily see having only the iPad if all you needed to do was web surfing, email, and a bit of writing. Office 365 runs very well on them and that gives you direct access to documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

The latest versions of applications let you access the cloud storage of your choice, (icloud, onedrive, dropbox, and I think even google docs) so you could do most if not all the routine business tasks with just the iPad.

I think I’ll stick to developing using my Macbook Air.

Why you might ask didn’t I just update to the latest and greatest Macbook Pro? Well, the cost vs the power differential just didn’t add up. My Macbook Air is still fast and efficient. When you’re talking GHz processing speeds .5 GHz isn’t really all that significant unless you’re talking about audio / video processing. The new touch bar would be nice but having it or not isn’t a deal breaker for me.

So, rather than updating my Air, I chose to update my 4 year old ipad.

Perhaps, you can even expect to see more blog posts, since having an iPad out at work isn’t nearly as “Odd” as having my personal computer running on my desk.

The first thing I used my new iPad for was polishing my resume a bit. Yes, I’m looking for a new job and I’m hoping to find something in the next couple of months.

If all goes well, I may actually be able to return to my field and the pay that comes with it.

In any case, I hope that you’re enjoying the holiday season and avoiding the stress that so often comes with shopping. I’m looking forward to the annual shopping trip with a friend even If I don’t buy anything.