Selfish Government

Candidates are now declaring their intentions to run for president in 2012. Millions and most likely billions of dollars are spent on elections every four years. It has made me think about the amount of money spent on elections in this country and what that money could be spent on.

I think we have to ask ourselves what makes more sense? We have found out this year that governments can be toppled by Twitter and Facebook. These social media websites are free to use, so why do candidates for the office of president of the most powerful nation in the world not grasp this technology and spend their campaign funds on something that will definately make our country a better place to live?

Many of these politicians who have announced their candidacy have fought against President Obama's healthcare plan and our budget and taxes. Everyone knows that our healthcare system needs reform. Everyone knows that the government has the potential to employ people that will shape the future of our country. We need good, quality teachers to teach our children so they can grow up to be leaders of the world. Budget cuts affect our ability to hire these qualified teachers, forcing our children into overcrowded classrooms that make it difficult to learn.

Our politicians need to stop being selfish. Our politicians need to embrace the technology that is changing the world. For as much as we consider our country the most wealthy, powerful nation in the world, we are still selfish and slow to change. We believe that nobody can tell us what to do. We do things the way they should be done. We cannot look at something that is successful in a third world country and make use of it here. We are better than that. I am tired of this type of thinking and call on our leaders to truly embrace change. I am asking them to stop spending money selfishly and start thinking about the greater good.

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Our Choice

I downloaded the app "Our Choice" by Al Gore. It is a book that includes full sized photos, interactive charts and videos. I guess then it is more than a book, but you can get a printed version of it.

I absolutely love the idea of this interactive book. I think this is a good example of what all books should be. It is perfect for reading on the iPad.

I started reading it before I even finished "The Art of Non-Conformity." I just could not wait to start it after I downloaded it. I really enjoyed watching "An Inconvenient Truth" so I was excited to read this book. So far I have not been disappointed. I have learned a great deal about what we are doing to the planet and why our weather patterns have started to change so drastically.

We need to stop denying the science and blaming other people and just take responsibility for our actions. The West can be a good example for the rest of the world and we can even satisfy our capitalist needs by creating better alternatives to our current energy sources and industrial practices. The developing world would have no other choice but to follow us or be left behind...again.

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Who is to Blame?

We all know that the economy has not fully recovered. Most of us know that the real estate market was out of control leading to the problems we are now dealing with. But who is to blame?

I think we are all to blame. The banks and brokers are the people who are most to blame, but home buyers deserve some of the blame as well. The Queen and I recognized that the market was out of control. We believed that home prices were artificially high and that the market could not support the prices for very long. Now, we all know that is what happened.

I now know several people who have either lost their homes or are going to lose their homes. Out of all of them, I only know of one of them that have lost their home because of a job loss. All of the others have just decided that they do not want to pay for their home any longer. They feel like if other people are able to walk away from their homes that they should be able to as well.

I guess I am old fashioned, but I believe that I signed the home loan documents so I should be responsible for paying the load back. My home is not worth what I owe at this point, but I am not in very bad shape. It is really close because we waited until we thought the market had adjusted properly. We miscalculated a bit, but I can live with it.

The problem with our society is that nobody wants to accept responsibility for themselves. There is always someone else to blame. We just need to accept our choices and take responsibility for our actions. Why are you bad America?

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Future Employees

I spoke on a panel last night called "Building the Community's Work Force for the Future." I was asked to speak about the types of employees my company looks for and the problems we have with finding them. I discussed both the hard skills and soft skills we search for in a candidate. Hard skills being the experience and/or training that they need and soft skills being things like attendance, work ethic, etc.

I was on the panel with three other employers as well as a representative of our local community college. I was not that surprised that the biggest issues facing the other three employers were the soft skills. They just need to find people that will show up every day and work hard. Of course, they were looking for warehouse and production line people so they don't require many other skills. What I was surprised by was that one of the other employers mentioned that math skills were important for their employees. This company is a beer distributor, so I think a lot of young people would be surprised to learn that you have to have good math skills to stack cases of beer.

My company, on the other hand, does not have as many issues with attendance. We do have problems with work ethic. I think the most important assets for our employees are speed and accuracy. We need engineer, mechanics, electricians and machine operators who take pride in their work and have been doing the job long enough that they are fast. The lack of accuracy really bogs us down and costs us money with rework at all levels.

I don't have the answers to how we create a work force that has pride and a work ethic. That comes from your upbringing and early school years. Teachers today are so overwhelmed that it is not fair to blame them for this problem. It still must go back to home life. We have too many families with parents having to work more than one job to raise their family. This is even more problematic when you look at single parent households. It is almost impossible to raise a family today on one average income.

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My Year of Forty

This is the year that I turn forty. I never thought I would be this old, but alas it has happened. I don't feel old, but I guess I am by most people's accounts.

I decided a few years ago that I wanted to go out of my thirties with a bang. I fantasized about going to Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, Tulum or even Europe. I wanted to do something big for my fortieth birthday. Well, I have come to the realization that I need to take it down a notch.

My company has had a rough twelve to eighteen months. My bonus last year was negligible and I most likely won't get on this year. That was the money I was hoping to use for my big adventure. This just means that I need to get more creative with what I am going to do.

We decided at the beginning of this week that we were going to go to Yosemite this weekend. Park admission is free and I have always wanted to go in the winter, so the timing is perfect. I have been doing some research to find out what I want to photograph in the park. I have read that everything is different when there is snow on the ground and I can't wait to find out.

We will drive up on Friday after school and stay the night at the Tenaya Lodge. Actually we will be staying in the cottages. That is where we stayed the night I proposed to The Queen way back when it was call Apple Tree Inn. Tenaya raised the prices substantially, but they say that they remodeled everything. I can't wait to find out if they are right. It was pretty nice before.

Next month The Queen and I are going to New York to see American Idiot on Broadway. Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer of Green Day if you didn't know, will be playing the part of St. Jimmy. The Queen has been a big Green Day fan for as long as I have known her. We even went to see them in concert at Pac Bell Park in San Francisco for the American Idiot tour. It was perhaps the best concert I have been to.

In June we have a few trips planned. I want to go to Yosemite again around my birthday and hike Half Dome. I think that is something that I will remember for a long time. It is not Machu Picchu, but it will do just fine. At the end of the month we are going camping at Dinkey Creek. We did that last September and it was a lot of fun so we decided to do it again this year.

That is all we have planned at this point, but I may try to lobby to go to the biggest trade show in my industry this year in Dusseldorf, Germany in May. I will just have to wait and see how the company is doing as the show gets closer. It only happens every three years, so it is a big deal.

It would be great to go to Mexico again, but the drug wars that are currently going on are enough to keep me away this year. I love visiting, but I am not about to risk my life and the lives of my family. I with they would just get the situations under control.

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Out of Control!

We, in the United States, often look at the messes in other countries and laugh at them. We believe that the struggles they have are because they are not as civilized as us. We believe that the things that happen there could never happen here. We are jaded. We are arrogant!

Politics in this country has gotten out of control. Obama was elected president based on a campaign of change. The people bought into this change agenda, even though we knew that it is virtually impossible to change politics in this country.

Obama and the Left pushed through health care reform, which I think is a good thing. I have said before that I don't believe health care reform was marketed correctly. It is really insurance company reform. The Right was angry and they got everyone all riled up about reform. The Tea Party started whipping everyone into a frenzy by making them believe that this was going to be bad for them. It was going to turn us into a socialist country. Even people on government health care, Medicare, were furious that we were implementing government health care. A lot of hate was being directed at the Left from the conservative Right.

The Tea Party gained some control back in the elections last year. The first agenda from the Right was to reverse health care reform. That is the last thing we need in this economy. It will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to reverse what is already being changed. That money could be better used to create jobs for the massive number of unemployed workers this economy has created. Or, it could be used to pay down the deficit that has been increased in order to help spur the economy along. Instead the Right is forcing this reversal of health care reform as a direct attack on Obama and his supporters.

Sarah Palin created a frenzy in March of last year when she released her target map of congressional districts with cross hairs on them. The map pointed out districts that her and John McCain had won in 2008 whose Congressmen voted for health care reform. She created hate among her followers for anyone who disagreed with her and the Right. I believe that her and some other politicians from the Right have gotten out of control. They are not trying to solve any problems, they are just trying to force their agenda down the public's throat. And I think that there carelessness contributed to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. She was one of the Congressmen in the cross hairs and Jared Loughner, the shooter, took her words literally.

I don't blame them for the actual shooting as it appears that Loughner was mentally ill. What I do blame them for is dividing this country and creating anger and hate. They are just fanning the flames of unhappiness instead of trying to overcome the issues we are all facing and improving our situation. They are creating a bad culture in the United States and that can be blamed on poor leadership on their part.

You can look at countries as larger versions of companies and we all know how important culture is to the success of a company. Without a great, or even good, culture, a company will not thrive. It can limp along and be somewhat successful, but it will never be a great company. The same goes for countries. The culture of the United States needs a severe tune-up. We need to stop the hate and fighting amongst our politicians and focus on trying to make positive changes. I don't know if Obama's health care reform is the answer for the problems in the system, but at least he is trying to change it for the better.

We need our politicians to be leaders and focus on being positive and inspiring us to do great things. They need to help us embrace change and realize that it is necessary if this country is going to survive. We need to stop all of the hate and fighting and move forward so we can make this country great again.

Read this good article.

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Am I An Apple Fan Boy?

I bit the bullet and preordered the iPhone 4 yesterday. But let me tell you, it was not easy. I started doing some research on Sunday in anticipation of the preorder date. I did a little more research on Monday evening to try to figure out what time the preorder would start. Nobody knew for sure, but the iPad preorder started at 5:30 AM, so that was what I went with.

I woke up and went for a run in the morning. I got back home at about 5:30 and jumped on a computer. The post it note saying they will back soon was up on the Apple site. I jumped in the shower. While getting ready I jumped back on the computer and saw that the Apple site was back up. It was not working correctly though.

I went to work and kept trying both the Apple and AT&T websites with no luck. I was checking for updates on Google as to the status of preorders. I finally noticed that there was a new Apple Store app that allows you to order hardware so I downloaded it at about 10:00. I tried it and it did not work, but it gave me a number to call at Apple. I called the number and actually got to speak to someone within about five minutes. He told me that the AT&T site was having problems so they could not verify accounts. He took my name and phone number and said he would call me as soon as everything was back up. He never called me back.

I kept trying the AT&T site and was soon able to preorder my iPhone 4. The process was slow, but it did work. At least I hope it worked. I got a confirmation and received a confirmation email message within an hour. I just checked my order and it is being processed.

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A Lot of Information

My meetings here in Rosemont have been very good. I am learning a lot that I can take back to my company. I have met a few customers that are great contacts to get us in the door of a few target companies. It has been a very productive trip.

This year the meeting have focused a lot of time on marketing, in particular internet marketing and social media. I know there is a lot more that I can do in both of these areas, it is just hard to carve out the time and to justify it. I have learned some things this week that should help me with both of these.

Last week I had a conversation with my advertising agency and was about to throw in the towel with regards to social media. I had a bad attitude about it and I think my account manager felt that and just went along with it. Our meeting turned into a trash talking session about what social media cannot do for my company. I admit that I was not seeing any potential. I came to my meeting this week all ready to dismiss social media as a waste of time.

Two sessions really changed my mind. One session was led by a marketing person from a company in my industry. He focused more on web site analytics, but he started to change my perspective. The second session was led by a consultant who works with companies to establish their social media presence. I think that he convinced me that I am not wasting my time and need to actually spend some more time on social media. I really need to get other people in the company involved with blogging, Facebook and Twitter. He told us that we cannot do it alone. It needs to be a company focus. I agree.

I am planning to get started with the implementation of a social media strategy when I get back into the office. I am already thinking about who in the company will buy into the strategy and really work to make it successful. At this point I only have about two people who I have identified.

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Long Weekend

Last Tuesday we were told by our social worker that we needed to have our spare bedroom ready for a child by today. The Queen and I talked about it and decided that our best option for a bed and dresser was to make the long trip to Ikea. The Queen and I both really like to shop at Ikea and they have good prices. I knew Unk Timmers was going to be in town, so I asked him to go with us. He agreed.

We had dinner with the fam on Friday night after Meg's track meet and we decided that we were going to leave at nine o'clock on Saturday morning. Saturday morning, The Queen decided that she needed to go to her classroom to get some things done so we cancelled the trip. After getting out of the shower, she decided the trip was back on. We ended up leaving at about ten thirty.

The trip to Burbank ended up taking us around three hours. It was the first time Unk Timmers shopped at an Ikea, so before we entered I told him he needed to prepare himself mentally. He had no plans to spend any money. He was just along for the ride.

As we walked through the showroom portion of the store he mentioned that he needed to buy a sectional soon. He started looking at them and ended up finding one that he liked. He said he might order it later.

We made our way to the bedroom furniture and found a bed, matress and dresser rather quickly. We made our way through the rest of the store much more slowly as The Queen was looking at every little thing trying to find items for her secret pal at work. We finally made it downstairs and picked up everything in the warehouse portion of the store. The Queen dissappeared and when I finally found her she had picked out a table and chairs for the patio. They were priced great, so I agreed to get them. Of course they were all sold out of the chairs so we found some alternatives and checked out.

Ikea was a mad house. The vehicle loading area was packed with people. It took me a while to get the truck parked there. We loaded up and hit the road. The trip home ended up taking us less than three hours.

Once home we began to put everything together. Unk Timmers was surprised at how easily everything went together and at the quality after it was built. I must say that Ikea has put a lot of thought into how their furniture is put together to make it the easiest and strongest. I am never dissappointed with my purchases from there. Granted, their stuff has the feel of a college dorm, but it is perfect for kid's rooms. Overall it was a great trip.

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Grand Challenges of the 21st Century

The White House is asking the citizens of the United States of America to help identify goals for the twenty-first century. Some of the goals that have been mentioned in the past include early detection of dozens of diseases from a saliva sample, solar cells as cheap as paint, and educational software that is as compelling as the best video game and effective as a personal tutor. I really like the idea that the White House is asking the citizens for feedback and not just having politicians make the decision for us.

One of our biggest challenges in the twenty-first century is global climate change. There are many things that are affecting this change. Our reliance on fossil fuels is a big contributing factor to climate change and I think the one area where we can make the biggest difference. We need to make our number one goal changing our global reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. This will not be an easy task, but I believe it is a goal we can accomplish.

Many aspects of our daily lives rely on fossil fuels. We heat our homes with fossil fuels. Much of our electricity is produced by fossil fuels. Our cars run on fossil fuels. Plastic is made from fossil fuels. Almost everything around us relies on fossil fuels. While this is a big challenge facing our global community, I believe that change is happening. Their are companies that are innovating new technology that is lessening our reliance on fossil fuels.

The greatest challenge we Americans face in the twenty-first century is education. I would like to see American youths lead the world in math and science scores. We have been losing ground every year and at this point we have fallen too far behind to be satisfied with our current education system. We need to have education reform. We need to make education our number one priority.

The students of today are the inventors and leaders of tomorrow and we are letting these students down by not making education our priority. We need to set education funding and not rob from it when tax revenue falls. We cannot say that it is a real priority if we cut our education budget every chance we get. It is easy to make cuts across the board, but we don't need leaders who can make the easy decisions. We need leaders who are willing to sacrifice in order to ensure that the long-term good of the nation is being met. We need leaders who believe that education is the key to our country's future.

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What is Happening in the World

I stumbled onto a site that gives a lot of statistics about what is happening in the world right now. This site really makes you think. For instance, right now the world population is 6,836,601,315 people and growing.

I think some of the more interesting stats on the site are in the Governments and Economics section and the Health section. I would have thought that the military expenditures by governments worldwide would dwarf the speding on education, but it is almost half. I guess it goes to show you that the less developed countries lack of military spending really affects the worldwide total.

More interesting statistics are that there are more televisions produced every year than books. But even more disturbing is that the amount of money spent on video games in the world today is almost eighty million dollars.

This site is interesting to spend some time on and see how the numbers change by the minute.

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Why US is Getting Fatter

Since everyone is focusing on health care with the passing of Obama's reform, I found an interesting article on the use of High-fructose Corn Syrup. I have known for some time that it is not healthy. I have even suspected that it is really, really bad for you to consume. Now I have proof.

Princeton University researchers have released a report that focuses on research that was performed on rats. Some rats were given access to high-fructose corn syrup and some were given access to regular table sugar. With equal caloric intake of the two sweeteners, the rats who consumed the high-fructose corn syrup gained more weight. Long-term consumption even led to the rats gaining more weight around their midsection and increased levels of triglycerides.

One quote from the report really stood out in my mind. "Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet. In humans, this would be equivalent to a 200-pound man gaining 96 pounds" Wow! That is eye-opening.

So where did high-fructose corn syrup come from? HFCS, as it is known, was introduced to processed foods and soft drinks in the US from about 1975 to 1985. Prior to that time, the US Government was looking for something that corn could be used for. Corn was, and still is a subsidized crop in the United States so it made sense to try to find something else that it could be used for. Sugar prices began to rise in the late nineteen-seventies and the fairly new HFCS became a cheap alternative to food and beverage manufacturers.

High-fructose corn syrup is now consumed in greater quantities than regular table sugar. In 2005, Americans consumed a per-person average of almost 63 pounds of sugar per year. It is an ingredient in most of the products sold in US grocery stores today.

A few years ago, I tried to eliminate it from my diet. I grew disheartened upon examining products at the grocery store. It would be very expensive and a total diet change to completely eliminate it. It would be very beneficial to American society if we could completely eliminate it from the packaged food and beverages available to us. I think that they only way to achieve this is for the government to step in and drop the subsidy for corn. This is controversial because most of the sugar we consume comes from outside of the United States.

Most sugar cane is grown in countries located around the equator. These growing regions tend to have weather fluctuations that affect the crops availability. They also tend to experience political change that affects the infrastructure that makes it available for export to countries like the US.

On one hand, I am glad that my assumptions have been proven correct, but on the other hand I am disappointed that nothing has yet been done to try to fix this major problem. As we get more and more overweight, our health problems increase putting a strain on our health care system. Eliminating HFCS from our diets would be one way to help reduce the cost of the health care plan that Obama just signed into law.

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The iPad

I am not sold on the iPad. I think it is too large and just does not fit into a well defined nitch. I think there is some very cool technology in the device, but I just don't think I will be purchasing one.

I like the size of the Kindle better and I like the fact that you don't need to pay for internet access to download a book from Amazon.com. I like that it has a paper-like display which will make it much easier to read books on. I don't like the navigation. I don't like that the screen is so much smaller than the overall device. I don't like that you cannot go into a store and touch one and try it out. I am impressed that it is the best selling item on Amazon.com.

When it comes to the iPad, I like that it has a color screen which will make it great for viewing magazines and browsing the web. I like the navigation because it is very intuitive. I like the fact that the screen dominates the device. I like the fact that it uses Wi-Fi. As I said before, I don't like the size of the device. I don't like the price tag. I am very impressed that they sold 51,000 preorders for the iPad in the first two hours it was available.

I am not in the market for one of these devices yet. I am going to wait and see how things shake out. I think Apple has a better idea of how it should work because they have experience with the iPod and iPhone and iTunes. Their system will be much easier to use and will be a much better experience. They just have years of experience with user interface design which Amazon.com is lacking. At this point I would lean toward the iPad, but I saw another reader in Popular Science magazine that had a paper-like display on one side and a color screen on the other. It opens like a book with one on each side. Now that is a great idea.

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Obamacare and the Tea Party

I was watching the morning news this morning as I was getting ready for work. There was a segment about Obama's health care reform plan. I missed part of it, but I think it was talking about people who report medical fraud. It showed a very excited Obama talking about the real opportunity of his health care plan passing. It also showed health care plan supporters protesting somewhere.

The next shots were the Tea Party and the person they were showing called the health care plan Obamacare. Wow, that is very witty. This group seems to be all about fear, hate and clever word play. I have not heard any valid arguments from them as to why the health care plan is a bad thing. They are not original at all.

They chose their name to appear to be patriotic, referring to the Boston Tea Party. That protest happened because the colonies were being taxed heavily and were not represented in the British government. To protest this, they sneaked onto the British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped the tea overboard. They were patriots and were protesting something that was affecting everyone in the colonies in a negative way. The British were taxing the colonies in order to support the government.

This new Tea Party group stole their name from these original patriots and are using the name to try to give their cause some credibility. Groups love to latch onto names and words that give their silly cause credibility. Whenever I hear about groups doing this, I instantly become skeptical of their cause. If there was a reason to be concerned, the group would not need to resort to these tactics.

I don't know why people are against health care reform anyway. Health care costs go up considerably every single year, even when the economy is struggling. The insurance companies increase their plan costs or co-pays and don't increase the service or the items they cover in the plan. That seems to be something similar to taxation without representation if you ask me. That is what the Tea Party should really be concerned with.

Anyone who has spent any time at all going to doctor's offices or hospitals knows that our system is broken. People go to the emergency room all the time for colds and other basic sicknesses because they do not have health insurance. This forces all of us to wait for long periods of time in the emergency room to get care when we have real emergencies. It costs all of us money because the government is left to pay the bill for these uninsured people. This is actually costing us more than reform ever would.

The other problem is the doctors know what the insurance plans will and won't pay for. So they will just run test after test or prescribe medicine in efforts to "try" to solve the issue you are visiting them for. They don't really try to diagnose the problem and come up with a treatment. Instead they just try things until they find something that works. For instance, my Dad was having seizures. His doctor just kept experimenting with medications until he found something that worked. The problem was that my Dad had to go to the hospital several times because the medications were causing him to have really bad seizures. So this medical practice cost the insurance company more money than it should have if the doctor would have just done his job the first time.

Doctors also refuse to communicate with each other. So if your primary doctor refers you to a specialist, many times the specialist will have duplicate tests run on you. This happens either because the doctors are not communicating or because the specialist knows that the insurance will pay for the test to be run again, so they just do it. They are taking advantage of the insurance system for their own personal gain.

Don't get me wrong, I think the good doctors earn their money. I don't believe they are over payed at all. Medical school is a big investment and they deserve to make a lot of money. That is not the problem here at all. The real problem is that the insurance system is broken in a way that does us, the patients, a disservice. We deserve more and that is why I support health care reform.

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The Road to Recovery

Here is a chart that the Obama administration recently released. The chart basically backs up Obama's point that he inherited the economic mess and that he has taken steps to correct the problem.

Here is a link to the image and a description on the Obama website. Obviously, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has worked to a certain extent. It was not the only factor in the recovery, just as Bush was not the only factor in the initial mess.

I still don't believe that the Obama administration has done enough. Banks are not making the loans that the administration had hoped for. Jobs have been created, but they are mostly construction and other blue collar jobs. Education spending is still being cut in California and I don't see that trend reversing before the end of the next school year.

Inflation is inevitable in 2010. What this means to the general public is that if people still have trouble finding jobs, then the economy will be worse off. That could be a major disaster!

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