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Yeah, What He Said

The other day I posted a meandering attempt at not ranting about information technology and the manufacturing sector. Today, Seth Godin wrote a post about basically the same thing. The difference is, his post actually makes some sense.

Talent is too smart to stay long at a company that wants it to be a cog in a machine. Great companies want and need talent, but they have to work for it.

Stop whatever you are doing and read the whole post. If you don’t read Seth, you probably should. Whether you are the guy running the show or the guy who sweeps the floors at night, he has great insight delivered daily for free.

And here’s a nice bit of irony for you…Seth Godin’s blog (for whatever reason) is blocked by our corporate IS department. Luckily, the concept of RSS feeds and readers hasn’t trickled down to them yet, so we can still read whatever we want through them.

Give them a few years and they’ll get Google Reader blocked as well.

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In This Year of Political Calls For Change

I decided to make a few changes in my career today. Well, I didn’t actually decide today. I just put the wheels in motion officially. So there’s a good chance that I’ll be available for anyone who needs BI, software development, or sys admin work done. Of course, only high rollers need apply. I hit the ground running in two short weeks.

Might as well quote another Van Halen song while I’m at it…

Change, nothin’ stays the same
Unchained, and ya hit the ground runnin’
Change, ain’t nothin’ stays the same
Unchained, yeah ya hit the ground runnin’

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And I Ain’t Lost Yet

Billymac just got back from Vegas, and it sounds like he did pretty well at the poker tables. I’ve known and loved Billymac for years, and this is one reason why…

I like no, I LOVE, taking money from punk-ass kids that show up to a poker room wearing a track-suit, pulled down hat, wrap around sunglasses, and listening to their iPhones at the table.

My favorite stunt to pull at Vegas poker tables is to sit down and immediately start talking. I like to play up the fact that I’m a stupid hick. It’s not much of a stretch, and I’ve preparing for that role my entire life. That kid with the iPhone and glasses Billymac mentioned almost always falls for it, and I can usually take them for a while.

Invariably, a couple of people at the table realize after a while that I’m a somewhat intelligent hick.

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Luckily, We Have The Fed

Admittedly, I am more stupider than a lot of people when it comes to finances.  So someone please tell me how the stock market really works.  See, I thought the stock market reacted to what is going on in the economy.  I didn’t realize it was the economy.  

Apparently, I was wrong, because the Federal Reserve has announced an emergency rate drop to “fix” the stock market.

The Federal Reserve, confronted with a global stock sell-off fanned by increased fears of a recession, slashed a key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point on Tuesday and indicated further rate cuts were likely.

…

This move is not an instant fix,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics

“Fix” is actually the perfect word.  Markets can be “fixed” kind of like a fight or the World Series can be “fixed”. 

So let me get this straight.  We (individually and as a country) have borrowed too much money, which has us headed towards a recession.  The obvious solution?  Lower interest rates to banks, which allows them to lower interest rates to consumers, which allows them to borrow more money.  Makes sense right?  Right?

“You can’t borrow your way out of debt”–Dave Ramsey

So rest easy tonight, all of ye lower and middle income Americans.  Though the cost of milk, gasoline, and Coors Light doth drift higher whilst thou income remaineth the same, panic disturbs not the slumber of bankers, barons, and brokers.  So long as the DJIA remaineth propped by policy, politicians, and ponzi schemes, you need not be troubled by the frightful prospect of competing on a level playing field and moving forward.

Ah, what the hell!  You can just put it on your credit card, right?  Rates have never been lower!!!

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Poker South Florida Style

The day after Christmas Bear Toe and I drove up to Dania from Miami to check out the Dania Jai Alai and Poker Palace (or whatever it is called). Our buddy BGE lives in Ft. Lauderdale, and he said this was the place to play. The poker room there is a decent size–probably 20 tables, but most of them weren’t used while we were there.

They run a tournament at 3:00 pm daily, and I signed up for that. It’s a $5 entry, winner take all. 2000 units, 50/100 blinds starting out, with increases every 15 minutes. While I was waiting for the tourney I sat down at a cash table–$1/$2 no limit hold ’em with $100 MAX buy-in . After about 10 minutes at that table, I wished I hadn’t bothered with the tournament.

It seems like there were two types of players there, pretty good and pretty bad, and the split was about half and half. I noticed when the tournament started that the pretty good guys at my table didn’t play in it, and the pretty bad guys did. I decided to just push all in every chance I got to possibly double up and get back to the cash table. There were 60 player in the tournament, and I wasn’t about to sit there for 3 hours for a chance at only $300, especially when there was easy money bleeding into the cash games from guys getting put out of the tourney. If I could pile up chips early, fine. If not, fine too. I think I was the 8th or 9th person put out. I think the wise locals show up just to pick off guys as they are put out of the tourney.

The rest of the day was pretty productive. My chip stack was swinging, but not too wildly and always trending up. As I built it, I’d open up a little and give guys action, hoping they’d stick around. By 10:30 I’d built it up to ~$700. Not bad for buying in at $100. My mistake was not leaving at that point. The poker room closed at 12:00, and people started getting really crazy as closing drew near. It worked out well for Bear Toe who won the final pot of the night (everyone involved pushed all-in) for about $500. I got caught with middle pair post flop countless times and was a little to liberal in giving other guys action.

I ended up leaving with $575 and a newly learned lesson courtesy of one of the pretty good players. It only cost me $65 for him to show me a big gaping hole in my game–pretty cheap!

Overall, a decent poker room. There wasn’t really any variety of games. A 7 card stud game was going on when we got there, but it ended and everything went to $1/$2 NL hold ’em. The dealers were fine on the whole. A couple were excellent, and one in particular was horrible. There were a couple of rules that some players had a problem with, but I didn’t think they were too out of line. For instance, if you show cards before the showdown your hand is automatically mucked. The service was not all that great, but I wasn’t there to drink and eat, so that wasn’t a big deal either.

I can’t wait to go back next year with a little knowledge going in!

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Ron Paul’s Money Is Coming From People Like Us

It looks like the Paul campaign will easily pass the $17 million mark before midnight. I’m guessing that’s going to result in $5.5 to $6 million raised on December 16 alone.

What’s most impressive to me is that this money is being raised by regular, every day people, in most cases $100 at a time. Earlier in the day, Ron Paul’s website reported that they’d received $3.6M from more than 30,000 people. Personally, I don’t know anyone who has or will reach the $2,300 individual limit, and I’m guessing that’s because people like us just can’t afford that much.

What separates Dr. Paul’s campaign from the other candidates is that it is being driven by a very large number of people who care, even if they can only able to give a couple of hundred bucks. I’ve heard several of my friends who are supporting Dr. Paul say, “I’ve never given to a political campaign before, but this is different.”

UPDATE:  Point reiterated here.

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Ready For The Majors?

Political operatives employed in public positions, no-bid contracts awarded to friends, e-mail theft, nepotism and cronyism (the KNS is full of links on this), renaming of positions to stay on the payroll, lobster for lunch, trips paid for with misdirected funds, secret meetings to determine public policy, providing funds to apparently fake entities, strongarming the citizens to vote for one tax to avoid another, etc.

Who says government isn’t efficient?  Knox County was able to accomplish all of this (and who knows what else)  in just a few years!

My question is, what are these guys doing messing around in little ol’ Knox County?  They should skip over state level gov’ment and head straight to the Federal level where they can do some real damage.  I haven’t commented on this in a while, but geesh…will it ever end?

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Credit Card Regulation, Free Markets, and Paying Cash

The Coyote Chronicles challenges Free Marketers to defend deregulation of the credit card industry: 

You can make the argument that people who can’t pay their balances in full every month should not take out a credit card, but thats more than a little disingenuous since we would see a staggering drop in consumer spending if people only spent when they could pay cash. The restaurant and travel industries would suffer immediately. I doubt there would be a Black Friday at all. Don’t even get me started about the car business.

I’ll take a shot at this one.  First of all, Black Friday, car financing, and credit cards themselves are all fairly new concepts.  Somehow, civilization survived before they existed, and suspect it will survive long after they are gone.  The assertion that our economy is propped up by the insane amount of consumer credit that exists currently tells me that we are, as a country, living above our means.  The fact that the savings rate keeps declining while consumer debt continues to rise tells me that we are in denial of this fact.  Government regulation that enables this foolish behavior only delays the inevitable crash that must occur to correct the market and insures with each passing year that the crash will be harder.

What would happen to the economy if people stopped using credit cards and started paying cash?  One thing is for sure.  Every debt free individual would have greatly increased buying power because a higher percentage of his income would be available to purchase goods and services instead of paying interest on the Big Mac Value Meal he bought 4 months ago.

Hat tip to MCB.

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Amazon’s Kindle — I Don’t Get It (Yet)

Amazon launched its new ebook reader this week, and while I can definitely see the value in owning one, I think I have to pass for now.  The big obstacle for me?  The price.

$400 is pretty expensive, even though the gadget is cool.  Amazon is footing the bill for their reader’s connectivity to the Amazon ebookstore, which is nice, but they are still charging for the books.  I would be much more likely to buy one of these if it came with some free downloads, at least 15 or 20.  Seth Godin wanted to give his books away with each reader, but Amazon balked at the idea.  For me, that could have been the justification I was looking for.

I’m still tempted, because something like this is perfect for me.  I’m always reading 4 or 5 different books at the same time, and it would be great to be able to take them all with me on one little device.  This one is billed as being able to hold 200 titles.  Also, it would be great to use when traveling for the holidays.  Nice features like reading blogs through RSS and a built in music player make it a little harder to resist.

I’ll probably end up waiting for the third generation of these things before I commit to buying one.  I’ve already been burned by first generation mp3 players and digital cameras.  The price will drop and the products will get better.  I’d also like to hold one in my hands befre I throw down the money.  Still, a really cool idea, and this is the direction everything is going anyway.