Friday, February 12, 2010

You would think California would tell the rest of the states

As found on an online store site;

"Products with exposed solder may contain lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects and other reproductive harm. Please wash hands after handling internal components and motherboards and avoid inhalation of fumes if heating the solder. "

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Sales fixes everything

As you know, I am not a huge Apple fan. However you do have to appreciate their ability to sell. From GUY KAWASAKI you have to appreciate his blog entry see below.


http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_art_of_rain.html#axzz0f0DgQgYU

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Ramsay's Back

Kitchen Nightmares the show is back!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsay%27s_Kitchen_Nightmares
He continues to lay out the painful truth to restaurants that are losing money faster than it can be pumped into them.

I did not realize that the original series was over seas.

I have to add to the bucket list to eat at a Ramsay restaurant.

Here is the list as of today

Season 1: 2007

1 Peter's Babylon, New York September 19, 2007
2 Dillon's1 New York, New York September 26, 2007
3 The Mixing Bowl Bellmore, New York October 3, 2007
4 Seascape Islip, New York October 10, 2007
5 The Olde Stone Mill Tuckahoe, New York October 17, 2007
6 Sebastian's Toluca Lake, California November 7, 2007
7 Finn McCool's Westhampton, New York November 14, 2007
8 Lela's Pomona, California November 21, 2007
9 Campania Fair Lawn, New Jersey November 28, 2007
10 The Secret Garden Moorpark, California December 12, 2007

Note 1: Renamed Purnima during production.

Season 2: 2008-20092

11 Handlebar Mount Sinai, New York September 11, 2008
12 Giuseppi's Macomb Township, Michigan September 18, 2008
13 Trobiano's Great Neck, New York September 25, 2008
14 Black Pearl New York, New York September 25, 2008
15 J Willy's South Bend, Indiana October 30, 2008
16 Hannah & Mason's Cranbury, New Jersey November 6, 2008
17 Jack's Waterfront St. Clair Shores, Michigan November 6, 2008
18 Sabatiello's Stamford, Connecticut November 13, 2008
19 Fiesta Sunrise West Nyack, New York November 13, 2008
20 Sante La Brea Los Angeles, California November 20, 2008
21 Cafe 36 La Grange, Illinois January 15, 2009

Anyway, I look forward to the show this season and what disasters he will be able to fix!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Undercover Boss Part II

So I had several comments on the last post. Some of which I did not publish (Language people!) Anyway, a couple of people suggested that the show degraded the position of the C-level person. An example of comment is

"The average American is dumb. This show just adds fuel to the fire – Joe American is going to think “Hey, the CEO can’t do my trash picking job as good as me, why does he make so much money!? Not fair!”"

I have several issues with the comment.

1st "The average American is dumb". Not true. We are a democracy and our opinions and what we stand for is the ability for us to make our own decisions. Do some people think that C-Level people make too much money. Yes. However the show does what I felt was a good job showing how C-Level people do care about their people and can sometimes get out of touch with their business. Yet they do want to learn and do care.

Really? Do people expect the C-Level person to be able to do all tasks in the company well? That would be a talented person. If the average American does believe this than they are dumb.

If anything the show made middle management look bad. The example of this is the clocking in thing where late the employee loses 2 min for every 1 late. This (I am sure) was made with thinking that corporate supported it. However it was a poor management decision. Just like the supervisors following trash pickup. Just decisions gone wrong.

It looks like next week will have some different issues surrounding what looks to be abuse. Probably happens more than we think.

Keep the comments coming!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Undercover Boss

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/undercover_boss/

It was pretty good. Simple idea is take a huge company and take the CEO and put them in the field doing the most basic delivery of the company.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

I GOT IT figured out

So if you have followed the blog for a while, you know I am a Mediacenter fan. However when I upgraded to Windows7 version, I lost my ability to use webguide. See http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/

The reason it no longer works according to the web site is
Note: WebGuide does not support Windows 7. Unfortunately, there are far too many changes in Windows 7 (and Fiji/TV Pack) that prevent WebGuide from being easily updated to work. Rest assured that the remote access scenarios WebGuide enabled are still near and dear to my heart and that I'm doing everything in my power to advocate for them across Microsoft.

It is posted online that the person who developed the app went to work for Microsoft. To be honest, Microsoft included the streatming into Media Player. It is not great.

So I found Orb www.orb.com I would call it Slingbox for Mediacenter. I can now watch TV, Watch recorded TV and all other media on that Media center. Works great. Sure, I have a few tweaks. However it works of low bandwidth (for remote viewing), on the mobile phone and more. I can even view my web cams. Woo Hoo!