Sunday, March 29, 2009
"Out of the Office" automatic email replies should be, for the most part, extinct. It's 2009, and you should have an iPhone or Blackberry at this point.
If you are even remotely diligent about your work ethic, you will respond to important emails at night, on the weekends, when you are on business trips, when you are on vacation, etc.
When I get an OOO message, I assume the person:
1) Doesn't have a phone that can read email. This is a FAIL person.
2) Thinks "work" occurs at a physical location during a set time. FAIL person.
3) Neither 1 or 2, but still does OOO messages because that's what people used to do and they never re-evaluate whether certain processes are necessary. FAIL person.
If you are even remotely diligent about your work ethic, you will respond to important emails at night, on the weekends, when you are on business trips, when you are on vacation, etc.
When I get an OOO message, I assume the person:
1) Doesn't have a phone that can read email. This is a FAIL person.
2) Thinks "work" occurs at a physical location during a set time. FAIL person.
3) Neither 1 or 2, but still does OOO messages because that's what people used to do and they never re-evaluate whether certain processes are necessary. FAIL person.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Not the Preferred Nomenclature
I can't believe I have to tell you people this, but apparently I do. When you are using a document versioning system based on creation date, it is imperative that you use the following format for the date portion: yyyy-mm-dd.
If you don't put the year first it won't be sorted properly if it lasts more than one year. And if you don't zero-pad the dates less than 10, it'll put October before February.
TPS-Report_10-01-2025.xls
TPS-Report_10-02-2009.xls
TPS-Report_2-01-2009.xls
TPS-Report_4-01-1999.xls
I can't believe I have to tell you people this, but apparently I do. When you are using a document versioning system based on creation date, it is imperative that you use the following format for the date portion: yyyy-mm-dd.
If you don't put the year first it won't be sorted properly if it lasts more than one year. And if you don't zero-pad the dates less than 10, it'll put October before February.
TPS-Report_10-01-2025.xls
TPS-Report_10-02-2009.xls
TPS-Report_2-01-2009.xls
TPS-Report_4-01-1999.xls
Friday, March 20, 2009
If you look at who is currently residing in the White House you'll realize that our country has come a long way with tolerance. Because even as far back as 10-20 years ago, whole books were written about how people like this are sneaky and evil. Back in the 1950's these people were systematically sought out and blacklisted from certain careers. Yes, I'm talking about the fact that we can have a girl with a Russian name, Natasha (Sasha) Obama, living in the White House, is truly progress. F you Joe McCarthy.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Ratings Agencies [i.e. skip this post]
Some of you know that the ratings agencies (Moody's, S&P, the other one) pretty much caused this whole financial disaster. A combination of incompetence and conflicts of interest caused them to rate garbage bonds as AAA, without which investors wouldn't have bought them, thus banks wouldn't have created them, thus mortgage brokers couldn't have made insane loans, and thus housing prices would've stayed sane.
So the question is what to do now. Obviously having bond issuers pay for the ratings doesn't work. There are some other proposals being floated around to have a big pool of money from the buy side pay for "independent" ratings. This is an even worse idea, for the same reason that there is no good credit analysis coming out of Cuban financial firms.
So here's my idea:
Keep the status quo, whereby issuers pay the ratings agencies, but add a clause to all the bonds creating a put option requiring the ratings agencies to buy it back from the investor if certain accuracy metrics are not met. The put option could be capped at maybe 5x times fees collected by the ratings agency in the first place, so they would still have some incentive to issue a rating, but this would counter-act the conflict of interest with an even stronger incentive to hire smart people and do a good job.
Some of you know that the ratings agencies (Moody's, S&P, the other one) pretty much caused this whole financial disaster. A combination of incompetence and conflicts of interest caused them to rate garbage bonds as AAA, without which investors wouldn't have bought them, thus banks wouldn't have created them, thus mortgage brokers couldn't have made insane loans, and thus housing prices would've stayed sane.
So the question is what to do now. Obviously having bond issuers pay for the ratings doesn't work. There are some other proposals being floated around to have a big pool of money from the buy side pay for "independent" ratings. This is an even worse idea, for the same reason that there is no good credit analysis coming out of Cuban financial firms.
So here's my idea:
Keep the status quo, whereby issuers pay the ratings agencies, but add a clause to all the bonds creating a put option requiring the ratings agencies to buy it back from the investor if certain accuracy metrics are not met. The put option could be capped at maybe 5x times fees collected by the ratings agency in the first place, so they would still have some incentive to issue a rating, but this would counter-act the conflict of interest with an even stronger incentive to hire smart people and do a good job.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Facebook, When You're in Your 30's
Is half a diary of your friends' unfortunate ability to breed, and the other half a journal of people desperately trying to convince others they are still cool.
All in all -- pretty sad. But I can't get enough of it.
Seriously though, I don't really want to see pics of your kid, or updates on your parenting mishaps. I also don't want to see what cool bar you're DJing at tonight.
Is half a diary of your friends' unfortunate ability to breed, and the other half a journal of people desperately trying to convince others they are still cool.
All in all -- pretty sad. But I can't get enough of it.
Seriously though, I don't really want to see pics of your kid, or updates on your parenting mishaps. I also don't want to see what cool bar you're DJing at tonight.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Liberals Believe
taking money away from the fruits of the most valuable capital and labor in our economy, and spending it on things we wouldn't even approve when the economy was booming, will actually somehow increase our country's output.
Hope that helps clear up any confusion.
and also...A higher cigarette tax will encourage people to stop smoking. A carbon tax will encourage people to shift away from carbon-emitting, and toward "green" energy sources. An increase on the tax for charitable giving will reduce the incentive for donations.
and therefore...A higher tax on the outcome of capital investments will not stop people from investing in the future of our means of production and employment, and even if it did those are rich people who can afford it. A higher tax on the most valuable work being done in our economy (as set by a free market) will not cause those people to shift their time away from this work and towards leisure.
taking money away from the fruits of the most valuable capital and labor in our economy, and spending it on things we wouldn't even approve when the economy was booming, will actually somehow increase our country's output.
Hope that helps clear up any confusion.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
General Motors' auditor expressed doubts over the auto maker's survival. Apparently having full access to their books and management made Deloitte & Touche the LAST TO FUCKING KNOW THAT.
