Cracker Barrel Stock up 27%

woah there, cracker barrel poppin' faster than a 'coon in a hound show, up 27% today. hashbrown casserole and okra anyone?

this trend of hedge fund action signficantly moving all these restauranteurs...unlocking value, essentially by spinning off non-core franchises owned by the companies (mcds begets chipotle, cracker barrel begets logans, wendys spawns tim hortons), lookout darden, red lobster and olive garden may be gettin' to the seperatin'.

The Powerpoint Virus

Some use it as a tool to convey information. Others use it as a tool to disguise lack of understanding. And like any technology, it has the capability to do good and bad in the universe. In case you felt your company was the only place it is used to confuse, a recent article on yahoo has the following statement from genentech's CEO:

"When Levinson sees signs of culture atrophy, he pounces, as he did in an e-mail to senior managers in December about "the spread of unintelligible, gibberish-laden PowerPoint presentations.... I have recently sat through several presentations that were simply incomprehensible -- mind-numbing, bloated discourses that were full of buzzwords and otherwise devoid of meaningful content. This is a serious problem, and the worst part is that it's spreading like the disease it is." (His abhorrence of corporate-speak helps explain why Levinson loathes consultants. "They suck you dry," he says.)"

Fun graphs of housing market overvaluation...

At overvalued.blogspot.com they are posting graphs of how various housing markets are deviating from the normal appreciation curve for real estate.

Bizweek article about Math careers...

I stumbled across a great read on some of the more interesting career opportunities for computer scientists and mathematicians in the next few years. You can take a read here.

a pill to remember...and a pill to forget...

Apparently, scientists are madly at work on a pill that helps you to forget stuff. They are speaking about targeting traumatic situations. Wow..methinks of the interesting implications of such a product.

The lack of posts recently is the hurried pace my life has taken in the annual review process at work, the preperations for 8 weeks sabbatical in australia and new zealand, and the 3 months after that i will be heading to shanghai.

Now, for the most part...this is good stuff, and i've learned alot about the relative competency of the average craigslist hound....i mean, who knew that there were so many people that surf the web that don't actually know how to read ?!? but i've had to prioritize posts lower than in the past. stay posted for pix as we tromp are way around down under!

Right now, I'm listening to some Dream Theater that Chad sent me....6 degrees of inner turbulence. good stuff.

Eminem acoustic "Lose Yourself" video

Was poking around video.google.com and found this acoustic rendition of "Lose Yourself"...now i just gotta reverse engineer that chord structure.

video is here , here's another one.