Sister's wedding in Pittsburgh!

The wedding was in a really beautiful , peaceful location, Green Gables, in the Pennsylvania mountains. It’s a playhouse in the mountains that folks from Pittsburgh make a pilgrimage once a year or so for a night out on the town. There were over 160 friends and family and it was a great opportunity to catch up with everyone even if only briefly. I saw neighbors from the street I grew up on in North Huntingdon, family that I hadn’t seen in several years, and friends of family that lives back East. We drove by the mine where 7 miner’s were lost last year, and drove up to the area I first learned to ski. One thing that surprised me was just how small the hill was that I learned to ski. Its nothing like the mountains in the west.

Travels to Anaheim, Ca

Orange County, which I am sure has its merits, was not the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Anaheim was just a bunch of concrete buildings isolated from one another by large hedges and iron fences. We stayed at the Hyatt Hotel. The overwhelming emotion captured by the construction in the area was isolation and artificiality. I was impressed that there were sidewalks through most of the area, this was very nice. Its just all the parking lots, stoplights, and non human sized streets that cause a feeling of anxiety. I suppose its what most of America looks like, but going out for a run through the area I just can’t help but ask myself how we got into this situation, with all these vestiges of an agrarian past taking up space with lawns and isolating ourselves into our little pod homes. There’s so much space for parking and cars…just so much space. And the entity of Anaheim seems to have been paved. They left enough space for palm trees down the middle of the highway. what have we done?

Citigroup and restricted stock dividend payments to executives

The August 25, 2006 Wall Street Journal reported in the article "Citigroup Payouts to Chiefs Irk Holders" that the top executives received dividend payments on restricted stock from the moment they are awarded. This is DESPITE the fact that they do not actually gain control of the stock until years down the line.

Wow, how is this not illegal? The individual doesn't actually own the stock until years down the road yet they can receive dividends on it ahead of time. One measure of fairness in the system would be to determine if the opportunities given to one shareholder translate equally to another. See, someday, say in 10 years, I too plan to own citibank shares. So, shouldn't I too be able to receive dividends on those shares? Perhaps I'll send a note and ask for my dividends on this stock which I intend to own in the future.

Shame on you for accepting the payments, Mr. Prince. And shame on the Citibank board for permitting this shenanigan. If you want to pay him, cut him a check. Don't muddy the waters like this, calling it a 'dividend' on stock he doesn't even have control of.

From the article, "is slated to pay Mr. Prince $1.4 million this year on unvested restricted and deferred stock he held through February of this year, including his most recent restricted stock grant from the company." This is on top of $13 million in salary and bonuses plus $9.7 million in restricted stock awards.

Jiffy Lube caught again!

Back in North Carolina I was suspicious about my local Jiffy Lube not doing work they claimed, so I started to watch them and made a list of work they did vs. work they claimed they did and I identified significant discrepencies. I called and complained and corporate headquarters refunded my money. This time, a TV crew caught them in 5 out of 9 repairs not doing the work they stated. This is not a new problem with Jiffy Lube. At Oil Can Henry's I can watch them on a TV screen so that is where I now go for oil changes. I recommend using Oil Can Henry's, and Jiffy Lube needs to adopt this strategy as well. Its impossible for corporate to police everyone, so empower consumers to watch for themselves.

Grand Theft Auto Like Coke commercial...

Kim posted here a nifty ad that Coke has done that looks like a scene from the game Grand Theft Auto. I haven't watched a commercial in awhile, let alone watched it twice. Good work to the Coke advertising dept.

Microsoft Share Buyback stupidity....

Okay, so i get this letter the other day, its like 60 pages long and says the following:

"Microsoft would like to buy your Microsoft shares from you for a price between ~24 and 25 and some change". We can't tell you which of the numbers in between those two numbers we will buy it for, we can only say it will be somewhere in between these two values.

Would you like to sell your shares for that price?

Can I ask what the value is in this escapade? If I wanted to sell my shares why wouldn't I just log onto my account and click 'sell'. best of all, if i wanted to sell at less than market value, which is what the letter was asking, I would just sell at a lower value.

How much did it cost to send every shareholder of MS (or 'lots of shareholders') this letter? I just don't get it.

If the letter said:

Hey, we want your shares and we know you don't want to sell them, but what if we give you 10% more than they are trading for on such and such a date" maybe that i would have responded to.

Maybe I'm just missing something here, but the only thing it proved is that alot of us have no desire to get rid of our shares of the company, but that is already reflected in the stock price.

confused,

--adam

Newport News and Matthews County, VA

After spending some the week in Boston I caught a flight down to Newport News to spend some time with Stacey, her family, and friends of the family. Met her grandmother for the first time and caught up with her parents. We spent the weekend in Matthew’s County and did some serious kayaking both evenings around sunset in the local rivers (no whitewater, sorry Stephen and Charles :). Good times, went by so fast though. Also got to explore some of the coffee shops in the Newport News and Williamsburg area. I learned that wireless access isn’t as prevelant in other parts of country as the Pacific Northwest. Hoping this all changes as WiMax rolls out. I hadn’t seen Stacey for about 4 weeks, so I was glad she remembered who I was when we me at the airport :)

The Great City of Boston and SIGGRAPH 2006

Headed up to Boston the first week of August for SIGGRAPH. My hotel was about 30 minutes from the convention center by bus so I got to see quite a bit of the city. I also got a chance to catch up with some good friends from graduate school who were spending time visiting in the north end of Boston called Little Italy. My reaction to Boston: I LOVED IT!! truly a great, beautiful city, people seemed very genuine and I can understand why people like it there so much. The biggest surprise to me was it didn’t have this ‘huge mega-city’ feel I expected. Instead, forgetting for a moment about a heatwave, it was a very walkable city with great food and great people.

Jamie Hill has a blog!

Jamie Hill emailed me the other day. Apparently he has a blog that I wasn't aware of. Jamie and I go way back to our college days at the ever inspiring University of Evansville. I've added him to 'the list' on the right hand side of the page.

Jamie knows boatloads about networking, routers, POTS, switches, Cisco stuff, guitars, and women. He lives in New England and telecommutes to work in Evansville, IN. He also has a free java call waiting app on his site but I guess you gotta have a phone line routed into your computer or something like that.

For more Jamie check out: http://www.stratusnine.com/

My first triathalon!

Finished my first triathalon yesterday, it was awesome! My chain fell off during my bike ride and I had some challenges not having done any real swimming. Ever. But it was a sweet time in Bend. The tri was called the deschutes dash.